>>11166883I don't celebrate my birthday anymore. It turns out that a friend of mine shared that birthday with me. He was only a year older than me when he decided to kill himself.
Whenever the topic comes up or whenever that time of year comes around I remember a conversation I had with him about suicide. We talked about it a bit and he asked me about what I thought about people who decided to do it. I told him something along the lines of "I don't think that it's a good solution in most cases, but at the end of the day it's not my life and it's not my decision to make and I wouldn't begrudge anyone who decided to make it."
A couple months later he made me a liar, and that's why I don't celebrate anymore.
Knowing what day my birthday is actually ends up being useful knowledge to me still because it helps me keep in mind what I said to him and what it means to me now, so now whenever people bring up the general topic of suicide I can tell them about him and that story.
At the same time, it turns out that I care about his birthday even though he's been dead for a few years now. I don't think he would have expected it to be important to me, since I don't even think he knew we shared the date. I actually never even learned about it until I read his obituary.
I guess what I'm trying to say to you is, don't make assumptions as to what information might or might not be useful to you down the road. There are things that you will want to have known in hindsight that you didn't realize, and there are things that you will always remember that you might not care to remember anymore. Whether or not it's useful isn't subjective, it really depends a lot on circumstances that are unfortunately outside of your control.
Pay attention to the little things, senpai.
