Birthday

I'm twenty. That's finally happened. All the semblances of youth - hanging on to the teenage years - are gone. Now I'm at that point where I have none of that and I'm still too young to drink in America. Not that I plan on going to America within the next year, but the point still stands. I am in a limbo year.

I have noticed that my birthday is just another day. Except some people give me presents. And my mum asked us specifically what we want for dinner (us being myself and That Guy I Am, who coincidentally also turned twenty today). My birthday has been dull, waiting for the ritual of Facebook messages from people who won't send them and for maybe something to happen that would make the day worthwhile.

Basically... no.

Up until this morning, I didn't even care about my birthday. I literally let That Guy I Am make all the plans for us. I can't say I was even especially ecstatic today. I was in a much better mood yesterday. Today just has too much expectation for anything, while V-Day is just a big ball of suck I can pleasantly be a cynic about.

And I still wait for that anything.

The day matters so little to me, relative to the hype of birthdays, that I've started writing an essay for college on the call of St Paul and his transformation from Pharisee and persecutor of the early Christians to apostle to the Gentiles. That is how little this day matters.

But I still wait.

I wait for the anything and I wait for the messages that won't come because part of me wants the hype of birthdays to be true, to live up to something, to matter. I wanted to let the day matter. I wanted to not be such a moan on my own birthday. That's just not me. But I sat more or less alone at lunch (admittedly it was because my friends all decided to sit on the opposite side of the table to me, but almost entirely out of earshot). I changed my routine of going to the library and doing work or writing or anything else, just because these were my friends and for a while it seemed like they wanted me there.

I wait, and I become a cynic about my own friends and about my own birthday, and I know that a lot of what I say is just the cynicism, and that I did want to be with my friends on my birthday. But I would have preferred if they had actually spoken to me.

And I wait.