Every year, I order a birthday cake for myself. I don’t find it sad.

I get exactly what I want—none of that black forest or ice cream crap.

 

In 2018, I made a call for my yearly cake—this time a Marshmallow icing cake from Costa Brava. When they asked me to dictate my dedication, I remembered a rhetorical question I asked my mom when I was 14:

 

“Did I ask to be born?” 

 

I took a photo of my personal cake and shared it with some friends. 

 

In 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I posted the cake on mother’s day,

because in many ways I am still 14 years old and reluctant to go to mass. 

 

The cake went viral.

 

Perhaps it was the cabin fever, or existentialism back in vogue, or the simple reality that nobody in the world asked to be born. An art consultant said I should sell it as fine art photography—and so it became part of two photo sale fundraisers during the pandemic. My teenage angst was art, and it was being used to raise funds. 

 

This time, the cake has made its way into a tote bag and a pillow—for those who are not content to live with their existential angst, they want to carry it around

and sleep with it too.

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May this find you well,

Tammy