It’s the day after my birthday and like Sylvia Plath after Christmas, I am overstuffed and dull. Not just physically, but emotionally and socially as well. I’ve had too much food, been given too many things, and shown too much attention in one day to process. It may be weeks before I recover myself fully.
Unlike Plath and many Christmases I’ve suffered through, I am far from disappointed. For me, birthdays are nearly always brimming with pure pleasure. I manage to cram so many of my favorite people and things into one day that my senses and soul become overwhelmed in the best possible ways.
I’ve been loved enough for another year and I’ll spend the next analyzing, agonizing, dreading, and then wishing again to be, for just 24 short hours, the center of my circle’s little universe.
I’m grateful for them all: my coworkers, my friends, my family. The celebrations aren’t yet over but the day is and no matter what other wishes or gifts I’m given the excitement of real and tangible growth is gone. A threshold has been crossed and the past year is fully in the past now, unreachable. I’m starting around the sun anew and I’m as young as I’ll ever be again.
I suppose every day is a birthday in that way. Perhaps spending a whole year celebrating the self every day isn’t such an unreasonable notion at all.
Lisa Marie Blair 