My birthday yesterday.

Another September 27th past and I have lived through it now for the 24th year in a row - thank God. I am noticing I feel discomfort on my birthday and prefer it that few people even know about it at all. Strangely enough, I am usually a lot more emotional than on other days. I must have received approximately 20 phone calls but I answered maybe four of them. At home before bed, I listened to all the voicemails. I had a moment. It pains my heart that the people I love are all over - listening to the messages made me ache a little and I was very touched they remembered and took the time to call. It really doesn't take much to make me happy and bring such pleasure into my life. Another reason why I don't like my birthday: expectations. To me it seems egotistical to celebrate a day you are born but there are all these expectations that I should have plans and do something meaningful. Yet I hardly every do and usually brush it off when friends make suggestions to do so.. and funnily enough, when I do nothing, I feel frustrated!! Either way, I like discretion and am touched by the show of love by those I care about - in whatever form it comes. That is enough. I just wish people weren't so scattered and somehow I did not feel so torn.

My parents are complete jewels. My mother got me a birthday cake and when I arrived home from my sushi dinner with my close friend, she came out of the kitchen with a birthday cake with two candles (a 2 and a 4) with my dad singing away. Surprise. I tried not to cry but was so touched and felt a little guilty that I did not eat dinner with them. How blessed I am. It is a feeling of quiet joy and appreciation. Thank God for all I have and I hope others are able to experience a similar warmth and emotion derived from the love of others. Alhamdullah ya rab.

Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say goodbye. I hate goodbyes. I know what I need. I need more hellos.
---Snoopy

Apparently, abandonment the first fear that each of us experience as an infant. As such, it is the primal fear. I am reading into it...

"The abandonment wound deepens with each new experience - a loss, a disconnection or a disappointment."

Geneva, the city of diplomacy. Friends would come and go every four years. Summers in Libya. Family would rotate, new cousins discovered, old ones lost, family fights, people disappearing in and out. No consistency, except for the house. The youngest of five, they all left the house.. one by one.. until I was 17 and I was alone at home.

"Abandonment is similar to other types of bereavement, but its grief is complicated by rejection and betrayal."

I have become overly self-sufficient. I tend to keep people at a distance and only let a select few get close. Even those few are either in different continents, far away, or we only see each other a few times a week at most. Distance is always there. I suppose it is comfortable. No one overly close. Not a strong possibility of disappointment or pain. It scares me sometimes.

Have you ever been in a crowd of 20 people you adore.. or received 30 phone calls in one day.. and still feel lonely? Worst still, have you ever come close to being loved, and pushed it away? Does it make sense that you would push something away that you quietly yearn for? And yet, you seem to have no control over it.. as though the self-defense mechanisms are operating on their own.. and you have absolutely no say in the matter.

Have I become the abandoner?