The Birthday

Growing up I never liked the acknowledgment of my birthday. I would desire to be allowed to stay home from school and I would rejoice the years when my birthday was on a Saturday. I did not like birthday cards, while I loved what normally came inside them. I did not even like having birthday parties. My goal was to always have a bon fire or something around the time of my birthday so that people could come over but that I was not "special" for the occasion. A few of my favorite birthday memories include, having someone fall down the stairs while holding my sweet new voice recorder and then listening to the thuds over and over again. That was a great party. I also enjoyed my first birthday at college because no one knew, and my parents forgot. My least favorite birthday memories were when everyone sang to me on the bus, I cried when I got off the bus. I also remembered when I turned 20 and my grandma who always sends me 50 bucks sent me 20 for my 20th. That was sad. Probably my main disappointment over the years was wanting something unparticular, telling my family, and not getting it. I would always expect to get it, but disappointingly get something else. The other thing would be cool, like a Foosball table, but because I wanted something simple, and normally less expensive than the other gift, I would always be disappointed. Like the year I wanted a game called splat but got a game called sorry. While sorry is actually cooler than splat, I wanted splat and therefore didn't like sorry.

Overall, it was never the gift or remembering the day, it was always being special that I did not like most. It was not like I accomplished something or did something great, I just didn't die for another year. Birthdays have always made me just simply want to be praised for something that I have actually done or worked for, and for this reason most birthdays have been a disappointment.

I have felt this way for many years, and now that I have written it out, I feel better about it. See there is a point to having a blog.

Old school cartoon

The dream

Imagine beginning your day and just feeling like something is off. You have no reason to believe that there is anything wrong but you simply feel off. You continue your day as if everything were okay but as you go about your schedule you just know that something is wrong. Then it happens…always different but always the same…you bite down on something and crack a tooth…you feel a tooth is loose and before you know it that tooth falls out…or you hit your mouth on something and accidentally knock a tooth out. It’s painful…every time. It’s bloody…every time. And every time it happens you think, “this is just like in my dream.” Each and every time is just like in my dream. It always happens differently and it is always so real. I think or say out loud, “I knew it would eventually happen, and today’s the day.” And then it happens again, another tooth. Again painful…again bloody. Sometimes it ends here with a mouth full of blood other times they all fall out. The end result is always the same: Hopeless, Pain, Sickening…

I have a reoccurring nightmare of pain and blood where my teeth fall out about two or three times a month. Every night it is real and every night I wake up feeling hopeless, pain, and sick. And the odd thing about all of this is that I actually hope for the day when my teeth do fall out so that I will know that it truly is a dream.