In the past though, I have had kind of shitty birthdays. Through no one person's fault alone but due to a culmination of terrible events that end up with me crying or making out with a car dealer (for the record, he sold Lexus so it wasn't that shady). Sometimes it is other people's issues that end up boiling to the surface on MY SPECIAL NIGHT (reminiscent of a Bridezilla, no?). Sometimes other people yell or cry or barf...and that's not cool, save that stuff for another night. I've rarely been the barfee and both terrrrrible times it was my poor friend Beth who had to deal with it. So ironic because I'm the one who takes care of everyone usually and so I feel doubly worse on the occasion I have not been able to hold my liquor...one time was camping and I still maintain is was the inundation of fresh air that did me in. So with some serious trepidation I am preparing for the big 2-7.
Ugh I thought I'd be married and someone's mom by now and not that I'm unhappy that I'm not...it's just that I'm more unhappy that I'm ok with that. I am no where near ready to be committed or responsible. I guess that comes more with experience and less with age. I just need some serious selfish time. Time to figure out what I want and figure out why I put so much pressure on myself, especially on my birthday, to have a good time and be a good hostess. Shit happens, I have to learn to not let other people's bologna bring me down. Now that I don't have certain commitments keeping me in Boston I'm thinking that next year I might be celebrating my birthday Texan style (which I feel would involve some cattle)...but more on that to come. I think I have been putting all of my eggs in one basket since I was little.
I remember my 10th and 17th birthdays the most because they were the most disappointing! My mother had told me before my tenth that not only was I not going to have a "friend party" that year because I was getting too old for it but on top of that I wasn't going to have a family party either (p.s. spoiled much). I seriously thought she was kidding. I had, had 9 years of birthdays filled with sheetcake, ribbons and Lisa Frank unicorns and she would not deny me that on my tenth year, I mean it was double digits!
Does anyone else remember referring to that year as such? Like it was the first year you were going to be double digits, I equate it to reading "chapter books" and then realizing you're just reading books.
I must have seen some Wonder Years or Punky Brewster episode where someone had a surprise party because after she told me there would be no party I had myself convinced she was planning a secret party for me. I even entered the house on my birthday night with caution, fearing I might disrupt any surprise plans they had for me. Alas, when I creaked open the breeze way door into the family room, the only thing that was waiting for me was a big empty house.
Even though I got Samantha the American Girl Doll I had wanted, which by the way was a super expensive gift back then and exactly what I wanted, I was still so disappointed. I think I would have rather not had the doll and still had the party because at the ripe old age of 10 I realized I had to grow up and not everything was sunshine and footy pajamas. I think now my mum might have agreed that perhaps 10 was too early to have the bday train come to a stop but for all I know that might have been a lean year, they did have two kids in private school and my dad was in night law school then (which I also always imagined to be like Night Court, what kid watches Night Court? Anyway, it wasn't like that). So I don't begrudge her about that now but the huge disappointment was only mirrored at 17.
The long and the short of it was that every one of my friends thought Mansfield was like in the middle of nowhere when in fact I drove into Dedham every day for school. It is 15min from Walpole 30min from Dedham and 40min from West Roxbury. We have a mall and Great Woods, which is now the Comcast Center, it isn't exactly the boonies. Anyway, without any malice, one by one that day each said they weren't able to come. I was pretty upset. So I was left alone and pissed. I recall them all trying to make it up to me but it didn't help really because yet again I was facing the facts that I was growing up and people weren't going to cater to me like I was the most special snowflake in a fucking snow storm.
Thankfully 10 years on I'm over those bad bdays...mostly, but it is hard to just say, "YEAH! Things are going to be awesome and I'm going to look hot in every photo and I'm going to meet a guy with a roof-deck and he is going to invite us all back to his brownstown and then fly us to Atlantic City in his helicopter from his helipad...on his roof-deck" (it all goes back to the roof-deck). So even though I don't celebrate getting older like every other twenty-something I will gift myself the ability to do the "told ya so" dance care of Will and Grace if things fall apart. Because at 27 what I know now that I didn't know at 17 and 10 is that things do fall apart.
Things fall apart and then you wake up the next day and move on. I didn't know that at 10 and I didn't think about it at 17 because I was even more of an egomaniac then. But after dealing with some things I realized that nothing is going to go perfectly and even if it did, it would be in my nature to find some fault in it. I wish I didn't have to but that's me. I still end up having some sort of an amazing time regardless because even as a fault finder, I'm still a great time. I can't help but laugh and let the great people around me crack open the walls I have built up because I want them to and I want to dance on tables and yell at cab drivers and talk to dogs. I have great friends and a SPARKLY outfit planned, that's reason enough to go out. So I guess not much has changed between 10 and 27...if they made Lisa Frank for adults I'd slap that iridescent rainbow on my butt and parade it all over town...only maybe I shouldn't at Storyville, seeing as how I might get groped, thanks Julian!
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