A birthday, all told, is just another day.
Birthdays are just as subject to bad luck as any other day of the year. It feels more personal because it's your day. But it's not--it's just the randomness of the universe making you randomly suffer.
u/CitrusBay asked:
What's the worst thing that happened to you on your birthday?
Here were some of those answers.
Carmen's Mom...Needs Help
When I turned 15 there was a girl who lived in my apartment complex who I'd flirt with from time to time. On my 18th birthday her mom drunkenly tried to have sex with me. While Stacy's mom may have had it going on, I can assure you that Carmen's mom did not.
Just Awful To A Child
Everyone ignored me and quite some people got gifts for my mom, then I sat in my room and cried. I got scolded for crying and everyone told me to grow up. I was 12.
A Sixteen Candles Situation
So growing up we were poor, lived on a trailer, and not white in the south. My tenth birthday was coming up, and I really wanted a party. A real one like you see on TV shows and whatnot. So I invite everyone in my grade.
The day comes and my dad and I go out and get pizza, and cake, balloons, the whole shebang.
No one showed up.
But my mom, thinking she could save it, invites her friends kids, one was seven, one was a kid who just was super annoying. My older sister invites her friends.
The seven year old totally took over the party, even blew out my candles. My sister and her friends just holed up in our room so I didn't even have a place to get away from the annoying kid, so I spent the afternoon trying to look like I was having fun so my dad wasn't sad.
Or when I was 13 my iguana died. Either one sucked.
Def Not Suspicious
My best friend told me he and my GF weren't going to meet me after I got off work because they were going camping for the weekend, just the two of them.
Just A Little Nicer
I tried to arrange a 19th birthday party over facebook. No-one showed. Sat in a pub alone on uni campus feeling like a right idiot.
My birthdays are generally nicer than that though.
Too Much Emotional Labor
Not anywhere near as bad as some of the comments in this post but in new flat that me and a bunch of friends moved into one of my flatmates had a birthday about 3 weeks before me. everyone made a big fuss about all chipping in money to pay for nice presents ($30 each) then we "had" to go to a fancy restaurant for dinner because the birthday girl had been talking about it. in total the 5 people that lived in the flat spent about $120 each to make the birthday happen (we all had decent paying jobs so we didn't mind splurging once in awhile)
I brought up the fact before we committed that my birthday was next and that we were setting a pretty expensive bar for birthdays in the flat and that it may not be sustainable if everyone had one like this. My flatmates assured me that everyone would get a nice birthday regardless.
my birthday rocked up and I never received any gifts, or dinner, or happy birthdays in person. personally I never wanted to make it a thing. I would have been happy to get some McDonald's for dinner to be honest. as I was going to bed I heard my flatmates I the other room obviously check facebook (though I couldn't see) and see that it was my birthday and that none of them had made an effort. about 30 seconds later I got happy birthday messages from all of them.
it was the last time I put any real effort into helping them with anything.
Externalized Awkward
This happened last year.
I had a huge party, invited about 30 people. At that time it seemed fun but that wasn't even the worst part.
I invited my best friend, I haven't seen her in 2 months at that point. I know that is not that long but before that we used to see each other everyday and then we couldn't meet each other during summer vacations so it felt really long.
I was really excited to see her obviously, I also felt a little nervous. I finally mustered up the courage to go and talk to her, I went to her to talk and she just said "Im sorry, this is awkward" and she walked away. That hurt. This happened at the start of the party so I was pretty upset throughout the rest of the party.
But I don't really blame her, she didn't talk to anyone much at the party as she was going through some tough times. At that time I didn't know that though.
OUCH For Wine
I had a date over for dinner on my 21st birthday this year. We discovered I, not being a functioning adult, lacked a bottle opener for the wine. We then embarked on a several-block walk to Target, purchasing and returning with a crappy little bottle opener.
Alas, it had a sturdy plastic zip-tie which fastened the screw inside. Again, I'm a schmuck, and could not locate my own pair of scissors. Already being stoned, I resolved to stab the plastic repeatedly with my roommate's butcher knife. I was eventually successful with significant force, but the knife plunged forwards and I bisected by entire left pointer finger, requiring a dozen stitches.
A jagged, to-this-day nerve-sensitive scar will help identify my body in any hypothetical future mass casualty incidents, so I've got that going for me - which is nice. At least six different medical personnel throughout the night joked, "Did you at least get any wine?" My date stuck with me in the emergency room until five in the morning - and I still got laid afterwards.
Search Party
5 years old. My best friend with social anxiety who lived in the next town over got overwhelmed by the large amount of kids at the party. He tried to run away and got in the car with somebody that knew him and decided to give him a ride home. This was before cellphones and gps tracking of children.
My parents panicked and called the cops and like 50 people got in their vehicles to search for this kid. When he got to his house his parents called mine to inform them of what happened. They all moved shortly after. Super weird...
It's A Way To Change Your Friend Group
I was friends with a narcissist for most of my life. Little did I know that one of the extremely f*cked up things they like to do is ruin birthdays.
They do this because they believe they should be the center of the universe and it pains them to see other people happy, because they don't care about anyone but themselves. You having a birthday is stealing their "spotlight."
I've made plans like going out of town only to be ditched. Like they tried to give me some bull about how they "don't feel like going" at the last second when the night before they pretended like they were pumped. Or they just turned their phone off the entire day when they practically invited themselves.
I don't have friends anymore because of this. I got sick of it. I got to the point where if someone tries to ruin my birthday, they're getting beat up.
