Birthdays, or: What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Sadder

On the fifth of November, I am going to be twenty-three years old.

*

Birthdays, for me, never really crossed my mind as something to worry about.

In fact, my birthday actually used to be my favourite annual holiday. Don't get me wrong, Christmas is neat and all... but, you mean to tell me there's a day where my family give me money and presents just for living? Just for being born? Fuck, keep that tradition going, please!

I know that for a lot of people their birthday is a point of stress. Some of my friends hate celebrating their birthday, they get flustered every time you bring it up. Some of my friends have told me they cry on their birthday every year, because of the pressure to have a good time, coupled with the idea that they’re getting older.

This is a relatively common feeling. Googling "sad birthday" brings up hundreds of blog posts and memes about the particular unease people feel about growing older. It's easy to see this in other places too: after all, there must be a reason for Lesley Gore’s 1963 song, "It’s My Party" permeating the public consciousness so thoroughly, for so long.

(It is your party, you can cry if you want to.)

Maybe I was always lucky enough to escape the Birthday Fear because almost all my friends are older than me; by the time I’d watched them stress and cry about getting older, I was over my own worry when November 5th rolled around. Maybe I never felt the Fear because I’m just hardwired not to.

Maybe it doesn’t really matter. Whatever the reason, the fact is this: I loved my birthday.

*

That is, I loved my birthday until this year.

On the 12th November, 2020, my sister Hazel took her own life. It was a Thursday, five days before her fifteenth birthday.

It was also exactly a week after my twenty-second birthday.

*

In the run up to my birthday this year, I am finding myself slowly coming to terms with the reality that it will never be something that I can fully embrace or enjoy again.

It’s just over a week away, now, and yet I keep forgetting that it’s coming closer. I’m mentally trying to block it out. I'm trying to forget that November is even going to happen. It's as though not thinking about my birthday will mean that I also don’t have to think about Hazel's death.

I have been trying to summon my usual enthusiasm. I've been joking about presents, planning meals out, but there’s an element of performance in it. It feels hollow, as though everyone can see right through me. Being enthusiastic about my birthday feels gaudy, awkward and obvious.

How am I supposed to enjoy cards and presents, when all they do is remind me I’m continuing to live when my sister will not?

How dare I derive joy in an anniversary of life, when it’s all too close to an anniversary of grief?

The very act of getting older feels looming, nauseating. It makes my stomach roll to think about the age difference between myself and Hazel broadening. Every second, I am stretching out the distance between us; the periods of time without her can only get longer.

I am struggling to reconcile the idea that I will go on to be twenty-three; twenty-five; thirty, while Hazel will never be allowed to progress past fourteen.

*

Here is the truth: when you love someone who kills themselves, there is always going to be a part of you that’s angry.

All of the self-help booklets they thrust on you in the weeks after death tell you that you’re allowed to be angry. They tell you that the anger makes sense, is logical. Anger is a recognised part of grief, one of the five neat stages. Anger is a simple tick-box for the rest of your life.

Are you grieving? Tick. Are you angry? Tick, tick, tick!

Death is always cruel, and it's never easy to lose anyone. We all struggle against the reality that we don’t get any more time with the person we loved, the person we love. I know this, but I also know that I have always been quick to anger at the best of times, and now there is a simmering fury within me that I struggle to control.

I watch people grieve loved ones who died at age thirty, age forty, and I feel the jealousy rise up in my throat like a tsunami. I listen to people talk about loved ones dying young and I want to scream at them they don’t know what young is. I’m furious at the idea that the world is continuing to spin, that things are continuing while my memories of Hazel remain frozen in time.

I would give anything to have Hazel live until she was thirty. I would give anything to have Hazel live until she was twenty, until she was eighteen.

I would give anything for Hazel to live just one more day, just one more hour. Just long enough that I could hug her one more time.

Just long enough to see her smile, hear her laugh, preserve her image in my head again.

*

On the fifth of November, I will be twenty-three years old.

There was a point in my life where I didn’t think I’d make it that far. If you asked me, age sixteen, how long I’d live, I probably would have told you that I might make it through another couple of years, maximum.

Suicide, for me, has never been a foreign subject. I am intimately familiar with it. I am fluent in it. If you had asked me, age sixteen, if I ever thought about killing myself, I would have laughed in your face. I did nothing but think about it.

Birthdays, for me, never really crossed my mind as something to worry about.

Looking back, I'm willing to admit that's because, for a lot of my life the future never really crossed my mind as something to worry about. I didn’t think I’d get a future at all.

I think that’s why I've always loved celebrating my birthday. I mean, a day where my family would give me money and presents just for living? Just for being born? I think that’s… pretty well-deserved, actually.

Birthdays were my fuck-you, my two fingers up in the air to God and the universe. Birthdays were the only time where I let myself be unconditionally proud. The only time where just showing up was enough.

Birthdays were the one day a year where people could take a moment and say: hey, well done Seren. The one day a year where people could say: it is actually really impressive that you’re still here.

*

I don’t blame Hazel for dying.

I know why she did it. I know what it feels like.

I don’t blame Hazel for dying, but I do think sometimes I blame myself for still living.

*

Every year, I used to wake up on my birthday expecting to feel different, magically altered.

Every additional year I lived, every extra day I crossed off the calendar, I felt like I was waiting for the moment where everything clicked into place.

That hasn’t happened.

Every additional year I live is wild and unpredictable. The days get shorter, months slip away from me. Turning twenty-three isn’t an occasion to be marked anymore, I’ve been twenty-three for years. I’ve been twenty-two for years too, and eighteen, and sixteen, and fourteen.

I will never wake up on my birthday feeling different, or magically altered, because I will always still wake up on my birthday as me. All of my ages stack on top of each other like Russian Dolls.

I am the person I was yesterday, and the person I was the day before, and tomorrow, I will be the person I was today.

*

On the fifth of November, I will be twenty-three years old, but being twenty-three years old doesn’t really matter.

What does matter is this: it will have been a year since I spoke to my sister last. It will have been a year since the last time that Hazel messaged me, a year since the last time I heard her speak without it being pre-recorded.

So, maybe my birthday will never again be something that I can love unconditionally. Maybe it will never again be an easy holiday. Maybe it will no longer be a day that’s a free pass to have fun.

Maybe my birthday, from now on, will always serve as another, uneasy reminder of just how much effort it costs me to keep going.

That’s okay, though.

At the very least -

I can learn to live with it.