sunday edition: it's my party (and i'll cry if i want to)

reflections on 33.

This week, I turned 33.

I have always had big feelings around my birthday. Perhaps it’s because I'm the oldest daughter in an extremely sentimentally minded family. Perhaps it’s because my birthday has always felt like an afterthought, sandwiched as it is between Thanksgiving and Christmas, often celebrated in combination or skipped altogether in the blur of finals, travel and holiday parties. Deeply understandable now, but occasionally disappointing in my youth.

Unsurprisingly (to me) as I grew older and internalized a significant amount of optimization and achievement culture, I channeled a lot of my perfectionistic energy into creating my own rituals and superstitions surrounding my birthday. It did not help that my birthday coincides with so many performance based milestones: college and grad school applications, finals, date events with fancy dresses, meeting significant other’s families at the holidays, performance reviews and promotions, new years and the inevitable deluge of weight loss and self love messaging. For years, I internalized that if I was the best possible version of myself (the skinniest, the happiest, the most high achieving) ON my birthday, it would ~ set the tone~ for the year to come

Is it any wonder that for years I prepared for my birthday the way a deranged early 2000s main character prepares for the prom?