Birthday Blah

Birthdays are generally a pretty stressful time for me. Granted, I’m sure that I’m no different than most women on that account. Yeah, it sucks to be reminded that. No one likes to realize that they’re starting to get old.

So, yeah… that’s part of it.

I think the biggest part of it was the lack of any acknowledgment of my birthday from my family. I went to Thanksgiving because it’s the time when they do birthday stuff for me. I hate doing family Thanksgivings because they are incredibly stressful. There’s a lot of complaining and guilt and all other stuff that I just can’t be around emotionally. I generally don’t like family things because I have always felt like the black sheep.

I’m not religious, almost all of my family is. My family is more conservative than I am. I don’t have anything that I can talk to any of them about.

So, yeah… family things already make me uncomfortable.

Thanksgiving is supposed to be at least some small recognition of my family of my birthday. Frankly I would like Thanksgiving to be as low-key as possible. Get a pizza and a pie or cake and call it a night. You don’t need the whole traditional Thanksgiving spread. Holidays are stressful enough as is. Why not just make it easier?

But there’s always some huge Thanksgiving spread with too much food.

Now the nice thing is that I generally get some form of dessert that’s mine.

Having a birthday around and occasionally on Thanksgiving, you would think that I would love pumpkin pie.

I don’t. I can’t stand it. I’m bored to death with pumpkin pie. I was forced to have that as the only thing for my birthday for 16 years. I am done with pumpkin pie… and anything with pumpkin in it in general.

So, they started making me something special for my birthday.

I was promised the week prior to Thanksgiving that I would be given a slice of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. I said that all I wanted was a slice of their red velvet cheesecake. It’s so rich, but it tastes wonderful.

So, when it gets to dessert… there’s pumpkin pie, but nothing for me.

The one thing I asked for I didn’t get.

And it brings up all of the feelings that I’ve had about my family.

Yeah. I didn’t think that asking for a slice of cheesecake is asking too much. Apparently it was.

Needless to say, I’m still feeling pretty disappointed. It certainly didn’t make me feel like anyone in my own family cared enough to acknowledge my birthday (not to mention I received 1 birthday card from my aunt and nothing from my parents).

Yeah…

I don’t know how best to describe how I’m feeling except maybe deeply hurt. I don’t know if I have the words to fully describe how I feel.