Memoirs of a Sober Birthday
Date of birth, April 22, 1977
As I grow into middle age, I don’t always look at my birthday anymore as some kind of big, loud, hyped up day. It will be a bit on the regular side, and like most people, I will get 200+ birthday wishes on facebook by “friends” who only know it’s my birthday because facebook told them. So, it’s kind of like cheating.
My birthday is still quite relevant in my heart because of many things. A bit erratic, because it is a huge mix of darkness and brightness. Things that may not look so pretty. The day once carried a lot of weight. The extent of that weight still seeming so negatively unbelievable that I can’t believe I got through it. The depression alone was damn near debilitating. Although the birthday has many dark memories, I can say now that I got to the light at the end of the tunnel.
A birthday in active addiction is absolutely painful. It is 24 hours of self loathing, guilt and shame. It is the worst day of the year, and it certainly flaunts that fact. Of course not all my birthdays involved active addiction, but the ones that did seemed to conjure up feelings that felt like it was God, working his butt off to knock some sense into me. Making everything heavy, sorrowful, and hopeless.
God is a loving God, but sometimes, it’s not about sending me a bunch of love. Because I obviously, had been ignoring it. He had to try to get tough. And boy was a birthday in addiction tough.
I have spent birthdays high as a kite, sober as ever, or in the worst withdrawals as well. Timing, money, and drug dealers didn’t always work as an exactly timed clock. Here’s how bad it got; my 40th birthday, was enjoyed in a lovely hospital room. While midway through an 8 day admission. No need for me to tell you all why.
Guilt can weigh down a birthday in other ways too. It’s the best day of the year for loved ones showing love to you. However when you hurt the way that addiction can hurt, it feels so awkward. It also feels undeserved to get that love. So blessed to have loved ones that soul mission is to make my birthday happy and special for me.
Many times, I had wished so hard that I could just snap my fingers on my birthday, and make the day as special as others thought it was. So many people in the dark, about how those birthdays really felt. Or maybe they knew?
For those years that I spent in a mental, cloudy, funk for my birthday, I look at those times now not for the sad terror that it so strongly felt like. I look at it more for how on those days specifically, loved ones, family, friends, and even some associates showed genuine care, and hope, and wanted to make sure they brought smiles to my birthdays. I was not really smiling, but I was learning lessons. Lessons about how that type of guilt, and fake birthday smiling, is all the kind of crap that I just can’t handle again.
I have said many times in the past that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy a horrible opiate withdrawal. Now I realize, that even more than that, I would really never wish active addiction on anybody, on their birthday.
Nowadays, there is not a feeling more special, and genuine, then the feeling I get, when my birthday comes, and I’m in sobriety. I enjoy the day, I enjoy the love from others (even those facebook friends who only know it’s my birthday because facebook told them, haha) and I see peace, not only in my eyes, but the ones around me. While suffering in silence, it was loved ones too who suffered in their own silence. Because it was on those drug addiction birthdays, that deep down, they knew the truth just by looking into my eyes.
They were sad eyes.
Life teaches such great lessons. I am so blessed. I know tomorrow, I will enjoy my day. I will not have those sad eyes. I will count my blessings knowing that my happy birthday, really was, a very happy, sober birthday, to me.
Michael Patanella, Author