I used to be so big on birthdays. In theY2k blogger days of my youth, I would painstakingly use the lasso tool on Photoshop to make collages to post on LiveJournal for my friends. In the early days of Instagram and the advent of apps like Nichi, I made digital scrapbooks to post on Stories to greet loved ones.
But birthdays used to be more than a greeting on Viber or a DM on Instagram. It meant listing down the people I wanted to invite to a party in our garage, so my mom could plan out how much food to prepare. It meant shopping for a cute outfit to wear to said party. Parties meant bringing out the white monobloc tables and chairs and the white tablecloth to put over them. There would be a cooler with softdrinks and beer and a large bowl filled with jungle juice, a punch we made from a recipe that our high school English teacher shared.
Then birthdays became trips. An escape to somewhere other than here to help keep it special. There was the beach, where I always felt grounded. Somewhere where I could hear the ocean felt strangely calming to me. Never mind that it almost always rained on my birthday. The sun would always come out and if I was lucky, there would be a rainbow.
Then it was to new places where I’d never been or haven’t been in a long time. To see family, to see friends, to see a different side of me. When I turned 40, I went back to New York all by myself. I still think about that trip and how I got to do all my favorite things in one of my favorite cities. Two years ago, I spent it in Sydney chasing Jacaranda trees for the perfect photo to commemorate another orbit around the sun.
But the older I am, and the shorter the list of people I want to invite to my hypothetical birthday party gets, I become more and more at peace with staying put. To making plans or not having any at all and being comfortable with my own company. I used to be so scared of eating out by myself. I don’t even know what I was terrified about. If I’ve learned anything in the past 4 decades, it’s that the best person you can be with is yourself—everything else is confetti.
