It's My F---ing Birthday

“In the coming year,” she said, hoisting her blindingly clean and gleaming glass into the air, “may half of all your dreams come true.”

“Mom,” I said to her, “isn’t that kind of pathetic?”

“Well, it’s realistic.”

It’s her thirty-sixth birthday, and she really thought things would be different this year—that she’d have figured out men and how to get along with her narcissistic parents enough to survive a birthday celebration. But nothing’s changed. Her disappointing day is capped off by the ...