Regrets and Remembrances

That sticks with you, if you're me at least. It lingers long after they've left and after you've had to fend off a dozen conciliatory congratulations from those faces and names you pass and live and work around every day. It nags at the back of your mind as you leave thirty minutes after everyone else in the hopes that you can avoid the awkward elevator ride down and it's the reason you stop and turn the other way when you're ten minutes away from home.

It's the reason I'm in this bar at all.

Not the statement, not a question of truth or accuracy whatsoever. No, I believe their statement. I absolutely don't like being the center of attention. I don't mind that no one remembered my birthday and when the email came out and everyone started congratulating me after the fact I cannot deny that I absolutely hated it. All of it was terrible, both being the center of attention and being the person whose birthday was forgotten because god that just put me deeper into that place where everyone was noticing me and that wasn't me at all.

So I don't doubt their statement whatsoever, but their statement does make me wonder in a manner that is only too reminiscent of the gnawing question that has been nibbling at the back of my mind all day.

I think sometimes we know answers but we waste hours and effort contemplating them unnecessarily. We do it because we're searching for another chance and another opportunity to get a different answer than the one we know is the truth. We are **** in our hope for any other option, because the one that we're facing feels like the worst possible thing in the world.

I think I know the answer to all of this. I think I understood on an innate kind of level why it was that it bothered me so much, no one noticing my birthday.

All of it is a smokescreen for a lie that I'd been living all my adult life. It's a guise, an easy disguise that I can put on to sell the lie to everyone including me.

"You've never liked being the center of attention."

A statement about me that on the surface feels like a fact only too easy to accept. And it would be so simple to just accept it because fuck if it doesn't feel like that every damn day. How easy it would be and how much it would explain if this life I was living was a choice and a conscious decision.

But I don't know if we ever make conscious decisions about the life we live. Or maybe that's just me.

I stare into the depths of the glass I ordered at the bar and I contemplate without a drop of drink on my lips. I search for any answer, studiously avoiding the clear and present one that is screaming in my face for attention and has been all day long.

And I do a real good job of avoiding it. I've spent years avoiding it. Avoiding the truth just might be my greatest skill in this life.

But then she walks in, the birthday girl, and it becomes damn near impossible to ignore.

And because it’s today and everything takes so long to get going today it starts out quietly at first. I catch a glimpse of her sash in the mirror on the back of the bar and I hear the ruckus as her group enters the place. I do my best to avoid staring, looking at her through the reflection and seeing the night unfold.

But by the end of the night when everyone is screaming that Happy Birthday song they're not the only ones screaming. There is a torturous torment in my mind, a voice so ragged with emotion that it is damned, shouting that it won't be ignored one moment longer.

It reminds me of my promise. It reminds me of my plan. It reminds me of what I've lived a whole adult life trying to forget.

You see once upon a time I swore that I would love being the center of attention. I made this promise that my life would be different and that I would turn the corner on things. I swore that I would change.

So what the fuck happened along the way to make me fall so far?

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