Grief Wearing a Party Hat

My birthday is coming up. I can always feel it approaching even before I consciously register the date. A strange kind of dread starts gathering at the edges of me like storm clouds rolling in from somewhere just beyond the horizon.… a weird heaviness, a restlessness I can’t explain. A quiet urge to disappear, ghost all social media. People always assume birthdays are supposed to be happy, a celebration… a reminder that you've survived another year. I spend mine trying to survive unnoticed. For me, they mostly feel like grief wearing a party hat. I know that sounds dramatic, but I don't know how else to explain it. The older I get, the more anxious I become. Every year, right after my daughter's birthday passes, I feel the countdown begin, not with excitement, not with anticipation, but with tension.

I think part of that is because Chris and I were born exactly 51 weeks apart, one week shy of a year. For 28 years, there was no version of my birthday that didn't include him. Before he died, I had never had a birthday without him. Not one. He was even there for my first one. I know that sounds insignificant. Everybody loses people. Everybody has birthdays after they're gone. But there is something strange about losing someone who existed beside nearly every version of yourself. Someone who occupied the same season every year. There has never been a version of my life that didn't include him somewhere in the frame. He is the foundation of every memory I own. That's what people don't always understand about grief. You don't just lose the person, you lose the architecture they helped build inside you. And every birthday, I feel the missing beams. I feel the places where the structure still stands but shouldn’t, the places where it creaks. The places where it leaks when it rains, the places where something essential is gone.  

Again, I know it sounds ridiculous. I know there are people who lose siblings and still celebrate their birthdays. I know the world expects you to keep moving. But every year, when my birthday gets close, I become acutely aware that Chris stopped aging, and I didn't. He is forever 28, and there will never be a time when, for one week, we're the same age again. That probably sounds like such a small thing to mourn. But it isn't. For one week every year, Chris would catch me. I was older, but for those seven days, we were the same age, and he loved reminding me of it. He'd joke that I couldn't boss him around that week. Like somehow those seven days erased the fact that I'd gotten there first. It became one of those silly little things siblings do, the kind of thing that seems insignificant until the person who shared it with you is gone. Now, June 9th comes and goes, and he stays 28. Forever. And June 16th arrives, and I keep moving. Every year, I step into an age he'll never reach, collecting birthdays he'll never get. There is something profoundly lonely about that. Not because I want to be younger, but because he was always right there with me. Chasing my age. Catching me for a week. Refusing to let me forget it. Then one year he stopped. And somehow I didn't. Every year feels stolen. It feels like carrying a suitcase that gets heavier with every passing year. Not because the grief itself grows, but because the distance does. Because there are now entire chapters of my life that he never saw. Entire versions of me he never met. Entire stories I can never tell him. Entirely new characters he’ll never get to know. Sometimes I think that's what people misunderstand about grief. They think you just miss the person. But you also miss the version of yourself that existed when they were here. You miss the language only the two of you spoke, the shared references. The memories that don't require explanation. You miss having a witness.

When I say I hate my birthday, people often assume it's because Chris died. They assume that's where the story begins. But if I'm being honest, the discomfort has been there for as long as I can remember. Chris's death just wrapped itself around an already existing wound. I hated birthdays long before grief moved in and made itself at home. I just didn't know it yet. For most of my life, Chris unknowingly gave me somewhere to hide. June belonged to both of us, so I never had to examine too closely why being celebrated made my skin crawl or why attention felt so unbearably uncomfortable. There was always a "we" to soften the edges of the spotlight. Then he died, and suddenly there was only me standing in it. The shield was gone. The distraction was gone. And for the first time in my life, I was forced to look directly at the thing I had spent years looking around and ask myself why a day meant to celebrate my existence had always felt so much like something I needed to survive. 

Growing up, birthdays weren't magical in our house. They weren't the kind of birthdays I watched other kids have, where kids run through the backyard carrying presents and everybody sings and laughs and takes pictures. We never had those. I can count on one hand the birthdays that felt remotely normal. Sometimes my aunts would get us a cake. Sometimes we'd celebrate at my grandparents' house with all the cousins running around, but that was a normal weekend in the summer. Those memories exist, and I cherish them. But mostly, birthdays were small. No elaborate decorations. No invitations handed out at school, ending in slumber parties. No sense that the day revolved around us. Most years it was just Chris and me together with a shared cake.

