It’s my birthday today. I am not really one for birthdays, and I’ve been trying to figure out why for almost all of my life.
I think perhaps it’s because when there is a day that is meant to be “your day” the pressure of it representing you fully is too great. Like Valentines day, the idea of the events of the 14th matching the depth of the love you have for your partner is too daunting to fit within a mere 24 hours. Or New Years, Where you must have a night out on the town that epitomizes the year you’ve had. And then of course New Years day, where you must cram, while suffering from a massive hangover, all of next years goals.
The sensible reader would say it’s not that serious. But I am not sensible, and take everything far too seriously.
The other obviously suspect in my distrust of birthdays is that, of course, it is a marker of time. “Another year around the sun!” everyone chants at me in perfect unison, their cheshire smiles, candle lit and horrifying, the light around their faces fading into milky black obscurity as chloroformed clad hand reaches around me, covering my mouth. (jesus avan)
This is harmless frivolity and quite honestly just factually accurate, another year has passed. But I think because I am so bloated with a desire to make, it causes me to wince. My head and heart are distended, fit to burst, with a need to make a mark on the world around me. It feels like I’ve been fitted with lead shoes. This is of course, just vanity, ego, and a number of other more minor sins that ail me constantly. For clarity, I don’t care about getting older, that I have made my peace with and I don’t fetishize my youth. I care about there being less time on the clock.
But I have accomplished! Look, a book! Another, different marker of time. One I prefer. One I can justify with my warped sense. But one that feels empty if not received and enjoyed by you, the reader. This is yet another sin of mine. I may need a priest. Regardless, It is not that serious, I’m told.
If you have read this far and are not exhausted by me, congratulations, and please, give me tips and hints cause I am. If you want more of this. Here is where you can get the book. Signed at that, and hopefully I’ll see you back here for the next little marker of time.
Yours. Avan.
And thank you for all the birthday wishes. It does make me feel good, I am just grumpy.
“If you have read this far and are not exhausted by me, congratulations…” this stuck out to me because I think with a certain level of self awareness, you notice the things that you do or say and it makes you feel like people will have the same reaction as you. It’s the notion that because you don’t like and it’s tiring to you, that others will agree. I feel like that from time to time, but I think instead of focusing the awareness towards something negative we could turn into something positive (easier said than done). I am also here for the dramatics, because it might be that serious to anyone else but it is to you. I understand so much. But congratulations on making it around the sun again, Avan! I do hope you have a good one!
Well, happy solar return to you then