Well, It’s finally here, it’s my 27th birthday. My mom’s birthday was two days ago, and she came to visit (also for mother’s day) this past weekend, and it has been a great vividly reflective week. Amongst these reflections, I realized I don’t actually remember very many birthdays, or at least not off the top of my head, so as a sort of celebration of my 27th, and journey to re-orient myself, I decided that today, I want to do some research, and internal digging, and try to track down exactly what I did on my birthday for as many of them as possible. Where possible, I will provide notes, thoughts, and where the info came from.

Early Years

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1

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On my first birthday, I had chickenpox, I remember my mom showing me the picture of me, swollen and red, with a cake in front of me.

3-5

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The next birthday I remember was one where I had a Bugs Bunny cake. I don’t know how much of this is real memory, or implanted, but I know I had this cake, and it was somewhere between 3-5

8-9

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While we lived in china, among many obsessions, I had a thing for weapons, and wanted badly to go paint balling, something very hard to find outside of the US. My mom found a place we could go, and we decided to make party invitations. Her idea for the invitation was to have me dressed up in camp, with green and brown paint on my face, holding a toy gun, pointing at the camera with some tagline like “I want YOU to come play paintball”. I was nervous about it, I didn’t have a lot of close friends, and was more or less relying on my friend Pontus recruiting kids for me, and I didn’t know if anyone would make fun of me for the invitations. To my surprise, plenty of kids showed up, and we all got in a van my parents rented, and headed out into downtown Shanghai. It felt like an hour or so of traveling, and the hype of going paint balling was wearing off, all of us dressed in cheap army surplus fatigues, when we got there, and it was either closed or fully booked, I can’t remember which. My mom felt bad, but all I could think about was how I felt personally responsible for everyone having a bad time. I can’t remember what happened after that.

Adolescence

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15

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Only reference I found in email / phone was a note from grammy saying happy birthday and that she “loved” my prom pictures, which would have been the pics of me in the terribly fitting tux and with Allie Matherne.

17

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At this point, I have SMS logs in my email, and I have a few references to the birthday. In one text from Nina, she asked if I was busy with birthday stuff, and I said not later. She mentioned she was in One Acts, and that it was about prom. I don’t know if I realized, but she clearly meant it was about me, and our issues with me, her, and Matt, and she wanted me to come see it, but I said “I can see you after”. I remember this happening, because we were planning to hook up a bit later, but I chickened out when I realized there were too many people in Reid Hall when we were gonna do it. Wish I had spent more time with her, as a friend.

22

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I was about to graduate college, and to celebrate, we did a lobster bake, Luke came, and a few others I think. My grandparents were there, and it was one of the few times I really loved how the timber ridge home felt, full of people.

23

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I can’t remember if it was on my birthday or around it, but this was

Adulthood

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24

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I was dating Allie, and we went to brunch in Chelsea, it was just her, Harry, and I, and I remember feeling like I was neglecting myself, and that I should have more friends.

25

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Hannah and I had just started dating. I believe Ethan was in the city, and the two of them, Harry, and I all went to village Yokocho for dinner. Just as the year before, I felt a little bit let down by the amount of people present in my life. Looking through my messages and emails though, I have quite a few people that reached out to me this year and the year before, so much of that was a matter of mind state.

26

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It was 2 months-ish into the COVID lockdown in New York. And Matt was staying with me and Hannah at Castlebraid. I can’t seem to remember what we did, but probably…. Got drunk and played video games.