Letters for loneliness
Loneliness can show up in a crowded room, in a marriage that has gone quiet, after a move to a new city, in retirement when the work that organised your week is gone, after the kids have grown up and out, after the people who used to know you have drifted, after coming out, after coming back from somewhere. It can show up in your twenties when everyone seems to have a group already, and in your sixties when everyone is busy with grandchildren you do not have. The letters in this theme are written by people who have been through that particular kind of quiet — the kind that does not get fixed by being around more people — and want you to know it is not permanent, even when it feels like it. Read one. Save the one that finds you.
Birthdays alone are a particular kind of bad.
Other people's birthdays you can get through. Your own — when there is no one to make a fuss, or when the fuss has to be a fuss you make for yourself, or when the day passes and the only people who messaged are LinkedIn and the dentist — has a specific flavour of sadness that feels childish to admit to.
It is not childish. The day is meant to be marked. You wanting it to be marked is the most reasonable thing about you. The fact that the people in your life forgot, or are far away, or no longer exist in the right configuration to make a birthday happen — that is not a verdict on whether you are loved, even when it feels like one tonight.
Buy yourself the cake. Or don't, and have toast. The day is allowed to be small. You are still allowed to wish it were bigger.