tw // suicide, depressing thought 

in my nineteenth laps of circling the sun, unexpectedly. 

seven months ago, i did not expect to finally blow the nineteenth candle of my life. i was depressed, frankly speaking (and frankly write about that here, too). living past my next birthday was not something i expected. i was literally on the verge of writing my last will and making my kamar kos haunted, unsold for rent, for that someone had hung herself and died inside. it took me seven months and three medications later to celebrate my nineteenth birthday, alive, breathing, and well. 

i am still on medications and therapy on my nineteenth birthday and as much as i need to admit that going through that makes me feel weak, i am so grateful that i got a chance to be cured, to go through therapy and get medicated is a privilege and i should have touched the ground for that. as much as it makes me weak, it had given me a chance to living, not to just meaninglessly alive. 

i usually hate birthday celebrations (this is another trauma unboxed in my therapy room). 

when i was twelve, i throw away a birthday party. i was in my first year on middle school. a lot of new friends and my extroverted ass were looking forward excitedly to this party. i invited around 30ish people and most of them confirmed to come. my grandma made a big portion of soto padang and my parents brought me a very big birthday cake. but then only 7 people came...

i will be forever grateful for these seven people, but it would not change the fact that i ended up eating soto padang for three days straight and there was a big ass birthday cake in my refrigerator until october (because nobody really like cakes in my household. we are minangnese, anyway) i found myself cursing that birthday cake for five months straight until we decided to just throw the cake away. but throwing that cake did not mend a hole in my heart. i despise birthday cake even years after my twelfth birthday. my thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays started with a tantrum because my parents insisted to buy me a birthday cake and i don't want to see even an inch of birthday cake with my name in it. but they finally understand in my fifteen and after, with pizza replacing the cake. 

and i never really celebrate my birthday after that (unless with blowing candles on top of a pizza in the morning and reposting snapgrams from my closest one). 

but this year, i found myself really fascinated by the idea of birthday celebrations. i have some people that i believe will and must come (and if they didn't, i will be very upset and probably change the trajectory of my life apart). 

it was almost like building a fortress, years of being disappointed had built me to always anticipate everything that could make me upset. i reserved the restaurant myself, plan the table myself, bought a cake myself, and even bought the gift myself. not that i don't believe these people i now called 'family' enough, but my standards of "birthday" are not the same as theirs. any probabilities would make me upset so just as i said earlier, i built the fortress, i prepared everything first. 

however, things are really not as bad as it seems. i got surprised by another cake! (just a donut stacked on each other, but who really cares anyway! i got surprised! i never been! then i received gifts, very absurd gifts to be honest! but me personally, i loveee these absurd gifts more than expensive gifts. because it means that they think about it and how it could be liked by me more than just picking random expensive items. 

i literally received two packs of cigarettes, not just any cigarettes but the same brand and flavor i usually smoke (they really think of it last minute but still manage to give me a suitable gift, oh my), then i also received a glass, not any glass, but the exact glass i want to buy but did not because i don't think it's necessary with my budget back then. It was also filled with bunch of paper balls with messages inside of them! The last gift i received is lipstick, but its color is the exact color i would wear which is bright red! (i even wear the lipstick now as i write this.) 

but nineteen... is something much bigger than a birthday celebration, isn't it? 

nineteen itself is a big number for me, a big number to control and conquer. and it seems scary, maybe because i haven't stepped on it and i have no idea on how it will be going. but if this whole planning for a birthday party teaches me to, is to not be afraid of something i haven't tried before. this includes, trying to be nineteen. 

eventually, i will conquer being nineteen, and being twenty, and being twenty-one, and so on.

and eventually, more birthdays will reveal what kind of conquerer i will be. 

best regards, 

klaire, now nineteen.