birthday again.

  I scrambled to write the excerpt I'm going to share down below one night in a fit of anxiety + general dread one night back in June. I get like this every June. I do this around New Year's, too. 

  I don't like the conception of time. I suppose it bothers me. It apparently worsens as I creep up the ladder of age. I do what I can to shift my thoughts onto anything lighter than the existential, but nonetheless: it remains.

  I think I appreciate it about myself, if I'm honest. That is, if you take, "existential dread" + just shave off the "dread" portion. Annoyingly, being so chronically empirical about life can give one quite a bit of depth in perspective, I've found.

  It makes moments more important. I document a lot of things because I have a fear of being forgotten, hence my love of photography & videography. I create so that I can try with everything in me to somehow let somebody know I was here on this planet, long after I'm gone.

  It's like shouting into a void with a permanent marker. At least someone will see me + remember that I loved people.

  I think after I left religion in 2018, the "God-shaped hole" opened up. For years, the questions I have now, I answered then with faith. It brought me a deep sense of comfort.

  Roughly seven years into opening up my mind to other beliefs, thoughts, religions, and, while some might like to label me an Agnostic, I never would truly deny that there isn't a God.

  Actually, I'd like to believe that there is one. I know there's someone up there orchestrating all of this.

  And while I don't subscribe to any one religion, faith, or belief of any kind, I sure as h*ll don't think that we're all here for a random reason.

  Maybe that's just my fear of being forgotten creeping in. This can't be random, can it? We don't all just appear, live, work, pay taxes, experience heartbreak, swim in the ocean, love so deeply, & then pass away.. right?

  There has to be something waiting for us. Somebody to remember us. 

  Please tell me Pop Pop is waiting up there somewhere for me, because there's so much I have to tell him.

  So, with my thoughts on life behind me + now officially posted to the Internet for everyone to gaze at.. time for me to post something that's possibly more embarrassing. But Joey told me to write again. Aaaand, this is all I've got in the think tank for ya'll.

  *copy + pastes iPhone notes from June 20th, 2025 @ 11:11PM + immediately goes into hiding*

June 20th, 2025 at 11:11PM

birthday again.

it’s gunna be my birthday again.

I miss when I didn’t mark every birthday with a “well, my birthday this time next year, I’ll have lost X-amount of weight”.

I wonder when the birthdays turned from being excited to turn another year older to being excited to wish myself into something that I’m currently not.

If I sat down and looked through old Facebook photos, I could probably pin-point.

Instead of counting down the days until I can have a drink with friends or family in celebration of another year, I’m met with a pit in my stomach when in hits mid-June, and I realize I’m mere weeks away from another trip finalized around this beautiful, yet God-d*mned sun.

“This time next year on my birthday, I’ll be happier. I’ll be happier, I’ll be different.”

Except this time next year appears, and I’m not that. I’m none of those things. I don’t feel different. I feel like I've wasted precious time because I haven’t changed.

Everyone around me assures me that I have, but I don’t see it. Sometimes I do when I read old journal entries or look at videos from this time a year ago and remember the headspace I was in, but nonetheless.. I still feel like I’ve failed.

It’s not a birthday without a cry. A deep, wondering, existential cry in the car. Why am I here? Why do I keep doing this?

I keep existing to blow out some form of a candle on some sugary something-or-other every year. And I’ll keep going.

I hate my birthday.

And then the next day is normal.

kat.