Batter My Heart

By: L.

Jan 23 2011

Tags: birthday, emotion, family, fucked up, loneliness, negative, positive, postaday2011, sadness, stupid, trouble, whining

Category: self

1 Comment

Fascinating.  It would not be a birthday in my family – at least for me – if there wasn’t drama.  I’ve come to realize though, and this will be rather TMI for some, that where my birthday falls is pretty much around the time where my period falls and sometimes what I mistake for a real, epistemological, soul-searching response to the way others handle my birthday and treat me is actually just the deep plunge of hormonal imbalance that proceeds the grand red tide.

Last night was wonderful.  It is not how most 27 year-old women have birthdays, but I’ll easily concede that I am not like most 27 year-old women.  We had cheesecake and some potstickers and veggies and small finger food and watched MST3K’s Werewolf and Annie and then I opened my presents and played Fable 3 which my sister got me.  My little sister and I got along.  It was silly and stress-free and I felt enveloped in love and kindness.  And this morning was much the same, lazy and interesting and talking with my aunt and cousin about books and having coffee and biscotti felt like it was reinvigorating my humanity.   Then I mentioned to my mom that we would go out to lunch afterwards and without reliving the whole stupid situation, she implied that she didn’t have time and had to go home and do laundry and I took her at her word and sort of curled up, disappointed.  Then when we left, there was confusion and apparently, she meant she was going to drop off this fake tree at our house and I thought she was bringing it to her house since she had to hurry home and apparently she wanted to go to lunch and my phone was muted because it was chirping and buzzing all morning and I turned it down and she was leaving voicemails and when my sister and I went to the Mexican restaurant and I happened to check my phone and call her…she was really upset with us since she was waiting at our house with a fake tree and couldn’t get a hold of us and all of a sudden, I completely absorbed her upsettedness.

I was so angry with myself for not having the phone on and missing my window to have a meal with her since we’re like ships in the night and tomorrow, I go back to being just awkward old me and it felt at the time, like the end of the world.  I started crying in the restaurant and had to pull myself together on the way home.  I had all these crazy birthday thoughts of expectation and loneliness and feeling like I was standing in the middle of the road on fire with need for affection and nobody’d bother to put me out or even knock me out of the way.  I felt her frustration with me, my frustration, my older sister’s kindness, my vague understanding that this was a very over the top reaction, and the feeling like I was ruining my own birthday with this bullshit that I couldn’t stop.

Then, of course, you get home and realize that, chemically, there was a reason.  I obviously played right into it, but, at least it’s not all my crazy head.

So, now I’m very glad to sit here with my thoughts and take a good breath and realize that I am right now, working hard on myself and I have to be proud of that.  That I am imperfect and I screwed up, but it wasn’t out of malice or to hurt my mother’s feelings.  And I’m pretty sure cramps are Jesus’ or the Great Whatever’s way of reminding us that we’re all touchable creatures.  We all can hurt and ache and make our way through it.  You can’t love without getting hurt and even without much understanding of what that means we will choose to pay that price.

I’m not without longings at the moment for affection and attention and contrary emotions of wanting isolation and actual invisibility, but I’m okay.   Not bad.