Today is a day that I do not celebrate, but grieve. There is no other choice to be made. I have tried. Mostly for the sake of appeasing the ones who want me to know that they are glad that I was born. I am glad too. I am. I just don’t want to talk about it this week. It’s something about the numbers. They are not my numbers.

Many years ago, I was working for a restaurant that printed pages for the reservation book every month. I am the one who did this monthly page printing for some years. The first time I had to do this for February, I was nervous. I know that when twos and tens find themselves near me at the same time, there is something horrible coming. I sound ridiculous, I understand. Irrational, maybe.

I am not a seeker of the future’s findings. I do not need to know more than I know. I’m not saying that the numbers or the palms or anything of that kind isn’t actual, I’m just saying that for me, it feels [physically, in my bones and the parts of me that know things for myself] unsettling and heavy. So I am not someone who has ever tried to put stock in these things for my soul. But the numbers just don’t work with me, and I cannot deny this fact.

Anyway, I had the pages ready to print. I scrolled down the computer’s screen to make sure that I had not missed a single date. It was all there. Control P. February 1, February 2, February 3…. February 8, February 9, BLANK PAGE, February 11, February 12… It was all there, except the tenth. I checked the computer again. It was there. See, the twos and tens want to steer clear of me too. But sometimes, we just have to be in the same place as each other.

So today is today. You think I’m ridiculous, I understand.

The first of my birthdays that I ever remember, I was seven. We lived in Houston, and we woke up to the first snow I had ever seen falling. I love seeing things for the first time. This probably has some connection to my travel bug, but it is so much simpler than that. The first time you eat a perfectly cooked beef wellington, the first time a little kid sees bubbles blown, the first time for most things is a magical feeling. Good birthday. That’s all I remember about it.

On my tenth birthday, I had a party. A great party at Celebration Station with a bunch of my family and so many of my friends. It was a joint party, a co-birthday with Lakesha. She was my very best friend, and even with a 20-year break, we are still that very much. After the party, seriously right after, we drove to a U-Haul store, and moved to West Virginia. It was abrupt. There was no warning, and there were no goodbyes. As a much taller person now than I was then, I see many of the whys and hows of this moment, but I did not for a long time.

Yes, I am just going to talk all this out. I really should take it out of my head, and make some space. You can leave anytime. It’s probably getting closer to a heavy holding, so if you’re looking for pleasant entertainment here, you should get out pretty soon.

On my eleventh birthday.. and yes, I do realize what I’m doing here, and event dates aren’t always the exact days. But I count it if it is a good enough reason to have still been sad on my birthday. So about a month before my eleventh birthday, my sister died. #goodenoughreason

And even though I knew for almost seven years that “she was going to die soon,” even though I was told over and over to “say bye to your sister, just in case,” I don’t even remember if I did that day. I do not remember leaving for school, but I remember when an ambulance passed by in the middle of the day and I felt her in it. And when it wasn’t mom who picked us up from school, I knew.

And I remember that somehow our classmates were all invited to the funeral. We were new again at this school in Virginia, and I felt for the first time [not one of those good firsts, but one that I will not forget] completely exposed to these strangers, my peers, who would forever see me first with pity. I felt that for much longer than another twenty days or so, and I do count it as a birthday, as it really does stick with the theme.

At thirteen, we had just moved to Tennessee. New again. It should be noted that my tenth and thirteenth are the only parties I remember ever having, and they are the only I hope to ever have again. IN FEBRUARY… once more maybe to be sure you understand. IN FEBRUARY, I had a pool party. Why? I do not know. Probably just for a story like this.

Back then, you had to invite your whole class. You couldn’t just choose the handful of humans who made you feel comfortable, so the whole class came. Is it still like that? Well, not now I guess. It would’ve been a game-changer if I had this party in a Zoom meeting.

I, already awkward as I could ever have been and shamefully underdeveloped in comparison to all of the rest of the girls in the class, in a heated hotel pool, in front of my whole sixth grade class, started my period for the first time.

What makes this even worse? The grownups didn’t want me to have to learn right then to use a tampon [that’s right, THIS IS AWKWARD!] so they gave me a pad. A giant one from the nineties to put under my bathing suit. And I was told it would be fine to still swim. AND I DID THAT! This one really does feel monstrously hilarious to me now. But then, it felt a lot like a birthday. I was never ever a new kid who thrived in a new environment. Not until I found some inhibitors, which happened by the end of this, my thirteenth year.

So for lots of years, I was just like, “Yeah, every day of the year is cause for celebration, and on my birthday… I’ll just hunker down. No big deal. I’m pretty great at moments alone, and it’ll be fine if I just hide.” And I hoped the best for the people I loved. And on the 11th, I’d call the people who I avoided on the tenth to make sure they were all still alive. I don’t do this anymore, but I did for a while. Did you ever see that episode of Friends, where Phoebe reveals that people die when she has a dentist appointment? I’m a little like that, except it’s less funny.

There were other things over the years. But these shook in the idea, and when the numbers met up, it was sealed in concrete. When we made it to the two and ten in the year twenty-ten [and no, I do not want to punch in the numbers], or so, within just a few days of it, as I earlier explained, I found out just how terrifying numbers can be. I know, I really do, that it is not about the numbers. I realize that this makes the whole thing seem even less rational than it already is, and it makes me feel more comfortable in the fact that it is so easily dismissed by on-lookers.

When the numbers met, a handful of things all happened at once, and also I had a miscarriage. All within 5 days of the days. In every instance in my life when there has been a need to focus on the pain of only one thing, there has been a barrage of other less important things that I’ve had no choice but to look at and be affected by, even though they didn’t matter at all. And it felt like nothing would ever matter again.

Isn’t it interesting and wonderful and terrible and divine that I have spent much of my life grieving her, even before she came, before she was a thought? I don’t care about the tiny reasons that brought me to want to hide for this “special day” for so many years. It is only about Zoe Magnolia.

Waking up on the 5th, her birthday, is excruciating and beautiful. I celebrate her. And I am grateful to be left alone in it, for the most part. And arising on the tenth feels similar, but with less space to breathe. And this day, it is less about honoring her and more about living with myself. Today is today.

It is a day that I let myself feel a year’s worth of saying OUT LOUD, “Nope. No kids. Maybe someday.” I sink into that smile I fake over and over so I don’t burst into tears in front of this stranger who is just asking questions that they don’t think are hard to answer. “I have no children.” I am heartbroken, and today is the day that I let myself feel that because there is no choice in the matter. I have tried.

I knew the greatest love,
knew in every crevice
of the depths of my soul,
realized with the glow that only grows
in the insides of the insides
of your insides

and the body -
not a safe space,
but a body -
not an environment that nurtures,
not a home that lets love thrive,
but a body -
not a life that brings life,
but a body that let love die,
a body that takes,
a body that steals,
a body that kills
all that is love within you.

I know this great love still,
she skips in the meadows of heaven,
the place where she was born.

It has been eleven years. She is eleven, and five days.

I do not celebrate this day, I grieve. Today is today, and I cannot imagine it ever feeling like anything but this.

If you’ve made it all the way here, I am sorry if I’ve made you sad. I’m grateful to be able to help you better understand me, and the pain that I may be operating from. I’m okay, a little better every day. By sharing this, I am not asking you to carry this with me. And you’ll be happy to know that even though you have all this information now, I still don’t want to have to talk about it. So thanks for being here, and thanks, from my future self, for not bringing this up.