A Day Like Any Other

of birthdays, blues, and unanswered questions.

here, to set the mood.

Today is the 16th of February, 2025. I will be turning 21 tomorrow. Even though it doesn’t seem like it, I always look forward to my birthday. As the years pass by, my excitement dwindles, but it’s still there, like an annoying younger sibling who you want to get rid of but can’t seem to. My past two birthdays were spent a significant distance away from my family, and, as bitter as I was, I learned to accept my reality, having chosen seafaring as my career. I know deep in my heart that the first birthday I spent away from my family will be followed by more — and many of them. It didn’t make me sad, though. I guess the sadness was retained and coated with a new layer of numbness. Now, I don’t feel sad. Instead, I feel indifferent. I accepted my reality as it was. I can’t go back and redo my actions anyway. Those only happen in the movies and fantasy.

Going back to the topic at hand, my past two birthdays were, for lack of better words, just fine. To me, they were just regular days, nothing special. I admit, I missed the importance birthdays hold outside the world I’ve been in since 2022. I missed how everybody made a big deal out of them. I understand that the transition was necessary to shield us from the feeling of homesickness and sadness, but it doesn’t make my chest feel any lighter.

It’s true, once you get older and learn truths that didn’t make sense to you when you were young, you get sad and numb. As an adult, I just go through every day in a trance, in a routine — a cycle, over and over again — hoping to find something exciting or interesting in a day and, hopefully, remember it.

Anyway, as I ponder on what to write here, a question forms in my mind: What are birthday blues, and why do they exist?

According to Medical News Today, birthday blues are an unexplainable feeling of sadness and depression as your birthday approaches. Some feel grief for the things they’ve lost, some feel drained, and some even lose their self-esteem and confidence. It’s a peculiar feeling I never want to experience, but I don’t have a choice in it. It’s so weird how a day you should look forward to might be the day you regret the most and turn out to be the exact opposite of what it should be. It’s a birthday, but it might as well be a death day. Something inside you dies that day.

(you are me)

The first year of spending my birthday away from my loved ones, I felt numb and disappointed. The nagging feeling of isolation never left my body, quite the opposite of what I told people. Besides, we’re all a bunch of sad people telling other sad people what they need to hear. I just kept finding ways to distract myself and not think about that feeling: of not belonging, of isolation, of sad independence, of not having a choice. I know I should’ve opened up to others, but how could I? I didn’t want to be a burden. Everybody has their own problems to worry about.

The second year, I felt inadequate. I felt like something was wrong, and there was nothing I could do. The best coping mechanism I know is to ignore it and set it aside in that small corner of my mind — and that’s what I did. I found distractions to focus on instead. I set it aside.

The thing is, when you ignore something, it never really goes away. It’s just buried under the distractions and other things you tried to cover it up with. Once those are unearthed, the very things you tried to hide float up and fill your head with a foggy feeling of heavy sadness and depression. It takes over your mind.

This third birthday wasn’t any different. I felt it again — that heavy nothingness that continued to cloud my mind the moment February arrived. And I don’t know how to make sense of it.

Luck doesn’t seem to be on my side. It crawls and settles in the pit of my mind, ever-present, always there. It never quite went away.

The thing is, maybe it’s not just about the birthday itself. Maybe it’s the weight of time that gets heavier with each passing year — the subtle reminder that we can’t stop it, no matter how much we want to. The world keeps turning, and we just try to hold on, to get attached, even when it feels like we’re slipping through its cracks.

Maybe the blues aren’t really about the day. Maybe they’re about everything we can’t control. The people we’ve lost, the things we still want, the parts of ourselves we’re still searching for.

But what if that’s okay? What if feeling like this is just part of the puzzle, one piece of a bigger picture we’re still trying to understand?

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Maybe it’ll be just like every other day, maybe it won’t. Maybe I’ll feel something new. Maybe I won’t. But, then again, what if feeling nothing at all is the most honest thing I’ve felt in a long time?

Maybe tomorrow will surprise me. Or maybe it won’t. Either way, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something I’m supposed to figure out here — something just beyond my reach. And maybe that’s the most unsettling part of all.