(no subject)

[vicarz]

Why I don't celebrate my birthday

Short version - momentum and I am a loser.

When I was a kid, I was a major loser. Not like most freaks at all. Most 'freaks' I know claim they chose not to fit in, or didn't fit in but could have, and always note that they didn't want to fit in. They didn't care that they didn't fit in. Well, I had no friends, but really wanted them. I hated the fact that I had none, and tried to hide the lacking. I was horribly embarrassed that I had no friends. I didn't make friends with the geeks because I didn't consider myself a geek, and they were a clearly identifiable group. I was not cool because I cared.

Holidays were a source of embarrassment. People talked about what they did on their holidays, the super gifts they got, the places they went, and the huge gatherings of friends. I was more embarrassed around the holidays and tried like hell not to be targeted around then, for I had no such stories. People loved to laugh at the comparison when it came up. My family did stuff, but it was nothing I thought made a good story (and the punch line again is that I cared about what others thought of me).

Birthdays were especially embarrassing. This is a personal holiday - one that reflects you, your life, it's your special fucking day. Well, I had no friends so my day was just something I wanted to cover up. My family celebrated, but in my mind that didn't count. No parties, no trips, no uber toys, no groups of people. So I learned to hide the damn thing.

Now I'm not moping - I recognize today that the problem back then was more me than the world around me. Still, I got used to not thinking anything of it, nothing good, and now I just kind of carry on out of momentum. I don't care about ceremonies - I have 3 college degrees but I've never been to a college graduation ceremony. I was talked into going into my HS graduation, but regretted going. I saw no point, hated the event, and still see no point. I won't go to graduation from law school either. I earned the paper no matter how the stupid thing is delivered. If you have a guy assault you in the parking lot, do you care whether you are a black belt or a red sash, do you care about how cool sensei was? You care about function.

I measure steps along the way, but not on particular days, not in a ceremony, not with robes, or candles, or any other trimmings that can be used without meaning. Similarly I don't give a shit about roses, rings, and all sorts of romantic drivel. That's just me - I care about things, I consider myself romantic, but not in the traditional way.

Sad story - not really. Too long ago to care.

Worst thing about it now is that people want to force their will on you. They don't understand that I don't like the damn thing, and want to 'make' me like it. They want to take their values, their beliefs, and push them on me to 'make' me happy. Great. Biggest fight I had with my ex was when she threw a surprise birthday party for me. "It's an unbirthday, don't you see?" I don't remember the fight at all - I blacked out drunk. Suffice it to say that while I recognized how much she was trying to do that it aggravated me so much that she couldn't respect something I had explained so very clearly...ugh. If people care they will respect your beliefs. I know it's difficult to understand, and probably exceptionally bitchy of me to make a point of it at all, but I get a tad sensitive to the idea that people are so stuck in their orientation that they are conducting their side of a friendship without realizing or recognizing the other half. Then I have to wonder if they're a friend, or if they are just trying to fit me into some pre-existing role they want to fill?

At this point trying to 'force' a birthday joy out of me is simply being disrespectful. I know it's with good intentions, based on their own core values, but you might as well drag me to Sunday mass because it's so wonderful that I should enjoy it. I don't. If someday I do I'll be sure to look these happy b-day people up, and by the way I'm not trying to stop others from doing what they enjoy. I recognize other people's birthdays, I just want mine to be left alone. So simple.

So that's why, and then some.


Edit: wow thanks! I didn't expect to see comments on this one, but the 'I hear ya' posts are greatly appreciated. Look - I like *HUGZ* after all, ya bastards.

Comments

[thefeline.livejournal.com]

I remember that party...

I know you hate your birthday which is why I haven't said anything.

Not all of us "freaks" fitted in when we were kids. Some of us got shipped around. I did okay until I moved here...then it was a real struggle to make and to keep friends...they were just meaner here. Other towns...it was far easier. Having a speech impediment...didn't help. Granted I had friends...until my dad got orders and I was being shipped out again...so for a few months to a year...I'd have "a" friend or two...mostly boys since they were more accepting of newcomers than girls. I'm lucky though...I had a younger sister to go and do things with so it was less lonely.

I know you hate your birthday...I know why...however...I'm still glad that you're around and wish I could celebrate that with you.

We still need to go for tacos...or something (maybe blueberry pancakes??). Maybe Sunday or sometime next week?

[vicar.livejournal.com]

This could work! Taco taco :)
I'll email - details out of my mental range right now

[djpsyche.livejournal.com]

Most 'freaks' I know claim they chose not to fit in, or didn't fit in but could have, and always note that they didn't want to fit in. They didn't care that they didn't fit in.

