I can�t believe how fast my next b-day is coming around the corner. Kind of like a runaway bus coming down the street and me not looking both ways before I cross because I�m tired of being afraid of runaway busses. Yeah I know, it kind of doesn�t make any sense, but please bear with me. For the past 5 years, ever since my best friend died, my birthday has hardly been a cause for celebration. Rather it has become some bittersweet reminder of how good things were once-upon-a-time and how painful things are at the present. It�s tough to experience anything resembling happiness during my b-day without my best friend who has always seemed to make that time in my life special. We�ve always celebrated our birthdays together and we always had the best of times celebrating it. I suppose it�s only natural that my birthdays will never be quite the same ever again.

I guess I could say that enough time has passed and the wounds have healed enough that I no longer feel so sad and so depressed that I simply want my life to end just like Ray�s did, but I�d by lying if I told you that my birthday was the mark of a joyous occasion. I don�t know, somewhere in the back of my head I know that birthdays are supposed to be a cause for celebration, that you have had the privilege to live and grow as a person for one more year and that there are other people out there that aren�t quite so fortunate, but I guess its all easier said than done, especially if you are spending all that time suffering the pain, loss and the grief of losing someone close to you like I have.

Thus far, I�ve only managed to cope with the sadness associated with my birthday by trying to make myself forget about it. I guess birthdays are just one of those things you really can�t sweep under the rug so easily, so at the very best I try not to dwell upon it as often as I used to in the past. In a way it works to my advantage because I�m at that age where I don�t want to see the numbers continuing to add up anymore and forgetting about my own birthday would be the perfect way to do that. Ideally, I would have like to have my age �frozen� at 29 because that�s when I unofficially stopped counting and in my more deceptive moments that is the age I give to people who have that audacity to ask.

People usually place me younger like around 25 maybe. I could possibly get away with looking even younger but I�d probably have too talk, act and dress differently and that takes way too much energy, though I should probably go out and get a sports car because I think my mid-life crisis is now and not age 40. God forbid I tell anyone my real age though, most people are sent reeling from the revelation. I guess it a way it�s a blessing I look so young, but having people always do a double-take at the age revelation sometimes gets old. It�s to the point where I�d rather not say anything.

Other that getting out of the house and overcoming my own �failure to launch�, I really have no interest in �acting my age�. The whole marriage, house with a white picket fence and a 3 car garage and 3-� kids thing doesn�t really interest me like it seems to have with all of the friends who are my own chronological age. With all the baggage of expectations and preconceived notions attached to one�s age, my birthdays become that much more annoying. I don�t want to live up to any fucking expectations. Life is tough enough as it is. I just want out go out there, give it a 110%, I gotta try to do my best and hope I did my best� I think I did my best!

So yeah, my fucking birthday is coming up, soon. I�m going to hit up this night club on the 21st and do some Halloween shit on the 28th. I still don�t have a costume, but I�m probably not going to go all out this year. Both my actual b-day and Ray�s is somewhere in between the two weekends. I guess we are making a little bit of progress here. I no longer have the urge to take a swan dive from the balcony of my former high-rise apartment. That�s a good thing, isn�t it? I don�t know, sometimes I wish I could just snap my fingers and just have the whole birthday thing go away just so I don�t have to think or worry or grieve about it but I guess that�s what vodka is for