My Snarky Take On Embracing The Birthday Blues

Posted on October 26, 2023 Updated on October 30, 2023

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October 10^th was my birthday, and I’ll admit that each year, I’ve experienced the birthday blues. Everyone thinks they want to stay young forever, and when you are a Gen Z fresh out of college, there is an invincibility factor that you go through. You know what I mean. We’ve all felt it at one point in our lives. When we’re at our peak youthful age, a power comes over us.

We think we’re invincible, and there is a period where it feels like we’re going to be young forever. And it is honestly akin to having children. When they’re newborns, they are so small and so fragile. They need us for everything, and during all hours of the day and sleepless nights when they’re feeding every two to three hours. It can feel like it will never end. My son is still breastfeeding and wakes up at night, climbs into bed, and latches on. Having breastfed my daughter past 2 years old, I don’t know any other way except to go along with what my children need. My son wants to breastfeed still. Most days, I don’t mind it at all, but there are days when it can feel like I’m being smothered by an octopus. Every suckle of this little succubus takes a little more of my energy.

But then I remind myself that he will only be a baby once. I remind myself that my son was born a preemie, barely over 4 pounds. I remind myself that this time a year ago, we almost lost him. He could’ve died from a deadly streptococcus pneumoniae infection that made his body septic. The one resource we can never get back once it is gone is time. No matter how frustrating our kids can be, they’re only children once, and if we screw up as parents, there are no do-overs! That’s what makes parenting so hard because we want to make sure we don’t turn our kids into adults who blame their flaws, failures, and shortcomings on their bad childhood and dysfunctional family.

Despite minor victories, every birthday has brought a wave of depression-like rainy storm clouds that follow Charlie Brown. The aging process is a natural occurrence that everyone goes through. It’s a part of life. Yet we take our youth for granted, think we have all the answers, and even might act annoyingly entitled. It isn’t until we finally begin climbing up in years that we begin to recognize these traits in the younger generations and find ourselves remembering the days when we acted like we were on top of the world.

Sadly, one study found that suicide rates increased among adults 75 years or older within 30 days of their birthday. Some of the reasons people feel sad around their birthday could stem from our high expectations. In the age of social media, it’s even harder not to compare ourselves to Peter Perfect, who bought a new house, beating his competitors with cash down and locked in a 2% mortgage rate when it was at a historic low, landed his dream job, married a model, and has two of the best-looking kids you’ve ever seen. In fact, they look created by AI. They’re so gorgeous that they each landed talent agents before they hit Kindergarten. To rub it in our faces,  he is 10 to 15 years younger than us. In fact, we’re embarrassed to admit that we can’t afford a house right now, not with the rise in mortgage rates.

Meanwhile, our youthful upstairs apartment neighbors, who seem to never need sleep, party at all hours of the night—who cares if they wake up other tenants? It’s not like the building manager, who smokes pot all day—hey, it’s legal in California—has done anything about the numerous noise complaints.

Welcome to renter’s hell.

How about Wanda Wonderful, who popped out more kids, and yet her body looks chiseled like she can be on the next cover of Sports Illustrated. We suspect she’s older than us, too. Good for her—not! Her magnificent physique is all over her Instagram feed, accompanied by a whimsical caption about how hard work pays off. Juxtapose this to us busting our asses. We have our Fitbit and Apple watches on as we run, exercise, and sweat, and yet can’t seem to melt off the fat.

The only time we feel hot is from hot flashes. Perimenopause and menopause—oh, how sexy.

Regardless, we can’t seem to get the baby weight off. Eff-you, Wanda, and your constant selfies of your body! Eff-you, Peter, and your stupid giant house you post nearly every other day. You getting the mail. You mowing your giant effing lawn. You washing your brand new Tesla—the expensive model—not the low-grade one that the average sucker can afford.

Yes, social media does wonders for unhealthy comparisons in just about all areas of life. From LinkedIn new job promotions to mega book deals announced across social media and, let’s not forget that author who started out self-published and became so famous on TikTok that they landed not just multi-book deals but a major contract to have their books turned into films. And boy, do they never stop talking about it.

Every time they make their TikTok videos, they humble brag that other 20-somethings can also get 7-figure book contracts if they just “try hard enough” and beat all of us old farts, still unpublished, still holding on to our baby weight, still renting and yelling at our obnoxiously boozing neighbors, loving to make renters hell, even more hellish—to shut the eff up.

There are far too many reasons why feeling lousy around my birthday happens, like clockwork, and not even a generic gratitude list seems to do the trick. Yes, there are articles out there that tell you how to make yourself feel less old. How to cheer ourselves up, despite our tits sagging and thighs growing soft from cellulite. Men don’t get cellulite—no fair! When men age turn grey, they’re considered regal and even George Clooney sexy. But women, we must proudly use photo filters, especially the glam filter on TikTok, to keep up with all of our 20-something competition sporting their faces without one.

Pepping ourselves up with Deepak Chopra and cute self-help-quotes or reading “The Secret” for the millionth time, hoping that dream boards and mantras can brainwash us into snapping out of it. At the end of the day, there is no solution for the birthday blues except to find acceptance for where we are in our lives. Who cares how quickly and young Peter reached all his goals on his bucket list. Who cares about Wanda’s rock-hard body at 50 years old. Forget those certain Authors of TikTok with millions of followers and 7-figure book deals, humble bragging in their how-to videos teaching other would-be’s that they can do it, too.

Throw it out the window.

What Mr. and Mrs. American Dream won’t tell you is they relied on their trust fund, generational wealth, family support, or connections that others don’t have. Don’t discount those with deep Rolodex or the well-known that came from pedigree. So much of what other people have is layered with false modesty and never what the full story is.

Most success stories aren’t the whole truth. People want you to believe they did it all by themselves. The smart ones will even try to sell you their American Dream success formula for a nice chunk of cash you can’t afford to dispense, oh but they have monthly installment plans! Hello, Tony Robbins! Hiding the small secret that they got to where they are from a little—no—a lot of help. Not to say that such success stories don’t exist, but so much of what people parade is a façade of half-truths.

We have to be okay with feeling like shit. We must be okay with our age, body, failures, shortcomings, and damn it, count the small wins because they’re all wins. We must realize that so many people excel at pretending everything in their lives is great. We have no idea what people’s lives are genuinely like off-screen. Someone’s social media profile, how they present themselves, and all of their wins they overshare are only the flawless parts of their lives they wish to divulge, not the imperfections.

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The Bottom Line

We don’t have to fight the birthday blues. We can accept how we feel and conquer our goals despite our emotions. We don’t have anything to prove to anyone else. We don’t have to be at a certain point in our lives by a certain age. It’s okay to feel inadequate. It’s okay to even feel a little jealous. It’s human. We’re human. We must hold onto that we’re doing the best we can with the resources we have and under the circumstances that we are under. We must remind ourselves that being in our 20s isn’t the romanticized notion it appears to be. I would never want to go back to my youth again. It was hard. It wasn’t easy. There were painful learning lessons that I had to go through by trial and error.

I embrace my age. I embrace my body. I embrace not having a mortgage. I embrace my ambition to be a published author. I embrace the journey, and I write not for the results of landing a 7-figure book deal and a huge Hollywood movie deal that I can humble brag to zillions of followers. I write first for the love of it and second for the goal of publication. Age is just a number. Our ambitions and goals don’t have to stop. We can accomplish anything at any age. It may take me a little longer than that TikToker with gazillion followers who landed their mega book deal in their 20s but damn it—I’m not giving up!

Happy birthday to all of us who are aging. Let’s not let it stop us from realizing our dreams.

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