Happy Birthday

It is my birthday. Today I am 31 years old. Last year I refused to acknowledge my birthday but no one would let me forget it. This year I really don't care. It's a birthday - so what? Am I supposed to celebrate this day? the day of my birth? the beginning of a lifetime of pain that I caused? the day I have wished could never have happened for as long as I can remember? I celebrate it with the mask that I need to wear to keep people happy but in my heart I do not celebrate it.

Last night I stayed up very very late. I do not know why - I had nothing special I was doing. I just didn't want to go to bed. I surfed the Internet and I read emails and the Friday night stories. I watched recorded copies of "my" shows and I read a magazine. I didn't do any writing or blogging or meaningful reading. I just didn't go to bed. I think maybe I just didn't want today to come.

Each year on my birthday, I reflect back on what I learned over the past year. Last year I learned it is possible to trust but that doesn't mean you won't still get hurt. It's just a different kind of hurt, one that isn't meant to demean and degrade and show your faults and failings. This kind of hurt, from someone I can trust, is about showing truths that I don't want to see and being willing to do things that upset me, even hurt me, but are to help me. It's strange, finding that trust, real trust, can still hurt. Maybe pain in universal. Maybe pain means absolutely nothing at all. Maybe that's why things that shouldn't hurt do and things that should hurt don't.

This year I also had what I have always known confirmed. Do or don't do, anywhere in the middle means getting caught and getting caught is a very very very bad thing. Ah well, I have to learn that lesson over and over it seems...

"Happy birthday to you..."