Saturday, November 22, 2014

Crappy Birthday to You

From early on, Katie always told me stories of how almost every year her friends throw her a surprise party. To point where she expects it now, but still loves how it one-ups the previous year.

I had already set things in motion before we went away. The plan was to hold a surprise party at the theater.

Her friends helped me by telling her that "something" was happening her birthday weekend and to keep it free.

Her best friend told her to keep the actual day of her birthday free to throw Katie off the fact we were surprising her the night before.

Now I was deliberately not bringing up doing anything for her birthday to throw her off. However, I kept feeling I was doing too good a job.

Maybe, as her boyfriend, she expected me to approach her with ideas of how I wanted to spend her birthday with her. Like arrange to go out for dinner or something but, but surprise, we never talked about it.

Maybe I'm wrong on this train of thinking but it was HER birthday and not ONCE did she approach me to tell me how she wanted to spend it with me. She was only anxious for what her best friend and other friends had planned. We were dating 8 months by then, you'd think it was given we should have some sort of plans? I was also pretty pissed to not be included in with her actual birthday plans. Never told "on my birthday my friend is surprising me, come meet us after", etc.

The worst of it for her was there WAS NO actual birthday plans, it was all a set up for the night before.

So as you can tell, things were strained with Katie. I was only getting cold reactions from her and was was too busy organizing the surprise party to do anything about it. Instead of talking about it I was worried of ruining her birthday so I kept saying to myself things will work out once the party happens.

The day of the party I got a bunch of friends to come early to help me set up. The plan was Katie thought she had a rehearsal that night with her best friend and another friend. She would arrive at night and we'd all jump out from behind things.

All day everyone was telling me how such a great boyfriend I was for doing this for her. Meanwhile I felt a a big ball in my stomach from how much I was sure that wasn't the case in Katie's mind from all the signals I was getting from her.

Finally the moment of her surprise had arrived. She opened the door, we all yelled SURPRISE... And her reaction was "oh... Hey guys". Not the happy thrilled reaction you'd expect.

She ignored me almost through the entire party. All day I was debating canceling the whole thing and now I was tempted to just walk out, but didn't want to cause a scene.

Once things died down she was talking to some friends to have them over to her place and I practically had to invite myself.

After a couple of hours of board games, when her friends called it a night she didn't ask me to stay or anything, she wanted me out, I could tell. We barely spoke and I left.

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