Its my birthday. Well, it was – my birthday just ended and it was awful. I mean, despite being alone in a city, it just made everything bubble up. Not a single one of my friends from my hometown texted me, no cake, no candles. And that’s my fault, I guess, neglecting those relationships both at home and in my new city. I haven’t been home since last Christmas and don’t have any plans to go back before the next. I don’t talk to them. The people around here, I didn’t even try to become friends with them. I was too fixated on my totally unique isolation, that the concept of making new connections was completely antithetical to the emotional project. And so when today rolls around, and I am only texted by my grad school friends, my ex, and my RAs, it really puts into perspective just how obsessed I have been with being miserable and alone. In a year, who in that cohort of doting respondents is going to text me? Who even am I to anyone.
And it all just comes around and compacts into this emotional singularity that looks like an empty funeral parlor. We’re only defined by our relationships with others, no man is an island and all that shit. And as I see more and more of these threads get cut, as I see the highwaters of self-prophesized isolation drown out this archipelago of love and care and concern, I can only lament that perhaps I have taken everyone in my life for granted.
I don’t know, here’s to 29. I’m thankful for everyone who reached out. I’m going to try my hardest to make sure my 30th is better.
jeez, louise 