End of August

The air changes around the second week of August each year. It is an intangible shift you realize when the sun starts dipping below the horizon just a few minutes earlier each day. Being born on August 13th means my birthday is permanently tethered to this specific transition. aka:The beginning of the end.

Every year, the approach of my birthday feels like impending doom. While everyone else is busy squeezing the last bit of joy out of the weather, I am bracing for impact. It is, quite honestly, my least favorite day of the year. Without fail, it is a day of heavy reflection and the one day of year I am guaranteed to shed tears. My birthday is the day I am forced to look at my circle and realize it naturally narrows each year.

I am haunted by the expectations my younger self had for who I would be by the age of 22. I had this vision of a youthful, adventurous, and fearless girl. Instead, when that number changes each year, I am just reminded of how distant from these characteristics I am. It is a cold awakening that I am alive, but the world feels like it is moving without me. There is something jarring about functioning as an adult while confined by the same four walls of my childhood bedroom. The same four walls I painted teal blue at the age of 14. The same four walls I cried in after the first day of high school. The same four walls I opened my college acceptances in. The same four walls I spent quarantine in. These are now the same four walls I am trying to build an “adult-like” life in. It is hard to feel like you are evolving when you’re physically anchored to the place where you first learned to dream big.

Before I even pressed play on the new Noah Kahan album, I "claimed" the song End of August because of my very opinionated and personal feelings toward this time of year.

The lyrics pull me back to those strange, in-between summers during college. I think about being home and driving the same roads from high school with Amy. We spend our time doing the exact things we did when we were sixteen, like a bad habit we cannot seem to break. I think about those last hangouts before going back to college, when Amy and I would sit together in the August humidity, not knowing the next time we would see each other but assured we would average 5 FaceTime calls a day and send each other about 200 TikTok’s (give or take). Every year, she hands me my birthday card around this time. This is not just ANY birthday card, but a card she spends the entire year planning to perfection. It is a physical manifestation of quality over quantity to me. In the song, Noah talks about the "yield" of the season, and as I hold that card, I realize that even if my circle is shrinking, the harvest is richer. I don't need a hundred messages when I have one person who spent 365 days making sure I felt seen on the one day I usually feel invisible.

tb to end of august starting senior year of high school🥹

There is a line in the song about how "it’s all ending," and that is the core of my birthday blues. It is the realization that the version of me from last year is officially gone, the new version feels a little bit like a stranger, and the expectations younger me set for myself at this age are a distant dream. As I’ve had this song on repeat the last few days, I’ve connected this strong parallel between the “End of August” and my personal feelings towards the end of August.

While I listen to this song….

I think about Amy’s cards, a year's worth of intention tucked into an envelope.

I think of my best friend Sammy, who despite being away and not having her phone, still managed to wish me happy birthday.

I think about my girls from treatment who remember the vulnerable details about me and wish me a happy birthday while remembering it is not usually a happy day of the year for me.

I think about my coworkers who shared the most personalized wishes.

I think about the interns I worked with who surprised me with cupcakes in the office.

I do not need a growing pile of gifts or a crowded room to prove that I am loved. I don’t want to spend every August 13th grieving the loss of the sun and shivering at the thought of the coming winter. The noise of a hundred birthday wishes doesn't hold a candle to being truly known by the people who stay through the coldest and the darkest months of our lives.