today is the 23rd.
tomorrow is the 24th.
my birthday. twenty-one.
i keep asking myself what i should do, how to spend the hours, but every answer collapses before it can take shape. i already know how it will go—me, in bed, scribbling words into the void.
it should mean something, right? this turning of the year, this quiet mark of survival. but it doesn’t. i don’t feel the spark people talk about when they count candles and blow wishes into the air. i don’t feel anything.
i don’t celebrate birthdays. perhaps they were celebrated for me once or twice, but i wasn’t even aware of what it meant back then. so in truth, i never really have.
emptiness is my oldest companion.
greetings—i can accept them, but not the hollow ones, tossed at me only because someone else remembered. what i value are the rare ones—unprompted, from memory, from intent. not borrowed. not forced. if you only remember me because someone else did, then don’t. there’s no need.
i remember the first cake i had—i was fifteen, a surprise from my mother’s sister. then eighteen—a cake from a past lover, another from ate dayen. after that—nothing. every birthday since has been blank: air, silence, and my bed’s familiar weight.
i expect nothing from my parents. no celebrations. no gifts. no cake—just their presence. more than enough. life is heavy, especially for them, and i refuse to add to that weight over something i myself don’t even find special.
that’s why i celebrate through silence. silence is the only gift i allow myself. it’s enough—enough to keep me sane, enough to remind me i exist, even when nothing else does.
today is boring. tomorrow will be boring. maybe i’ve already decided it must be that way—maybe choosing otherwise takes more strength than i have.
i’m not excited. i’m not sad. i don’t even know what i feel—what to feel. and that—somehow—is the heaviest part of it all.
i’ll be back tomorrow with another monologue.
author’s note:
— bled by @achilleusdeirdre
— 23rd of august, year 2025
— open to criticism; all echoes welcome.
— lowercase intended for signature writing.
The Ruin Script 
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