Yes!
It underlines how much my parents don’t understand me every year. There’s a present which invariably makes me feel worse than
No present (I ask for no present): something very ugly with a “I saw this and thought it was exactly you”, or earrings for my never pierced ears, etc. Even if I give them a really specific, not at all expensive instruction, it’ll go wrong. Last year my card had a handwritten message about my age. Except i wasn’t that age. And despite for ten years me saying that my name is still exactly the same as it was the day they named me, it’s often addressed with some variation of my husband’s surname in it.
All of this and I’m expected to ring them to thank them otherwise I’m the rude one. At least last year my child said “grandma you’re silly, mummy is x this year and you said she was y, I thought you were supposed to be mummy’s mummy”. Bless the honesty of six year olds.
I have other family members too who make me feel bad about myself. I honestly know how lucky I am to have folk to remember me and buy me a present and if they stick to “buy me a book token or a pack of chocolate buttons” i ask for every time it would be fine, but instead every present I have received in recent years has made me feel worse about myself. And then there’s the lashings off gratitude I need to demonstrate. And the guilt I feel that way. And the trip to the charity shop.
I have thought long and hard about it and it would be a relief not to have that palaver.
I also don’t have really close friends, although I find it easy enough to invite random people from the school playground out for a “let’s go to the pub to celebrate” etc.
My husband tries, but he doesn’t do special easily and is an anti social git, so there would never be a meal arranged for friends, a party, etc without me making the effort.
And to top it all we get another year older!
Unhappy birthday everyone.