Grief and Birthdays

Last week was my 33rd birthday. I woke up and went to the gym, and on my way home, I stopped at Starbucks to enjoy my free birthday drink and started sobbing. There wasn't a real reason for the tears, but I was melancholy. It had started the day before at a work event, where I needed to walk away and find some place to hide by myself because I was overwhelmed and stressed out. This was a culmination of the growing pressure over the past few weeks (months) where I have felt out of place.

I look around at my friends, and I can't help but to compare how easy life seems for them and how hard it has felt for me. The ease of small talk and making connections for them has developed a sense of disconnection within me. I have been wrestling with the growing feeling of being an outsider. It's made worse because I feel guilty to express frustrations because they don't have the same struggles, and their well-meaning advice makes me feel like I am doing something wrong by feeling or thinking how I do.

My rational mind understands the complex feelings I have and can push back when I am being ridiculous. Yes, multiple truths can exist at once, and I am trying to squash the feelings of despair caused by comparison because obviously our lives look different. Our relationships with people will look different. Our experiences will be different. I don't have less because they have more (or different).

I am working really hard on my goals, and while they aren't coming together as I want, it isn't in vain. This just isn't the timing or the place or the opportunity or some mixture of those options. I can be incredibly happy for and proud of my friends and still feel disappointed for myself. Even still, I refuse to believe in a scarcity mindset that other people (particularly women) are my competition and that I need to fight for a place at that one table. There are other seats and other tables and other rooms. It's up to me to navigate and find the one where I am supposed to be. I know that I will find my place, even if I have to create the table myself.

And yet, my ego is bruised. I know that all of the frustrations stem from my ego taking a beat down. It is really hard to put yourself out there and not get something that you think you would excel at. It's hard to show up authentically as yourself and have passion and ideas but get shut down and rejected for them. I called my friend Genna during the work event last week, and I shared how crippling this rejection has been because it's not just a version of me or a mask of who I am that is getting rejected. It is me who is being told that the way I show up and present isn't valued. I feel like I have to compromise who I am and hide and protect myself because it hurts to repeatedly put my heart into the world and have it get stomped on. My natural reaction is to hermit into myself and put up my shields and keep people away because I am my safest of places, especially when I feel misunderstood and attacked.

All this rational and emotional contradiction and complexity has turned into an internal struggle where I am constantly battling myself. I have to push back on my thoughts and reconfigure them because I refuse to let the intrusive ones become my reality. It's really been exhausting because I don't want to be at war with myself.

However, this year has contained all of the internal turmoil. Starting in January, I had to decide how to respond to a friend and determine if it was a healthy friendship to continue. There was a pattern in that person that made me feel like I needed to wow them into spending time with me and that I wasn't a priority for them. They were selfish and always treated me like an inconvenience. I felt inferior. By deciding to sever that long-standing friendship, it caused me to sever another shorter friendship that had the same dynamics.

Both of those choices were difficult to make because I care deeply for both of them and like them as people. However, I had to take a stance on what treatment I accept from others. Once I made those choices, it felt freeing, but it was after a long internal confrontation. A battle of old and new versions of me determining if I really had learned my lesson.

Then came my series of reflections on my teaching journey and my former friend group. By opening those wounds and looking intently at them was very painful. I addressed someone I hadn't talked to in years, and I had to decide if my story and perspective mattered. I am glad that I handled it the way I did and reclaimed my voice, but I was concerned for the feelings of people who never truly considered mine. Even in that, I tried to hold my empathy and compassion for them even above my empathy and compassion for myself.

I think that by addressing my past and trying to close cycles that didn't serve me, it is making me question who I am now. This past version of myself is gone. She made choices and accepted behaviors and dynamics that didn't always value her, and I can see how I have learned so much from her and understand why she went through life as she did. By reflecting, it has helped me to see how far I have come, and I am really proud of that growth.

However, I still see the future version of me and the goals I am working towards, but right now, I am at a bit of an identity crisis. If I think I am capable of things yet other people don't see it, am I actually capable of anything? Were my past experiences a fluke? Am I going to actually complete my goals and create the life I have imagined? What value do I offer to those around me? What matters to me? Who am I now?

It feels like all of my self-confidence and trust has been evaporated this year. Maybe my coping mechanisms have been taken down. Maybe they no longer are applicable to the struggles I have been facing. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

In my gut, I know that it's time to rewire my brain and my body. This has slowly been happening throughout the year through my new friendships and within the choices I have made. It's why I started acupuncture and therapy. I am addressing these wounds that are coming up because all of this pain finally needs to be released. I am going to take it in stride because I need to rebuild my foundation and create a healthy version of these patterns.

My birthday was emotional this year, and it feels like it was a grieving of the past. The girl I once was, and the woman who I am becoming. The death of my ego that keeps trying and failing and hurting. The release of all the times that my birthday started a fight. The pain at having to fight for every scrap of joy and happiness, particularly on that day.

It is also the start of a new year in my life. A time to embark on new cycles. A promise that my dynamics are and can be reimagined. A complete transformation like a butterfly that dissolves completely to reconfigure into something brand new. Both beautiful in their own way.

Even if I am still in the in-between phase.

This is happening for me, not to me. Yet it still feels like a personal attack.

My hope for the rest of this year is to find a way back to myself. To rebuild my trust and instincts that have been slowly falling away. To reclaim my voice and opinion rather than defaulting to shrinking to appease those around me.

This summer I am going to be intentional with doing my favorite things, such as going for long walks and listening to podcasts and reading books. I am promising myself that I will find ways to have joy, even if that means it has to be protected and private.

In my soul, I know that I am where I am supposed to be and all of this is meant to happen, so I can emerge in a different way that will help in the next phase of my life.

But damn! This shit is hard, and I am tired.

I am also really glad that I am choosing to evolve and level up. I am grateful I am given another year to discover who I am and who I want to be. I am so very ecstatic that I exist.

All of these truths exist at the same time, and it is okay to feel the weight of all of those truths. It is good that I am grappling with all of these complex ideas because it means that I am invested in the outcome and making intentional choices for myself. I will emerge on the other side of this victorious. I promise.

Post-Script shout out to my friend Deb, who pulled me aside on my birthday to have a lunch of yogurt and berries on her deck as she listened to me vent and cry about all the things I have been keeping inside lately. Thank you for listening. It helped tremendously.

Another post-script shout out to my "It Doesn't Matter" t-shirt for helping me to shift my mindset from what I "should" have done to celebrate or how I "should" behave on my birthday and to accept that it didn't matter if I cried or didn't do my hair or didn't dress up or didn't celebrate. In the grand scheme of things, it is a day, and it didn't need to be special. I can sacrifice this one for grief, and I can try again next year. Thanks, A.B., for the shirt and the inside joke! It helped tremendously.