The Birthday Theory

The Birthday Theory

At the stroke of midnight on my 28th Birthday, I found myself alone in my room drained from work and drowning in a contemplative state of "Why's?", "How's" and "What Ifs?"

I suppose such weighted sentiment is to be expected from a girl like me on the joyful anniversary of the opening my eyes to the world while bellowing an immediate baby-belly-pay-attention-to-me-love-me-nurture-me-squeeze-me howl into the sterilized echoes of the Baylor Medical Center Delivery Ward. "LOVE ME!!!!!" "FEED ME!!" "MAKE ME FEEL LIKE THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY CREATURE ON THIS TINY BLUE PLANET!!" It was a loaded, claws-to-the-blackboard scream, no doubt. How do I know? Am I a rare case of Human Being that recollects the earliest of infant memories? Ehh, nope. I know because the unnerving childhood methods of screaming and staging tantrums continues on, still today, in my 28th year.

The pay-attention-to-me tactics have been diluted a bit, morphed into more acceptable adult behaviors, but, none-the-less, my motivation has not changed. This is no unique behavior. An integral element of Human Nature, for sure: the need and desire to be loved. To feel incubated in the warm, radiant glow of acceptance, nurturing and connection. The Human Condition. (Which, ideally should, in my mind and heart be labeled, the Human Unconditional. Silly, I know.) But, what if the rare splendor of our personalities was always embraced and the twisted guts of our psychological needs were always met with compassion and generosity? That's a big "what if," I know. (At least we can pay reverence to my gushing idealism in my adulthood, eh?) But, perhaps, if we as humans, yanked our grayscale eyeballs from our partially-hydrogenated assholes, we'd see what we are doing wrong...how we neglect our basic human need for love (and nutritional value.) Not just to receive love, but to express love in all of our actions, reactions, relationships and personal endeavors. This neglect of the heart is exactly why, at 28, I am still kicking, screaming, drinking, rebelling, shooting my flare gun into the sky.

This is why many of my comrades, my beloved band of orphans, are still desperately leapfrogging from empty relationship to relationship, finding synthetic solace in the forty bag of blow in their pocket, drink with reckless abandonment, smoke weed on their way to class, wait tables well into their thirties, leave their dreams in the wrappers, all the while wondering, with genuine naivety, "why the fuck do I do this to myself??" My Birthday Theory (and it has certainly been theorized by many others before me) is that the early and continuous neglect of basic human needs (whether it was stemmed from the selfish neglect of our parents or the foolish neglect of ourselves) is why so many of us sabotage our happiness, use control as a means of communication, fuck ourselves and fuck our eager, loyal audience with the capricious recklessness of a heroin-laced Rock Star. (Pete Doherty: screaming child in need.) (Oooh! His razor-wire-figured hottie ex, Kate Moss: thinks she needs another line of Devil Dandruff. Wrong! She needs her Daddy.) So, you are probably more than getting the point here... What the world needs now is love, sweet love, right?

Cute, huh? Seemingly silly and ideal, yes. But, this butter-bean heart, this child-in-need is, indeed, in immediate need of some love. (That had a nice cadence.) Some good-ol' fashioned nurturing of the soul. I've been frantically spinning my wheels to the tune of "gotta go to work, gotta write, gotta date, gotta go!go!go!" without stopping to offer gratitude for all the hard work I've been doing. So, to wrap it up in Birthday ribbons, if I seem like I have chugged a chalice of circa 1994 Ecstasy next time you see me, I have, in fact, not (most likely.) I'm just practicing...

P.S. Just to serve as a bit of insight into the overactive mind of KriKri, all of these thoughts took place in about two minutes of thinking. This was just the philosophical tip of the iceberg of last night's Birthday Eve curiosities.