Every morning when I open my Facebook to see if my acquaintances are alive and kicking, to see if the Third World War has broken out and if someone formed a new Government, the very Facebook opens that option “on this day” to me and catapults me to the past… a past as such can paint my day in various colors.

This morning I was served to some joke about Mrs. Merkel, shared only 4 days after my significant other had packed and went without any agreement to the country of the above mentioned Mrs. Merkel so that he would not watch us rot here, having no patience to wait for me to figure it out if I am tied to Serbia with a chain or a thread. And so this anniversary reminded me of the anniversary of the day when he really went away. It was not a nice day. Dad was alone then and he was not happy; mom had passed away three months before that to a little better, but an unearthly place; and then I was also alone, no matter that I was not alone actually…
Anniversary.
Whatever that is.

And then I realized that my birthday would be in 45 days. I will turn 45.
Anniversary. A substantial one, isn’t it?

This morning, while I was scrolling through that awful Facebook option, I realized that almost every anniversary is a wound, never healed completely. Then, that day comes, rubs salt into the wound, picks right and left, the wound bleeds, you feel the pain in your chest, your eyes filled with tears, you take a deep breath and wait for the following day. Next day – next anniversary.

The older you get, the more you have… Anniversaries. Marriages, divorces, second marriages, births, break-ups, beginnings, breaks, new jobs, finishing school, PhD thesis, deaths of acquaintances, deaths of relatives, wars that we survived, anniversaries of those wars that we did not survive, then departures, arrivals, returning, subtracting, giving, everything has its own place in time. Everything has its own date in the calendar. Its birth and its death. It is awful that these are all anniversaries. And yes, the older you get, the more you have those that started and ended. Just like me. Like you. Whenever that one date comes, and the damn technology reminds me of it, it hurts.

Anniversaries should be abolished. Please, let me know if there is an application for deleting anniversaries which forces the calendar to pass to the 367th day and none of them, not a number, and no feeling will remind you about the previous one. You go on, as if there was no yesterday…, and there are not any anniversaries to pick your wound and blur your eyes with tears that do not drop.

Author(s)

  • Tanja Tatomirovic

    We do not have to take everything seriously in order to do the job well.

    Author of the book about WW2 fascist radio propaganda. PR, MSc, PhD researcher. A character from one novel. Works for Microsoft, writes for Thrive Global, Forbes and Medium. The statements [or testimony] I offer today represent my own personal views. I am speaking for myself and not on behalf of my employer, Microsoft Corporation.