My friend recently posted on her blog that she is too low energy even for blogging. She wondered "how can one run out of energy for narcissism?" I am here to say that narcissism is EXHAUSTING. It requires way more energy than almost anything else. And, of course, it is pretty tiring for others to deal with as well.

Case in point: my birthday. The adequate celebration of my birthday has been an ongoing struggle for about 10 years now. Clearly, the needs and feelings that center on my birthday are larger than life can handle. I have good years and bad years, but it is always some sort of struggle in which I try to be honest about my needs without being demanding and those around me try to fulfill my needs without being resentful. Yeesh. This year was a mixed bag. I felt very satisfied about my birthday before and after the day itself. However, on the actual day, I was beset by melancholy and loneliness. I suspect those latter feelings were exacerbated by my current state of unemployed limbo. Also, the internet doesn't help. The first thing I did upon awaking on my birthday was to open up several tabs in Firefox so I could flip fruitlessly back and forth between GMail, Facebook, MySpace, and my other email accounts, looking for signs of birthday love. Of course, I was doomed to disappointment by both my strategy and my expectations. Nevermind that two days before, I was feted and pampered by my boyfriend in a fancy hotel room in Boston. Nevermind that the day after, my parents drove for over an hour through nasty weekend traffic to bring me a cake my mom had prepared early that morning. Nevermind that most of my friends and family don't even know where in the world to find me, let alone remember my birthday and commemorate it. Nevermind that I rarely remember any birthday but my own. The old feelings of inadequacy, anger, insecurity, and fear rose up in me and spread along my limbs and skin like a particularly virulent virus.

Today, July 24th, I am sufficiently relieved from my own narcissism. The world is a brighter place! I will call my dad later to wish him a Happy Birthday and, what is better, I will mean it.

On another note, I finished the latest, and final, Harry Potter at 3am this morning. It was an odd feeling. I had devoured the book, sometimes almost skipping words and sentences in my hunger to find out WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. I was completely panicked the whole time, certain that either Ron or Hermione would be killed at any moment. I couldn't even tell if I liked the book, because I was trembling with the knowledge that it was the last one. Going on some message boards helped - people expressed many of the same feelings and thoughts I'd had and I had the nice, arrogant feeling that I'd understood some things others had not. I was amazed to see that some people were planning to reread the entire novel immediately upon finishing it! I definitely need a break, though I think I'll eventually reread the entire series. It is especially satisfying to think back on the arc of the books and see that the main excitement and concerns of the first book are so different from the last, and yet connected. One of the cool things about the series is the way that the author understands the shifting of concerns from age 11 to age 17 and how she mirrors that shifting in the events of her plot. She also does very well with metaphors made manifest, symbolism brought into the literal world. I have really enjoyed these books and I can't quite believe that there won't be more.