The Birthday Tribe

My 47th birthday is exactly one week from today.

For as long as I can remember the month prior to my birthday has always thrown me off. Most of my life the entire month of November felt like a scratch I could not itch, I felt unsettled, like there was something profoundly wrong, yet I could not pin point what the particular thing was exactly.

Through the years I have been able to shorten it to about a week, and although I did feel the inkling of this all too familiar feeling around the 10th I resisted the urge to give into it, but it can't be avoided.

It takes a few days to encompass me, and looking back it must have begun last Thursday when I found myself preoccupied with the cholesterol deposit the eye doctor told me was beside the retina on my right eye.

Although she assured me it would have no bearing on my sight, since she told me I have felt had trouble focusing on objects in the distance.

It was last Thursday I actually called her just to make sure she was positive it would not ultimately grow over my retina and blind me, or worse give me one of those clouded over eyeballs. One time I was at a carnival and I saw a guy with a goiter and a clouded over eye ball, and so in my mind the three things are associated- carney, goiter clouded over eye ball....and before I know it I'm spinning.

The doctor was sure, I would be fine.

I didn't realize it until today, but that is when the "it" began, this odd sort of low grade panic that overcomes me this time of year.

Since I have had it for the majority of my life, in my early twenties I did discuss it with a therapist. She suggested in a past life I may have been part of a tribe that did something terrible to you on your birthday and I have carried this memory with me into this life.

Although I have completely accepted this as a rational theory, it has occurred to me that a person would have to be a complete dumb shit to belong to this kind of tribe.

Apparently, I was one of those dumb shits.

For me I can't help but think about what I'm not- what I haven't done- my laundry list of what I thought I would be by this point in my life - and what I am. I know that sounds harsh, but I can't help myself- its woven into my DNA like the color of my eyes- my father suffers from the same plight.

"Whats the alternative to not having a birthday, if you don't have a birthday your dead," my mother has said to me many times over the years.

My mother is right, certainly at the minimum it is some form of neurosis...or maybe I was the member of moronic tribe....