During my teenage years birthday has become associated with “look how other people have cool parties with friends and you’re alone”, so not caring about birthdays was necessary for survival. But now, in my 20s, after I found someone I love (and they love me!) I am getting into celebrating birthdays again! Sorry if that was 2meirl42meirl4meirl

My family always tries to guilt me on my birthday in to doing shit and im like “its my birthday, give me the gift of leaving me the fuck alone”

@Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com

I grew up in an abusive family that made me feel like shit every birthday and I hate that for myself. If you want to make me climb out of my skin, fuss over me on my birthday, bring me a cake at work. Watch me puke in the bathroom from the anxiety. Yeah, real mature.

I can relate to that. Nothing too special to celebrate.

Yeah! Let’s celebrate making another trip around the sun. /s

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy I’m getting older–because the only alternative is death.

yeah I don’t think I’m more matured, I simply think that life is a curse and have no interest in celebrating the day I was cursed.

everyone seems to say matured when it should just be mature. I hate hearing it live especially, it’s so jarring I get that arm hairs pulling away feeling

No money, no friends, no birthday

I got moved to a new school every year from 5-12th grade. I never had friends to even invite to my birthday. I tried a few times when I was younger and it was wildly depressing. I learned fast to keep to myself, talk to nobody, and expect nothing from “big days”.

We’d do small family birthday stuff but even that was awful. My mother liked to get the shitty cheap knock-off version of whatever you asked for even if the original thing was already cheap… or in my case she’d buy me clothes (from goodwill) that were absolutely hideous, the sort of thing my sister would wear to be the center of attention but which I wouldn’t have touched… so I really never even had any gifts to look forward to…

In my early 20s I figured I’d try again. Birthday 21 rolls around, the one everyone wants to celebrate with you… and… two friends and two family members came out of the dozens of people I invited. Nope, never doing that again.

Now at best I’ll go sit somewhere that I drink for free with one other person at most. Just give me the free alcohol, don’t try to get me to be all chummy with the other birthday people. I’ll just leave.

I dislike being put above others and celebrated just for existing. You don’t owe me a cheap throwaway gift, I don’t owe you dinner and a slice of cake. Maybe that’s a cynical way of looking at it but I genuinely don’t like the consumeristic aspects nor having that much attention thrown my way. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. It’s just another day.

I still appreciate if you get me a gift but idk girl 95% of the time that turns into a $10 gift card or me putting in most of the effort in telling you what I want. I’m really bad at gift ideas for myself because if I wanted/needed it that bad, I would have figured out how to get it myself or made peace doing without. Cute socks are always nice though!

I usually just treat it as a birthday month, take a couple weeks vacation then, and spend it with people I like. I find it facilitates loved ones being able to filter in and out of the birthday situation as their schedules allow without putting much pressure on me or anyone else to have a good time. It feels like cheating, but I like that any good memories during that month get attributed to the celebration and any bad ones can get written off as “not birthday.” It might be fractured to the point of delusion, but I still like it.

I’m not doing shit on my birthday.

I actually hate celebrating anything because anytime it was a holiday or birthday my mom would take it upon herself to make everyone’s life hell even more than usual, and that childhood trauma is certainly not resolved. So yeah, miserable, leave me alone indeed…