I remember when I was a teenager, my best friend commented that I always seemed to get hit by the birthday blues. I guess at that age each year that passes brings with it a mounting pressure to meet all the standards set for you. Social and sexual standards, educational and career standards, independence standards, not to mention fashion and body standards. Back then it was easy to feel like I was the only one who was falling short, but I suspect everyone probably felt the same. At least my friend cared enough to remember it was my birthday and notice my seasonal shift!
As my daughter enters this same teenage chapter in her life, I notice a similar shift in her. Not wanting to celebrate, spending more hours in the bathroom preening her face and hair, carefully selected outfits and craving home, the only safe place to be completely free to be your unfiltered self. Because I remember, and I understand, I respected her need for a comfy day at home in her pyjamas. She spent most of the day on her computer playing games and chatting to her friends until my parents stopped in for cake and coffee.
After they left, she came to me and said she was feeling “salty.” Which I believe is young people speak for annoyed/upset/angry. Asking her why she was feeling that way, she said only one of her friends had remembered and said happy birthday. I said maybe they didn’t know it was her birthday as she didn’t do anything to celebrate and she insisted she had been talking about it all week at school, so they must’ve known, and that she remembers their birthdays. Although, as we get older, birthdays hold less significance, and we have more understanding and tolerance for other peoples own busy lives and cluttered mind, I could still relate to her feelings.
It’s so easy to fall into this trap where you convince yourself that you are a better friend to your mates than they are to you. To allow yourself to feel uncared for, to see the negatives and start questioning your own importance within your circle. It’s even easier to over exaggerate your own greatness as a friend. Especially when you are a teenager, but even when you aren’t.
It might come down to love languages, because sometimes the way we express love, care and friendship to others, is not the way they themselves express it. For my daughter, remembering her friend’s special day is a way she expresses her friendship and that she was thinking of her friends. When she planned a “friend-entines day” celebration for them and lovingly packed each of them a love heart cupcake, and when she buys them thoughtful gifts for their birthdays even if they don’t have a celebration, or she isn’t included, she’s expressing her friendship and the special bond she feels with them individually and as a group.
I am so proud of her for the way she expresses her friendship, and the joy it brings her to make her friends happy. To see her realise that the act of giving is a greater gift than that of receiving. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to receive. What it does mean is that she has to look more carefully for the details she is missing in her salty state.
I reminded her of the one friend who was able to calm and comfort her when she had to go to the sick bay at school, which was her friends way of showing love and care. I reminded her of the requests for time spent hanging out together in person from another friend, and the secrets they share in those moments alone together. That shared intimacy is an act of care. I reminded her of the friend who makes her laugh, even when she feels like crying, and how that was an act of love and care.
Most of all, I reminded her to look for these positives, to remember them and to be gracious when her friends don’t reciprocate to her in her own language. Not to test people, by not celebrating your birthday and seeing who will notice. Not to set people up to fail and to confirm your worst fears about yourself and them. Not to let your mind poison you and your relationships by convincing you that nobody loves you and you would never treat them in ways they treated you.
When I relayed this to a friend with a young lady in her life of a similar age to my daughter however, she reminded me, that while they were all valid points, and important, it still does feel craptacular when your friends don’t remember your birthday. I reflected on an article I had read recently in a female friendship group I am a member of, and how a woman in her 60’s was also upset when her friends did not remember her birthday, while they remembered and celebrated everyone else’s birthdays.
So I hugged my young teen and told her it is ok to feel salty. It does hurt to feel forgotten and unimportant. Then we brainstormed ways to make it not happen again, such as celebrating as a way to remind people, or sending them a subtle message on your birthday such as “wow, I am 14 today! Sooooo old!” Lol I also said it was ok to say to her friends that she felt hurt, and allow them to apologise and make it up to her. Because while it is easy and lovely to express your love for your friends, sometimes it is not easy at all to express your hurt. But if you can’t, are you really as close as you think you are?
The magic isn’t in having perfect friends who never forget, who go above and beyond, who never let you down, the magic is in letting yourselves be imperfect, in working it out, in trusting that they will make it up to you, and that you can trust them with your hurt. “I’m not hurt” she insists; “I’m salty.” And I remind her that when someone says “I hate you” they really mean “you hurt me.”
“You don’t understand what salty is mum. I don’t hate them.” Ok, maybe I don’t understand what salty means, but I do understand friendships; what she’s going through now, what she will go through. The joy and the heartbreak and the new and old friendships, and the art of knowing when to hold and when to fold. But, as my own mother loves to tell me “you can’t put an old head on young shoulders.”
You can’t. But maybe my daughter has much to teach me about friendships too. Watch this space, the next generation of girl drama is coming through! Stay tunes folks!
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
