Birthday Blues

Birthday candles on a Colin the Caterpillar Cake stand tall and cheap. Bright pink with yellow stripes. Your friends are wearing tacky party hats, smiling at you expectantly. A ‘Little Miss Birthday Girl’ badge clings for dear life on your black cardigan. A funeral for Twenty-Two; the birth of Twenty-Three. The first birthday you actually remember was your tenth. Hopeful because it represented a new decade – the decade you felt life would begin. A decade of firsts: a decade of excitement.

Or so you thought:

Eleven. Boring. Last primary school birthday.

Twelve. Lonely. New school. One friend. Old friends growing distant.

Thirteen. Hopeful, part two. Teenager, finally. Gifted a mug that read, ‘Thirteen Little Diva.’ The mug sits in your new kitchen, in your new flat, now a decade old.

Fourteen. Same as thirteen but not as exciting.

Fifteen like the Taylor Swift song. You remember sitting on the edge of the bath, crying, as it played in the background.

Sixteen. Claustrophobic. Lesbian accusations. Lesbian acceptance.

Seventeen. Dancing Queen. Fun, Fun, Fun. Vomiting in bathrooms, on the street, in baking bowls in the back of cars. Love your friends, hate your A Levels.

Eighteen. Scary. Old now. No party. Death of youth. Teenage melodrama almost over.

Nineteen and on fire like Lorde. Bye-bye, Belfast. Hello, Glasgow. New friends, awkward birthday card.

Twenty. New decade. Helpless decade. Not-so-surprise birthday party. Not iced lemon cake.

Twenty-one. Somehow younger than twenty. Fun, Fun, Fun: More Fun, More Furious.

Twenty-two. Young again. Retired from sad, new career in being silly at the club.

Twenty-three. Cut the birthday cake. Scream when the knife hits the board. This year you become a God.