Birthday

September 28, 2021 (blank) / 11:22 a.m. / Today is my birthday; I am one year closer to being six feet under. I know, I know, I should be happy — but I’m not. Nor am I really sad. It’s hard to describe how I feel. Like the cloudless sky, I’m empty.

D_F sent me a virtual birthday card via email. It was a video depicting dancing cats. I genuinely laughed, a modicum of cheer on an otherwise blah day. He encouraged me to indulge by going to get Chinese food, my favorite. But I’ve not the energy. Besides, I need to watch my money.

Birthdays are draining for me, because I feel it is obligatory to be grateful. Nevertheless, I can’t help but sense an edge beneath my skin — a shard of glass sticking in my soul. The cruelty of Saturn’s return. Here I am, enduring the big 3-O, and all I have to show for it is a kingdom of moral wreckage and abject guilt.

2:44 p.m.

I’m taking a break on the bench outside beneath the tree. People have messaged me Happy Birthday, including my sister.

I appreciate it, I do. Still, the void rotates and I am exhausted, my head heavy as a collapsed sunflower.

What is my purpose?

What is the point?

Where do I go from here?

The older I get, the more these questions seem not to have an answer. Or if there is an answer, I fear there exists only a cruel joke to be discovered — a sardonic taste of irony, in which life is not on my side and I am but a roach beneath its boot. Put simply: a giant, cosmic Fuck you.

5:25 p.m.

A chocolate cake sits on the counter. Next to it, a pack of candles. I’m dreading the party.

Mood/song: “Opium” by Marcy Playground