Pathologically Genuine XII: The Confluence of Autism, My Birthday, and the Holiday Season
Autism is probably one reason I feel miserable on my birthdays but it is not the whole story.
I turned sixty-five today. I don’t like my annual birthday. More about that later.
I think turning sixty-five means that I entered the world of senior citizenship. I don’t really know what that means other than I get discounted tickets at are our movie theater every day, though I rarely go; I get discounts at the grocery store on Thursdays; I have a Medicare advantage plan insuring my health and giving me silver sneakers (a pass to go to just about any fitness center); I continue to get an endless supply of electronic and physical mail from AARP; and any relevance I had to my profession and my field will now disappear more quickly with each day.
All in all, I am finding I am good with that part of aging. I mean who doesn’t like discounts? I am also semi-retired. I am pretty thrilled to no longer work 80+ hour weeks and now only go to meetings not involving students if I feel like going - and there is only one meeting a month I feel like going to. I am happy to be totally irrelevant to all of the others. It is also nice to have an organization like AARP to want me as a member so badly that they contact me three times a day.
I am more thrilled to get to focus on teaching and students I teach tell me I am good at it and relevant to them. (see here)
My therapy dog, Brea, and I volunteer together about ten hours each week where she almost always succeeds in making people smile. Being Brea’s handler is also a great way to learn to fully embrace the irrelevance of senior citizenship. For example, Tuesdays are “Brea Day” at a community center for people recovering from mental illness and Wednesdays. are “Brea Day” at a school for autistic students. At both places, staff announce over a speaker or on walkie-talkies that “Brea is here! - never “Jim is here” when we arrive. When we volunteer at hospice, the staff yell out, “it’s Brea!” as we approach the nursing station, and once we enter the station, they proceed to give her special dog treats they brought specifically for her. They don’t bring any treats specifically for me. I am good with that, too.
Roughly a hundred people want to take Brea home each week. Zero want to take me. Being autistic, I don’t want anyone to take me, so that is also good.
Nonetheless, birthdays are generally not fun for me. Though this year, a few people made it extremely hard for me to implement wanting to be miserable. I received this e-card/video. https://lnkd.in/eP4aniww. If you understand that I am an ecologist that teaches about the ecology and behavior of many of the organisms that participate as actors in the video, and that I play music, it is guaranteed to make you laugh.
Then my brother and sister-in-law sent the world’s supply of helium to my door, as you can see below.
Nonetheless, the typical lack of joy on my b-day has nothing to do with aging (I actually like aging except for challenges with my back), but a confluence of autistic traits; timing of my birthday in relation to other holidays and the anniversary of my parents; the mental health challenges that many people face during the holidays; and a general irreverence, even dislike, I have towards societal expectations to be joyful. By the way, people like me from Pittsburgh try to use the word “confluence” as much as possible because our identity is built on the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers.
I am actually not sure how to tease those all apart. Autism can explain some things in my life, but it is so wrapped up with things that have nothing to do with autism. Please take that message away from this post even though autism has a starring role here. I am reading a lot on social media posts these days. If those were all that I read on autism, it would feel, even as an autistic person like me without cognitive disabilities per ADA, that I was part of group defined totally by my autism and systemically disadvantaged, perhaps on purpose, by the malevolent neurotypical society. I don’t feel that way.
Being on the autism spectrum certainly explains some things about not enjoying one’s birthday like having challenges making friends and feeling on the outside and lonely; not liking loud parties; a need to be able to leave any gathering when one wants to; not liking the texture of things others love on birthdays (e.g., too much icing on a cake); and not responding well to anybody who tells me I am supposed to be happy.
Google AI tells me that there are many reasons that as an autistic person I would not like birthdays. They are included in the list below. They all probably apply to me. But, once again, Google AI drew these inferences from websites, YouTube videos, Reddit, and Instagram, not from scientific studies. There seem to be very few scientific studies at all on autism and birthday celebrations, especially on adults (other than videos of young children at a party can be used to diagnose autism). So, please take all of these with a huge grain of salt.
Sensory Overload: Parties involve bright lights, loud noises, different smells, and textures that can be overwhelming.
Social Pressure & Masking: There’s an intense expectation to be joyful, interact constantly, make small talk, and show gratitude for gifts, forcing autistic individuals to “mask” their discomfort, which is mentally draining.
Disruption of Routine: Birthdays break normal patterns, and sudden changes or unplanned events can be stressful.
Gifting & Expectations: Receiving gifts can be stressful if they aren’t desired, or if there’s confusion about what to do with them, and the pressure to reciprocate on others’ birthdays adds to it.