That is SO not true in my case. It's a sour grapes thing. You spend most of your young life wishing you could fit in, hoping to fit in, trying to fit in, but too afraid to really try to fit in, before deciding to give up, quit bothering, and pretend you don't care or are happier not fitting in. (Or find a smaller, more exclusive group where you CAN fit in.)

Erm... happy Wednesday?

[joanarkham.livejournal.com]

Yep, you beat me to it. I tried to fit in for years.

I guess that's the difference between a born freak and people who go through a freaky phase.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

My birthday passed some time ago :)
I didn't do an un-announcement on it either.
Been doing this a long time, I haves!

[anarcha.livejournal.com]

"Worst thing about it now is that people want to force their will on you. They don't understand that I don't like the damn thing, and want to 'make' me like it."

I couldn't agree more with you about this -- I deal with much the same thing. People are to some extent unable to conceive that others don't enjoy the same things they do. For example, I don't generally enjoy fancy dinners out -- I dislike sitting still for extended periods of time while others serve me, have a negligible sense of taste, and tend to see food as stuff to be shoved into the tank whenever the tank's empty. Ditto for not enjoying cocktail parties, classical music performances, wine tastings, spas, or anything else that involves passive enjoyment and "being spoiled." I know many others enjoy such things, but I don't, and that's just me. And yet, everytime this subject comes up, I get some version of "Come on, give it one more try!" "How can you not want to go to the Kennedy Center?"

You can also draw a parallel to the BDSM people who claim that anyone who doesn't enjoy BDSM is "repressed" or "in denial."

People need to understand that we are all individuals, with individual preferences equally worthy of respect. Just because I made a big fuss about my own birthday doesn't mean that I have a right to insist that others do the same.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

I like your tank.

Damn you're cool! I like your take on the whole service thing - though I'm much more comfortable with that sort of thing than I used to be. I credit an episode of Kung-fu where grasshoppah voices discontent of always having to serve. His master hears this, and turns the tables and serves his student who is horribly uncomfortable with the ordeal. I serve, and in turn can be served. Who is in what role is fleeting, but...yes I am quoting a tv series.

but you can avoid the role entirely which is nice too. You confuse me - working that hard...for what? You could buy luxury, most people work like that to get it, but you are a pizza out of a box on the floor kind of a girl. You fucking rock, did I say this?

Thx for the words though. I'm hearing more chiming in than I ever expected.

[djkangal.livejournal.com]

Worst thing about it now is that people want to force their will on you. They don't understand that I don't like the damn thing, and want to 'make' me like it. They want to take their values, their beliefs, and push them on me to 'make' me happy. Great. Biggest fight I had with my ex was when she threw a surprise birthday party for me. "It's an unbirthday, don't you see?" I don't remember the fight at all - I blacked out drunk. Suffice it to say that while I recognized how much she was trying to do that it aggravated me so much that she couldn't respect something I had explained so very clearly...ugh. If people care they will respect your beliefs. I know it's difficult to understand, and probably exceptionally bitchy of me to make a point of it at all, but I get a tad sensitive to the idea that people are so stuck in their orientation that they are conducting their side of a friendship without realizing or recognizing the other half. Then I have to wonder if they're a friend, or if they are just trying to fit me into some pre-existing role they want to fill?

Wow, I have to tell you man, I really related to this. I've been there man, it's tough to be the one person who hates something everybody else wants you to love so much. For what it's worth, you have my solidarity.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Much appreciated. I like the way you grump too :)

[grymnir.livejournal.com]

Your comments on holidays, in general, echo a lot of mine and sound especially like a certain person we know when she talks about X-mas in the U.S.

On birthdays...I'm not as negative as you are about them. I admit they are more hassle than they are worth and especially difficult wen someone close throws a surprise party (or similar) with the best of intentions but only invites that slice of your life that they know (or appove of) so it isn't representative.

As devil's advocate (just 'cause I gotta): when we had no friends, or weren't cool enough, or were embarassed by our social position/status (all aspects of not fitting in or trying to fit in) the birthday, anniversary, celebration (insert social ritual here) was a source of social discomfort and pain. As we mature we define ourselves more by the values we choose than the people around us (no, not completely, I know) and we begin to attach value and meaning to different events, people and things.

You do not seem to want to deal with most celebrations - I include Hallowe'en, for instance - and that is your privilege and right. The difficulty for others is that they may feel they've taken control of themselves or formed a social peerage and want to have their ownn celebrations, especially when they have been outsiders (by choice, exclusion, or default) for so long.

