Birthday Blues
Maybe you have heard about the term birthday blues. But for some people who never experienced it, the term can be hard to understand or unrelatable.
Birthday blues is the feeling of being sad, apathetic, or disinterested in celebrating or thinking about your birthday.
At the beginning of January, I came across a tweet saying “i will NOT cry this year on my birthday” with 36k retweets and 146k likes. Seeing how high the engagement was, I assumed birthday blues is becoming one of the most famous topics to talk about specifically among women because of how common it is for most of us to be sad and cry on our birthday.
One night I was having a conversation with my best friend that led us into many topics and somehow we ended up on the topic of why most women cry on their birthday, including me. She told me she was so confused when her friends said they were all feeling sad or even cried on their birthday because she never felt that kind of feeling before. She always thinks that her birthday is a happy day for her.
However, it’s a different case for me.
The same as her other friends, I always find myself feeling sad and even cry on my birthday without any reason, at first. So, she asked me why. What are the reasons that make most women feel sad? Is it because the people around them don't congratulate them? Is it because they spend that day being single and they see it as a pathetic thing? Is it because they didn't receive any gifts or surprises and were expecting from their friends?
Eventually, she asked me, “What about you? What makes you feel sad on your birthday?”
I pondered my answers and ended up with how it began after my dad passed away 6 years ago. The root of the problem I would say.
My grief was blinding me, blocking me from looking at the good things or appreciating what I still have in life. I felt empty on my 19th birthday ready to give up on life because I was only 18 years old when my dad passed away and I thought that nothing mattered anymore if one of my family members was gone. The pain was extremely unbearable for me.
“What’s the point of celebrating my birthday if one of the reasons I am here is gone?” my 18-year-old self said to herself that time.
That thought and answer eventually developed for different reasons as I grew older. The reason I feel sad on my birthday is no longer because of my grief. I began to think about how I spent every birthday being miserable because I constantly compared myself this year to last year and was convinced that I had no improvement at all. I live the same life with no exciting things happening. I don’t have any major achievements at all.
And it continues until my 24th birthday last year.
I kept thinking like that even though last year I already achieved and had something different to do in my life; graduating and doing an internship. I spent my birthday working from the office on Monday. But still, I was unable to appreciate myself.
I was waiting for someone to point it out for me on my birthday, to finally validate every achievement I made in my life because I can’t bear the thought of appreciating myself (which is ridiculous because I don’t even talk to someone about what I’m proud of or about my achievements, so why am I expecting people to talk about it with me?).
I thought it was cringe. I set a high expectation for myself so I thought everything I did was bare minimum and deserved no appreciation. I never feel enough.
And then after a moment, she talked about her point of view. She thinks that she’s happy on her birthday because that’s the day we’re here in this world. That alone is something to celebrate.
She said something along that line:
“I think we have to create our own happiness. We can’t keep chasing and putting our happiness on other people because if that’s the case, we will always see our life as never enough. Everything we do will never be enough and we will never be happy because we’re searching for happiness in other people.
If we can’t create our own happiness, then who else will? In the end, we only have ourselves. We can only depend on ourselves.”
I agree with everything she said (I felt like I was being slapped in the face honestly). While listening to her quietly, I highlighted something in my head from what she said.
Creating our own happiness.
Something clicked in my brain. So that’s what I didn’t do for the past 6 years. I failed to create my own happiness. I depend on other people to point out how proud they are of me because of all the things I did and went through. I waited and waited with expectations. Expectations.
Those expectations rotted in my brain.
Expectation always ruins you.
I failed to create my own happiness simply by saying thank you to myself for being here, sitting on my desk writing this, and having another realization about myself because my world didn’t end when I was 19 years old.
All the stuff I didn’t do to create my own happiness suddenly ran through my head as my best friend kept talking about how being grateful can be the start of creating your happiness.
As the conversation went to an end, I said to myself, “Maybe this year is the time for me to start appreciating myself bit by bit. No matter how small progress I have.”
“That’s right,” she answered.
“I never appreciated myself for getting out of severe burnout and was capable of finishing 3 books last year. I never appreciated myself for pushing myself to keep learning Korean even though I only did one chapter that week. That’s something I have to appreciate right?”
Because small progress is still progress. Small achievement is still an achievement. I just need to stop belittling it as if it doesn’t deserve my appreciation.
For other people, creating their own happiness might be the simplest and easiest thing someone could ever do. But for me, I need time to adjust myself. To change the way I think, to change the way I see myself, or simply change the way I talk to myself because I’m already so deep in the unhealthy cycle.
Two days ago, I finished reading ‘Everything I Know About Love’ by Dolly Alderton. In the chapter ‘Everything I Know at Twenty-Eight’, I found a sentence similar to what my best friend said:
‘It is no person’s job to be the sole provider of your happiness.’
What a coincidence, I thought to myself.
It is like the universe trying to give me a confirmation of the thoughts I had after the conversation with my best friend ended.
Like my previous story that I published (read here: I Forgot I Was Once a Little Kid), there’s still the kid in my that I carry everywhere, and making her happy is my job to do, not other people’s.
I ended the day feeling a bit relieved. Maybe because I finally found one of the answers to one of my problems in life and the fact that I bravely talked to someone about the thing that had been hiding for so long.
Laying down on my bed, I thought this was one of the moments I had to be grateful for, to have a best friend and to hold a conversation that made me realize there’s always an answer to my worries as long as I talk to someone about it.
