Birthday Blues

Yesterday [25th] was my 26th birthday
Oh shit I'm old

I hadn't planned to do anything and was in fact hiding it from all until a text from Eric a friend enquiring where the merry beers where to be had that I decided to concoct something to save face. My younger sister followed shortly by offering to take me to the cinema; a pleasant surprise considering we're not always the best of friends.

I hi-jacked her idea and went to the cinema with two friends followed by dinner, preferring that to going clubbing and hanging around a dance floor too nerve-ridden to mingle with my age mates who drunk on their liberated youthful spirit no doubt would shake into the night like it was their birthday even though it's not their birthday.
I had to fight some strong incredulity from Eric who didn't believe I would not be having a drink for my birthday.
"What cinema for you birthday - nah man come on you have to get a drink"
"I'm not drinking, haven't done so for a bit"
"Whaaat? Since when?.....Not even for your birthday?...No, No, you have to have at least one I mean we can't go to just cinema then that's it?... Come on you deserve a birthday beer"
I'd expected the inquisition and I soldier through it finally getting him to accept my wishes and join Jay, another friend and I, to the local cineplex for the much hyped comedy, The Dictator and dinner afterwards. It was all around a low key affair, simply just another day out with friends with nothing perceptible from the outside that this marked the sun setting on the very last of my youth. Having outgrown the brackets of a young-adult I'm now a fully fledge adult - a man who should be capable? Knowledgeable? Self-sufficient? A man who should be man enough?

I'm always left with these bitter under currents of self-doubt and anxious feelings of infantile inadequacies, that have marked all of my major birthdays since my sweet sixteen when I still held sincerely that my mere "shyness", as it was then, was a phase to be outgrown from which would emerge my true personality whose effervescent glow would bring me all the companionship and success I longed for.

Still I'm glad to have marked the day with pleasant company and a few laughs.