MiserableBastard1995
Experienced
- Mar 17, 2018
- 291
TDLR: Sick of birthdays so I'm going fully off-radar for the day, and not accepting any gifts.
Been meaning to write this as apparently I'm 23 tomorrow.
Though I loved my birthdays up till 18ish (getting presents and doing whatever you want), I've never really seen any real point in making a big thing out of the fact that a person is roughly a year older.
(To paraphrase Creepio) "Oh, bully, you were born! Congratulations, you've met the bare minimum requirement for existence!"
Once you take away the meaningless cultural nonsense, and look at it logically, the idea of celebrating a birthday becomes utterly absurd. Malignantly Useless, as Thomas Liggotti would say. There are eight billion other humans on this earth, making you, and everything about you, statistically irrelevant.
Like many other people with aspergers, I detest the whole cake/candles/singing ritual. It's tired, cliched normie dogma. As we all know, being the centre of attention is horrible. "Am I making eye contact right, am I feigning interest authentically enough, fuck, stop staring at me, I wish I was in my cave working on my models" etc etc et-fucking-cetera.
These last five years, I've become as indifferent to birthdays as I've always been about any other "holiday". When Mum starts nagging me about what I want as a present, what to do on the day, and what I want for dinner, (I live at home and likely always will) I just say "nothing", because it's just another day to me. This of course isn't good enough, so she keeps nagging. Eventually I cave and say "just give me $100, and here's something easy and convenient for you to cook, because you do enough around here." And I stay home working on my modelmaking projects like any other day. It goes this way every time.
Unfortunately, I'm getting numerous calls on the home phone (and sometimes calls and texts on my mobile) from family all day, wishing me a happy birthday. I can understand why most people would appreciate this, but I find it incredibly draining. Having the same conversation: "I'm just staying home for my birthday. What'd I get, I got $100. How are you going? How is X, Y and Z doing? Yeah, the weather here is pretty sunny, how is it up your way?" And so on and so on and on with with this spoon-melting charade, over and over with most of my extended family. This takes up about half of the day. On top of that, phone calls give me huge anxiety.
Then of course are all the people I don't really know on Farcebook doing the same thing, so I have to individually respond to all of these. There goes another hour and a chunk of my remaining energy.
Like many here, the years have worn me down and I'm now in the throes of autistic burnout.
Society's whole birthday circus just "rubs it in" so to speak, and is a bitter reminder of our own existence.
Last year I got sick to death of this, and went over to a mate's house to help with a workshop project. I still got the mobile phone calls/texts, and some home-phone calls when I got back, but it was far more manageable.
This year however, I'm just about taking the scorched earth approach. I'm not accepting any presents, money, nor even a card. From anyone. I don't drive, so I'm gonna catch the first bus of the day, before sunrise, and spend the entire day killing time and running errands. I won't get home till after dark again. (that's gonna be fuckin' hard with the burnout)
My Farcebook account (which I rarely use anyway) was deactivated a couple days ago, and will remain so for a week, and my phone turned off. For all intents and purposes, it's just another day.
I'm sure this comes off as unappreciative, and in many ways I agree with you. But no one ever asked for any of this, so I reject their weird, draining, alien customs. I'm just too exhausted to care anymore. Hell, this post took 3 days to write. In any case it'll all be over in a few years - this I guess is just part of the distancing act.
Thanks for reading.
Been meaning to write this as apparently I'm 23 tomorrow.
Though I loved my birthdays up till 18ish (getting presents and doing whatever you want), I've never really seen any real point in making a big thing out of the fact that a person is roughly a year older.
(To paraphrase Creepio) "Oh, bully, you were born! Congratulations, you've met the bare minimum requirement for existence!"
Once you take away the meaningless cultural nonsense, and look at it logically, the idea of celebrating a birthday becomes utterly absurd. Malignantly Useless, as Thomas Liggotti would say. There are eight billion other humans on this earth, making you, and everything about you, statistically irrelevant.
Like many other people with aspergers, I detest the whole cake/candles/singing ritual. It's tired, cliched normie dogma. As we all know, being the centre of attention is horrible. "Am I making eye contact right, am I feigning interest authentically enough, fuck, stop staring at me, I wish I was in my cave working on my models" etc etc et-fucking-cetera.
These last five years, I've become as indifferent to birthdays as I've always been about any other "holiday". When Mum starts nagging me about what I want as a present, what to do on the day, and what I want for dinner, (I live at home and likely always will) I just say "nothing", because it's just another day to me. This of course isn't good enough, so she keeps nagging. Eventually I cave and say "just give me $100, and here's something easy and convenient for you to cook, because you do enough around here." And I stay home working on my modelmaking projects like any other day. It goes this way every time.
Unfortunately, I'm getting numerous calls on the home phone (and sometimes calls and texts on my mobile) from family all day, wishing me a happy birthday. I can understand why most people would appreciate this, but I find it incredibly draining. Having the same conversation: "I'm just staying home for my birthday. What'd I get, I got $100. How are you going? How is X, Y and Z doing? Yeah, the weather here is pretty sunny, how is it up your way?" And so on and so on and on with with this spoon-melting charade, over and over with most of my extended family. This takes up about half of the day. On top of that, phone calls give me huge anxiety.
Then of course are all the people I don't really know on Farcebook doing the same thing, so I have to individually respond to all of these. There goes another hour and a chunk of my remaining energy.
Like many here, the years have worn me down and I'm now in the throes of autistic burnout.
Society's whole birthday circus just "rubs it in" so to speak, and is a bitter reminder of our own existence.
Last year I got sick to death of this, and went over to a mate's house to help with a workshop project. I still got the mobile phone calls/texts, and some home-phone calls when I got back, but it was far more manageable.
This year however, I'm just about taking the scorched earth approach. I'm not accepting any presents, money, nor even a card. From anyone. I don't drive, so I'm gonna catch the first bus of the day, before sunrise, and spend the entire day killing time and running errands. I won't get home till after dark again. (that's gonna be fuckin' hard with the burnout)
My Farcebook account (which I rarely use anyway) was deactivated a couple days ago, and will remain so for a week, and my phone turned off. For all intents and purposes, it's just another day.
I'm sure this comes off as unappreciative, and in many ways I agree with you. But no one ever asked for any of this, so I reject their weird, draining, alien customs. I'm just too exhausted to care anymore. Hell, this post took 3 days to write. In any case it'll all be over in a few years - this I guess is just part of the distancing act.
Thanks for reading.
