Why Are We All Crying On Our Birthdays?
Actually, apparently we're not all crying on our birthdays. I asked our waiter at Kiki's last week and he said he doesn't.
I think I’ve cried on my birthday ever since I learned of its meaning at the ripe age of 4. I’m not actually sure if I fully understand it as a concept to this day. I’d go so far as to say that birthdays are pretty dumb, but then the whole crying thing wouldn’t make a lot of sense, would it? I can’t think it’s that dumb if I have some kind of significant visceral response to it every year. But I do think it’s dumb — so where the hell do we go from here?
I take issue with the fact that my birthday feels like a forced celebration when there really isn’t much to laud. I’m not even trying to feel sorry for myself here. Who the hell cares that I turned 24 in February? I don’t. And I actually don’t think most people in my life do, a fact that I am not even remotely offended by. I would prefer to not have the reminder that little has been achieved since I turned 23. I work for the same company. I have the same friends. I live in the same city.
I did not stray far from normal Wednesday tasks on my birthday this year. I took the day off work which later, upon reflection, I was embarrassed by. I left my bed at a cool 8:30 AM and walked into midtown Manhattan to return an ambitiously purchased crop top that was one cab-hailing away from a face full of underboob. I then walked all the way back up to the 96th Street New York Public Library to pick up a book I had on reserve. The security guard expressed concern about my lack of wearing a winter hat in the day’s 30-degree cutting chill and I smiled at him, simply enjoying the fact that he didn’t know it was my birthday. Then I walked home and read said book.
Sometime during the days leading up to my birthday, I had unconsciously decided to not acknowledge it. I made no plans. I didn’t see anyone until the weekend, and at that point, it had been sandwiched between enough workdays that it wasn’t really at the forefront of anyone’s mind anymore. Fantastic.
I still cried later that night (but in a cool, indie way of course). I sat for a while in my bathtub, stretching my foot across to intermittently fill it with more hot water until I began to sweat. I wondered what was happening. I did feel a little lonely I guess, but mostly I felt helpless. I didn’t like the attention. I didn’t like that men I’d tried to forget about were using the day as an excuse to reach out to me again. I hated the fake gestures, and I mostly hated that I couldn’t understand why I was making such a big fuss.
There’s an easy cop-out explanation for all of these uncontrollable waterworks, which is just the mere fact that I’m aging at an uncontrollable rate. Sure, getting older is daunting. I worry about it sometimes. I’ll look in the mirror and scrutinize my forehead wrinkles and think about the societal pressures on women to remain pristine looking as they survive another decade of having their physicality be the topic of discussions they didn’t ask to be a part of. I do a lot of staring at my naked body in the mirror as if trying to engrain its exact form as it currently stands deep into my long-term memory, perhaps attempting to mentally preserve its youthful shape so that I can remember I had something going for me in 30 years. I’ll be the first to admit that I participate in these harmful and common thoughts. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.
I don’t think it’s about aging at all or the physical deterioration that comes with it. But I do think it is, of course, naturally, and perhaps obviously, about the passage of time. Our birthdays signify this seemingly arbitrarily made-up measurement of moments getting lost behind us, swallowed up into a hole, uncontrollably, right under our noses. It feels stupid and annoying that we’re forced to keep track of the permanent losses of these occurrences (sure, we have our memories, but that’s not exactly the “real thing” is it?). We couldn’t reach out to grab and hold on to any part of them if we tried. And that is fucking scary. And that is why we cry.