Ranting On...Single People and Birthdays

I'm going to get a little confessional here about single people and birthdays, because it's a topic that I'm currently going through (it's that time of the year), and also I want to put it out there as a PSA.  As I get older and know more and more single people tangentially (by and large my life is filled with couples), I have come to realize that there are two different attitudes amongst single people and their birthdays, and I think it's time that both are respected.

The first type is the single person who L-O-V-E-S their birthday.  This is the person who celebrates their birthday for the entire month, who chronicles it on Snapchat and wants presents but tries to figure out a way to let you know not to buy (but you better be buying them).  They're also the person who has set the expectation that you better have something planned for their birthday.  In all likelihood this is the single person who still hits the clubs, still makes a big deal about your birthday and wants you to reciprocate.  This is, let's face it, the single person you see on TV-the one who is probably going to go home with a sexy Michael Fassbender-type in the movies but in real life is probably going to go home with a balding CPA around 2:00 when she bemoans that all of her friends are having children and she's still watching House Hunters International marathons on weekday nights.

The second type is the single person who is over their birthday.  This person is hard to pinpoint because it's not entirely clear why they're over their birthday.  Some of them may just have never been into birthdays to begin with, as it's kind of a silly tradition if you think about it.  We have personality types that completely hate partying, and we sort of force them to go out and do just that on a night when we're supposed to be celebrating this person and their wants/needs.  It seems pretty anti-intuitive. Still others are sad because they're getting older.  This is something people in couples or family situations go through too, so don't think I just find this as a single person's perspective.  Whether it's a year that wasn't that great, a year that you didn't accomplish what you wanted, or whether you can hear that tick tock toward the cloaked guy with the sickle, getting older can be hard from that perspective.

There is also a third option, and this one is far more geared toward single people, and I think it's something that isn't discussed often so as a single-person advocate, I want to bring it up.  Once you get past the age where you have roommates and you're still single or not in a relationship, your birthday frequently becomes a chore.  Unless you're still in that phase where clubbing on Saturdays is a regular occurrence, birthdays are something that, if you want to celebrate them, YOU have to plan.  When you're in a couple, the expectation of planning a birthday, or at least the heavy-lifting of sending out invites, buying a present, getting people to come, and having an idea in mind all fall on the other half of the couple (or at least they're in charge of making sure you have something fun that you want to do for that day), but when you're single it falls upon you yourself to do it.  So frequently I find that it's better just to skip it, because usually you want to have maybe one shindig (you're not one of those people who wants a prolonged birthday), but trying to find a bunch of friends to get together is impossible.  You end up texting friends about wanting to do something, but they're busy or they don't get back to you.  As a result, you end up with a birthday party three days after the fact with a bunch of people who can only be there for an hour.  This is fine and all, but honestly, if you're past the age where you really need to celebrate your birthday, isn't it fine just to skip it?

The problem is you get looks of horror when you say you don't want to celebrate your birthday.  This is weirdly specific to your birthday.  Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and Halloween-you can blame staying in on family or work or just plain being tired.  But your birthday is a celebration of you as an individual, and it's something that the rest of the world isn't celebrating along with you.  Having plans is mandatory, and most people frequently say, "you need to do something," but in my experience as soon as you plan something or ask them to do something, suddenly there are days on end where you have to work around a schedule and again, you end up doing all of the work to celebrate your birthday.  Which makes the single person feel worse, not better.  This concern is only worth a hill-of-beans if you're willing to take on the party-planning or the idea-creating.  It makes the single person feel like crap when their friends persuade them, against their initial wishes, to do something for their birthday and then none of them are actually free that weekend or want to plan the thing with you.

Cause the thing is, you didn't feel bad beforehand.  You had a plan-do nothing, it's just another day.  You weren't going to sit around and feel sad, you were just going to get up, do what you normally do, and maybe get a Target gift card from your aunt in the mail along with a picture of her new cat Mittens.  It was only after people made you feel guilty about not celebrating your birthday, and then they didn't follow-up with a "so, here's the plan-does this work?" that you felt like crap.  So if your single friend says that they don't want to do anything for their birthday, either say, "would you want to do X-I'll make the arrangements?" or else plan a nice text that day and let it be.  They're adults, they know what they want.