Happy Birthday, Soren!

14!!!!! Happy birthday!!!! You’ve gotten so big, I presume, since in actuality I barely know what you look like. Welcome to Slightly Bigger Teenagehood, and the six months of the year we look one year apart instead of two. Did you have a party, and did your friends come over? What did you get? Did you make a cake? I can see mom making that wheatgrass cake from Bedtime Stories, haha.

I drew you this. I’m going to also make it the cover of a story I finished. I’d send that story to you, but I’m ~terrified~ of having things out in the open world. If I publish it to Kindle, I will post a link here.

Consider it my contribution candle to your birthday cake. Best trick candle ever, since you can’t blow it out, lol. The quality’s probably diminished because I had to compress the image to help it load, and then screenshot it and upload that because the compressed image wouldn’t upload either (goodness!)

Everything feels too normal here. But it’s not just another day. Has it been six years since I was last at your birthday? Was I there in 2016? I don’t even remember. I feel like such an awful person. I’m so sorry, Soren.

On a slightly lighter note, I have a garnet locket that I tried to put your picture in. Turns out, the printer was running out of ink, and I’m not very good at sizing. Soooo….

Here’s the front, isn’t the gemstone pretty?

Ah, yes, my perfectly tiny and perfectly bright pink little sister

Once the printer ink is replaced, a suitable picture will be put in, after I painstakingly struggle with cutting nicely with scissors. This is the picture of us by the bridge in California, this one:

I’m so tired, Soren. This wasn’t supposed to happen. We were supposed to be normal. This house feels so empty without you and mom, and I feel alone all the time. I don’t like having my own room. I can’t even imagine how you feel- I never had an empty home that you were once in. I don’t know if mom ever mentions me, if I’m given a mention on my birthday, but we miss you all the time. I miss you so much. You don’t even feel real anymore, in a sense, it’s been so long that you feel more like a mythological figure, like a god who is technically ‘present’ in the lives of their worshippers but is never actually there. It’s almost been five years, and my memory’s done awful things to me since then. Do you understand? Do you feel something similar? Will I ever know your answer?

I love you, Soren. I hope you’ve had a happy birthday, and got everything you wanted. Have some cat photos as extra presents: