party 4 u 2

I was hopin' you would come through

Melancholia (2011)

There's a lump in my throat that gets progressively tighter as I think about writing about birthdays. So here are two essays on the subject!

I loathe birthdays.

Actually, I don't necessarily despise birthdays. Maybe what I hate is the expectation that it will always be an unusual (and perfect) day and that I'll receive a thousand messages from everyone I like. And here I am, writing about birthday anxieties at three in the morning when I have to work and have a thousand things to do when I wake up.

I don't hate the birthdays of the people I love, I wouldn't be able to. I live to appreciate them, but having my own birthday seems wrong. It seems forced that it has to be a happy day. That I have to think about getting older, about the piling up of years and responsibilities. My birthday can never be like the last one. Every year I have to be a little bit more of a woman. I have to have more money in my bank account. I have to have more posts on LinkedIn. I think about the people who used to be part of my life and now the birthdays I used to spend with them are distant memories. I think about how I haven't been to the movies for too long. I think about back pain at 22. I think about how I shouldn't mix groups of friends. I think about how different I am with my groups of friends, how should I even act when they're all in the same place? How do I act with my friends from elementary school now that I'm an adult and we have nothing in common? Do I love them as they are or do I love what we were a decade ago?

I decided to write party 4 u as a personal exercise, I wanted to idealize my perfect birthday, in which nothing was missing and in which I never felt anything negative, not even a hint of anxiety. Tears fell from my eyes as I realized what this reality could be. I never realized what I had lost so clearly, what could have been if my decisions had been different. I published the essay without editing even crossing my mind, I wanted it to be a mishmash of my deepest thoughts. It almost felt like I was receiving instructions from my subconscious. Sometimes I write, write, write to see if it sticks, if the puzzle comes together. Sometimes you have to swap pieces around, but somehow they end up fitting together.

Precisely because I'm not very fond of my birthday, I decided to explore this part of myself. There's always the basic idea that your birthday should be a special day and that you should get attention. The idea of being the center of attention scares me, even if I'm in bed, under the covers, looking at posts made from the heart with the worst photos of me ever taken. On the one hand, I'm so grateful that they remembered. On the other hand, I'm overwhelmed, I don't know how to act the moment the spotlight turns to me.

I haven't had a birthday party in a while. I also wondered if it was worth it, everyone lives in different cities and have their own lives. And, because I assumed they wouldn't make a short trip for me, I ended up not arranging anything at all. My fear of being ignored, as I have been in the past, made me immobile, and I ended up drawing the prophecy so that I wouldn't have to be hurt if it happened naturally. In short, I pushed people away before they pushed me away, in cases where I saw signs that this could happen.

However, this didn't mean that I didn't cherish the connections I had with these people. The fear of being abandoned overcame everything and followed me around as if it were my very own shadow. Every time I make new friends, that fear lurks, whether close or far away. While writing party 4 u I kept those people in mind, how I wish I could see them and how I regret what I did. I don't think about them because I feel lonely, in fact, I think that on very few occasions have I had other connections so real and I've also rarely been busier. It's really because I feel nostalgic for the times I spent with them, and for all our naivety and ache of adolescence.

Before Easter I went to my partner's friend's birthday party in their tiny village. It seemed almost prophetic because it looked like the world I had envisioned at party 4 u. The house was full. Before Easter I went to my partner's friend's birthday party in their tiny village. It seemed almost prophetic because it looked like the world I had envisioned at party 4 u, the house full. The elderly by the fire. Children running around and messing about. Loud traditional music. People dancing in groups. Food and beer everywhere. Young adults talking in circles. It was like a huge family. It left me extremely inspired to write, but when I got home I laid down in a fetal position. I couldn't move, my inspiration quickly turned to anxiety, that shadow had followed me and wasn't going to leave me alone. If I thought I was going to be able to be in a social situation without anxiety, I was totally wrong.

Something I also couldn't stop mentioning in the last essay was the way I felt. Completely relaxed, accepting everything that was happening around me, and even happy to be surrounded by people. In reality, it's not quite like that. I find it very difficult to manage my anxiety in these moments, when so much is happening around me and I have no control over it. Feeling the moment isn't for me, I seem to have been designed that way. All I wanted for my birthday was not to be afraid of being abandoned and to be able to enjoy the attention I get, and to learn how to say “thank you” when people say nice words to me that I don't usually know how to respond to.

In a real situation, I don't know what words I would exchange with these people I imagined at my party. The last time I spoke to the person who brought me an imaginary cake was via cold LinkedIn messages, when in the past she knew all my woes and we spent hours on the phone. When I got my driver's license, you made a video for me, with several people from our class saying congratulations. And in the middle of 2025, I'm afraid to drive and I don't have you involved in my life. I think about her a lot, and the question of “who are we with each other in 2025?”. In my head you had a cake for my birthday, in reality we're LinkedIn connections. All I wanted for my birthday was for you to show up with a cake and for us to be best friends again.

It wasn't just because of the friendships I lost that I cried while writing about my dream birthday party. In fact, it was such an ordinary party, it was just all the people in my life together in one place. Yet many of the people I imagined are no longer with me. Nowadays, I drive the big green car (occasionally) to feel one of the little pieces that my grandfather left behind. That car still has the smell of my childhood, it hasn't disappeared yet. Everything else might’ve changed but the fucking car still smells the same.

When my grandfather's health deteriorated, I remember his sadness at not being able to drive anymore. How he felt all his abilities gradually deteriorating, how he felt he was losing himself, little by little. In the end, I'm not sure what was left. One of the last times I was with him was on my birthday, and how happy I was to be with him, even though he was very ill and probably didn’t remember my name but didn’t want to admit it. In that day, the atmosphere was tense, we all knew the day was coming and we didn't know how to cope. Grief was already suffocating us before the event. Two weeks later, and I no longer had a grandfather. It was almost 8 years ago, but imagining him getting out of his car made me stop writing because I needed to get some air. I was practically a child and now I drive his big, dark green car. Sometimes I still go to Google Maps Street View from 2014 to see it parked in his garage, where it belongs. That day we were probably having lunch together, he went to feed the chickens and then sat down on his sofa for an afternoon nap, with me on the sofa next to him, book in hand. We spent many quiet afternoons like that, in each other's company, in an extremely comfortable silence. All I want for my birthday is a moment in silence with my grandfather.

On that painful day in 2018, something was lost in my grandmother too. I imagine her in that empty house, in the moments when we couldn't be there for her, where she made lunch only for herself. She'd turn on the television just so there'd be a bit of noise in the house. She tended the garden so as not to think about the pain of losing a life partner. Her grief turned the hardest stone (her heart) into something that needed care and help. Recently, I have witnessed her fragility more and more. The person who took care of me for so many years needs me to take care of her. Unlike my grandfather, her mind is well preserved, but parts of her body have already given up. All I wanted for my birthday was to see her on her feet, walking without anyone's help.

There are too many wishes for too few candles, and also too many impossible wishes. But at least in my writing I can have the birthday party of my dreams. There's nothing to stop me from imagining it, but unfortunately it won't be anything more than my daydreams.

Melancholia (2011)