31

Last Sunday was my birthday. 31 years old.

At first I was thinking not to celebrate anything.

I used to celebrate my birthday with my only two best-friends-since-childhood back in Indonesia. Sometimes with some close friends from my bachelor degree who were working in Jakarta and had time to celebrate with me. So seldom with my family, because I usually didn’t have days off from work on my birthdays. Home was 1.5 hours flight away from Jakarta. So I usually saved my days off for Idul Fitri celebration. I remember, the last birthday I spent with my Mom and Dad was on 2012, at the hospital in Kuching, Malaysia because my Dad had to be hospitalized due to a heart attack.

Last year was the first birthday apart from everyone I used to celebrate with.

I spent my “big” 30th birthday only with my flatmate at the moment because all of my new friends, ones that I considered as close friends were not in Karlskrona. However, it was a good day. We went for ice cream, then pizza, then watch movies (The Raid and Kill Bill ~ a hell of birthday movies). He was a really good company, keeping me from being sad for that was my first birthday without my best friends, and also my first birthday after my Dad passed away and Mom was 10.000 miles away. And a week later, some of my friends were back, and we’re celebrating my birthday with watching the final of World Cup 2014, as well as making it a farewell party for a friend who’s going back to Japan on the next day.

This year, I was thinking not to celebrate anything. I’m no longer communicating with my (now ex-)flatmate for some reasons. Some of the friends that I knew from last year were leaving Karlskrona already. I didn’t make a lot of new friends throughout the second year here because I preferred to have an in-depth relationship with my depression. And I still think that any celebration to have since my Dad passed away is going to be a sad celebration anyway. True, I’m still grieving. It just won’t go away no matter how hard I tried.

But anyhow, I wanted to feel happy if only for a day, for my birthday.

The thing is one of my new friends who I hang out with recently, had to move out from Karlskrona on Saturday, to another city where she has her job. Another one of them would probably leave on the weekend to his hometown for a summer holiday. I don’t have many friends left to celebrate my birthday with, that’s why I decided to celebrate it early. So, the celebration was starting on Friday night.

I made an Indonesian traditional birthday dish, nasi kuning (yellow rice), with all its side dishes that I could afford to make: tempe kecap (tempeh with sweet soy sauce), kering kentang (fried shredded potato), telur dadar (shredded omelet), ayam kecap (sweet soy sauce chicken) and sambal balado (balado chili sauce). I also made a vanilla cake with cream cheese frosting that tasted heavenly (I swear!). My friends (Lithuanian, Greek, Swedish and Turkish) loved my food. I was happy.

The next day, one of my Indonesian friends invited me to celebrate his son’s first birthday. So, another Indonesian food and Swedish typical birthday cake, princestårta to enjoy. Then some of the friends asked to go to a swimming park in Ronneby for the next day, my actual birthday. I was absolutely excited about it, but then we didn’t make it because one of the girls who supposed to drive the car was getting sick. So sorry for her.

On my birthday, since we canceled the Ronneby trip, I was staying in my bed until 11 o’clock in the morning. Then I checked my phone and got messages from my family and best friends. I was not excited to do anything until I decided that I wanted to feel happy again, on my actual birthday day!

So, I texted one of my Indonesian friends to enjoy ice cream with me. It was a really warm day, ice cream would be perfect. She and her husband agreed. Then we met another Indonesian friend and her family in the ice cream place also. It was an unplan small birthday celebration with them. Later on, my friend and her husband asked me to join them for a short trip outside the town. Even though the husband said that it might me boring, but I joined anyway. It was nice to go outside of Karlskrona for a while. Don’t get me wrong. I love Karlskrona, but I’m getting bored by being lonely too much.

Before we left, I turned on my birthday information on facebook to be able to be viewed by my facebook friends. I normally just keep the information for myself. I don’t really like people to know my birthday, except for my close friends and family who I expect would know it by heart. But yeah, something different might do me good. However, I don’t have internet access to check on my facebook anytime anywhere. So, after went back home, I felt more happy to found that a lot of my international friends wrote me birthday wishes.

I’m still fighting my sadness and depression, but it felt good that I could make myself happy on my birthday weekend. 🙂

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