The ones we want to remember us

Birthdays. One's reminder that time does pass indeed, even if we somehow try to sustain its passing.

I am always excited for mine, because I love seeing how many different people, dear and kind to me, remember that date and try to make it special for me. I love reading the inspiring sentences they have put together to express their sincere wishes for what will await for me in the future. 

However, on each birthday, there are a few people (or maybe even just one) whose names you desperately want to see on your laptop screen or your cell phone display. A few days before your birthday you sometimes even create a whole imaginative version of how the one who you've been so passionately desiring, awaiting, craving for, comes back into your life by preparing something breathtakingly romantic for your special day, letting you know how dear you are to his heart. Of course, if those people forget about your special day, despite hundreds of "happy b-day" notes, it seems like nobody has even remembered. 

Memories are tricky. In those moments when we feel fragile, they drag us into their cage and display all of the nice, funny, sad, romantic etc. videos and make you burst into pieces every time. They are vicious. "People change. Memories don't." In that  very sentence is hidden the destructive power of memories. 

I promised myself to delete certain messages right after my birthday, as a personal boycott to my own feelings... As absurd as that sounds. Funny how, when it comes to emotions, we regress to thinking that the erasing the concrete means also erasing the abstract. It is as if, by erasing the messages, I can erase the memory of the one who typed them. 

The trouble is that I feel like I can't, because now when there is no physical presence of him, losing the metaphorical is unbearable. One of the brilliant Serbian poets noticed how women after relationships become like fetishists; they persistently collect every single detail that reminds them of their loved one and stick to them like to the most precious things in their life.

The object of our desires exists firstly in our fantasies. When we catch up to the reality and have our hypothesis overruled by "objective" life struggles, I believe that we still use that imaginative aspect to make up to our heart for all the pain that we endure. We imagine, we dream, we create our own little story apart from the reality as a hide-out in case this hack of a life causes us more pain. I am not referring to the world of potential paranoid. I am talking about the magic of our imagination. At least about those of us who never stop using it.

I admit it- I overuse it. That's why my friends often accuse me of acting childish. 

Well, this birthday, I deleted all of the messages. I made myself delete them. 

I decided to move on. To find something new. To embrace the fact that people change and to fully accept the chance that I can change as well. 

Don't let anyone ruin your special day. Ever.