Birthdays
Please bear with me for a quick foreword. I’ve moved back to this platform after some experiments and a long mental health break. To my Medium followers, thanks for hanging in there and I’m doing my best to publish much more regularly. To my newer readers from elsewhere, welcome, I’m hoping this will be a better experience. I will be repeating my other posts here over time in addition to new ones.
I recently had a birthday and things didn’t quite go to plan. I ended up spending a large portion of the day on my own.
It was fantastic.
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I imagine a lot of people enjoy the standard birthday format of socialising and receiving gifts and attention but I really don’t. My social battery is miniscule and takes weeks to charge. I find group socials overwhelming. The bright lights and loud sounds that often come with celebrations are painful to process. People often find issue with the fact that I don’t drink alcohol — and even more issue with the fact that I’m not afraid to be increasingly rude the more they push me to drink anyway. I don’t like being the centre of attention. I can’t play the music I like in social settings because, despite my Spotify Liked Songs playlist being over 14 000 songs long (no, that’s not a typo) people enjoy my music as much as I do theirs — not at all.
I also have a lot of issues with receiving gifts. Throughout my life I’ve had to be grateful because so-and-so bought me something, even if I hated it. As a child, it always struck me as rather strange that I wasn’t to offend an adult by being ungrateful for something when I was really disappointed after all the pre-birthday hype and rather offended that they hadn’t put in the effort to buy me something I’d actually like. I remember being utterly disgusted by a musical jewellery box when I was maybe 6 — one of those pretty, tinkly things with a spinning ballerina inside. I have never been particularly interested in ‘girly’ things and in retrospect, it was hell on my sound sensitivity. I still had to say thank you and pretend I liked it. The family member in question and many other people in my life therefore never, ever learned and kept buying me things that I’d throw away or regift. To me, that renders the entire process of gift-giving invalid, even if I’m correct in my theory that there’s some weird social construct that gives you social ‘points’ for buying someone gifts, regardless of the actual suitability. I also find it very stressful to think up ideas for gifts for myself because they’re almost inevitably either too expensive or difficult to obtain.
This kind of thing is by no means unique to me. I remember a few years ago a young woman who was 23 at the time asked on a group if she was being unreasonable. She went on to explain that her family — who knew full well that she is autistic — had arranged her birthday party for her. Firstly, um, hello, she’s an adult who didn’t need the occasion arranged for her. The family were then wildly offended that their arranging a cake smash event was a huge sensory no for her and that she wasn’t enjoying something that they had not consulted her on, or made sure she’d actually like. They made her feel like the bad guy when I’d argue that if you’re going to put effort into something for another person, you might as well actually make sure it’s something the other person actually wants — especially on an occasion like a birthday that’s supposed to be about them. Not everyone magically just enjoys the same things.
This birthday, for probably the second time in my life, I had a really good day, because I largely ignored the fact that it was my birthday. Instead of catering to others’ expectations and comfort, I ‘selfishly’ didn’t go out or even open WhatsApp (my notifications have been off for years) and did what I wanted to do. My partner had to be elsewhere for a few hours and I got cozy in my sensory-friendly computer/music room with a cup of tea and spent a few hours playing Minecraft and listening to my Liked Songs on random. Later on, I started composing a new song of my own. I totally forgot about all of the expectations and pressures that usually go with birthdays.
It was also a wonderful relief when I opened WhatsApp the next day and replied to the people who had sent me wishes and they understood. They are the people who actually stuck around when I went off-grid for a few months last year and as such, support my differences because they’re neurodiverse themselves and/or care enough to make the effort to understand me. Turns out birthdays can be fun after all.
