Confession: I’m a Birthday Whore

Every year you get a day that is yours to do whatever you want. You can be selfish. You can eat cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You get showered with presents. You get 789 Facebook notifications from “friends” that you haven’t spoken to since the same time last year when they left the generic “Happy Birthday! I hope it’s awesome!!!” comment on your wall. You get flowers sent to your office from your mother or boyfriend, or preferably both. You go to Starbucks and happily hand them the free-drink-because-it’s-your-birthday postcard. You go to the bar and tell the bartender, and anyone else that will speak to you, that it’s your birthday. You are happy from sunrise to sunset. It’s your day and it’s the best day ever.

Birthdays are awesome. For weeks leading up to my birthday, and especially the day of it, I’m like this:

It’s not just my birthday that makes me as happy as a pig in shit. It’s any birthday. I am giddy as I order birthday flowers for my mom. I take my best friend out to breakfast, organize his party, give him a couch to sleep on when he gets wasted, bake him cupcakes and spend the entire day so stoked that he is having a good birthday. If anyone mentions to me that it is their birthday, my immediate response will be, “Oh my God, are you having the best day ever?!”

I just really fucking love birthdays.

Last year, I turned twenty-five years old. A quarter of a century! The best age ever! I celebrated for five straight days with my friends, family, roommates, coworkers, acquaintances, strangers, bartenders, servers, bus boys, cab drivers, the cashier at Whole Foods, the guy running next to me on the treadmill, my landlord and pretty much anyone else I could find. If you came within 100 feet of me, I made sure you knew it was my birthday. I had two birthday parties, two birthday brunches and four birthday dinners. It was excessive. I was a birthday whore. I didn’t realize that my celebration was spiraling wildly out of control. I was certain that everyone else was as happy about my birthday as I was. I mean, obviously, they love being nearly a week of their lives celebrating my birth. Right?

Wrong. It was too much. My friends were all exhausted, hungover, broke and probably pretty resentful of my existence by the end of the five day nonstop party that happened last year. This is my public apology to them. I’m sorry and I am changing my ways.

I turn twenty-six on September 19th.

Mark my words, I will not be a birthday whore this year. I am having one party. ONE. That’s it. No more than that. And I’m not even having a birthday brunch. (Okay, one brunch, but just with my parents…) And I’m definitely not having any elaborate birthday dinners! (Just two small, intimate birthday dinners, but that’s it…)

And I’m not even going to blog about my birthday.

(This one doesn’t count.)

- Suzie Robb
@suzierobb