Snuffing out the Birthday Candles

Between my last visit with my best friend and her daughter’s birth, I had yet another birthday. Looking back, I see I was still young. But birthdays always seemed to be a reminder that yet another year of my life had gone by. Another year and I was still not a mother like I had always dreamed I would be. For multiple years I hated my birthday. Celebrating another year come and gone. Celebrating the day I was born when I was unable to give birth. It wasn’t a day I enjoyed celebrating.

Of course, the people who love me like to celebrate that day. My husband in particular. Our birthdays are 10 days apart, so we have always tried to do something fun the weekend that falls between our birthdays. Being frugal, I have never liked celebrating two birthdays so close and separately. And I have especially never been one for exchanging gifts. So we usually ended up going out to eat somewhere we had a gift card.

Me on my 25th birthday

This particular birthday we went to Olive Garden. Our tendency is to just fill up on salad refills, taste our food, eat maybe 1/3 or 1/2, box it up, and go home. I remember wanting to enjoy my birthday. I wanted to enjoy the moment. I wanted to eat food and like it.

​I have a horrible tendency of thinking so much about the future that I don’t live in the present. I let days slip past me, focusing so much on what lay ahead. I find myself still falling into this trap. Rather than seizing the moment and living every day as if it were my last, I feel uncomfortable and discontent in the present. 

​I always take on some new project that will extend today into tomorrow. As if today alone is not enough. I’m always chasing after something... what?... I don’t know. Exhausted from the nonstop marathon but never reaching the finish line because I get too distracted with something else that might get me there faster... to some ending I might like more.

That was my life every day for too long. I couldn’t enjoy the moment because I didn’t have what I wanted most... or what I thought I wanted most. I don’t remember the weather on that day. I don’t remember the events of the morning... if we went out for lunch or for dinner. It’s all a gloomy blur.

I remember so many events from over that time... but they all are hedged in and filtered by infertility. I have more memories of feeling my stomach turn and heart race while walking past the baby section at the store than I have memories of laughing til my sides hurt. I used to laugh. I used to look forward to waking up because tomorrow was always more glorious than today.

When Mitch and I were falling in love with each other, I would have rather sacrificed sleep than sacrifice a moment we could be together. I’d wake up early so we could meet before our early class. We’d go over homework in a dimly lit cafeteria or we’d go out and run in the crisp morning. I hate running... but I loved this man who would become my husband. Being awake was better than being asleep.

Mitch and I in 2007

​After we got married, that started to change. I didn’t fall out of love with him, I started falling out of love with life. Life didn’t start to turn and go rotten... my dreams just started to die... and I didn’t know how to live... really LIVE... outside of a dream. I loved my husband, but I pictured my life so different than it was. I had been swimming upstream my whole life; my life continuously shaped by the decisions of everyone around me. I felt like everything was out of my control, and now I couldn’t even decide to grow my family. I no longer wanted to lose sleep... I didn't want to be awake and drink in more reality.

​Dreams gave me a sense of survival growing up. I lived in a world of make-believe. This is probably why I look back at my childhood, despite all the hardships and trauma, and think I had the best time. It wasn’t real. I was hardly me. I was play-acting someone else in a different time and place. I was moving a toy and being a voice for whatever character I was puppeteer for that day.

I wasn’t riding a bike in the driveway; I was jousting in a medieval tournament.
I wasn’t cleaning barn stalls; I had just walked 2 miles home from school and had to work the farm like every other farmer's child in the 1800s.
I didn’t have a blanket hanging over my bed; I was an early Native American and I had just brought my kill-of-the-day back to my tee-pee to dress and prepare.

Me on my 4th birthday. (I am the blonde in the middle)

​I couldn’t escape into a make believe world in my 20's like I had as a child. Life was real... and staring me right in the face! Circumstances knocked on the door of my guarded heart, reminding me that my dreams were dead. I didn’t want to wake up, but I was afraid to sleep. Sleep is where I could slip back into my make-believe world where I felt safe. I would see my life for what I wished it were... and feared it would never be. I’d sleep...and hope would bloom, then I’d wake up and crush the spark before someone or something else snuffed it out for me. At least I would be in control.

​I didn’t want anyone to know it was my birthday. I was afraid it would trigger peoples’ minds to the idea of me getting older, me being married longer, me still having no children. I feared the questions that might come. The comments that could follow and sting for longer than they took to say or think of. People like to draw attention to the “birthday girl,” and I hated that. I still do. Everyone staring at me. The invisible finger pointing at me, too strong for me to push away. I don’t mind being the “center of attention,” but only on my terms. It comes back to the desire to have control but never being able to. Wanting to take the wheel and steer, but someone else always beats me to the driver’s seat of my life.

Birthdays brought too many self-accusations. Too many reminders. Too much attention...