4 is hard

4 is hard. It's not the unending agony and sadness of 1, but it's still hard. At 4, you have you traditions established and you actually start to enjoy the day, but the days around it are still painful and grey. At 4, you still feel angry with the universe for the birthday boy not being here and with all the people who either forgot to or didn't bother to acknowledge that someone in our family should be 4. At 4, you have the ability to keep the veneer of "normal" in place most of the time, but some times it feels like underneath the veneer you are just as broken as you ever were.