Birthdays are messy, emotional milestones that remind us we’re still here—and that’s worth something.

There is something weird about birthdays.  A strange emotional cocktail of joy, anxiety, nostalgia and existential dread sneaks up on you when the calendar flips to your special day.

Birthdays are marketed to us as representing pure joy, a day filled with streamers, parties and sparkly dresses. Anyone who has lived through more than a handful of birthdays knows that they do not always feel like celebrations. Sometimes they feel like emotional minefields. Despite the emotional chaos, or maybe because of it, birthdays can be profoundly beautiful too.

Birthdays can be happy and sad because they serve as reminders. Every birthday you celebrate indicates you made it another year. This is a beautiful thing to be reminded of, especially if the year was a hard one. Maybe you pushed through mental health struggles, family chaos or just the general gremlin-energy of university life. Maybe you lost someone or lost yourself. Yet here you are, despite it all, older and (debatably) wiser. I think that is something worth celebrating.

This reminder that time is passing can also be terrifying. Birthdays are like clocks dressed in party hats, reminding us that we are not timeless. That no matter how many serotonin-boosting brunches or chaotic karaoke nights we throw at them, the years are adding up. You start asking yourself weird questions: 

Am I where I thought I would be by now? 

Did I do enough this year? 

Will I ever feel truly happy, or am I just chasing milestones because I do not know what else to do?

The strange thing is that you can be asking all of that internally at the exact same moment that someone is handing you a cupcake with a candle on it. This is the emotional whiplash of birthdays. One minute you are laughing with your friends, feeling loved and grateful. The next, you are alone in your room staring at the ceiling, wondering if your life is on the right track or if you are just vibing your way into the void.

This is normal, and more importantly, it is human.

Birthdays are little mirrors. Not the funhouse kind, but the kind that show you who you are right now — flaws, fears, dreams and all. Birthdays give you a moment to stop and take stock. To reflect on the weird, wonderful, painful journey you have been on and to imagine where you are going next.

That kind of reflection can be emotionally intense. For people with complicated histories, birthdays can stir up some real grief. Maybe your family never celebrated them. Maybe you share your birthday with someone you lost. Maybe the idea of celebrating yourself feels alien or even wrong. That sadness is valid.Not everyone has picture-perfect birthday memories. For some of us, birthdays are less about joy and more about surviving. It is about choosing, maybe for the first time, to show up for yourself in a way others never did.

Social media has weaponized birthdays.It feels like it is not enough to just have a birthday anymore; now you must perform it. You need aesthetic photos, clever captions, an Instagram story collage of you smiling in six different locations, all while pretending you did not cry in the shower that morning because turning 25 made you spiral. It can sure be exhausting.

Some of the best birthdays are not the loud ones. They are ones where you spend the day with people who really know you or you go for a solo walk and realize you are proud of who you are becoming. The best birthdays are the ones where you feel understood by others, and maybe, finally, by yourself.

We live in a culture that is obsessed with celebrating beginnings — births, engagements, graduations — but we are less good at honoring the process. Birthdays, at their core, are about process and growth. Sometimes it does not come with balloons, but with tears and silence instead.

If you are someone who loves your birthday, who throws big parties and basks in the attention, that is amazing, and you deserve all the joy. However, if you are someone who dreads it, who feels heavy and weird and just wants the day to pass quietly, that is also valid. You do not have to perform happiness to make your birthday meaningful. Sometimes, just acknowledging your existence — your real, messy, miraculous existence — is enough.

Maybe that is what birthdays are about. Not celebration in the commercial sense, but recognition. If your birthday is coming up, or just passed, or is still months away — remember it is okay if it feels weird. It is okay if it is both happy and sad, since that is what makes it real. 

Birthdays are a reminder that life is not a straight line. It is a series of loops, spirals and surprises, with every year you live being another page in the messy, chaotic, beautiful story that you are writing — just by being here.

That is truly something worth feeling everything about.