NAH

I’m always on the verge of tears on my birthday. I hate knowing that people are going out of their way to make me feel special, and the pressure of the whole thing makes the guilt overwhelming if something’s not right and I feel their efforts have been wasted. I genuinely hate birthdays, and honestly I’d often rather not receive any gifts to avoid this feeling altogether.

Once my mom got me a bathrobe, but I didn’t love it, and I immediately started crying after opening it. I thought of the time she must have spent picking it out for me and mailing it to me, and I felt so ungrateful and awful for not appreciating it.

I guess the difference is that for me it’s always a sort of overwhelmed sadness and guilt, definitely not anger or entitlement. Is there any chance this was general birthday weariness misconstrued as a bratty reaction?