You are a friend. They want to include you. They may not see past their intent and mean no disrespect...but, you are right, they aren't looking at what matters to you.

Personally, I find having a party to be expensive, political, and socially awkward. You run into the "if I invite them, will they behave like a grown up" or "gee, I didn't invite someone but they're friends wth x,y,z" and other similar bits. Bloody annoying.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

I live for devil's advocates!

I understand the potentially cool motives, and the simple lack of understanding that occurs. I know that you get used to certain things - I'm guilty of this too. I have certain expectations in friendships and other types of relationships, and have difficulty when the relationship doesn't fit into that box. When I can I adapt, other times the relationship doesn't handle the strain well. Sigh.

I don't hate everything - I even take steps for others to enjoy those things they enjoy, at least until they cross the line and make me miserable myself. I throw parties, for no reason or one I create (vinyl party, goodbye b4 law school party). I do things for people's b'days. I work on holidays so others dont' have to. I don't beg people not to go to goth prom - whatever - I just don't do it myself.

Halloween is fucking cool - but many of my friends don't consider waiting if they want to dress up.

[grymnir.livejournal.com]

Ah - I will update the memory banks accordingly.

I like having parties that are for a theme or a neutral event (New Years, Beltaine, whatever) because I like mixing people together. I am not as happy with religious or culturally important days - with the exception of Halloween. We had a fun Bastille Day party once...with lots of good French wine.

But - in the main - I understand your point. I vacillate between liking birthday parties and not. When my friends were less devisive and back-biting (no, not all of them) I loved a b-day party as a chance to see them all outside a club or con - oh - and to GET LOOT!
But...getting loot means giving loot, at least to me, and so while I love presents, I can't accept gifts if I know I can't give soemthing in return later. Not having a party also allows dodging others' parties - when you know you won't have the time, or cash, to handle their 'event.'

[railwaymadness]

I throw parties, for no reason or one I create

Indeed. This is the only way I'm comfortable with celebrations for my birthday; by making them the same things I do the rest of the year and just calling them birthday things. Before the cocktail parties were regular, I'd call clubbing my celebration. And if people want to call me on not doing anything "special" for my birthday, you know what? I'm special enough that I deserve to do my favorite things all year long.

Then again, sometimes it's easier to ask people to do something "for my birthday" rather than coming out and saying "because I am plagued with insecurity and need to know that you are willing to go the extra mile." Not that I'm a manipulative little bitch or anything. Um.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

I relate to much of what you write about as well.

Ugh - I have now responded to everyone who responded. I have to stop doing this!

Don't reply to this one, it'll make you feel better

[mercurialgirl.livejournal.com]

I think it's rather nifty that you know you don't like a thing that most people do, and that most people *expect* you to, that you know why you don't like it, that you're okay with it, and that you approach it the way you damn well want to approach it.

I love my birthday so very much now (well, even though this year's had some uber-fucktastic stuff tied to it and an official do-over was called) because when I was younger, I was lucky enough to have been surrounded by freaks of one sort or another, and then when I fell in with my ex, I drifted away from my people and tried very hard for a long time to make the mundanes I was surrounded by happy by not being myself. Birthday gifts -- often elaborate or expensive things -- used to make me cry because I felt so not-known. One year, I forget if it was birthday or xmas, my ex gave me, get this, a gold heart-shaped locket with daisies on it. No picture, no story behind it, just something that's so completely not me that it made me burst into tears. Fortunately, because it would just be unkind to have told him, he thought they were happy tears.

When my best friend and I had found each other again, and she gave me a postcard that had reminded of her the entire time we were apart, I burst into tears again, the good kind. Having people around me who know me feels like cause for celebration, and I fucking heart my birthday, after over a decade of awful painful shut up and leave me alone birthdays, 'cause now, for me, it represents good stuff.

Anyhoo, it makes perfect sense that you'd not celebrate your birthday if it doesn't represent anything good to you, and kudos for being true to yourself despite outside pressures.

[one-andrea.livejournal.com]

Um, nobody called me on my birthday, and nobody gave me a gift besides my parents and Dan. I would think at this point you would appreciate that people cared enough to acknowledge an event in your life, but that is just me. I also didn’t mention your birthday because I know you don’t like to celebrate it.

[kelowna.livejournal.com]

A few thoughts...

