may fifth

May is the crown month of the warm afternoon breeze, pastel tank tops and mangoes, picnics at twilight and sleepover gossip, lemonade and holiday book binges, feet brushed by beach waves and everlasting road trips laced with pop music of the season. However, to me, all of that's negated because it also happens to harbour my birthday.

I've grown up truly detesting being a may-born, mostly because that meant most of my friends from school would be out of town for my birthday and I wouldn't get to have a birthday party like everybody else! Bummer. As I slipped into my teens, loathing turned to angst and the annual reminder of the feeling of simply feeling tolerated corroded the need of the inner child to be acknowledged. So I did what every teenager did, turn my back on something that turned its back on me. That is, until this year.

I'd done plenty of shadow work last year around this theme and I was determined to make the best out of my birthday this year, no matter the circumstances. GUESS WHAT HAPPENED. My birthday week was the best week of my entire life! My best(est) friends happened to throw me an early (and my very first) surprise birthday party, I got to spend the day at an amusement park with a friend (getting borderline harassed because I wouldn't go on a scary ride, but that's a story for another day), my lovely family had gathered back home to celebrate, and then to cap it off, my friends and I expended our time painting the town red that weekend!

Let me tell you, that's a LONG list for the birthday depressed and it still has me bowled over. I'm still over the moon with gratitude for all the people that are in my life right now, that come together to make me feel celebrated and recognized every day, but especially on May the fifth. It almost feels like I won a prize, somehow, undeserving. Anyway, the running joke in my family is that I spent a whole week celebrating all my preceding nugatory birthdays. And you know what, they're not even wrong!

To me, now, May stands for the sound of laughter and my love for benji, pyjama pants and green apple soda, confetti and swimming, summer rain and taylor swift, amusement parks and pink hair. A moment in time, indeed.

love,

A