Because of course it is.
Sometime in the next 24 hours, Earth is projected to complete one of its fastest full rotations in recorded history—shaving off just enough time to make my birthday the second shortest day… ever.
Scientists call it a freak geophysical acceleration. I call it emotionally resonant.
The Earth hasn’t even done it yet, but I can feel her tapping her molten core against the clock. She’s prepping her little gravity heels, eyeing the exit like a guest at a party that already went on too long. The message is clear: Let’s wrap this up.
Of all the billions of days she’s twirled through, she looked at the calendar, saw my name scribbled in trauma ink, and said, not this again.
Because my birthday has never been a cause—it’s always been an effect.
You can ask anyone who’s been cursed enough to attend one. They’ll tell you about the power outages, the breakups, the food poisoning (from soup), the hospital visits, the canceled dinners, the mysterious absences, and the year someone got arrested before cake was even served.
My birthday is not an event. It’s a reckoning.
It’s when the universe knocks twice and then walks in uninvited. It’s the only day where I’m both the guest of honor and the final girl.
So it makes perfect sense that this year, the Earth itself has decided to participate. Not with fireworks or butterflies or alignment. No, she’s going to rotate just a little bit faster—just enough—to remind me that even time itself has limits.
Let’s not pretend this is a coincidence.
This isn’t astrology. This isn’t retrograde. This is math. Precision. Physics with a grudge.
On August 5, 2025, Earth will allegedly complete a full rotation faster than she has in years. A few milliseconds off the clock, barely a whisper in the void—but meaningful to those of us who’ve spent our entire lives losing time we never got to enjoy in the first place.
It’s poetic, really.
While everyone else is buying balloons and planning rooftop dinners, I’m watching the planet itself fast-forward through my trauma anniversary like she’s skipping past the heavy parts of a rewatch she regrets.
She doesn’t want to be here.
Neither do I.
And yet we spin.
Because birthdays, for people like me, aren’t joyful checkpoints. They’re audits. Memory pileups. A soft reminder that survival is often measured not in milestones but in millimeters.
I’ve lived through things that should have ended me. Childhood abuse. Conversion therapy. Cancer. A 14-year entrapment that wore the costume of love. Felony charges that don’t even belong to me. A body that carries trauma like it’s job security.
And still—here I am. Upright. Functional. Responding to birthday texts with “thank you!” while quietly wondering what it would feel like to have a year where the worst thing that happened on August 5 was bad karaoke.
Instead, I get the shortest day on record.
Earth has entered the group chat, and her only reply is: “seen.”
I admire her, honestly.
I respect a girl who knows when to leave.
She’s giving: “I showed up, and now I’m gone.”
She’s giving: “No, I don’t need to stay for cake.”
She’s giving: “I already gave you 39 other rotations. This one’s pro bono.”
And part of me wonders—how fast does she have to spin before we just pop off the axis entirely? How long before the cumulative weight of bad birthdays launches me into orbit, or at the very least, flings my Amazon wishlist into the sun?
There’s a quiet threat in it. Not today. But soon.
One millisecond closer to rupture.
People keep asking: “What are you doing for your birthday?”
I’m watching the planet accelerate away from me.
I’m wondering if this will finally be the year it’s not a funeral in glitter.
I’m re-reading my trauma like it’s an itinerary. I’m inventorying the ghosts. I’m lighting a candle and hoping it doesn’t set off the smoke alarm again.
What am I doing? I’m bracing.
I’m smiling for the pictures.
I’m fielding texts from people who still don’t know what day it actually is, but heard there might be cake.
I’m celebrating the fact that I made it one more year without being completely unmade.
And if the Earth wants to get that over with faster than usual?
Same, girl.
Final Thought:
Birthdays are a soft lie.
They pretend that time is something we get to mark, rather than something that keeps taking from us whether we look or not.
But this year, the lie cracks.
Because this year, even time wants out.
The Earth is spinning faster.
The day will be shorter.
The celebration, if you can call it that, will be clipped.
And still—I’m here.
A little bruised. A little dizzy. But upright.
Maybe that’s the miracle.
Not that we celebrate, but that we stay.
Even when the ground won’t.