“As a self-proclaimed birthday hater, it has taken me 20 years to finally say…that I don’t hate my birthday anymore?”
That was the first line of an article I wrote exactly one year ago, reflecting on how I have learned to love my birthday. I wrote that article when I had just turned 20, and seeing as I turned 21 last weekend, it felt fitting to revisit this reflection.
I won’t repeat everything I said in my first article, but to summarize… I used to despise my birthday. For the longest time, I viewed my birthdays through the lens of what I was losing: the simplicity and ease of childhood. I dreaded getting older and life getting more serious. The weight of adulthood sat on my shoulders like an anchor I could not cut loose. Which is ironic, because celebrating your birthday means you have gained another year (literally) but also that you are still living. So why did I see it as something so negative?
I don’t know what kind of switch flipped in my brain, but two birthdays ago I started to question this. I realized that reframing birthdays as an accumulation, not a loss, reminds you of the things you should be grateful for. I know this seems like an obvious realization, and I don’t mean to sound like a boy thinking he invented a new philosophical theory that girls have been talking about at sleepovers since we were ten, but it truly never clicked for me before.
Yes, while every birthday celebrated means you are getting older, it also means you have accumulated more. More dinner parties with friends, more hikes on the Fife Coastal Path to see the fluffy cows, more yogurt bowls with Balgove granola, and more hugs with your parents when you reunite at the airport. More experiences. More life. This is what your attention should be on while you blow out the candles on your cake, not taxes, or dissertations, or the impending doom of now having to get a pap smear.
Leading up to my 21st birthday on September 12th, I made a list of 21 things I am grateful to have accumulated this past year, and 21 things I hope to gain this upcoming one. Typing away on my notes app on the train from Edinburgh to Leuchars, I caught myself going over the 21 limit I had set. I wanted to keep going, to keep writing down the things I had gained this year. How lucky to be able to say that. It made me realize just how rewarding this year has been for me, and how fortunate I am to be thinking that.
When looking back at the list on my notes app, I noticed that many of the things I was grateful for were about my friendships. It spiraled into a greater reflection on how truly special friendships, specifically female friendships, are. I am never more joyful, comfortable, and confident than when I am with my friends. Nothing makes me more fulfilled than laughing with Georgia until we can’t breathe, still adding onto the joke long after it should’ve ended, or Bronte braiding my hair because I’m not good at doing it myself, or FaceTiming Sonia to debate whether she should get a hot or iced matcha today. Nothing fills my heart with more love than when Ruby gives me the biggest hug after a long day, when Caroline brings over soup dumplings from Morrisons, or when Jules and I get to catch up and the most mundane things in our life become exciting.
I truly believe that the real gift of birthdays is not the number itself, but everything I have gotten to add onto my life to get here. If 15-year-old Stella could see this list, and see how full my life and notes app have become, I hope she would stop being so afraid of the years ahead. I hope she would see that growing older simply means she gets to keep collecting more friends, more laughs, more soup dumplings, and more reasons to be thankful.