Do Birthdays Drag You Down?

[IncolaVacui]

Yes.
I stopped celebrating my birthday between the age of 17 and 19. I stopped asking for gifts around 16 and just telling everyone that I want it to be like a normal day. After I became legal drinking age at 21, my response to people insisting that they had to get me something was: "A cheap bottle of vodka or whiskey will work."

I don't like the sudden attention of it, is the thing.
Which was only made worse by the development of modern social media now that everybody that can add you has a birthday reminder. -_-
Before I totally abandoned my Facebook, I'd switched my birthday to some totally arbitrary date a month ahead or behind, so that I wouldn't have to deal with the influx of attention from several handfuls of people that either haven't spoken to me or seen me in person for many years, or that I've only ever met or talked to once or twice.

These days, I just write it off.
I don't even tell my co-workers what day my birthday is, unless they directly ask for some reason.

 

[TheRealCallie]

^^Why don't you just hide your birthday on fb instead of putting a fake birthday down?
As for your coworkers, why not just tell them you don't care to celebrate your birthday, so you'd rather not say?

 

[IncolaVacui]

^^Why don't you just hide your birthday on fb instead of putting a fake birthday down?
As for your coworkers, why not just tell them you don't care to celebrate your birthday, so you'd rather not say?

I didn't know facebook had that option. Besides, I don't have a facebook anymore, so it doesn't matter. I haven't had one in almost a year now.

My co-workers, like with some of my friends, can be persistent, they don't understand me and think that it has to do with my self-esteem, which is partially true I suppose, it really is mostly just that I don't like spontaneous, holiday/celebration-specific attention.

Besides, my life is totally **** and I'm a complete lunatic, I don't wanna celebrate that.  
Or if I am going to celebrate my lunacy, it'll be more...private, more personal.
I have actually done that before, it's usually me taking a long walk in a certain frame of mind at night.

 

[redbeard 44]

Yes, birthdays and New Year's Eve are pretty bad for me. Nothing worse than staring out the window on your birthday evening singing 'happy birthday to me' to yourself. There's the obligatory call from the parents, but after that, after they're gone, there'll be nothing on my birthdays. Same with New Years and Valentines. Knowing all the 'normal' people are out there with someone else, it seems almost like bragging and kicking us in the guts. And any holiday for that matter when groups gather together is a little disheartening, 4th of July, Memorial day, Christmas... they're just days off of work that I have to try to kill time. It makes me feel like an outsider, the kid looking in through the window and that's what I feel my life is. I'm not part of anything, I'm an observer.