Nobody Likes You When You’re 23.

It’s looming, coming closer, I can feel the air becoming stagnant and distasteful. I have an overwhelming feeling of unbalance filling my mind, every year it’s the same, on Thursday I will be ‘celebrating’ my birthday…*cue horror screams* Lately I haven’t felt like writing, or doing anything for that matter. Each year it feels like my life has been put up on the high stakes table where it is scrutinised under industrial lights, the winner of the game will take all. Every year I try and fill the day with activities that will divert the always impending dread. The build up to the day acts as a depressive trigger, filling my thoughts with distorted discontentment. The morning after my birthday it’s as if none of it mattered, my emotions are still a little bit dulled and muted, but I would’ve weathered the emotional storm. With each birthday people have to confront the fact that they may not have achieved all they had hoped they would in that year.

That they may not be where they would be like to, the discontentment running deep. I guess at a younger age I always had a vision of where I would be now; birthdays are always filled with both crashing disappointment and anticipatory spikes of happiness. I’m trying to make myself stop and regain sight of things, appreciating the people and things around me instead of the things that are nowhere to be seen. It’s as if a birthday malaise exists, perpetually creeping in each year, slowly whispering in your ear as the day draws nearer and the time to complete your expectations is drawing to a close. I’m not one to let my birthday pass by unnoticed, but I’m highly susceptible to disappointment.

I’ve planned small things this year, not wanting to be uncomfortable in group settings, finding comfort in close friends and family. It’s so hard to let go of being depressed about my birthday so that I can actually enjoy it, trying to release the past disappointment to embrace the present, focusing on progress and not the perfections of one’s life. I need to fix my current mental happiness block that I’ve hit head-on. My happiness has become a single defensive tower that is being attacked repetitively by soldier triggers. I’m starving off depression, the stalemate not helping either side gain the higher ground. The overshadowing queen of darkness keeps on approaching, her army gaining size whilst offering the comforting pit of morbidity as parlay.  She plays her game well. Writing this makes me realize how silly and trivial it is to monopolize a day to such great lengths that you allow it to be a tyrant to your emotions.

On Thursday I will be 23, I will try and not let depression encroach, I will try and remember all the wonderful things I have in my life and not the things I don’t, I will try and not let it dominate who I am. After all it is only a day. Thank you Blink182 lyrics: “Nobody likes you when you’re 23”

Dr. Maas acknowledges the “chicken-egg” problem inherent in bipolar and other mood disorders: “Depression can cause extensive insomnia, and insomnia can cause depression—which comes first depends on the individual and the circumstance”.