37

Nobody talks about birthday sadness. Not really. We just wake up, feel it, and assume something is wrong with us.

Birthdays used to feel like a test I hadn’t studied for. Like the whole day was supposed to prove something .. that I was loved enough, celebrated enough, that my life looked the way it should by now. I’d wake up with this quiet expectation and spend the day measuring it against reality. It never quite matched.

This year I just didn’t have the bandwidth for any of that.

I woke up, Rania needed something, my husband got a cake and we lit a candle. That was it. And somewhere in that nothing, I realized I didn’t want anything else. Not the dinner, not the fanfare, not the texts from people who remember once a year.
Just this. Just them.

I don’t know if that’s growth or exhaustion. Probably both. But 37 is the first birthday I can remember where I went to bed feeling full instead of quietly disappointed.

Cottage in the countryside. These two. That’s the whole wish.