Birthdays and other days.

As a kid, I was always excited about birthdays. My birthday, the birthdays of family and friends—literally everyone! No points for guessing why I would be excited for mine. But I was equally excited for other people's birthdays because there would be cake for everyone and we would all have fun, plus I could make cards for everyone( I genuinely enjoyed making cards for everyone, so win-win).

I remember as a kid, I once asked a bhaiya (who must have been in his late 20s) if he was excited about his birthday, which was coming up in a week. The reply was a nonchalant "eh, yeah, it's just another day."

The 8-year-old me couldn't fathom in her young mind why he wasn't excited for his birthday. Wasn't everyone supposed to be excited for their birthdays? Didn't they all have friends coming over in the evening for the birthday party? Didn't they receive gifts from everyone? Didn't they get the chance to distribute chocolates and sweets to everyone in school and receive that special attention on that day? So then, why would he have said, "Eh, yeah, it's just another day?"

It felt weird to have someone talk like that about the most exciting day of one's life.
That day, I had made up my mind that I would never not be excited for my birthday.

Fast forward 15 years.

I recently celebrated my birthday, only a few years shy of reaching my quarter-life crisis. I slept for most parts of my birthday :p, the excitement was low, and it felt like a task to even have people around.
While talking to my friends, we realized that we all had almost the same experience in terms of the pump and excitement being absolutely down for our respective birthdays.

For me, the excitement was taken over by anxiety weeks before my birthday—thinking about how to celebrate it, with whom to celebrate it, what to wear, and all the other things that I definitely wouldn't have had to ponder on any regular day. I realized then that birthdays were slowly becoming quite stressful and, (sad to say), just another day.

The amusing part about the whole thing is that I didn't want it to be eh. I wanted to be excited for birthdays and other days. I wanted to dress up and just enjoy the day without thinking of a million things. Somehow, I felt like I owed it to my 8-year-old self to be excited for birthdays.

And maybe I will, in time. Next year, I might just get a little less stressed about the whole birthday and actually chill and enjoy that piece of cake. Hopefully, it won't be eh, anymore! :)