Two weeks and two days.

[mrissa]

I have just had an e-mail exchange with a friend wherein I mentioned my impending birthdayness, he said he/they would have to remember to get me something*, I said I didn't mean to be hinty, and he said he'd prefer that I hint than that he forget.

People. You cannot forget my birthday. I don't mean you will remember. Noooo, I mean I will remind you.** Because I love my birthday. It is my favorite holiday ever except Christmas Eve and perhaps Lucia Day. I think everybody should get something nice on my birthday, ice cream or something. I have taken to responding to, "Happy birthday!" with, "Happy my birthday to you!" I am like the queen in this regard if few others.

I am still trying to work out the details of my birthday party. I'm having one, but I'm afraid it's going to be a much smaller one this year. This means many of the people who have enlivened past birthday parties will not be invited to this one. It's not because I don't like you any more, dear hearts. It's that I am pretty drastically short of energy. Last year it was extremely important to me that I have a big birthday party in the face of the vertigo. I don't have that much energy for grand gestures of defiance this year. I just...don't.

As I go backwards in my lj tagging past entries, I am struck by how much more mental and emotional energy I had for howling at the moon then. I thought 2008 was awful, but 2009 has taken the fight right out of me. I'm not giving up on the PT, and we're still seeing slow progress. I can do things I couldn't do this time last year. But also I admit that I am more resigned in some small areas. When I bruise myself, when I break things, when I can only enjoy part of something. I am frustrated when I have to say no to things that would be fun because I physically can't do them, and I'm particularly frustrated when I'm afraid that the friends I'm saying no to are getting the message that I don't want to instead of the message that I just plain can't. But the frustration is the small sigh, not the shower of tears.

I don't think this means I'm doing better with it. I also don't think this means I'm doing dangerously badly, since I'm still doing the PT etc., all the concrete stuff that will continue to make things better in measurable, concrete ways, and since the lack of emotional energy is comparatively limited. I'm still finding the energy and the focus to write, or rather I'm finding those things again after the early days of PT. And there's been a lot going on in my family lately, some of it really good but all of it pretty intense. I'm just...not long on cope right now, and it feels like vertigo-related outbursts will harm more than they help.

I thought about not mentioning the birthday party thing, but I've had so many years of "bring your neighbor's best friend's cousin if you like" sorts of birthday parties that I was afraid some of you would feel you'd personally offended me if there wasn't some kind of late-July/early-August invitation coming your way. And realio trulio you haven't, and I hope I haven't offended you, either, by bringing it up. I know it's not good manners to bring up parties people aren't invited to. But I am tired all the way through my bones, and I need to make my birthday party a little lower-key this year so as not to exacerbate that. I hope that's not hurtful to anyone.

*He is wrong. Remembering to get me something is strictly optional. I am extravagantly pleased with presents but not the least bit perturbed by their absence.
**July 26. Now you are reminded.

Comments

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

*trying hard to figure this out*

They don't share a birthday ...

Circle me, Mris!

?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Bert always has a tally of how many days until his birthday. Always. This comes up quite frequently on the air. "Only three hundred eleven days until my birthday!"