1) i hope that i insisted we go out to dinner didn't bother you.
2) it all comes across as a very Grinch that Stole Christmas concept therefore I don't doubt people try and "force" it upon you.
3) I think once, over all, you find some more personal joy in your life (don't argue this!) that the birthday thing will seem a whole lot less of a big deal.
4) My birthday is the day AFTER Christmas. I got pretty damn tired of people telling me a week before all the great plans they had for it... only to forget/get tired after Christmas Day.
5) I am learning to not get angry at people if they mean well/good intentions and all.
6) burp.

--kelowna

[vicar.livejournal.com]

1. We eat out all the time. Did we bday and I miss it or forget? We've argued about who was paying a few times, but I didn't take it into bday context.
2. It's not really grinch that stole xmas, or scrooge - because I'm not taking it away from anyone else (or so I think/hope). I even help others enjoy theirs - just not mine.
5. Point - I vary on what I think of the intentions - is it just incomprehension of my interpretations, or is it forcing something on me? Even in the aforementioned fight, I was well aware that overall the intentions were good. I admit it was an awful week and that was just the piece where I snapped (and shouldn't have).

Intentions matter more than anything, admitted.

[mpeace.livejournal.com]

Heh... I had toyed with the idea of doing something for my birthday this year, made a few random posts here and there about it even, and in the end, did nothing. Fear killed it.

The last time I tried to was about 5 years ago and of the 50 people I invited, 2 showed up.

It was the first birthday celebration thing for myself that would have occured since I was 12.

I am still bitter about it. Very. And rather than risk a repeat, I just let the subject die off this year.

And while you've already said today is not your birthday, while we're on the subject of them, I bring you this randomness. Today is the 31^st birthday of the guy I dated in high school.

I can't forget other people's birthdays maybe because mine are so forgotten.

Most 'freaks' I know claim they chose not to fit in, or didn't fit in but could have, and always note that they didn't want to fit in. They didn't care that they didn't fit in. Well, I had no friends, but really wanted them.

I didn't fit in. I wanted to. I failed miserably. I'd sit down at the lunch table and people got up and left. I made one friend in high school but not until my junior year. On the plus side, Jason and I are still friends.

[desiringmachine.livejournal.com]

I have always had trouble understanding my boyfriends active dislike for Christmas, but I think your explanation about birthdays helps.

Alot of my birthdays sucked when I was younger but I seem to have blotted them out, I can only remember one off the top of my head.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Best SNL disfunctional xmas carol ever:
Leave me alone,
please go away,
I'm feeling fine,
just go away
(sung in rows)

[monty-dc.livejournal.com]

Eegads, bro! I knew you didn't like your birthday, but I had no idea (yes, somehow even after living with you) that you truly loathed it that much (or maybe I just forgot, you know how bad I am...) So, my apologies for having wished ye a happy one, was more out of me being a smartass, since I remembered you didn't like it, and just because I figured it was a good enough reason to say hi ;)~

[vicar.livejournal.com]

It was just a general post thingy - I don't get all bent out of shape about it. I didn't post a thing about my b'day on my b'day. 'sides - don't I fuck with everyone about everything? If I had that thin a skin :)

The post isn't a complaint or anything, just explaining as it seems the subject has come up a lot lately.

[oontzgrrl.livejournal.com]

I can relate. I wasn't just unpopular in school, I was Weinerdog from Welcome to the Dollhouse. I have a lot of memories of not having anybody to celebrate my birthday with, and hell, since you mentioned holidays as well, try being the jew kid around christmas time. Add to that my parents forgot my birthday one year, I got kicked out of the house on not one but *2* birthdays, and I got dumped on a birthday. I geuss that the way in which we differ is that my goal was to reclaim all the things that sucked about being younger and make them into something good. For me, when I look around at all the friends I have now, who are really happy to celebrate with me, I don't really think about the past and get sad or angry. I just think "I win". But what's right for me isn't always gonna be right for you.

I think it's rude for people to force you to acknowledge your birthday in any way that you don't want. Afterall, it's YOUR birthday which makes you the birthday princess, and therefore what you say goes. Even if what you say is "bugger off and shut up." But on the otherhand, I don't think you ever realize how much you have touched peoples lives and they may just want to express their appriciation by saying "hey, I'm happy you were born." But I geuss honestly, we can say that any day of the year.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

I stare at that movie as much as a decaying puppy on the side of hte way. It's horror, but I can't stop looking. Yeah - wow all my loser friends are coming out of the closet lol.

I should celebrate the date of my consumation - that would be mighty confusing. And sick.

People who were confident or popular as kids weird me the fuck out.

[jwitcraft.livejournal.com]

Really? Damn.