Then our little sister came along and suddenly there were three birthdays stacked on top of each other within nine days. And if there is one thing children are experts at, it's hearing the things adults don't realize they're saying. We heard the stress. We heard the financial worry. We heard the exhaustion. We heard the frustration. Maybe nobody intended for us to absorb it. But we did. I learned very early that birthdays weren't joyful occasions. They were expensive. Complicated. Inconvenient. Something that put pressure on mom. Something that caused a lot of stress. Something that cost entirely too much. And eventually, without realizing it, I stopped feeling excited about my birthday and started feeling guilty for even having one. I learned that celebrating me created stress. I learned that my existence cost people things. I learned that taking up space came with a price tag. And those lessons settled into my bones so deeply that decades later, I still can't shake them. Even now, if someone asks what I want for my birthday, my first instinct is panic. Nothing. Please, nothing. I'm totally fine. Don't make a big deal out of it. Don't ever spend money. Don't plan anything. Don't even look at me for too long. Don't ever make me stand in the center of the room while everyone sings. Don't make me feel visible, especially not visible. Because visibility feels dangerous. Visibility forces me to spend a day looking directly at someone I've never quite known how to love. I don't think I realized how deeply that belief had rooted itself until I was sitting in my therapist's office years later, trying to explain why I become anxious every June. She told me that people with childhood trauma often struggle with birthdays because birthdays force us into the spotlight, and when you've spent your life learning that taking up space is dangerous, uncomfortable, or costly, the spotlight doesn't feel warm, it feels threatening. And suddenly everything made sense…. Why I hate being the center of attention. Why I become uncomfortable when people make a fuss over me. Why compliments slide right off me but criticism buries itself in my chest. Why I can spend months planning something beautiful for someone else but feel almost sick when someone tries to do the same for me. Because I never learned how to receive celebration, I only learned how to provide it.

Because the irony is that I love celebrating other people. I look at my children and I cannot imagine them ever questioning whether they deserve to be celebrated. I would move mountains to make sure they never feel that way. I would sell everything I own before I let them believe their existence is an inconvenience. I love watching their faces light up when they realize I’ve paid attention and they’re being seen. I love making a big deal of other people. I love making them feel cherished. I pay attention to tiny details. The things they casually mention months ago. Their favorite colors. Their favorite foods. The gifts they would never buy themselves. I love hand-making something so they know they’re worth my energy. I want people I love to feel important. I want them to know they matter deeply to me. I want them to feel held. But when somebody tries to do those things for me? I become deeply uncomfortable. Almost nauseous. Like I'm wearing clothes that don't belong to me. Like somebody handed me a script for a role I never auditioned for and shoved me on the stage in front of thousands of people to perform. When did I learn that being loved and being a burden were the same thing? Because somewhere along the way, I learned that love was something you gave. Not something you received.

I learned that my value was in taking care of everyone else. I learned that my purpose was making other people feel seen while remaining invisible myself. Maybe that's why celebration feels foreign. Not because I don't want love, but because I never learned how to stand still inside it. The older I get, the more I wonder what it would feel like to experience my birthday without guilt attached to it, without grief attached to it, without the urge to apologize for existing. What would it feel like to believe I wasn't a burden? What would it feel like to believe my presence was worth celebrating simply because I'm here? Not because of what I do for people. Not because of what I give. Not because of how much I sacrifice. Just because I exist. Maybe that's the real wound underneath all of this. Not that I hate birthdays. Not even that I miss Chris, though God knows I do. Maybe the deepest ache is realizing that I learned how to celebrate everyone except myself. And now, at pushing thirty-seven years old, I'm still trying to figure out whether I do deserve the same tenderness I so freely give away. I know I’m lucky to have the people in my life and I know they love me deeply. The tragedy is that some part of me still doesn't know what to do with it. The little girl inside me still thinks attention comes attached to obligation. Still thinks celebration creates hardship. Still thinks being loved requires repayment. Still thinks existing is something she should apologize for.

So every year, as my birthday approaches, I find myself standing between two versions of myself. The woman who spends her life making sure everyone around her feels treasured. And the little girl who never quite learned she was worth treasuring, too. That little girl whispers the same old lies... Don't take up too much space. Don't ask for too much. Don't make this about you. Don't be difficult. Don't be expensive. Maybe that's why birthdays hurt. Not because I'm getting older. Not even because of the memories. Maybe it's because every June, I come face to face with the same heartbreaking question: What if every birthday hurts because it asks me to celebrate someone I've spent most of my life apologizing for being?

I don't know the answer yet. But I think that's what this season asks of me every year. Not to celebrate, not really. Just to sit with that question. To look at the little girl who learned she was too expensive and to look at the woman who still apologizes for taking up space. And somewhere between them, to grieve all the years spent believing they had to. Because every June, I find myself standing in the space between grief and guilt, between who I was and who I'm still trying to become, wondering how many birthdays a person can live through before they finally stop apologizing for being here.