I wake up early on my born day

My worst birthday was probably my 24th. Stuck at my mom's house in San Jose with no one to spend it with but my old friend A., I found myself loafing around the tweener apartment complex, with somewhere around seven units, that no less than three of my friends used throughout the years as the first landing pad after leaving their parent's nest, tucked in behind a decrepit old strip mall barely buoyed along by the Safeway stuck in the middle, with the movie theaters I still refer to as the $2 theaters from the days of my youth (despite the fact they'd climbed to the astronomical figure of somewhere around $4 by this point in time), tons of asphalt, stupid stop signs, and a huge expressway nearby. It was a small hamlet of everything I had spent the previous 23 years trying to escape, and there I was again.

My friends were broke so I ended up purchasing not only the meal for everyone kind enough to join me on this momentous occasion, but the booze for all of us as well. Highlights of the evening included a drunken phone call from my then girlfriend over-animatedly wishing me a happy birthday followed by no less than ten minutes of drunkenly slurred confessions of love, a voice mail by a loyal and always well meaning friend who I hear from two or three times a year, and visits from the other apartment complex denizens whom I neither knew, nor cared to know, so that they could smoke some of my friend's pot. The denizens had unfortunate facial hair and terrible fashion. We watched Bad Santa, ate some pizza, and then played Time Splitters 3. No amount of booze could have saved the evening for me.

My best birthday was probably my 23rd (only a year prior, yet the same season somehow so much sunnier). I had lots of loving friends in my life who came to my apartment to fete specifically me, who gave me lots of loving presents, some personally thought out and some more general but still generously offered, dinner was bought and paid for by the most dear person in my life, and I felt good. It wasn't the material goods or the location or circumstances or anything like that, I think it was more that at my party, I felt a genuine circle of love around me from all my friends. It was a warm feeling, a feeling of acceptance and support. It felt like what I thought a birthday party should feel like -- just love.

I've spent other birthdays alone, others aimlessly drinking with a friend or two. In elementary school I remember always being bitter about the fact that other children were allowed to celebrate the day by bringing in treats and getting the class' attention, while my summer birthday was merely forgotten, never celebrated amongst my peers minus a single year when one of the teachers allowed all the summer birthdays to have a day near the end of the year together. Such a small gesture, and still not comparable to being the center of the entire class' attention, yet one I always remembered so vividly from then on.

On my 19th birthday I fought a bull, not necessarily to commemorate the day that I burst onto the scene, but simply because my vacation plans ended up working out that way. I fought the bull and the bull won, so as personal experiences go it's not a terrifically poetic episode, just one to remember. It was more touristy, there was only one true friend there with me, and while it may ostensibly appear to be one of my finer birthdays, it didn't have that same feel of love, acceptance, and support that made the other ones such a high point.

I couldn't tell you at all what I did on my 20th. It's a day lost to memory, like many others -- 16th, 13th, 21st even -- but for those ones that stand out, and they are some of the most treasured, poignant, cherished days of my life.

Birthdays are an important day to me and I catalogue them, compare them year to year. They're the one holiday I seem to feel a real excitement for. Whether it's my own or other people's day to be celebrated, I'm always determined to make it the best day I possibly can.

Other holidays and arbitrary days of celebration have never been my thing, but for some reason birthdays have never paled like the others. I mark them upcoming and I get excited. If it's a person I truly care about I start to count the days. Whereas I generally shun the traditional gatherings of friendship and love -- Christmas or Easter or Thanksgiving or whatever -- birthdays feel different. I think there's just something to them that isn't present on the traditional holidays.

Of course there's the cycle of life, the convenient chapter breaks and marking of the passage of time. There are milestones and in many ways I feel that some of my own birthdays were important markers of the end of one period and the beginning of another (another, more private reason the 23rd anniversary is so important to me), but it's not the storytelling that makes me so interested in them. It's something more than just remarking upon the passage the individual has taken to that point.

In the others holidays I feel obligated to feign love and compassion for those around me, but that's not the case with birthdays. Whenever I'm celebrating with someone, I'm there because I love them, because I'm happy they're in my life, and I'm happy there's a day for us to celebrate that person alone. More simply, I'm happy they're here in my life with me, and I find pleasure in the celebration of that simple fact.

Birthdays are for commemorating an individual -- not an institution, not a religious event, nothing like that -- but the person you hold dear. Of course there's some guilt and obligation in making sure you're seen on a person's birthday, but that exists because you don't ever want them to doubt your support of them. It's a day for an individual celebration, the elevation of a single life, enjoying its passage further in time, and I love sharing that with people. For all the people I've loved and all the people who do the same in return, birthdays are the holidays that I love to celebrate with each other. It's your day, it's my day, it's our day together. It's the time to commemorate how cool it is we're all here and doing what we can to get by in life, and how excited we can be about that.

Thanks to everyone I've ever been able to share these greatest of holidays days with, the day we were goddamn born.