Birthday Blues

Yesterday was my 35th birthday, and in spite of the fact that I couldn’t get together with my amigos, I found more at my doorstep and in my mailbox than I have in years. I got balloons, and champagne and beautiful treats, and I felt more close to the people I care about than ever before.

I couldn’t sleep the night before my birthday as I kept crying intermittently. It wasn’t a deep sob, just an expression of ineffable grief that I knew the source of but didn’t want to look at and identify in the night.

My dad was 35 when I was born, which occurred to me while I was making my cake, a lovely vanilla which I had plans to decorate with wonderful long, skinny, gold candles in a circle at the top, with pastel-hued, rainbow colored sprinkles to adorn the sides. While I was baking my cake, his best friend Chuy, who I’m in touch with but hadn’t heard from in a few weeks, messaged me out of the blue to say he’d been watching old movies, one from a time we’d come to visit from the east coast. He told me how adorable my siblings and I were and that I’d missed my calling as a reporter, reporter being the role I played in the home movie he’d been enjoying. I was so happy to get this little dose of nostalgia on my birthday and was excited to share with him that he’d reached out on this particular day. He was thrilled to hear this and was grateful for the happy coincidence of having contacted me on my birthday. It felt like getting a call from my dad, their spirits being so much the same, not only from being born of the same culture and people, but from the many life experiences they had shared that formed their being. It was one amongst many wonderful birthday gifts.

Another top gift was one that on first reveal didn’t seem to be a gift at all, but which turned out to be and a highlight of the day at that. My mother, incredibly excited to speak to me on my birthday called while I was on the phone with a childhood friend, who is more like a second daughter to her. I thought it would be fun to merge the calls, so I did and at first all was well, until it very much so wasn’t.

Things began uneventfully enough, and she started by ‘giving’ me my birthday gifts, which were two amazing strides she’d made in her mental and physical health. First, she spoke of being able to now do the Ashtanga primary yoga series after having had a hip replacement in April, which would take a great amount of discipline, dedication and perseverance to achieve. The second thing was that she was acutely making steps toward her sobriety by not abusing one of her prescription medications, which when abused account for the psychosis that she experiences when coupled with even the slightest of stressors.

Her positive experiences were among the best gifts I could have asked for on my birthday, well and truly, and I was over the moon. But, somehow, my mother’s excitement turned into anxiety and before we knew it, she was spiraling out, not acknowledging my friend and I on the line for minutes at a time, getting more negative and mean by the second, culminating in my asking her to stop speaking so we could hit a reset button as it were, only for her to break the silence every time I asked her to do so with utterances of “OKAY, I’m being QUIET!”, then interrupting me each time I went to speak.

So, I hung up the phone and called my friend back. I regrouped, apologized to her for the deterioration of the conversation, and called my mom. I explained to her that she needed to be more aware of the fact that she dominated the talk by not including my friend and I at all, which served to only confound the discourse and disallow for any acknowledgement of her amazing progress and the happiness that would bring me, especially on my birthday. Stunningly, she understood perfectly what I meant and we had a great conversation afterward. She told me that she got overly excited and that things spiraled out. She’s “working on it”, she said, and I could tell she meant it. I talked about how in times when we’re triggered with anxiety our amygdala takes over, leaving our prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain responsible for rational thought, offline. The worst part about this flip of the brain into fight or flight mode is that the anxiety actually spurs more anxiety. That and the fact that the amygdala learns very quickly what makes us fly into this mode, unlearning far slower than it learns, sets the stage for needless suffering. “Thank god for that anxiety class I’m taking”, I think to myself as I’m telling her this. We leave the call feeling better than we had before. I went on to celebrate my birthday the best I could and carried on with the day, satisfied that things resolved well between us.

It’s been a little over two years since we lost dad, and getting to the place I got with my mom yesterday (in record time, I might add!) shows how much progress she’s made. I think dad would be proud that I didn’t lose my cool. I was certainly proud of myself.

Thinking on how my dad only started having kids at my age makes me feel at ease about having started doing the things I’ve wanted to do later in life than I always imagined doing them. There is so much more life to live, and so many iterations of myself to be. I feel the anxiety of my birthday start to melt away as I reflect on the day passed and the meaning I’ve placed on it, which seems to be helping me find acceptance. It feels good.

Now, I feel free to bask in the love I received yesterday from so many others. And to eat some leftover cake.