Estrangement and Birthdays

I recently celebrated a birthday, and the experience was similar to every birthday I’ve had since establishing complete estrangement with my immediate and distant family.  It was complicated and filled with complex emotions including sadness, loneliness, hope, disappointment, and anxiety.  Any feelings of happiness or excitement unfortunately failed to make the list.  The dread starts at least a week prior.  And on the actual day, I dislike the attention I receive and try my best to minimize the specialness of the entire day.  Meanwhile, I’m also attempting to shield my young children from my true feelings, so that they don’t catch my negativity like a disease. I often count down the hours until the end of the day when relief inevitably comes that I survived yet another birthday.   

But if I’m totally honest, every year I secretly hope that this year will be the year someone from my family will contact me to wish me a happy birthday.  Every year on my birthday I obsessively check my email accounts, including the junk and trash folders, waiting and silently hoping that I won’t be forgotten again.  And every year, for the past 10 years, I have been disappointed.  I understand my hope is silly and impractical, and so I guard it carefully close to my heart, not disclosing it to even my husband or closest friends.  And as my birthday comes to an end every year, and no messages, emails, or phone calls from my family have arrived, I feel tremendously foolish and ashamed to have gotten my hopes up again.  And then the cycle repeats next year.

Birthdays weren’t always like this.  I recall many wonderful, fun-filled birthdays, with friends and family, laughing and celebrating during my childhood.  But over the years, cracks developed in my shiny

family veneer and led to where we are today.  Now that birthdays pass without any acknowledgement from those who literally brought me into existence, it’s hard not to extrapolate that to mean something about my worthiness as a person.  I'm not even important enough for the energy or time it would expend to send a simple text message or email.

I know that I may be in the minority when it comes to feelings about my birthday.  I’m sure there are many of you who have experienced estrangement who have figured out how to continue the celebrations without your birth families.  Perhaps your chosen families work hard to ensure you have a spectacular day, or even better, you plan and execute extravagant birthday parties yourself.  All I can say is that I wish I was like you.  I wish I could see the happiness and excitement of what a birthday could and should be; just like when I was a child.  I’m still figuring it out.  But I do know that next year, after the cake has been eaten and presents have been opened, I will still be silently checking my emails as the day comes to an end.  Hope may be my downfall, but I haven’t learned that lesson yet.