Birthdays and Mile-Stones (aye-carrumba…) Why do I feel like singing that famous old song about eating worms?

Every year is marked with the ever blooming ‘Anniversary of One’s Birth’;

50 years cake (Photo credit: trindade.joao)

otherwise known as the Birthday.  And every year, I dread it.  Why?  Because I just simply don’t want to intrude on everybody around me to come and indulge me.  Then I ask myself the question, “why not?”  Others do and they don’t seem to have an issue with it.

Not sure if you remember my ‘ah ha!’ moment back in my 2010 post Out of The Mouths Of Babes…, when I recalled the events surrounding my first birthday.  But I am coming onto another milestone and I’m really having a hard time with it.  My sister is pressing me for information of friends to invite, how many and where we should have it.  “It’s a HUGE milestone”, she says; “we really should do something.”

[Sigh], not to make anyone uncomfortable, but I truly don’t see anyone coming.  I look at my list of Facebook friends and think, psha… really?  Would this person drive 400 miles for a dinner?’  Doubt it…  And where did I get that sort of stinking thinking from?  I should know better!  I meant, I’m a cool chick!  I laugh, tell jokes, make others laugh… sing.  Hey!  (I could be the entertainment…)

Seriously, I think of November 5^th, and I just want to lose my lunch.  Why do we have to have these ‘milestones’?  Then there’s the whole ‘half of a century’ mark.  Yep, that’s right… I’m gonna be the big 50!  OMG!  I have been keeping myself so distracted with life that I’ve not been able to really think about that part.  And now that life is going along pretty well, ‘reality’ is starting to creep back in.  I have Honey (who is THE Man of my dreams, truly!) and am looking to the future and what it is that I truly want to do with my future.

Which leads me to my next question; 50, ‘glass half full?’  Or ‘glass half DONE?’  Am I at the beginning of a new chapter of a NEW book?  Or, am I at the closing chapters of a stale old [boring] book?  (Well Ann, since you put it that way, no wonder you are in such a state…).  I HATE this!  Why the struggle?  (Aye carrumba!)   A HUGE part of me looks at my life NOW, and I’m grateful.  I look at it as a completely new book.  Some of the cast of players have carried over from the last, but see a whole new journey unfolding.     And contrary to how this looks, I am truly happy.

It’s just one of those things and it is my birthday… (we all know how much I dislike my birthdays…); actually, I take that back.  It’s not that I dislike my birthday as much as it is that I dislike the idea of intruding on others to celebrate my birthday (does that make any sense?).  I know; I am so co-dependent!  Now, Kimball loved celebrating my birthday (all of our birthdays actually).  And this will be the first year without her.  Kimball made my birthdays very special… she was just that way and I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to handle it with her gone.

So, I find myself, yet again, in this situation and am wondering; what to do about it?  The best thing [I think] is to just plow forward.  Make a list, check it twice and invite and plan.  Know that I will have a wonderful time no matter what as I will have my honey and family around me and those friends that did decide to show and celebrate my big day.

I was with one of my very dear friends the other day for lunch who just happens to be in her fifties; she says that it is the best time of her life.  For the first time she does what she wants to do.  She no longer feels the need to put up with what people dole out to her, nor does she feel the need to do things because it is the ‘right thing and would make others happy’.  There is a time and a place for that and the bottom line is that we all must stay true to ourselves first.  And for the first time in her life she has discovered this in her fifties.

With age comes wisdom.  Why is that?  But it is so true.  And there was something more; we determined that I am not so much dreading my birthday as much as the planning of yet another big event (there has just been too much for me to do this year… ya think?).  My girlfriend indicated that we should do something simple instead and just have fun.   Perhaps she’s got something there.

Bottom line is that everyday is worth celebrating and we are all worth the celebratory day.  Still not sure what exactly I’m going to do for my big 50; but rest assured it will be a mile-stone of some sort.  I was just given news that a dear friend of mine passed away (Martha; remember her? Courage Wears So Many Faces – There’s One In Particular…).  She most certainly would have said “Honey, live it up!  Stop your moping!”  And I intend to do just that.  Ok Martha; here goes nothing!

Young at Heart
by Martin Dejnicki
(from www.special-birthday-poems.com )

Happy birthday young at heart,
So many decades, where to start?
With energy, like that pink bunny,
You make us look lazy, that’s not funny!

Never-ending old school ways,
Filled with stories, to Amaze!
Listening has been lost with age,
You belong on theatre stage.

If you manage to forget,
We’ll remind you, don’t you fret.
Happy birthday young at heart,
Smile with joy, you old fart.

~~~

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