birthdays are sacred

Today is my 23rd birthday. I’m studying abroad in Ecuador and feeling homesick; this is the fourth birthday I’ll spend away from home since I started college. Despite my tumultuous relationship with my family and all I’ve done to try and get away, I can’t deny that birthday traditions are one of the things they got right. Birthdays are sacred. They are anything-you-want days, breakfast in bed and dinner at your favorite restaurant days. They are constant hugs and smiles, calls and check-ins, toasting to your achievements and candles and cake and playing your favorite song of the moment as many times as you want no matter how sick everyone is of it days (currently it’s Purple by Wunderhorse). But to me, birthdays are sacred for more than celebration of age, choosing power, and nostalgia.

1. Birthdays are an honoring of the gift of life.

Not just winning the race to become a conscious being, but the miracle of staying alive. There are so many things in this world that can take you out–war, disease, a bad fall, loneliness, an inattentive driver, food insecurity, falling asleep with a candle on (guilty), one wrong step with a kitchen knife, giving birth to another, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time–reasons why so many don’t live another full cycle of the seasons. Everyone dies between birthdays; to live to see your next one is a much bigger deal than we often realize.

This morning, someone in my program asked me what age I’m turning. “23,” I groaned with an exasperated tone and an eye roll as I put my hand to my forehead. Thanks to trauma, COVID, the whirlwind in which I live my life, you name it: I don’t feel my age, and with the realization that I’m passing an landmark that was unfathomable to me as a kid and still is, I’m reminded of so much time lost. But writing this, I can’t help but think of all the kids in Gaza who won’t live to adulthood, the thousands of infants who won’t even see their first birthday, and all the people in the world for whom the opportunity to look back at 23 and think “How did I get here?” would be a luxury. My feelings are still valid of course–it is undeniably depressing to be nostalgic for/grieve the moment as it’s happening and still feel it slip through your fingers as if it were someone else, not you, experiencing it. But however imperfect, however difficult, my life and existence is a blessing, and I’m grateful to have survived to this transition (repeat affirmation as needed).

2. Birthdays are an act of love.

Call me insecure if the shoe fits, but I often see birthdays as a sort of “love benchmark”: a reminder that I am loved and by whom. I have terrible emotional object permanence, so a reminder of the people that exist in my life and care about me is always nice. Regardless of how I feel throughout the year, birthday wishes and gestures give me something to hold on to for as long as I can.

Birthdays are an act of love for and from people whose lives have touched, a way to honor each other and the gift of shared time, experiences, memories, and if you’re extra lucky, a sense of community. They are also an act of love to oneself if you let them be. I don’t subscribe to the nonchalantness of “Don’t get me anything,” “I don’t like the attention,” “It’s not a big deal” — I go equally hard celebrating others on their birthdays as I accept attention on my own because I think that everyone, even me, deserves a special day to celebrate their unique existence and resilience. Pop culture’s obsession with painting all self-attention as conceit is something I definitely internalize, and it does us no good when it comes to recognizing the beauty of our lives around our birthdays. However, like all holidays, they can bring up a lot: feelings of grief, loss, loneliness, trauma, estrangement, fear, and mortality are understandably common. I don’t mean to be callous and suggest everyone can take such an optimistic view, but I prefer to see birthdays this way.

It’s because of this way of thinking that I take it especially hard when my birthday doesn’t turn out good. I wrestle with the OCD need for a “just right” experience, combined with the fear that my connections are too few or diminishing, and that I won’t have people putting in the effort that makes me feel loved. If you struggle with this kind of apprehensiveness or comparison around your birthday, you’re not alone. It’s a fine line when the joy of connection becomes a need for validation, one that I’m learning to walk constantly.

3. For better or worse, birthdays mark transformation.

At home in the Northeast, my birthday typically corresponds with the changing of the seasons. I consider myself a pretty dynamic person, so I think it’s appropriate that it’s associated with one of the most recognizably transformative transitions: the beginning of autumn. Whether by fate (birth date) or by chance, I have always felt absolutely head over heels in love with fall. From candles and rainy cafe evenings and Pennsylvania pumpkin patches to campfire smells and vibrant colors in the crisp, cool morning air, there are few things in this world that fill me with as much unbridled joy and inexplicable emotion as my favorite time of year. Halloween is my favorite day (yes, even more than my birthday); my second ever tattoo was a drawing by my friend Charlotte of a black cat (Charlie, affectionately named for the artist) in a witch hat sticking out from behind a jack-o-lantern with red, yellow, and orange leaves on the ground. I feel connected to fall on a spiritual level, like autumn itself is me or part of me, and struggled immensely without it during my first two years of college in southern California.

It’s hard not to feel lonely in a foreign country during this period, only able to imagine the changes beginning to place back home. It’s especially hard when you find yourself suddenly among a group of 19 new people, lacking context for each other and struggling to navigate personal insecurities plus group dynamics. Yesterday morning, I was distraught because we found out last minute that we would be leaving this morning for a trip which entailed a 9 hour class day plus travel time–meaning that I would be away from my family, my home friends, my school friends, and my host family–and my ritualistic plans to make a good birthday in Quito that included a tradition from home (sushi for dinner) were null and void. I accepted that I would have to make the most of it, but I couldn’t help but feel totally bummed. As I cried and intellectualized my feelings aloud to a good Ecuadorian friend, I was shocked by the homesickness I was expressing. As I said, birthdays are one of the things my family got right, and while I wish many things were different, I’m proud of the way we celebrate each other. It was that disconnect, the fear of not feeling cared about on my special day because I wouldn’t be surrounded by those who love me at home and feared I hadn’t made strong enough connections yet in my program, that had me feeling so down. But I was once again reminded how quickly things can change.

My friend’s mom kindly went above and beyond to put together a party at their beautiful home, and despite a lack of response from the group during the coordination period (typical of our age group, really), almost everyone was able to make it. It was more than I could have asked for, complete with little notes and a carrot cake and a rainbow “FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS” banner not unlike the “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” one that’s hung in my dining room every year for as long as I can remember. I had a blast and ended the day feeling overjoyed, though a little overwhelmed with emotional whiplash. I was so exhausted but needed to journal, where I remarked that the way that the party had gone, the way I was able to pivot and accept disappointment/give up control and still have it turn out amazing, was a testament to who I am becoming. In the face of my self-consciousness, I took it as a sign that I form better connections and touch more lives than I am always aware of, that my current emotional reality is fleeting and subject to change, and that the year since my last birthday has changed me, for better or worse.

Each birthday is a chance for things to be different, each one celebrating not only how long I’ve been alive but a new, different, context-dependent version of me that has been shaped by the events of the last 365 days. It is also a reminder of who I want to become, what I want to experience and work on over the course of time until the next September 30th and far beyond, universe willing (again, not taking them for granted). Birthdays, then, are also a reminder that like Earth in its orbit around the Sun, you are never stuck in time. Do with that what you can, what you wish.