sad on your motherfucking b-day
my complicated relationship with birthdays and hopes for the future
It’s my birthday today. I am now 24. Not going to lie, aging has always scared me. To me, growing older means more responsibilities, more expectations to be great, to “have it together”, so to speak. It scares me even more because I remember feeling like I wasn’t going to make it pass 18, which I once made peace with. There was a strange comfort in ending my life. No more disappointing birthdays. No more pressures. I would be free of it all. Unfortunately for me, suicidal ideation is like a terminal disease in remission, an ugly scab I just can’t help picking at. Every year that I surpass, I continue to feel more uncertain of my future.
But with age comes wisdom, and I’ve learned something important: you do not need permission to be great. There is no handbook, guide, or handrail to pursing your passions, finding your creativity, your drive. This may come to no surprise to you, my dear reader, but the realization came to me after feeling lost and aimless for about a year and half after college graduation. I graduated from an elite private university, I got good grades, good summer internships, and even landed a good job after graduation. Yet, there was a nagging emptiness I felt for majority of post grad. It was a debilitating, crushing sadness that needed a trip to the inpatient psych ward for a few days to remedy.
The answer came to me when I was scrolling through my social feeds one day, seeing people around my age doing the things that I dreamed of doing, that I wanted to do, and I knew that I was capable of doing. I asked myself, why not me? There was no one to give me permission to start doing it, no class I could take or certification I can earn to officially start writing, to start making content, to express my creativity. You just do it. Thus came the birth of this newsletter.
I think many 20 somethings ask themselves “is this it?” upon entering the work force for the first time. For most people, the monotonous pace of waking up early in the morning, commuting to work, clocking in, then making the same commute back home late in the evening doesn’t leave much room to pursue other endeavors. Not that there’s anything wrong with working a 9-5- its a valid way of making of living for the majority of people including myself, but there’s a reason why there’s so many people that idolize quitting their jobs, living “free” and being their own boss. This shit sucks.
So I hope by taking the reins of life herself I can live the way I hope to. There’s no guarantee that any of this will work out, which is the scary part. Trusting yourself and your work doesn’t offer the same security as a corporate job (although who really knows at this point with firms laying off people left and right, I digress). I will probably always dread my birthday, but if I can grow a bit more confident, a little more wiser each year, then maybe aging won’t be something that I fear.
