the joy of being known
it was my birthday recently! this was my first birthday in a long while that wasn't preceded by a week of me being the most insane version of myself, which i'm grateful for... i'm pretty sure my more stable moods have a lot to do with the recent sleep/fitness changes i've made, alongside just getting a little older!
my family greeted me in the morning with flowers, and worm was so so excited about everyone being in our room!!!! she probably thought it was her birthday. specialest girl in the world <3
i spent the rest of the morning replying to some text greetings, reading my yearly birthday letter to myself (i use futureme.org to send these), and bumming around before our lunch out. the rest of the day was pretty uneventful actually, and i didn't have a lot of time to just do my own thing – i had a haircut at 4:30, and between that and the end of lunch there wasn't enough time to do anything substantial. but it was ok!! i replied to some emails and prepared some files for stickers i wanted to get printed before my august trip.
i also gave myself a little extra time to get ready for dinner, because falsies take me so so long to put on......... i tried using lower lash falsies too. i couldn't figure out how to apply them for the longest time, but this time they kind of worked?? later they got in my eye though so like. I CANNOT WIN... they were cute while they were there though. i'll try again next time.
i chose my birthday dinner restaurant for their sangria. we happened to be there when they were offering a two-for-one special, and we had two huge pitchers of it!! we were only able to finish the one (that thing is STRONG) and the restaurant didn't have any containers to put the second one in, so my sister ran out and bought a huge bottle for us to transfer it to and take home.
at dinner when they brought out the cake, my family also surprised me with... a 3d figurine of myself??????
AMAZING.
it was my dad's idea!!!! he asked my brother to ask his friend R to make a me based on one of my drawings. 😭😭😭 so now i have four figurines of. myself. they're now on display on different tiers of my billy bookcase.
i think it's such a silly and cute gift, and at risk of sounding narcissistic i really love it. having four mes with goofy :D faces on just makes me laugh!!! delightful!!
it's so heartwarming that my family thought to do this for me to make me feel special. i'm very lucky to have been born into my family... i get teary if i think about it for too long q_q
the next day was a day i'd usually go to the gym, but i told my trainer i'd skip that day because i had plans... to hang out with my best friend the whole day!!! they live far far away, but our timezones and body clocks line up well enough that we can hang out for hours. i was counting down the days to our hang and they told me they were too!!
i woke up a few minutes before we were scheduled to call and got online. the first thing they did was have me blow out the candle on a virtual cake 😭 i don't have the file but i'll attach it later. THEN they introduced a game they prepared, which was GUESS WHO – BOYFRIEND EDITION........
they assembled this list of boys by writing down everyone they could remember, and then went to check my blorbo page on my site.
(B to me while explaining this: thank god you have a website)
i was so amazed at the fact that they'd designed this game for me. i'd tagged them long ago in a post where people play subjective "guess who" where you have to ask questions that are based on vibes ("would this person complain to the manager", etc) with an offhanded comment saying we should play it like this, and they REMEMBERED???? and made it me-catered to boot???????? i felt so seen and loved and a little choked up about it.
since the game was "boyfriend edition", the questions all had to be boyfriend-themed. it was fun to play because of how much thought goes into both the question and the response. if one of us asked something like "would your friends be impressed by them?" and the other answered "not necessarily", both have to know what our friend group finds impressive, what each character is like, and try and assess who would be immediately impressive or totally unimpressive and eliminate.
below is a screencap of my board, with the questions i asked as the layer names. the character my best friend had to guess is encircled in green.
i did not even win at my own blorbo game, by the way!!!! LMAO. i guessed wrong twice: louie first (he met all the criteria!) and then karamatsu, before i landed on ichimatsu. i fucked up when i asked "would my parents be concerned about me dating him" – the answer was "maybe", but i assumed my parents would be for sure concerned about ichimatsu, and eliminated him in the first round. i had to backtrack alllll the way. but it was so fun i could not be mad about losing!! i'd lose a second time if it meant we would play this game again.
B also prepared a ship version of the game, but we said it would be fun to play while drunk (and made impromptu plans to drink together after i got lunch) so we put it off in favor of talking.
we ended up talking for longer and then watching a whole bunch of ducktales (they put off finishing s1 so they could watch it with me!!). we also both got too drunk for the ship game in the end LOL. i made the mistake of mixing my alcs and got SO trashed, but if i were to get that way with anyone i'm glad it was with my best friend and in the comforts of my home!!!
anyway, we finished hanging out after ~10 hours. they went to bed n i passed out just before dinner.
i woke up later that night and managed to catch my sister coming home. she'd also spent the day with a friend and texted me earlier that day with a picture of a disney duck themed miniso blind box, asking which one was my favorite. she got me a huey!!
it's so sweet that she saw it and thought of me while she was out. the store was apparently one where you could just... pick which blind box item you wanted, instead of praying you'd get your fave, which is great. look how cute he is!!! i love that he comes with a standee that says "study" too... like ok i will!
i feel like this was the best birthday i've had in a while. i went into it not expecting anything, and came out of it feeling so special and known and loved ;_; it's not so much the gifts as it is my family and friends caring about me and doing stuff to make me smile... i'm really grateful to have the people i have in my life!!! i want to do more to make them feel loved too.
also, most days i have mixed feelings about being perceived (the mortifying ordeal of being known), worrying about the parts of me that are annoying and unlikeable and will eventually drive people off. i think this birthday helped ease those fears a little bit. my family and friends know the worst of me and love me anyway, and i could stand to trust that love more and just try every day to deserve that love!!
sorry this got kind of weepy towards the end, but augh... i just didn't expect my birthday this year to be so lovely. i'm so happy!!