It Only Happens Once A Year…

Normally, I don’t celebrate my birthday.

I think the last time I celebrated my birthday…🤔…I might have still been an undergraduate student at FSU. I also didn’t know my birthday was today until I sent a “Happy Birthday” text to my now sixteen-year-old nephew and remembered our birthdays are two days apart.

Normally, I don’t celebrate my birthday.

I can’t tell you why. I don’t know if it’s because of that feeling of getting older with even less answers to life than you had last year. Or the idea that you’re supposed to have some semblance of your life together, but your life looks a lot like that shredded paper from the dollar store people put in gift bags. 

This year:

• I was supposed to go on my first date since November 2014, and that date was pretty awful, so that’s at least six years since I’ve last felt butterflies. Or held someone’s hand. Or got wrapped up in a hug. I miss that.
• I had four conferences scheduled I was pretty excited for since I would have gotten the chance to meet a few of you.
• I was in the process of overcoming anxiety in order to find reasons to leave my house more than once every fortnight.
• I was supposed to get my life at least 16% together.

However, I’m writing this in checkered pajama pants with a fragment of a Cape Cod chip on my shirt, what feels like a couple more in my bra, and with everlasting neck strain. I have considered getting one of those unique massages I’ve seen trickling around the internet, but if a man handles me like that…we go together.

However, despite my having the average millennial concern that life is going by both too quickly and not fast enough, I’ll celebrate a little. My parents are throwing my nephew “one likkle birthday ting,” and I’m about to roll up and pretend it’s my “likkle birthday ting” too. 

The Lord took away my body’s ability to process flour without intestinal damage, so I’m still figuring out where to find cake I can eat. Y’all, I used to tear up some apple fritters and chase them with an anti-emetic back in the day. 

I may also seriously attempt to find someone in my area who does those sensual erotic unique massages to work out my kink. The one in my neck, I mean. From the neck strain. From the computer.

😇

And, I would love it if you all, to help me celebrate, take some time out for YOU today. 

I’ve talked a little about how stress affects black women, and it impacts us to a greater extent than any other group. Stress might even be responsible for why we have more pregnancy complications, and why our babies (here in the U.S.) die at a higher rate than the babies of black women in any other developed nation.

So, for me, watch your favorite movie, savor your favorite wine, have a dance break in your bathroom to your favorite song or playlist—do something that takes you away from social media drama, author drama, election night talk, parenting during a pandemic, getting one year older and your life looks nothing like what you’d hoped at this age, gray hairs, COVID-19 fears…etcetera. 

Etcetera.

Do that for me, for my birthday, and I’ll talk to you all soon.

I love you.

xoxo,

Alex

P. S. – The next few episodes of Hidden In The Shadows are going to be beautiful and sweet and lovely and will speak straight to your heart…because I’ll be ripping it out right after.