Happy birthday to meeee

It’s my first birthday since launching The Adult Orphan. My sixth since becoming one of them. What to say…?! The occasion deserves some attention, yet my mind is scattered.

I guess that’s what it’s like most years around my birthday, actually. A cocktail of pleasure and pain, expectations and enlightenment. Another year older, another year wiser, another year calmer. Mostly…

I have always loved my birthday. I don’t know why it’s a hugely important time to me, but I’ve always done like a million and one things spread over weeks with various people. Some years I try to bring various people together. I love the cake, I love the singing, I love the presents, I love being surrounded by faces I love.

Since Mum died, the importance of my birthday has been paramount to me. It kills me that I can’t wake up to her singing me Happy Birthday at the end of my bed or at the end of the phone. To bestow small but utterly perfect gifts upon me. To go out for the day or night, and spend some quality time together.

As the six years have passed, each year it does gets easier. If you are new to Adult Orphandom, please know that on each birthday the void eases up a bit.

But I still have a pressing desire for it to go well, so I don’t find myself crashing and burning. The better it goes, the less I think of her and how much I miss her. Distracted by people who love and respect me, The Birthday Week becomes a breeze.

This year I did two things for my birthday. I had a beautiful, fun and luxurious time on a two-day trip away over my birthday. Do you know what? I didn’t think about Mum at all. I can’t work out if that’s awful or awesome. Later that week, I pulled a small group of people together and it ended in tears. The complexities of human society. I have been trying to get my head around it all and through writing over the past few days I come to realise, quelle surprise, just how much I miss my mum.

It’s a funny ole time, this. I don’t miss her on a day-to-day basis anymore. And I remember a time when I wondered if I would ever get to a point when I didn’t miss her every single day. But it’s at times like this when you go, ‘Do you know what? F*ck you, world. I want my mum and she is not here. And it’s my birthday. And that’s not fair.’

Yeah, it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

I want the oversized Happy Birthday, Daughter! card (which FYI I have every single one since my first birthday). I want her unconditional love and loyalty. I want to be a princess for my birthday, all of it. Selfish, maybe, but tell me I’m not alone?

It probably doesn’t help that mum died like a week and a half after my 28th birthday. That the last thing we ever did together was go out for my birthday. So it’s a double whammy of a blow to the stomach each year.

As an only child from a single parent family, you are the epicentre of everything generally anyway. Let alone on your birthday; you are Number One. On that day and at any subsequent celebrations. So when your parent is no longer in your life it leaves a huge void and it, unfortunately, is down to your poor friends to take up the reins. It’s a huge responsibility and I don’t envy them. But please let me be your princess! Do for me what my mum can no longer do. Just this one time of year. And I will love you forever.

My mum was a hugely complex women. Both courageous and vulnerable. Generous and warm. But if you crossed her, by God did you feel her wrath. It appears I have inherited more traits from her than I ever realised. Maybe when you’re around each other you don’t recognise it? Or perhaps it has something to do with getting older.

I can’t work out if these are good traits or not. When I suffer from her vulnerabilities, I curse her; when I rise up from the ashes as a lioness, I thank her for building me into a strong woman.

So why have I written this post? Let me see.

1) So that you know if you have lost someone, that it does get easier each year.

2) So that you know that when it sometimes becomes uneasier you don’t feel any badder than you already do. It’s ok. Let it be.

3) To communicate to my friends and the friends of adult orphans everywhere reading this blog: if you want to be in our lives around our birthdays, you better damn well realise what a job you’ve got on your hands to make us feel like our mamma's princess.

4) To celebrate the connection I have with my mum's ability to be both the lion and the lamb (religious connotations aside). Let the lamb bleat, but remember the lion's roar is what powers our survival.