Birthday Gifts!

Another day, another year older. Everyone’s been asking me how nineteen feels and I respond with the same answer, “If nineteen had a feeling it would be fat, single and eating copious amount of Chinese food and cake.”

It just so happened that I got a week off from school and since dubbed it “Joe’s Birthday Bash Extravaganza Week Long Awesome.”  It started out with spending all of Wednesday with newly single and a dear old friend, closeted gay. We went shoe shopping, book shopping, out to dinner and ended it with The Amazing Spider-man 2, which was AMAZING. Truly, one of the best sequels I’ve ever seen, covering every range of human emotion.

Today, being my real birthday, was spent eating Chinese food and cake. I answered all the posts to my wall, the texts and snapchat and then I went to goodwill, my go-to used bookstore. As I browsed through old titles and familiar classics, my phone rang. I would’ve thought that by now ex-boyfriend 1 would’ve forgot my birthday, but instead he called and suggested lunch at Denny’s. Meet at two-thirty.

I got there at two-forty; I like to keep him waiting. I thought he would’ve told the employee’s that’s its my birthday and they would’ve sang to me, maybe even give me a cupcake, but no. Nothing except a free grand slam, which I didn’t even finish due to my Chinese food. He then suggested that we go see a physic. “There is one right down the street from the house,” he tells me.

Long story short, the physic tells me three things. That I will have two sons (at this point I looked at her. Should I tell her I'm gay?) not related or twins, that I will have one marriage, and only one marriage (better choose the right guy) and that I will leave my mark (mark on who? What?)

On the drive home from the physic, ex-boyfriend 1 just left me, I thought about birthdays and gifts and people. They always said that it’s the gift that counts, but what if the true gifts are the people themselves?

The people you can’t live out, the people you love or hate, the people that call you at nine in the morning and sing Happy Birthday. The people that save pictures for four years, ready to use them for the perfect occasion.

To me, those people are the true gifts. The ones that keep giving.