I Spent Years Making My Own Birthday Plans
It’s your 35th birthday my mom said. I want you to get exactly what you want!
I was standing in the dressing room, contemplating a thick flannel to the tune of $165.00. It’s not as if I’d never spent, or received, a shirt with such a price tag. But a flannel? (Side note: The shirt still hangs in my closet.)
I glanced at my phone. I was due to drive down to the city around 3 pm, and we still had to swing by the farmer’s market. I was headed to see a guy who in retrospect is one of those that just has me going….. Why? WHY???
Today was my actual birthday and we were going to celebrate together. We’d been seeing one another for a few weeks now. “Seeing one another,” meant me driving the two hours to Brooklyn to spend the day or a brief overnight with Craig. Granted, he didn’t have wheels and I was heavy in a season of “I’ll never meet anyone upstate and thus need to make the trek to NYC,” but the true driver of this behavior was my propensity to give.
We grabbed the flannel and a few other items at the boutique and headed over to the farmer’s market. I wanted to buy a celebratory rib eye. Craig was paleo, and while I wasn’t paleo, I, without question, went along with his diet.
Craig wasn’t just paleo, he ate the same thing, every day, for every.single.meal. To his credit, he’d lost over 100 pounds in the last year and he wanted to maintain that. Steak was frequently a contender for dinner, but not one, of, let’s say, any sort of quality. I wanted something special for my birthday. God knows why I didn’t express to him (actually, I know exactly why). The most “natural,” move, was to purchase the damn grass fed thing myself.
$49.00 dollars later, I had our local steak for two.
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I don’t recall driving down that day. I don’t recall too much about the meal. I recall his encouragement that I choose the movie we were going to watch as, after all, it was my birthday. Flash forward now to a husband who literally showers me, showers me on the day of my birth, and the crumbs I saw as special and effort now land like measly leftovers.
I do remember driving home. The day felt hollow. I felt hollow. As I walked to my car on what was bound to be one of the last glorious fall days before winter hit, a part of me knew this was the last time I’d be making the drive to Craig.
Unsurprisingly, the next day, Craig texted me to let me know on Sunday, after I’d left, his ex-girlfriend (the one he’d lamented endlessly about to me), had gotten back in touch. They were going to try again. Of course they were.
Suddenly the stark reality of my birthday set in— the steak I’d purchased, the drive I’d made, the “birthday cake” I’d endured. As part of this diet, Craig ate keto cheesecake every night. He’d cut a large slab and drown it in flavorless whipped cream and frozen fruit. This is about as disgusting as it sounds.
But, yet again, I never spoke up. I never said a word. I just ate it, begrudgingly.
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This wasn’t the first dating scenario of this kind — one where I’d look back and grapple with the all that I’d tolerated, all that I’d given, all that I’d brushed aside, only to be met with raging resentment when the thing inevitably fell apart.
I’ve seemingly only ever learned to do things differently, to better care for myself, by essentially lighting myself on fire in the first place. Giving so much, tolerating so much, doing so much, that in actuality was completely out of alignment with what I wanted. Such that on the other side, as if I’d sat in hot coals, I was sure to never do it again.
There’s still some rage around Craig, which tells me I’m still learning the lessons. And if I reflect on that now in the context of my current life, I’d say, yes, that’s true. I can tell you exactly the context in which I’ve realized I’ve been overgiving, for a solid three years, and the fury I feel towards that person.
And no, it’s not my husband (thankfully). But turns out, these patterns lurk in all corners of our lives. I worked like hell to weed them out of my romantic pursuits, only to have them crop up in all other areas.
How very human.
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