I turned 22 last Tuesday. Unless we’ve been friends for a long while, you probably didn’t know. My birthday is not on Facebook and I might mention it once or twice throughout the year.
A few years ago when I was in that teenage (a euphemism for stupid) state of my mind when you want to learn who truly cares about you, I deleted my birthday from my Facebook profile. I have not put it back since.
I should probably put it back. I don’t know why as a teenager I expected people to know my birthday; now, I’m sure I don’t expect you to. You have way more important stuff to store in your brain, like elevating lyrics coming from the genius of Kanye West and Nicki Minaj.
Many people want to offer you their best wishes sincerely. Am I taking that chance away from them? It’s probably not a big deal. If it is to you because you’ll have to consistently interact with me in the near future, don’t worry; there is another chance next year.
The week before my birthday I went through all the cards I have people have written for graduations, birthdays, Valentine’s Day, and other less important occurrences. In one of them my dad said I should never say my birthday doesn’t matter, that it is just like any other day. I guess he thought I didn’t care much about it; perhaps that was the time when I wanted to believe I didn’t care.
This year, I cared. I wanted to have a special day, even if it was spent by myself. So, from the night before I decided it would be a great day and I would eat brunch at Bagels & Joe. That much I knew.
From the time I woke up, I felt happy. It was a great day even though nothing had happened yet. And by nothing, I mean nothing (I didn’t wake up to any 12:01 a.m. messages).
After brunch I returned a DVD of Le Nozze di Figaro to the library and tried to figure whether my student account from college had the right figures. I then paid a short visit to the office where I was a student worker for three years. I walked around the Haymarket, spent some time looking at books at Indigo Bridge Books, used my birthday reward from Starbucks to get a flat white (after basically only consuming drip coffee from The Mill for a month), finished reading Jane Glover’s Mozart’s Women (excellent!), and watch The Lobster.
An honorable mention goes to a conversation I had with my friend Stella, who happened to be at Starbucks studying (nerd!) when I got there. If there is something that energizes my soul and takes my mind off self-hatred (an exaggeration perhaps), it is a conversation with an extremely talented person who just needs a little push.
I experienced the daily doses of loneliness, confusion, and fear, but I also experienced beauty as I hadn’t in a while. And I experienced love that felt so present while being far away. The people closest to me (and yet away from me) called and wrote me. They reassured me I am loved, and I love them.
Enrique Quezada-Llanes 