I’ve always loved birthdays. We’re not guaranteed any number of years on this Earth and I feel that every new year should be celebrated, whether you choose to have a large or small celebration, whether you're 10 or 53. If my friends enjoy parties and festivities, I’ve always enjoyed celebrating enthusiastically. The more involved I can be, the better. If they prefer to let the day pass quietly, (not everyone is into big celebrations) I try at least to give them a call or a text letting them know that I’m thinking about them.

My last birthday living in Chicago. This was snapped by Meredith Ernst after I successfully blew out 40 candles.

I’ve always enjoyed my birthday. Growing up in the sunny south, Mid-March was a wonderful time to have a birthday. We’d always had just enough time to recover from Mardi Gras and the weather was warm but not yet scorching. It was rather annoying in Chicago when I was always competing with St. Patrick’s Day and the winter was inevitably still hammering away at us. Every now and then I would get lucky and have an atypical warm day, but it wasn’t the norm. Still, people were usually willing to gather indoors and raise a glass.

Mid March in Nashville hasn’t been great so far.

The past couple of years, right around my birthday, we’ve had fire, tornado, and pandemic. And although none of these situations have been ideal, to say the least, I always felt like we were lucky to get through as we had. Yes, having your apartment catch fire two days after you’ve finished a cross country move is horrendously stressful, but we had insurance, I happened to be home and got out and I got Jake out. We also had a lot of people offer help. Having a tornado hit right after we moved to a new house wasn’t fun, but the house was okay, Jake was okay and we only lost power for five days. We all know how the pandemic is going. The fact that everything shut down here on my birthday was just kind of … well, at the time, I thought it was funny.

The day after my birthday this year, I received my first vaccine shot. The day before, I paid a bunch of taxes. A friend asked me what I thought I would do to celebrate and I said that honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it. I knew Dean was giving me a gift and I would open that, but I hadn’t really felt like it was my birthday this year.

Then one night, as I was pulling out old records to be shredded and moving last year's records into the box to sleep in the attic, something I do every year after finishing taxes, I felt a huge wave of dread and sadness. I had no idea where it had come from and I couldn’t get rid of it. Fortunately, Dean and I had been listening to Harry Potter and were right around the part where Sirius dies, so I asked him to play it while I went through the files and I was able to cry and pretend that it was about Sirius. And the feelings of sadness and dread I was feeling could mix with my sadness for these fictional characters.

I texted a friend and said that I had no idea what was going on with me. And as she asked me questions, I wondered if this could be some kind of anniversary related trauma. I have seen friends go through this, but had always felt like they had experienced ‘real’ traumas. I was fine.

I’ve really been taking notice of the grass and the trees. The weather, how it felt. And had been thinking in my head about how we are back where we were last year. This is how the grass and trees looked a year ago.

There’s been no shortage of ‘tornado weather,’ but I haven’t felt particularly nervous. At least I don’t think so. I have had unexplained acid reflux. I thought maybe my hummus was too salty and I had had it too many times in a row.

Sitting outside with Cloud on my birthday, but you can see my jaw really well also, so I thought it worked.

My jaw has been clicking. This hasn’t happened before. It’s been clicking for a few weeks. I have a dentist appointment already scheduled in April, so other than it being annoying, I haven’t really given it much thought.

I’m thinking now about the last time I had jaw trouble. I was in my 20s and my jaw just got tight. It was a gradual process, but eventually I couldn’t open my mouth for much more than soup. I went to the doctor and got X-rays. I remember that I had to pry my mouth open with my fingers in order to get the image they wanted. They couldn’t find TMJ. They decided that this was how my body was holding stress and gave me several doses of muscle relaxers that knocked me on my ass. I could only take them before bed because they made me useless. After a few weeks of that, my jaw loosened up.

At the time, I didn’t think that I was under great stress. I was, however, in a long term relationship that was great on the surface, but gradually tearing down my self esteem and self worth.

It could be that this feeling of dread and sadness is coming from the same place as the acid reflux and the clicking in my jaw. They’re all manageable, but very annoying and I wish they would go away. It could be just that I’m getting older? I hope not.

Perhaps this March will pass without significant incident. Perhaps next March will too. I’d like to enjoy the coming of spring. I’s like to look forward to my birthday again.

Anniversary Dread