Today was my 23rd birthday. Old and current friends reached out on social media and via text to wish me a happy birthday. I got my free birthday Starbucks latte. I went to dinner with friends. My parents had cupcakes when I got home. I am healthy. I have a job. I have a loving family. I have a car that runs. I have access to nutritious food. I have a warm home and roof over my head. Summed up: I am extremely blessed. There is nothing missing from my life that I truly need for survival. From the outside looking in, my life is happy, neat and seemly effortless.
What I have come to realize is that, while my life is very blessed and I thank the Lord every day for all He has given me, I am making myself unhappy. I don't want to say that I am a people pleaser--I have worked very hard over the past four years to take into consideration the expectations of others while first and foremost staying true to myself--but I am overly agreeable. I don't want anyone to go out of their way on my account. Today, however, on my birthday, I expected... more. Perhaps this was too high of an expectation, but I imagined the day feeling different, special, mine.
What I have come to realize over the past few days is that I will go out of my way to make a friend or family member's birthday special. I will build it up for them, tell their peers, bake them their favorite dessert and wrap a gift. (Ok, I really like birthdays.) I think that I build up my own birthday as well, except I don't tell my peers or try to make people feel guilty if they forgot. There is no Megan running around on my birthday to make me feel special. It stinks and makes me a cross between mad and sad.
Once that mad/sad emotion settles in, I get even more upset for being mad. I feel guilty and self-centered. I try not to want to be the center of attention. Normally, I don't want to be the center of attention. Just one day a year though, I want to be the person that people seek out, the person that people go out of their way for to celebrate.
I feel convicted for even writing this, but I needed to get it out. Crying a few times and fighting back tears on your birthday, isn't the best way to celebrate what a wonderful year I had had, all that I had accomplished and all that I had experienced. I am inconceivably blessed. Beyond words, I am blessed. My parents, brother and sister-in-law, friends and extended family are such a strong support system. I'm not sure if my expectations are just too high or if the stress of other circumstances in my life are making me crack. I have learned to go with the flow and not let petty things bother me, but I also need to learn when and how to voice my anguish. I brush things off and tell people "not to worry," yet I am breaking inside. The heaviness from my hurt drowns me. Even as a swimmer in high school, I am terrified of drowning. Now the challenge is to learn how to swim in this and not let my unvoiced expectations rule situations. Here's to learning something new in the next year!
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