On birthdays and apartments

the birthday newsletter edition

Hello lovers!

It’s my birthday! I’m writing this from bed, wearing my favourite dressing gown, and am thinking about what I should have for breakfast before I start work at 9am. I’m always overthinking around my birthday, planning, scheming, dreaming. So I wrote a short little thing about that you can read below. To be honest, I wanted to write a lot more, but this is all that came out this time. I’ll save the rest for my book. I also want to highlight that my show, I said what I said, is opening at Melbourne Fringe in a week (October 6-14). It’s the same show I did during Melbourne Comedy Festival, so if you missed it then, this is your chance to see it (or recommend it to someone if you already have!). You can find event info and tickets here.
Love you all extra today because it’s my birthday!
xo,

Aurelia

On birthdays & apartments

I was born at home. 
But like, not the way you’re thinking. My birth wasn’t giving Gwyneth-approved, doula-guided, well-prepared, or partner-supported. The time of the year I was born in leads me to believe that my parents tried to work things out again around Christmas or New Year’s, but by the time I was due they’d split up again, and this time it was final. Mum moved into a 2-bedroom apartment without central heating. She worked in a warehouse, packing orders, continued cycling everywhere, stopped smoking. The only person present for my birth was my seven year old brother, sleeping in the bedroom he called his during weekends only. Monday to Friday he spent at my dad’s. I was born on a Saturday.

It’s my birthday week and I’m turning 27. I’m catching up with a friend who’s halfway through her Saturn return and has already lived though the unique blues that accompanies being the right age to join the 27-club. 
I loved 27, she says. 27 has so much potential. You’re young enough that, if, you played your cards right, you could still make it onto a 30 under 30 list. You could start a family and people would think; yes, they’re old enough to make these types of decisions . And scientifically, your brain has been fully developed for about two years now, so you’re not fucking stupid anymore. 
Yeah, I feel good about this, I say. Because once I get through 27 without dying, I’ll just keep living you know? Because what’s the point of dying now? You know how when you’re a kid people try to convince you that you’re living the life and it’s only going to get worse? What a fucking lie. It’s only getting better. I’ve never wanted to die less in my whole life, I say. She picks up a glass half full, it’s pet nat of course, we’ve fallen for the scam of so called natural, so called french wine. Cheers. To not dying. Fuck it, to living forever!

Because my birthday is on September 30th, I can use the whole month of September as an excuse for Birthday Behaviour. Birthday Behaviour includes, but isn’t limited to: a birthday mani-pedi, massage, and haircut; dinner at a fuck-off restaurant; setting an unlimited budget for vinyl purchases; buying that bag because the world is ending anyways and a whole lotta “who am I to deny myself this?” attitude. I blame this on not having any birthday celebrations as a child. Growing up in the Jehovah’s Witness sect meant we didn’t celebrate birthdays. We also didn’t celebrate Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Years’s Eve, Easter, Halloween and Valentine’s Day. I don’t have a single memory receiving a gift that I asked for, or any gift at all, as a child. As a result I’m prolific at gifting myself almost whatever my heart desires. I’m healing my inner child, I say.
And my inner child loves Telfar bags. 

It’s my birthday week and I’m coming home alone late. My apartment is warm and full of everything I love, my dog is waiting for me, he’s heard me park and his little face is peeking out between the curtains. Someone is practicing guitar downstairs. The upstairs neighbours shower is running, and the communal laundry dryer tumbles away. I always wonder what my neighbour’s apartments look like. Where they’ve placed their couches and where they hide their weed, and importantly, whether their bathtubs are more comfortable than mine. I don’t know the neighbours, but I’ve met them all. Today I notice the balloons in the couple next door’s apartment, visible from their window. They’re silver and spell out happy birthday, there are flowers on their window sill, and that means another Libra in the building, I think. One time, shortly after moving in, I leaned out the window late at night, smoke in hand, pondering what I’d signed up for, living in this building. When I looked to my right I spotted my neighbour doing the same thing out his window. We both pulled our heads back inside straight away, like what we did was verboten, but smoke lingers. Per my birthday eve tradition I run a myself a bath. I’ve done this as long as I can remember. A bath is a relatively cheap luxury. Warm water and soap. Wash the last day or year away. 

The year of my twelfth birthday is no different. I take a bath on the last day of being 11, a number I liked because it was simultaneously odd and even. I recline all the way to submerge and hold my breath underwater as long as I can. I’m not drowning but I’m not not drowning either. This is as close to floating as I can get. I’m turning twelve and I’m not celebrating because we’re in a cult. But my body gives me a gift on September 30th anyways: my first period. 

My body is a clock that strikes period for every birthday. I hate this shit. 
I mean who doesn’t hate periods?, my friend  Riv says, who’s come over with lox bagels and iced coffees to celebrate my morning with me. Show me a bitch who loves her period and I guarantee she’s either a lier or a masochist, probably both.
I couldn’t agree more. The punishment for not creating a new life is blood. A monthly reminder of what could have been. Only that we’re glad that what could have been, isn’t. Anyways, Happy Birthday! Don’t let your body ruin this for you, she says. And I won’t. My body is home and home is a good place to be. Have I told you I was born at home? I say. Like, one of those home births? she asks. No, more like, I was in a rush to arrive. More like, mum thought she had a whole other week and no one was expecting me yet, but I only took half an hour, so she delivered me alone and then called the ambulance like, hey, I just had a baby, can you pick us up? She had time to put the sheets and towels in the washing machine before they arrived. My brother was woken up, and demanded to know why she hadn’t gotten him to help deliver me. My father was called and arrived at the hospital with his new girlfriend. I was born in a two bedroom apartment not much bigger than the one I live in now, and into a family that wouldn’t even celebrate the day. But there is no place I’d rather be, then, or now.