My Girlfriend Remembered My Birthday When Even I Had Forgotten..

Today is my birthday, but no one wished me except my girlfriend. Here's the part that gets me. I didn't even remember it was my birthday, she did. I need to explain how someone forgets their own birthday because I know how that sounds. When I turned 18, I thought it was going to be a big deal.

18 is supposed to be a big deal. I didn't ask for a party, I didn't ask for anything. I just figured my parents would do something, maybe dinner, maybe a cake from the grocery store, anything. I came home from school and the house was empty, no note. I texted my mom, she said they were at a restaurant and there were leftovers in the fridge, just the two of them, not on purpose, they just forgot.

My brother was away at college and didn't call. My two friends at the time knew and still didn't text. I sat on the couch and waited up till midnight like an idiot, like somebody was going to remember at 11:59 and save it. Nobody did. The next morning my mom said, "Oh my god, yesterday." and looked at my dad. He shrugged. I gave it one more year.

At 19, I didn't remind anybody, I just waited to see, nothing. That was the last birthday I counted and I know that sounds small. People have real problems, but something in me just shut off. I decided if nobody was going to remember, I'd make sure nobody could. I took my birthday off Facebook. I took it off every app that asked.

When I started a new job, I told HR, but asked them to keep it off the little birthday calendar in the break room. When new friends asked when my birthday was, I'd say, "Eh, I don't really do birthdays." and change the subject. If nobody knows, nobody can forget. That was my whole system. It worked for six years. Six birthdays came and went and I treated them like a Tuesday.

After a while, I stopped even noticing the date coming up. That's how you end up forgetting your own birthday, you practice. I never told my girlfriend either. We've been together seven months. She asked once early on, kind of casual, and I did my I don't really do birthdays thing. She said, "Okay." and let it go.
I remember being relieved. I figured that was that. In May, she brought me to her mom's birthday dinner.

Everybody sang. Her dad did a toast. Her little nephew smeared frosting on the table. I sat there smiling and it felt like watching it through glass. At one point she looked at me across the table for a second too long. I didn't think anything of it.

So, last night I'm in bed at 11:58 watching some dumb video on my phone, normal night. I had work in the morning. My phone buzzed at exactly 12, "How? Happy birthday." I just stared at it. My first thought, and I'm not kidding, was that she sent it to the wrong person, like maybe it was her co-worker's birthday and she hit my name by accident.

I actually opened my calendar to check the date. Then I sat there looking at the screen with my heart going because it was the date, it was my birthday, and I had not known that 30 seconds earlier. I was halfway through typing, "Wrong person." when a second text came through, "Look outside." I went to the window.

Her car was in my driveway with the headlights off. She lives 20 minutes away. She has to be up at 6. She drove over in the middle of the night for a text she could have sent from bed. I opened the front door and she's standing on my porch in pajama pants and a hoodie holding a gas station cupcake, one of those chocolate ones in the plastic clam shell, one candle stuck in it.

The candle was already half melted. She'd lit it in the car and sat there in the dark waiting for the clock to hit 12 before she sent the text. I asked her how she even knew. I genuinely could not figure it out. I had been so careful. She said, "Back in March we stopped for gas and I handed her my wallet to hold while I pumped.

" I don't even remember that day. It was just gas, but she was bored. She flipped it open and looked at my license. She saw the date. She said at first she just thought, "Oh, that's coming up in a few months." But then she remembered how I dodged the question and she noticed I never mentioned my parents calling on holidays.

She noticed I never talked about any birthday ever, not one story, not one memory. She said she figured if I never brought it up, it was because nobody else ever had and she didn't want to ask and make me say that out loud. So she set a reminder on her phone that night, March 14th. She named it his birthday, "Don't bring it up.

Just show up." She showed me. It was still on her phone. She'd been sitting on that for 5 months. She never said a word. She never hinted. She never asked again. She just waited. I was standing there in my doorway in my socks. I didn't know what to do with my hands. It was cold out and she was shivering and she'd been parked in my driveway since 11:40 so she wouldn't be late.

Then she held the cupcake up and said, "Make a wish. You're not going another year without one." I'm 24 years old and I stood in my doorway and sobbed into a 99 cent cupcake.