A Birthday Story

Today is my birthday, and I am striving to find happiness as I navigate this uncertain world. I thought I would examine my feelings in this story, which consists of four movements.

I. Standing Over the Sink

Hunny turned seventy-four on a Friday. No cake, no candles—just the soft hum of the refrigerator and the ache in her knees as she stood over the sink, eating half a peach from a chipped bowl. The juice dripped onto her wrist, and she didn’t bother to wipe it. She used to love peaches. Now they were just something soft enough to chew. She had all but lost her passion for fruit or food of any kind. You would think she would be thinner, she did.

Her days had become a loop: wake up, walk the neighborhood to get her steps in, go to work, come home, eat, sleep. She didn’t resent the routine. Resentment required energy, and lately, she was running low. Romance had long since slipped off the table, and adventure had been postponed indefinitely—until the bills were paid, until retirement was possible, until something changed.

She used to be fire. She had marched, shouted, and written manifestos in the margins of her life. She had loved hard, fought harder, and raised a son with whom she bought a house. One more thing she hadn’t thought through. If she felt old before now, when she said she “lived” with her son and his family, it put her in a new category of old person. She had recently taken to saying, “We bought a house together”. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t make her feel quite so ready for the nursing home.

Hunny had stories—ones that could make you laugh, cry, or question everything. But lately, she felt like a book left open on a nightstand, pages curling at the edges, waiting for someone to return.

That night, after rinsing her bowl and turning off the kitchen light, she paused. The silence wasn’t heavy—it was hollow. She walked to the mirror in the hallway and looked at herself. Not to fix her hair or check her makeup. Just to see if she was still there.

She was. But it was odd how she didn't see the 74 years etched across her face; instead, a younger version looked back.

And for the first time, she whispered aloud, “I miss me.”

It wasn’t a declaration. It was a beginning of sorts.

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II. The Girl Who Used to Be Me

She came to Hunny in fragments.

Not in dreams, but in flashes—like old film reels flickering behind her eyelids as she brushed her teeth or folded laundry. The girl who used to be her wore combat boots and hoop earrings, carried protest signs in one hand and love letters in the other. She had a laugh that made strangers turn their heads and a spine made of steel wrapped in velvet.

She was nineteen and fearless, standing on courthouse steps shouting about justice, her voice hoarse but unshaken. She was twenty-three, a radiant single mom, dancing barefoot in the kitchen with a baby on her hip and Aretha on the radio. She was forty-five and furious, slamming her fist on a conference table because someone had called her “emotional” instead of “right.”

She was the woman who wrote poems in the margins of HR reports, who kissed with her whole body, who believed in second chances and third cocktails. She was messy and magnificent, and she never once ate standing over a sink.

Hunny missed her.

Not because she was younger, but because she was vivid. She had edges. She made choices that felt like declarations. She didn’t wait for permission to feel joy.

Now, at seventy-four, Hunny felt like a shadow of that girl. A quieter version. A woman who had traded fire for function, who had learned to budget her hope.

But that night, after whispering “I miss me,” she sat down at the kitchen table for the first time in months. No candles, no ceremony—just a notebook and a pen. She began to write, not about what she had lost, but about what still lived inside her.

The girl who used to be her wasn’t gone.

She was waiting.

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III. The Spark

The notebook stayed on the kitchen table.

Each morning, Hunny walked past it on her way to lace up her sneakers. Each evening, she glanced at it while eating over the sink. It was like a dare—quiet, patient, unrelenting. On the third night, she sat down again. This time, she pulled out her laptop, because she couldn't even read her own handwriting in that notebook she had started. This time she wrote:

“She wore red lipstick to interviews and didn’t care if it smudged. She believed in love letters, even when they went unanswered. She once told a man to leave her apartment and never come back because he didn’t laugh at Monty Python.”

The memories came like rain—soft at first, then steady. She wrote about the time she danced in an island thunderstorm with a stranger named Miguel, as well as the protest where she locked arms with a woman who would later become her best friend. She wrote about the heartbreaks that didn’t destroy her, the victories that didn’t make headlines, and the quiet moments that felt like miracles.

And then she wrote about now.

“I eat standing up. I walk to keep my heart from stiffening. I work because I’m afraid of what silence might say. I miss being wanted. I miss being witnessed.”

She didn’t cry—she didn’t need to. The words were enough.

One day, she discovered a website where she could share her stories. A place where she could share her voice, share her truth.

She almost kept scrolling. But something tugged at her—the girl who used to be her, maybe. So she joined. She knew she wasn’t a great writer, but there was something cathartic about sharing her stories, whether anyone read them or not; she was opening herself up, maybe to no one but herself.

She had felt given up on. But one day, someone commented on a story she had posted, and she felt seen.

It was a small comment, almost felt like a whisper, “You sound like me.”

And just like that, Hunny felt seen.

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IV. Becoming Again

She started eating at the table by the glow of the laptop. She bought a new shade of lipstick—deep plum, like rebellion. She wrote every night, not to escape, but to remember. She didn’t fall in love, not yet. But she flirted with possibility. She planned a small trip, just a weekend, just for herself. She wore earrings again.

She didn’t become the girl she used to be.

She became the woman who remembered her.

And that was enough.

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