Another Birthday

I hate birthdays. I don’t like the entire process of sneaky people coming and wishing. That one day you think you’re special and everyone loves you. But the next day everyone starts acting a fool around you. Some don’t even wait for it to be midnight before activating their folly. Birthdays are paradoxical, they are meant to make you happy but they end up making you old and sad. Unless you’re already old and sad, then it’s another day at the office.

Smile, you should be happy today. I can picture in my mind a world without birthdays, a world without hate. Simply because I truly hate birthdays. Ever thought about birthday depression? It’s terrible. If you want to make me feel special, do it every day. Why is everyone excited about me being one step closer to being dead? There’s no point. Let me pop your bubble, I’m not special and neither are you.

Birthdays are arbitrary markers of time constructed to impose meaning on our finite existence in an indifferent universe, perpetuated by capitalism to fuel the consumption of sugary foods and mass-produced kitsch. When it’s your birthday and you see some waiters coming towards you singing an annoying birthday song with a cake. And you think to yourself, should I kill myself or kill them. Why do people take a whole month to celebrate their birthdays? It’s called a birthDAY. That’s one DAY. Cut that shit out.

Best wishes on your birthday. My so-called Happy Birthday is being made a very Unhappy Birthday by inundating it with fake and reasonless love.  I any day prefer the hate. Neither the best wishes of my well-wishers will make my birthday better nor the curses of my haters make it worse. Birthdays were so easy when I was younger like I wanted toys and stuff like that. But now? people are like “What do you want?” and I’m just like “I don’t know, maybe some good fortune? Emotional stability? A love life?”

If you think about it, birthdays are really satanic rituals about chanting around a flaming object that represents the number of years taken off your life, upon which the flames are blown out and a knife is stabbed through it. I hate those dumb questions that follow too. “When are you getting married?” The way I see it, it’s actually none of your damn business. Now if you want a cheerful response, write me a cheque of a million dollars and I’ll even let you pick the date. In fact, I’ll do you one better and you get to pick the wife too.

The ‘happy birthday song’ is the most cringe-worthy song ever written. And when people are singing it to you, nobody tells you what you’re supposed to do with your face. Should I smile? Too much? Now I look like the donkey from Shrek. Once again it’s your birthday and you are left to reflect on your simple existence full of endless failure and bad decisions. To add to an already depressing day, my Facebook wall will be filled with birthday messages from people I’ve never met, haven’t seen in years, or genuinely couldn’t give a toss about.

Why do men hate celebrating their birthdays so much? We’re tired of receiving socks from people who expect boat cruises from us. Explain this, on my birthday I spend money to celebrate with you. On your birthday, I spend money on gifts for you. Then there’s valentine, women’s day, mother’s day, girlfriends day, and some invented day only women celebrate. I feel sick that men still somehow spend money on Jesus’ birthday too. Make it stop. Well, to everyone else, today is Gottfried’s birthday.

For me, it’s just another Monday.

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