When the cake sours

It’s not that I do not like my family to sing me a ‘Happy Birthday’ song whenever my birthday comes. I just wanted to see someone sing it to me, not “when the right time comes,” but now.

Behind the cheers and applause or laughter and surprise, the cake on my birthday just sours. It’s not that it’s too bad to eat in the first place. No one just wants to eat my cake—the real cake that I want for that someone to eat.

Cake sours not just on my birthdays. It sours when no one likes the clothes I picked that I wanted much more than I currently have. It also sours when I venture out into the world with open arms to what is to come. It sours when I tell my family I’m gay.

I don’t want my cake sour. It’s not what cakes are. Cakes are supposed to be sweet, fruity, chocolatey, exciting, exhilarating, or just cakey. Life, just like cake, turns sour when we don’t do the doing that it’s meant for.

No, it’s not boredom—no, not even weariness. Self-expression is not a matter of how I want to improve myself. It’s how I want to stop pretending to be someone else—how I long to engage with the world without holding back. Liberation, for what it’s worth, awaits outside the closet.

But it’s just too hard to come out of it.

There are too many what-ifs just there—not even ifs but whens. Because I see how it’s too easy to drown me in a tub or knock me down to toughen me up, I keep my fragility and peace down to where it belongs. We are mermaids in a rap song, barbie doll enthusiasts in some, but we’re never doctors or scientists.

“There’s no point in keeping the cake sweet” because they think the only way up is to be stiff. “No point in coming out” because they believe there is no reward.

So when push comes to shove, a shovel is dug up for us. We do not think about the cake at this point. We just want to have another birthday to come. For some who do it earlier in their lives, maybe a punch would not hurt to take. But for those who are too late to realize what they want, everything becomes shaky.

Some want to file annulment; some opt for banishment. Our cake is not even sweet at this point, but they choose to decorate it for us. Life becomes sourer when we are not in control of it. So those who have it mildly sour decide to hide it behind doors.

Those who are unaware of the plethora of cake choices choose the cake that tastes faux-sweet. We turn a closet into a world of our own. We expand it. Sooner, our pursuit of happiness, which we thought to have been solved, becomes an empty success.

We do not do it in vain—the resentment is natural. The world does not want us yet, and it is too hard to see how we can love ourselves. Grumpiness must be the response, but gay is a synonym for happiness.

When are we ever right? When are we even appreciated? When are we even incentivized to live? There’s no point that I can answer these things, but the sooner we get a bill passed, the sooner we can make the cake sweeter than it is now.

A sweet cake awaits us. We do not have to run, hide, destroy everything and anything, hurt or tortured. At least wait for the sweet cake to come and greet you with a new happy birthday.

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Written by: Jantzen Eros

Layout and Design by: Cris Cudal and Charles Ian Ramos