Birthday Wishes
welcome to birthday wishes; a space built to document regret, growth, nostalgia and all the little in-betweens.
Constructed from anonymous submissions and hand-picked pieces, bringing you on a journey filled with love letters to our younger selves: bits of advice, critique, therapy sessions from who we are today, and minutes we wished would last forever.
These are the moments that build us in to who we are.
this space was curated by REGAN GONSALVES-ALLEN.
As you get bigger the people you look up to get smaller and smaller. You’ll realise those that you idolised may not be as great as you thought they were. But it’s okay because eventually you become your own role model, you will look at some of the things you’ve achieved and think “wow…I’m incredible”
1. today is all you have. your mind and body is only true with its present self. yesterday is not you and tomorrow you wont be you. every second you are changing so dont dwell on the past and continue striving forward by only focusing whats in front of you.
2. you are never forced to be friends with someone, you either enjoy their energy or you cut them off.
3. go get you licenses before you turn 18, itll be worth the memories.
i hope you can learn to forgive yourself for things that have happened that are out of your control. you don’t have to carry it all on your shoulders and you’re allowed to enjoy yourself and have fun with your friends. you’re allowed to like your body and be proud of your thoughts and the things you do, and you’re allowed to give yourself a break sometimes. time with people you love will always be worth it when you look back. it’s okay to be soft and it’s okay to put your guard down. you’re okay.
to my younger self: you're not dying
and once, you were scared of turning thirteen. do you remember that? you sat on the first of the first in your bedroom and you wanted to cry. but you never did. a few weeks passed, and it turned out not so bad until it turned out horribly until it turned out okay again. oh, the indeterminate nature of life, the ambivalent hands of fate. in the end, she choose okay. you weren't dead, you didn't really want to be. and now, i'm still scared of growing up. we're in january again. the summer is blazing and school is back and it feels like death. it feels all too lively. it feels like the beginning of something i cannot handle. but here's what i learned from that year i turned thirteen: lady fortune, however unfair, however hesitating does not stop for anxieties. she flips a well-controlled coin and no matter how long you stay awake, one day it will on tails. it doesn't matter how many times you've betted on heads. but everything is temporary. do you know that? nothing lasts forever, and that includes misfortune. good luck, i suppose. wish me the same.
Stop and take time to be selfish. in the moments where your mind runs wild, you may feel like the walls are crumbling but you’ll be right x and when it ain’t alright, just go to the beach.
In the summer, you'll swim like you always wanted to. Read by the water, make a picnic, cut your feet on rocks and branches and go to sleep smelling not of chlorine, but fresh water — green and musky, sure, but real. You'll drive out west for hours and hours and stay in a house where you can breathe. Make dinner, laughing with people you love. You'll sleep in a tent and wake up to sweat and birds and cool air. You'll take a shower in the afternoon; lay all your anxiety bare. You'll run on 6 hours of sleep, and spend too much money, but spread avocado on toast and drink oat milk traveled 7 hours in a cooler. You'll feel pretty without makeup — you'll prefer it, even, because who can be bothered when there's land to explore and dinner to make?
And when you drive back, you'll sit in uncomfortable silence with your best friends, and not wonder if they hate you. You'll put yourself and them over any school in the world. You'll forget names and states and heartbreaks; stain clothes and clean them out, sing songs and scream and shout. You'll be you again. Smile as big as you did when you were five. Ball your eyes out at movies like you never could when you were ten (always too proud; always hiding something back then). Think you'll grow to know who you are. Little by little. With each pout and each giggle. Every brand new scar. Think the water won't feel so much like an escape — more like a coming home.
when i was young my mother and sister threw me into the deep end of the pool and waited for me to float. after thrashing around in the water for weeks i resurfaced, gasping, with blue glass stained on the backs of my eyelids. bodies, my mother said, ignoring the tears which slid with quiet indignation down my cheeks, were built to float in water. if you are human, you will not sink. i didn't know how to tell her i'd been kicking all along. when i have my children i take them to the pool. we give them goggles and inflatable armbands and a floatie shaped like a duck to stick their legs in, and as they paddle awkwardly across the surface of the water we stand on either side of them with our arms held out like construction cranes, ready to catch them before they tip over. they are not very careful and we don't ask them to be. we're trying to teach them what weightlessness looks like without fear.
"what if we get tired of kicking?" they ask a few minutes later, hanging their arms over the rim of their rubber duckie and grinning at me.
"then let me know," i reply, "and i'll come pick you up."
Today, I looked around and realized that my life is what I always wanted it to be. I still get sad, and lonely, and overwhelmed. But I get to wake up every day to do what I love with people who make my heart SO full it could burst through my chest. People who make me laugh until tears fall from my eyes, and then hold me as I cry. I spent so many years dreaming of becoming who I am today, but what I realized this past fall, while living out of the country for the first time in Athens (the location of all these photos), is that I have the ability to become whoever I want. My fate is in nobody's hands but my own, and knowing that gives me power.
a warning to the girl i used to be, or a threat:
You always had the bone of a martyr, father
Living and dying for your cause
You, your teeth gritted smile
I watched the lie slip away
Run into the night
Your glass eyes sent rolling on the concrete floor
Of the house you built
In December you Forced as to walk
Two by two, as if the world flooded around us
In this false gods ark you Built
Two by two we sunk
Now it’s July
And you are culling the Ferals
Your hands crushing my throat
In the mud
my corpse bruised
I will be
Pushing up daisies in August
Me your greatest failure
A box office flop
Left to rot
Till March arrives again
I wish I knew the importance of letting go, of moving on. I wish I could tell my younger self that grieving the loss of something significant is an important aspect of personal growth. It is ok to abandon connections that no longer have an impact on you. If it doesn't make you a better person, why let it help shape who you become? Find something that makes you a better version of yourself, no matter the sacrifices you may have to make along the way, no matter the heartache you may endure. It will be worth it!
