“hey you, Happy Birthday 🎈”

The text has sat on ‘read’ in my iMessage app for four, maybe five, hours now. I’d lost track of time since I first lied on my apartment’s cold carpet floor.

What was the proper response, if there was one? How could I condense marinated feelings into a single text, like trying to untangle webs of a spider that never stops spinning.

Bzz. Bzz.

My phone buzzed again for the eighth or so time. I’d lost count after downing the cup of lukewarm coffee. Decaf, for obvious reasons.

My digital tongue was tied with a bout of alexithymia.

Bzz. Bzz.

Birthdays are the subtle reminders of the amount of friends and family we have. But the morning after, it’s as if we’re strangers once more.

I lie on a carpet dirtied with cat-litter, wallowing in my own self pity, unable to feel grateful — unable to say, “thank you.”

Or, “how have you been?”

Or, “I love you.”

Or, “I hate you.”

Or, “fuck you.”

Or anything at all. Instead, most people I’ve come to know in my life sit in my inbox only wishing me well today. But where were they the other 364 days? Maybe that’s when I’ve needed them most.

I’m bitter, I know. But I suppose I could feel any which way I want. It is my birthday, after all.