OK, so my name’s not Lisa, but the song’s been running through
my head since I was watching TV last night and wished myself happy birthday at
around two a. m. Watching TV until four o’clock in the morning on your
birthday. Having your birthday on a Sunday. When the next day is a Monday. A
back to school homework homework Monday.
I always get so depressed on my birthday. I’ve never gotten into the
whole birthday party thing, and after my parents stopped making me have those
cake and ice cream frilly dresses and ribbons in my hair parties, I
haven’t had one. I always plan to, but the first obstacle is my
deep-rooted fear of having a party where no one shows up, and secondly my
birthday always comes out of nowhere. School starts, and three days later, hey
it’s your birthday and you SO don’t feel like celebrating.
It’s my birthday birthday birthday and I have homework homework
homework, and I didn’t get to see any of my friends and and and…
I don’t know. You always have such expectations from this day, like
your life’s going to change from being you to dancing queen, young and
sweet only 17, etc. And it’s precisely at the moments when you expect
life to be the most climactic that you realize how anti-climactic it always
is. Just like goddamn summer. You think your entire life will change and that
from now on everything will be the way you always wanted it to be and blah
blah. But it doesn’t.
I love getting presents. That’s the only reason I even celebrate my
birthday. That’s the only reason I have a birthday. I guess that’s
the reason people are supposed to have parties, so they won’t get
depressed. I don’t even know why it happens.
It’s not even that you started reflecting on time wisely and unwisely
spent. It’s more like you realize that you’re still you.
Nothing’s changed. Theoretically you could argue that you’re in
a completely different place, like I have a car now, I’m a senior now,
I feel better about a lot of things now and in general I am like this beacon
purveyor of goodwill right now for some reason, but none of that matters. What
matters is that you’re still that same you that the advocates of
reincarnation and Buddhism teach you is unimportant. The I, the ego, that
person that’s going to die.
And I don’t believe in reincarnation or the immortal soul. I as I
know myself is going to die. Even if your soul lives on – who cares, I
don’t even know what that soul is. I, as this particular arrangement of
molecules proteins, even of feelings and qualities, will die. We’ll all
die, everyone, everyone who remembers us, maybe even everyone who remembers
the human race. And the fact that you remain yourself despite the external
changes your life undergoes just serves as a reminder that this is
inescapable.
That’s why I get depressed, I guess. That’s why everyone gets
depressed I guess. (But that still doesn’t explain why I seem to want
to make everyone depressed.) If a birthday falls in a forest and no one is
there to witness, will it still make a depression?
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