This past Monday was my birthday. February 28th. It comes every year and for most of my life I have simply given a small smile or brushed off the comments, accepting well wishes and moving on about my day. This year I had a breakdown. Unlike so many I know, I hate my birthday.
It isn't a self loathing issue, some kind of chronic lack of enough attention, or unfulfilled desire to have more made out of a day that generally passes by relatively quietly, it is a reminder of so many terrible memories I have nightmares, flashbacks, and have to fight crippling anxiety each year when it appears again. This year I lost the fight. I have kept the majority of the information inside myself for over two decades but following the breakdown I opened up to those closest to me and in light of the healing I have spent the last year working to achieve and the ride I am preparing to do on behalf of those like me, I have decided to share some of the darkest and most difficult things I have in my heart.
When I was a kid my parents used to throw parties with pizza and games and invite all my classmates. I was never a huge fan of those because I only got along real well with a handful of the kids. Still, it was a party and I was supposed to be having fun. I would smile and play the games, eat pizza and cake, but secretly I was happy when it was over. The first year I was allowed to just invite the friends I wanted I was beyond excited. I got to do what I wanted, with who I wanted, and I was going to be the princess of my own party. Until the day came, but the party didn't. I created handmade invitations, I planned my food and activities, everything was ready but the party wasn't to be. All the people I invited and things I wanted fell apart. Not a huge deal in the overall scheme of things but for a kid it was a huge rejection and was traumatizing.
A few years later I began dating a boy who I thought was my first real love. He was charming and handsome and I was queen of the world because every other girl wanted to be me. At least from what they could see. He was controlling, manipulative, condescending, insulting, and had a way of getting under my skin and into my head like no one else has ever done. Add to that he did this during my early teenage years and the damage was complete. His voice planted itself inside my mind and it lives there to this day. I am just now finally getting to the point I am stronger than it most days. On my fifteenth birthday we had an argument where he ignored me and made me give a full report to him about all the things wrong with me and why he could do better than me because I was worthless and not deserving of love. He told me to think about whether I should subject him to being with such a failure and then stopped talking to me. Just before midnight that night, while my family was asleep, I sat in the dining room with a bottle of rum and every pill I could find in the house. His voice taunted me, telling me I should end things so no one else would ever have to put up with me again.
It ended up being that same voice that stopped me from killing myself that night as well. The voice in my head laughed and told me even if I tried I would screw it up and then the whole world would see what a loser I am. I would embarrass my parents and no one would be able to forgive me for messing up something like that. I put the liquor and pills away, but the pain stayed inside me. The next year we broke up on my birthday when he attacked me and nearly killed me himself. I survived but there was a point after the attack I saw him and was still so far gone emotionally that I apologized to him for being the kind of girl who deserved that.
Keeping the tradition alive for bad years, my seventeenth birthday I was waiting for one of my best friends to drive up from his home near Detroit to have dinner with me but he never came. I thought he had changed his mind and I wasn't worth visiting. I found out later that night he had been killed by a drunk driver while on his way to see me. Two years after that his younger brother was attending a party at an apartment complex next to the one I lived in and was coming to say hello when another party goer sped out of the parking lot without his headlights on and killed him. He was alive long enough for me to hear the accident and get to his side but he died in my arms while waiting for the ambulance.
I had one other time I tried to do something when my ex husband insisted I have a party but when I said I wanted an alcohol free party, something more like what I used to do when I was a kid, he blew me off and I, instead, spent the day playing designated driver to him and his drunk friends. It was a reminder of my lost friends and I felt like I was driving around with their ghosts.
My current husband did, six years ago, recreate that birthday for me and it was the one incredibly good day I have had on the 28th. It does not, however, erase the pain that day has held for so long. Being reminded of the loss and the pain of the abusive relationship I have dealt with over half my life brought on the anxiety. Doing the work to face those feelings for the past year and preparing to do my bike ride in honor of those like me who struggle with PTSD made everything that much more vivid. I broke.
I fell apart completely and I was sitting at work, doing everything in my power to hide the tears that wouldn't stop, when I was given some inspiration. A good friend and inspirational woman I have known since we were teenagers also went through a horrible trauma. She was attacked and raped in her home and was devastated. But she didn't let it defeat her. She changed her perspective and created a different day in her life. She celebrates her survival with a day she calls her affirmation of life day. After the attack she packed up her life and moved overseas to explore the world and has since travelled extensively and taken on adventures and life with a spirit I can only hope to embody someday.
I decided to take a page from her book. My birthday is never going to be a day I want to celebrate but there is a day on the calendar that makes me proud. August 18th is a day that stands out because after my ex was done with me I had crippling fear of everyone and everything. I couldn't go to the grocery store to buy milk by myself without having a full blown panic attack. I was destroyed emotionally and completely unable to do almost anything at all. It took the encouragement of all of my friends and family to go back to school, graduate college, and go on a volunteer trip in 2009. But I did go. I went to Australia to do conservation work. I also had mini meltdowns everyday, most days on several occasions.
Shortly after we arrived and all met one another we began our work. On the very first day I was riding through pastures on my way with the group out to plant trees. I was standing on the hitch between a trailer and the truck when I realized we had to go through a dip and I was going to slip off. I tried to jump off and clear the path but slipped in mud and ended up getting hit by the trailer. It was mortifying. I lay, facedown in the mud, crying and hating myself for being such a loser, when everyone in the group rushed over. I waited silently for the ridicule. But it never came. They helped me up. They asked if I was ok. They became my friends. I spent the rest of the trip closer to those six people than I had been to almost any other human being the entire time since my ex attacked me. They saved me. That day was my Ah Ha moment.
It was the first time I felt like it was ok to not always be perfect. I could laugh at myself and the stupid thing I did and they would laugh with me, not at me. I was reborn that day. It isn't a new birthday but a rejuvenation day. For me it is a day that reminds me that I began to heal. I have struggled for the past few months because I was falling into the victim mindset again facing all the old feelings but with the support of those that love me I will be getting back to the survivor mindset and part of that is beginning a new tradition to celebrate my rejuvenation day each year on August 18th.
If anyone out there is struggling, please know you are not alone. Life is hard but there is so much support. I am always here to listen and be a friend even if I don't personally know you. Life is precious, even when it hurts, and we are all in this together. There are resources if you are worried about harming yourself or that someone you know is feeling that way. If you need help the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be a wonderful tool. 1-800-273-8255 Please reach out if you need to talk.
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