Happy Fucking Birthday

This may come a surprise to some people but I hate birthdays. HATE THEM. I have pretty much the same regard for birthdays as I do for Christmas – it’s really a load of bollocks. Always such high expectations followed by disappointment – a far cry from the M&S, glitter bomb that everyone says it is. You probably love birthdays. But this is where you and I are probably different.

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It should be a time of celebration, of joy and unadulturated happiness with buttercream on top, but for me, personally, my birthday is a time of severe awkwardness, disappointment, frustration and completely pointless, inane family arguments.

So, this year I decided to minimize the damage and leave London and celebrate my birthday back in Cornwall. My theory was, if I set the expectations low, and was prepared to be disappointed it could only turn out better then expected, yeah?

‘I’ll watch Sex in the City, not talk to anyone, eat sugary e-numbers all day and in the evening I’ll go for a low-key dinner with my close family… What could possibly go wrong?’

So the day arrived. My mother made a BEAUTIFUL breakfast. I opened my cards. It was all very civilised. Afterwards, with a belly full of pancakes, bacon and maple syrup – hmm my favourite – I settled down in front of my log fire to watch Carrie and the girls – just as I planned.

Bad decision.

Now I have discovered something: If it’s your birthday and you decide to watch reruns of SATC do not, I REPEAT, DO NOT watch the episode when Carrie gets abandoned on her birthday (The Agony and the Ex-tacy – Series 4 Ep1).

IT WILL ONLY MAKE YOU FEEL WORSE ABOUT YOUR LIFE AND YOUR BIRTHDAY.

To give you an idea, here is a clip…

‘….maybe we can be each other’s soul mates??’ Oh just BITE ME Charlotte! Fucking hell.

Bust up.

So there I was – emotionally unstable when my mother starts to pipe up ‘Oh my gawd, why do you watch this? Why are Carrie and her friends all acting like sluts? 

I began to feel a surge of annoyance rise from within me…

‘Yaz? You look up to these women? WHY? I don’t get it.’

‘It’s my city dream mum. MY CITY DREAM.’

‘What are you saying?’ she replied.

‘Well I’ll just switch it off then’ I snapped, switching off the telly.

My mother, rather startled by my severe reaction then tried to revert the situation.

‘Come on Yaz don’t be silly, put it back on.’

 ‘I can’t possibly watch it now!’ I declared stubbornly. ‘Because you keep making annoying comments that you know upsets me. I just wanna watch what I wana watch on MY BIRTHDAY and now you’ve ruined the show for me.’

We sat in silence for a while, neither wanting to admit that we had actually just had a confrontation about Sex and the City. #firstworldproblems

I know what you’re thinking: This is CRAZY. And I realize that now.

Things get worse.

I then decided to go and sit in my room and watch something on Lovefilm. Cool down, ya’ know. Only to find that the bloody internet wasn’t working. But hold on – Run Lola Run was on my computer.

But the version I had didn’t have any subtitles and after faffing around for an hour I gave up.

Half the day had bloody gone! And I had achieved nothing.

Determined to keep the day on my terms I decided to head outside: the great outdoors. I shoved on my wellies, stuck some Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on the car stereo and drove to the beach, on my own. Hell yeah! What a rebel I was.

I go to the beach.

At the beach I felt wholly satisfied that this was the best decision I had made all day. I was like Marianne Dashwood… wild and untame. Climbing down the craggy cliff like a crafty hermit crab, I made it to the shore and began to walk… stride in fact… along the beach: it was my birthday…

Then I started to get a bit bored so I decided to take selfies of myself, posing away as clads of duffle-coated dog walkers passed me giving me concerned looks. I didn’t care. It was my birthday. I was posing quite seriously too – pouting and all. (DON’T JUDGE ME!) In fact DO JUDGE ME. I judge myself when I read this back.

I take selfies.

I’m quite glad no-one on the beach knew it was my birthday otherwise I would have looked like a moron.

I held my iphone up for a final snap when I noticed something occurring in the background…

In the frame I could see, behind me, this dog doing a massive shit in the shallow water while his owner was egging him on. The man obviously didn’t want to pick up his dog’s epic steamy turd and so was encouraging the animal to do it on the shore line. It was completely distasteful. And what’s more, it was ruining MY BIRTHDAY photo. MY BIRTHDAY SELFIE. For fucksake! How selfish can you get!? Even when the dog had finished his ‘business’ the shit was still rolling around the beach by the force of the breaking waves. So I couldn’t even take the snap after the dog and his douchebag owner had gone.

And in that surge of frustration I realized: This is a metaphor. Here I was, trying to control the shot, the angle, the pose but out of nowhere a dog came along and shat on my selfie. I.e. The more I was trying to control “the situation” that is my life the more it was all just going tits up!

As I watched, horrified, the dog shit tumbling around on the shore I made the realization that I was in control of NOTHING. 

It got me thinking: To what extent can we call the shots in our own lives?

Was the picture-perfect memory I was trying to forge of this birthday just as fabricated, self-indulgent and staged as a selfie on the beach alone on my birthday? 

When I got home I realised that my walking-out act had caused a lot more pain than anticipated. And I had hurt the people whom I loved the most.

That night I sat in my room alone; no cake, no birthday-wishes, no presents, no friends – just me. A part of me felt as though I had doomed myself from the start and it was all my fault. Because while I was trying to control everything else around me – self-control was the one thing I seemed to be lacking.

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I had expectations of having a terrible birthday and here I was, experiencing exactly that. I expected heartache and so I got heartache. I expected disappointment so I had disappointment. I was being a dick.

‘When we are no longer able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves.’

Victor E. Frankl

So that night I gave myself another shot – don’t worry I didn’t take another photograph! A different kind of shot… That I would expect joy not plight; that I would choose to be happy not right; and that I would live to love not to fight (even if my mother doesn’t share my adoration for SATC). Why? Because these are the only choices we really have. Everything else is out of our control. Happy Fucking Birthday.

Have a great week peeps.

x

Tags: angst birthday grumpy selfie sex and the city The Agonie and the Ex-tacy

Categories: Mirror Mirror: Self Improvement Rant Yazmin Joy