The past month, my Facebook has been abuzz with exuberant birthday wishes accompanied with loads of photos at birthday parties - a substantial number of my old ACS classmates were born in October. Here's the thing about me. I've never been fond of birthday parties or cakes. I have never envied anyone for their birthdays, how they celebrate it, or what they get from it. I've always been contented with spending my birthday with one or two of my closest friends, satisfied that I had close friends who made the effort of remembering the day I was born.
 

Not until now.
 

It's a sad existence. I never expect much on my birthdays, but this year just might be one of the worst I've ever had. While others celebrated their 21st with stacks of cards, mountains of cakes, loads of friends and barrels of booze, I could count the number of birthday wishes I got from my friends on one hand, I spent the day in absolute loneliness and one of my closest friend completely forgot my birthday.
 

Apparently, I share the same birthday as Andrew Scott, who portrays one of my favorite villains of all time, Moriarty from BBC Sherlock. At any other time, I would have been ecstatic about this shared birthday.
 

Just... not this time.
 

I wonder what it says about a person when his closest friend gushes to him about a TV star's birthday while remaining completely oblivious to his hurt and frustration. Does it perhaps mean that his existence is less important than that of a celebrity? Is it something else?
 

As hard as I try to avoid thinking about it, I can't help but wonder how many of my friends even cares about my existence. Half my birthdays, I'm forcefully reminded that perhaps my birthday isn't really worth the effort to remember after all.
 

I'm sorry if this is starting to sound like a rant of self-pity. But I figured since this is a blog with near-zero readership, probably the only people to read this would be the occasional stranger chancing upon this blog. I'm not generally fond of self-pity - sometimes I look at it with disdain - but I think I realize now why self-pity exists. People pity themselves because there is no one else to pity them. In my case, the only people who would pity me are people who know it's my birthday, and since there's hardly any of them - and none of them are even in the country - it doesn't amount to much at all. So I celebrate my birthday with whatever I have left - a cake of self-pity lit with 21 forlorn candles and extinguished with drops of tears, celebrated with the stuffed animals on my bed who sang happy birthday in their little stuffed animal voices.
 

To those who know me, you know that my friends mean the world to me. I've always tried my best to be the best friend I could to those I befriend. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, maybe most of my friendships one-sided or something, maybe it's something else. I don't know. There's so much I don't know. All I know is that it's been awhile since I felt as worthless and discarded as I've been feeling these past few days.
 

A week ago, I looked forward to my birthday so very much. What a naive fool I've been. All I wanted was for my closest friends to remember my birthday. Birthday messages would have meant the world to me. I adore them. Words from the heart mean so much more to me than any tangible present ever would. All I ever wanted and needed for my birthdays was to know that I meant something - anything - to my friends. That's all. Sigh. My wishes were so different... but unrealistic, I realize now.
 

The procrastinator here, signing back out to his sad, quiet existence...