Birthdays and the Memory that Won’t Leave
There’s a certain performance expected of you on your birthday. Even if you don’t care for cake or crowds, even if you prefer solitude to ceremony, there’s a social contract – unspoken but ironclad – that on this one day, you’re to be grateful. Festive. Present. Pleased. It doesn’t matter how you feel inside. It’s your birthday. Smile for the camera. Accept the gift. Be celebrated.
But what if the day itself is the wound?
What if the date, etched into calendars and stitched into well-meaning greetings, is the anniversary of something unspeakable? Not publicly unspeakable, like a national tragedy, but privately so – spiritually radioactive. The sort of thing that, if voiced aloud, would empty a room or change the temperature of a friendship. Something terrible happened to me on my tenth birthday. And every birthday since has been a silent replay of that original betrayal. A ritual not of joy, but of dread. Of holding my breath until the clock ticks past midnight and I can be anonymous again.
I’ve never liked birthdays. Not because I dislike getting older – I find ageing oddly reassuring, like a slow surrender into myself – but because the day brings a kind of psychic claustrophobia. It stifles me. Not with attention, but with the unbearable pressure to feel happy. Happiness on demand is a kind of tyranny.
You learn, over the years, to deflect. To be cheerfully evasive. “Oh, I’m not big on birthdays.” “I prefer a quiet one.” “Another trip around the sun – how thrilling.” You say these things with a wry smile and a shrug, hoping people take the hint. Most don’t. Because birthdays are sacred to the culture. They represent life, family, belonging. But for some of us, they also represent the moment the world stopped being safe.
Psychologically, we talk about trauma in terms of triggers and imprints, but I’ve found it more accurate to think of it as time travel. The body may stay here, in the present, but the spirit slips back. And certain dates – especially birthdays – become wormholes. One step into the day, and you’re ten years old again. You’re helpless. Cornered. Split open.
Spiritually, I think trauma is a kind of uninvited baptism. Not in water or fire, but in fear. Something changes the shape of your soul, and you spend decades trying to explain that to people without showing them the scars. There are truths I’ve never spoken. And probably never will. That’s not shame – it’s stewardship. Some griefs are not for public consumption.
Philosophically, I sometimes wonder what it means to be ‘born.’ The ancients believed your fate was set at birth, spun by Moirai or scribbled by angels. But what happens when the day of your birth becomes the day of your fracture? Can you ever disentangle the two? Or do you carry your birth certificate like a bloodstained contract?
Existentially, birthdays force us to reckon with time. And I’ve never trusted time. It gives with one hand and takes with the other. It dulls pain but never removes it. It places candles on your cake and ghosts in your wardrobe. And so, each year, I brace myself. I wait for the gloom to pass. Not because I’m being difficult, but because I’m being honest. Because this day is heavy. And I’m tired of pretending it isn’t.
So here’s what I wish people understood: I don’t hate life. I’m not bitter. I’m not sulking in a corner hoping someone will coax me out. I simply need space. Grace. Permission to not perform. Because not every birthday is a party. For some of us, it’s a pilgrimage. A long, quiet walk through an old wound, lit only by the hope that, eventually, the memory will loosen its grip.
Until then, I remain – grateful for understanding, resistant to obligation, and silently counting down the hours until the page turns and the ghosts go back to sleep.
Happy Birthday to me.
Wording 