It’s my party and I can cry if I want to.

 My birthday is 27-Sep-1984. I am 35 this year. As is my families tradition, I’m returning to Idaho to channel my inner supremacist and try and get a young Aryan looking girl pregnant. That’s a joke, kind of…

As with most years my birthday leaves me vexed. There is an aching voice that reaches out from the back of my mind that asks “Who am I? What am I? What am I doing?” It presses me for the value of my existence. It inquires in on how harmful my existence has been to others. It often concludes that existence is suffering. That I will inevitably harm others by being alive. That the only whole and effective resolution of this sin is to simply stop existing. It often conjures up an image of embarrassment around my birthday asking “How old are you going to be this year? And what exactly have you done? When will you finally put an end to this embarrassing display and do what’s best for the world and put an end to yourself.” Or more simply “When will you put yourself down?”, you know like an old dog. This started since I was about twelve. Sometimes the voice and the corresponding questions arrive earlier during the summer other times only a few days before my birthday, but they often seem to lead up to early fall yielding despair and then taper off and disappear with the leaves.

I’ve often avoided telling people about my birthday. People hate that. They want to know when you were born even though it’s almost entirely unimportant to them. I tell people my birth date. When the date arrives, I’m disappointed they haven’t said anything. Because who remembers someones birthday? When confronted with my ornery response to the question “When’s your birthday?” by a young blonde girl (the type I’d totally love to get pregnant) she said “Why do you hate your birthday so much? Don’t you love your life?” My brain started to reel with internal dialog. Woof, god no…. I mostly despise my own existence. I feel as though I’m inevitably going to cause problems in the world and have absolutely no redemptive qualities. Most days I think of myself as a waste of skin. “You’re right, I should celebrate.” I managed to stammer out and I did my best to force a smile.

Facebook inevitably made this worse. It would announce your birthday to the Internet by default and an army of gawkers would feign interest at a click of a button. Each click amplifying the internal voices then disappear not caring about your life tomorrow (fuck, if that’s not a reminder of my parents). Birthdays are like that though, people feel some uncomfortable sense of duty to congratulate you. They’ll show up if there is a party but almost none of them genuinely have an interest in your life. It’s all wedding and no marriage.

Speaking of no marriage. I’m adopted. I know very little about my biological parents. I have been told to “Watch out for alcohol. It can be a problem.” I know that I was born in Boise Idaho. My mother was about 26 and German (hence the Aryan pregnant girl humor) or something like that. My father was more of a “stick it in” than “stick around” man, and took off for the hills as soon as possible. My birthday places my conception right around a holiday party, maybe Christmas or New Years. It’s hard not to imagine myself as a byproduct of a last ditch lay on that bed where they store all the coats. As my mother and father awkwardly go to get their jackets while the party winds down. Sparks fly and vomit is swallowed back. Me a single devoted swerving sperm swimming upstream while my cum brothers are crucified on someones hand knit scarf during pullout. And voila, here I am, a symptom of alcohol and loneliness.