And I’m finally seeing… why I was the one worth leaving.

I was doing so well, really, I was. But the pre-birthday blahs have hit me, and they have hit me hard.

For as much as I love October, for as much as this month excites me, my birthday is not part of that list. In fact, it should be scrubbed from the previous entry. Part of me wishes that I could just zoom past my birthday, to forget about it, erase October 15th from the calender. Birthday’s are suppose to be happy times, they are supposed to be exciting. My birthday has never excited me.

Even when I was a kid, I hated my birthday. Most kids get sugar-high off cake and ice cream, but most of the time when I was a kid I never even made it to cake and ice cream. By then I had already sent myself to my room, leaving both my parents and my friends to cut the cake, eat the ice cream. There are actual home movies of these birthdays, most of the time with someone asking “Where’s Shannon?” I do believe the only time I actually came back down was when I said goodbye to everyone, handing them their goodie bags, opening the presents at a later time.

And trust me, my “grown up” birthday’s have not gotten any better. My sixteenth birthday I was left in my basement when my two best friends and my boyfriend (at the time) went running around the streets (two weeks later, he broke up with me, for her. Yes. That was a good October all around.). And last year my best friend didn’t even bother showing up for my birthday party, instead choosing to go to a party to get drunk with a girl she, a month later, was no longer even talking to. Oh did I mention this is the same best friend as the sixteenth birthday? When I say I have no luck when it comes to birthday’s, it’s not an exaggeration, it’s the truth.

And I’m not even going to bother trying this year, because I already know I would be left alone yet again. It doesn’t matter if I’m isolating myself, or my friends are abandoning me–birthday’s leave me alone. And I’m tired of getting my hopes up that this year will be different, when almost 22 years of evidence can prove otherwise. Instead it’s just going to be another day. Work. Come home. Maybe eat something. Go to bed. I don’t want anything special. I don’t even want it mentioned. Just a regular day, nothing out of the ordinary.

Which honestly is easy to accomplish when you’re alone.