Hit by pre-birthday depression

Every year without fail, around about mid-May, the air around me becomes distorted, unbalanced, distasteful. Things are not themselves. My life feels up for grabs. It’s a strange feeling, as if the future had been concertina-d and was being thrown at me.

The reason? My birthday looms.

The feeling lingers and hardens on the actual day, continuing into the evening, regardless of how I choose to spend the day. The following morning, I wake up and the horror has fled. Life feels normal, even a bit dulled and numb in a comfortable, comforting way.

I’ve spoken to other, more functional people about this feeling. No one owns up to experiencing the kind of pre-birthday depression I do.

It was so bad this year that I half-jokingly wondered to myself if I was re-experiencing some kind of birth trauma – as if every other person on this earth didn’t come into the world accompanied by various degrees of trauma.

Certainly it’s grown worse in recent years, and I think I know why it’s so powerful. On this one day, and leading up to it, I confront the difference between what I thought my life was going to be and what it is. Or rather, it confronts me.

Now that I’ve come to expect this feeling and grown familiar with its rise and fall, I’m better able to deal with it. I get stressed planning my birthday and then I experience some relief when the day actually arrives. But a grim shadow follows me around all day.

Melbourne’s been experiencing a spell of weather disconcertingly warm for this time of year. On Saturday night, the night before my birthday, there was a humid, windless, outdoor feel to the air although the winter darkness fell hurriedly. The warmth continued into Sunday, my birthday.

The first half of the day was spent as positively as possible. With a friend I saw a cheery film that was quirky without trying too hard. It didn’t matter that throughout the film I was comparing myself unfavourably with the main character (why don’t I own my flat? why don’t I have dinner parties?).

Afterwards I drove the friend and me to Elwood. We went to a tiny, familiar café and had the overpriced food you’d expect from somewhere so close to the beach. Again, no major problem. My eggplant parmigiana was an undersized runt served in a small round china baking dish, but rich enough to just satisfy me and tasty enough to evince a determination to find a restaurant that serves a parmigiana of decent proportions (I mainly keep off dairy but will gladly make the odd exception).

We strolled along a prosperous residential street to the beach. When we got there the air was still, the water hardly moved. It was a grey-silver, a beautiful corollary to the neatly patterned cloud flurry that lay low over the water and seemed to tilt upwards in the direction of the horizon. The light behind the clouds placed everything into relief; every grey-bone grain of sand and the densely layered chinks of shell-bits.

A patch of blue sky close to distant shoreline looked cinematic, almost green-tinged. There were a few people around, but the atmosphere was pretty quiet – I wondered if people had taken advantage of the weather and gone away for the weekend.

We lingered and walked and threw the problems of the world at the calm water. I was dark, but it was manageable. We drove back to East Malvern and I had a nap before going to my parents’ place for a family dinner.

This started fine, although later there was an ‘incident’ (unfortunately family gatherings are prone to these) that caused a feeling of being sabotaged. I don’t want to go into it; the truth is, I was feeling bad anyway, so it didn’t really have much of a long-term effect.

The next morning I woke up in a calm daze, apart from an initial downer as soon as I remembered the incident. But really I was feeling so much better than the day before. My birthday was over. Normality had returned. I got up and put the kettle on.

One year on, I've written an update on pre-birthday and birthday depression and my experience on the birthday that followed the one described here. The update includes some suggestions (not advice) about dealing with birthday depression. Click here if you'd like to read it.

Please note: birthday depression is another term for birthday sadness. If you are having suicidal thoughts or think you may have clinical depression, please speak to your doctor or a family member, or ring one of the numbers listed here. Please reach out and seek help if you need to.

Want some more insights into birthday depression? I've written an ebook about it. 

Do you have a story of birthday depression you'd like to share?  Head over to the Birthday Depression website and share your story with others experiencing the same thing.

For a short time I'm offering a free mobi file of the book if you share your story on the website. 

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