Happy birthday to me, I hope this is my last.
Birthdays: A Reminder Of The Passage Of Time.
We are taught to look forward to our birthday, a date that seems to mean the most to us, a day where wishes would be granted and everyone you love will put you in the center of their life, trying their best to make your day special. Standing in front of the cake that is supposed to be your favourite flavour, surrounded by laughter and love, the only thing that filled your mind is how much you've failed yourself again, how you are still exactly where you were last time you blow those candles. Wondering to yourself, if there is any achievements that is worth celebrating, if birthday mean more to you or the others. You blew the candles anyway, afraid to disappoint the ones that cared more for the cake, afraid that if you wait a little more the tears might come gushing out and the whole world would know about your pain that you tried so hard hiding. The candles went out, followed by a loud cheer that mocks your misery.
I wasn't always afraid of my birthdays, as a kid birthday is all I look forward to, birthday was fun when the world is still innocent and full of colours, but as I became acquainted with melancholy, I learnt to see what I short and lacked, birthday turns into a yearly reminder of how much a burden I am to the world. Every day I wake up I am greeted by the familiar disappointment: I find them getting along with the voices in my head, lurking in the shadow of my abandoned dreams, growing in the cracks of my broken relationships, even hiding within the eyes of my loved ones. The inability to see a way out of this suffering I started wishing for the perfect way out. I spent all my birthday wishes, all the 11:11s and every fallen lashes on the same dream. Birthday marks another year of halting, a complete rotation around the glooming Sun.
Overflowing despair
The darkness in your head overflows and takes over you, eventually it becomes the only thing people notice of you. I could tell from the way their eyes soften when they meet mine, it's like they are saying they will forgive me for whatever I believed to have sinned. What they didn't know is that the tenderness hurts more, it would be better to believe that someone hates me more than I do, at least it would assure the doubt I mistake as faith, that I am not alone in thinking this way. I could feel the shift in them grew each year as I share another birthday with my demon, the crowd shrinks every year and the ones that are left start to rush the ritual, as if they are losing hope in me too, and despair would triumph, again.
When you see the world through contempt you will end up taking sides with your demon, you start looking for evidence that supports your beliefs, that you are right after all. This way you feel less lonely, and all the self loathing would be justified. Misled by the wrong leader you forgot that hope is always lingering within arms reach, waiting for you to look back.
