Dude...Thats Not a Guy

26. Surprise

To me, birthdays are bittersweet. They're put in place to celebrate the day you were brought into the forever evolving, messed up world we live in, and that same day is a reminder of how old we really are. Again, aging is bittersweet, to know we've survived that far into life, but also the fact that indeed we have already been alive for that long. Birthdays hold more than that to me. It reminds me of what I don't have, what I don't know.

All my biological parents left me was my date of birth and my first name, I didn't even get one of those letters that you're only allowed to open when you're eighteen or twenty-one or whatever. My parents didn't want me, and they didn't ever want me to find them. Every year I'm reminded of that on one fateful, nostalgic day which is supposed to be a day of celebration. A day of happiness.

My birthday.

I looked at myself in the mirror, wondering what my parents hadn't seen... or had seen in me, to make them want to abandon me in a basket on the doorstep of an orphanage. I wasn't even a day old when they did. I've had the usual 'they thought that you would have a better life without them' and the 'they might not have been able to provide for you' speech over and over again, in a hundred different ways. The truth is that, yes, I probably was better off being an orphan, and yes, they may not have been able to provide for me, but that never stops you from wondering what kind of life you may have had. Whether it be that you somehow end up living in a mansion somewhere or on the streets barely surviving.

In every imagined scenario I create in my obscure mind, I can never seem to put a face to my parents. What did they look like? Did I get my red hair from my mother or my father? From which parent did I get my dark blue eyes? Do I look like my mother? Or am I one of those girls who end up with their father's features on a feminine face? What did they sound like? What kind of voices did they have? Would one of them sing me lullabies when I was a child? What kind of personalities did they have? Are they exactly like me?

Or am I completely different to them?

Another big wonder is if I have a sibling. A cute princess of a sister or an annoying little brother. But, before I got too deep in thought I reminded myself of what I have now. A family, a brother, friends who apparently like me, a permanent roof over my head and food whenever I need it. It seems that every other day of the year I didn't worry about any of this, just on my birthday. Or maybe that's because I think about it the most on this day. This arrogant version of a celebratory day, all made worse by the fact that I couldn't just drown in sorrow for the dwindling hours of the day and cry myself to sleep at night, because Kelley and Dave decided that they would throw a birthday party for me.

One where they would invite a whole lot of strangers that I will need to call my family, and I would need to plaster on a fake smile and fake attitude to myself so I wouldn't seem like a bitch. Even though that's exactly what I am. I sighed before I tugged at the skirt of this dress, the white material making me look somewhat tanned, but that was the only positive about it.

It had a tight top and a loose short skirt, had cut outs along my stomach and back, barely covered my ass. But it was a dress in general and I couldn't take it off to wear something else that shows my own personality because Kelley bought it for me specifically for today. I smiled at myself, wondering how much the insincerity would show through. I could barely pick it up myself, so I decided that no-one else would notice. I slipped the heels next to my bed on, tucking my still warm curls of wine-coloured hair behind my ear before having one last look in the mirror. Fake a smile, get through this hell of a party, then you can take this damn dress and make-up off while you throw your heels out the window and climb into bed at four in the afternoon.

Good plan, Soraya, good plan.

I opened my bedroom door and began my awkward descent down the stairs, trying not to trip over since I never ever wear the torture devices called 'high-heeled shoes' for exactly that reason. They're made for torture. I could already feel an aching pain coming from my poor feet as I took each step slowly, already needing to pull down the dress again due to the fear that someone could see my ass cheeks. My eyes began to flick around the lounge room, already filled with strangers and people I'm supposed to know but don't.