I wish i could tell my younger self that childhood is the most safe and warm time. I would tell myself not to hurry, but to enjoy the presence. To not want to grow up so bad, but be happy to be without responsibilities and expectations
Not everything has to be according to plan, sometimes you can walk with no destination as long as you enjoyed the journey. You can live life your own way with your own friends, family and motivation. you choose the setting, context and plot of the story or maybe you don’t but what matters is what makes you happy and as long as you’re having fun, nobody can tell you anything.
at the ripe age of 11 everything you were protected from came flooding into your life. middle school. what a fucking nightmare. there was no need to rummage through that much emotional baggage. it’s not your fault. society is hard on us, the worst part about that was that we were harder on us. we still are. there’s just so much and so little to do all at once. mental freedom is everything. we haven’t achieved that yet but we're working on it and we have so much time. we have so much time.
You're right - nothing around you will last forever. But that doesn't have to be a source of stress. Instead, you can let it be a source of freedom. Use every experience as an opportunity to learn about yourself and the world, and that way when it's inevitably time for the next thing, those experiences will still be with you.
I wish I could tell my you get self that life goes on. There is no point in stressing about the little things in life because there is so much beauty in the world. Also, start therapy sooner.
Dark brown blinds of our room that always kept closed. Mouth, always closed because we always got told that we were too loud and talkative. We tried every trick in the book to not seem annoying and to be loved. Looking back, it does not seem real that I have lived through all those years. It seems as if they were a dream or some mere tricks my mind is playing to me, tricking me to think that there are some scraps of memories that make up my "childhood". But as far as my memories go, at one point, I stopped whatever it was that I was doing. Mom and dad sent me to the psychiatrist where I got too confused, because it rather was like an art class. My parents welcomed me with open arms as I got out of my session, thinking that whatever going wrong in me caused by their divorce was gone now that I grabbed a crayon and drew a house with a red roof. They got me a bar of chocolate, and moved on. We, never moved on. We stayed there, stayed at that moment when our dad asked if he could marry another woman and when he promised to not have another child just to break it a month later. We stayed at every moment mom compared us to dad as an insult and every second our childhood crushes showed no interest. We were happy being quiet but of course, they never let us alone.
You have so much time to rummage though emotional baggage.
The guilt you feel isn’t yours, it belongs to the adults that have wronged you.
image created by Georgia Blackson
I’ve spent a long time talking to the shadows on my wall like they were friends. Conversations lit with car headlights and always must be something quiet, something somber. I’ve spent a lot of time with my eyes closed, pretending my door was really a door, something I could open and walk out of and close without ever wondering what I was leaving behind. Doors aren't supposed to be remembered, not like this, but I’ve remembered every one. Every curve and wooden frame, how the handles felt in my hand and how the lock sounded when turned. How it felt to enter and again to leave, and I wonder if I’ve changed somewhere in between those two spaces. If I’ve captured more reflections than I have created myself, internalized, how much of me is made up of this house? If leaving is ever truly in my reach, will I feel it’s hands pulling me back, through the door, up the stairs with one last view of the window before tucking into bed. Can I leave if I’ve never truly woken up? Pulled back the sheets? If my body still lies pressed between pillows and notebooks, filled with confessions of long nights and one sided conversations.
I only ever write what’s in my head, the conversations I play out alone in the dark. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a reason for that, or if I’m just searching for something deeper than what I’ve come to know. Who I am and who I want to be are two very different people. I wrote about that ideal once when I was sixteen and hardly knew what I was talking about. I wouldn’t realize until four years later that I would never be able to explain myself as well as I did back then, when no one was asking. Now that’s all they do - ask. I sit in silence with a pin in my stomach, it turns and pokes and prods for something deeper than “I don’t know,” than, “I wish I could tell you.” Because I wish I could tell you. I used to write like my heart was on fire, now the smoke has risen up into my lungs and I can hardly breathe.
‘You make me so happy and so sad at the same time, you know that?’ I do know that. She told me when we were young, passing letters to each other when we got bored being cooped up in the house. We missed each other, our observations, our constant minds and would frantically ask questions, as an excuse to not come to terms with our singular thoughts. I read that letter continuously through the night, peering into the rotten garden of my childhood home. I know everything that she meant. Yet still, I ask her to elaborate. ‘You are one of the few people who have deeply affected me and conflicted me. From the beginning you helped me stay in touch with my idealistic side and really-as sad as it is, that's what keeps me sane.’ In torched lantern light, our breathing momentarily stops. I’m reminded of everything. She is resting her hand on one of the kitchen stools. She has taken her hair out of those braids, hands flushed with pink, as though someone’s flicked paint onto her. ‘You’ve always respected me and related to me about privacy, and you take away some of the guilt I feel for being unsociable as my way of escape.’ She continues in a softer tone, ‘you don’t make me sad, per se. It’s the parts that I can relate to and parts I can’t. Call it sympathy or empathy, or perhaps it’s because I see myself in you that I wish I could change.’
Her answer’s completely changed. There’s some despair contained in people and I notice it when I look at them. I notice it in their clothes, and the shape of their glasses and trestles of hair because I don’t know where else to look. A sadness is apparent within years of knowing; in a strange, locked in way, they are those photographs of people holding each other, talking about the food from the groceries, avoiding any lingering fear of hunger.