Past Negative Experiences: Childhood parties with few guests or awkward social interactions can create lasting negative associations.
Feeling Misunderstood: Some feel torn – wanting love but hating the way it’s shown, leading to sadness if celebrations don’t meet internal (often uncommunicated) needs, or if people forget, causing feelings of invisibility.
I most definitely suffer from the last one. I don’t want any celebrations, but I get hurt of people don’t remember my birthday. For me, one of the great advantages of Facebook is getting happy birthday messages from people who otherwise wouldn’t remember.
I worry, though, that although I feel these challenges represent mine very well, they don’t tell my whole story. My wanting to feel miserable on my birthday this year is grounded in other things, too.
First, I won the lottery in the sense that I beat the 1 in 365 odds that I would be born on my parents’ anniversary. Don’t worry, I was not born on their wedding day. Since my birthday is always during the holiday season, I spent the vast majority of my birthdays with my parents and we celebrated jointly. So, my birthday was never my own day. That was perfectly fine with me, but then I didn’t know anything else. I generally enjoyed celebrating together with my parents as an adult, especially since that meant I didn’t have to celebrate alone. But now that my parents are dead, my birthday just reminds me how much I miss them.
Second, autism is intersectional (or co-morbid— but I hate the word co-morbid) with depression. In general, the depth of depression increases in those that suffer from it during the holidays. This was particularly true for me as young adult in graduate school. I would spend a several week period at home with my parents in a city where I had no friends of my own. So, loneliness often intensified depression. The only good thing that came out of one of these several weeklong periods is that I taught myself to play the piano over a holiday break without reading music. I figured out how to transpose guitar chords on the piano and improvise in between. My fingers seem to know what to do. I don’t read music. And, it doesn’t work well if I try and tell my fingers where to go on the keyboard. I have no idea how people can read music and play at the same time. Nonetheless, playing piano has brought a lot of joy. And I feel music very deeply so playing piano helps me find my emotions as well.
I am Jewish so we didn’t celebrate Christmas, but we celebrated Hannukah. This is a relatively unimportant holiday in the religion but culturally an important one for kids. That is the time we get presents! My birthday often overlapped with Hannukah so the birthday and Hannukah gifts meshed together. So, between sharing my birthday with my parents’ anniversary and sharing the gift giving with Hannukah, my birthday didn’t feel particularly like a special day for me.
My birthday is close to Christmas and the New Year. There is so much societal expectation for joy and togetherness during this period. And there are so many traditions this time of year. This is not good for me.
There are two aspects of my personality that are not in sync with the social expectations of the season. I think they might be related to being autistic but they are also probably related to growing up in a politically liberal family in the sixties and seventies where questioning everything was cool. These are:
I am irreverent. On one hand, I am a rule follower to a fault. on the other hand, I usually refuse to follow a social norm if I think it is illogical. For example, I always try resist wearing uncomfortable clothing like suit and tie, or anything really other than t-shirts, sweatshirts/fleece pullovers, jeans and sneakers.
Being irreverent is one of the great strengths I have had as a scientist, teacher and as an administrator. If a tradition made no sense to me, then I would only follow it by kicking and screaming. I am skeptical of anything that is widely believed by people that doesn’t make sense to me. So, a time of year that is about tradition and social expectation was bound to be something I disliked. I also grew up hating “normal.” When Pringles potato chips came out (perfect identical chips in a round container), they were the symbol of what was wrong with society to me. I think hating normality is probably common for many autistic people, since normal also caused a lot of hurt for many of us.
I am a total contrarian when it comes to societal expectation. I react to normal expectations by fighting them. If you tell me I need to be happy, then I will be sad, angry, or depressed. If you tell me I need to wear certain clothes, I will refuse to wear them. If you give me a perfectly reasonable and true explanation for why I have to do something that I find stupid, I will argue with you until you give up. If you tell me that I have to stay up until midnight on New Year’s eve, I will go to sleep at 10:00PM. Being a contrarian is a great way to develop critical thinking skills, but it is a terrible way to fit in.
Finally, I truly, truly hate New Year’s eve. I hate fireworks. I hate crowds. I hate being in a room full of drunk people. I hate loud music. I hate being involved in things that seem unauthentic. And, candidly, getting to the next year was a relief for me, not a celebration. I also really could not stand watching the New Year’s eve countdown shows which seemed to define inauthenticity. And, if you are a lonely young man, who does not know how connect with young women (in my case), New Year’s eve is the universe’s way of rubbing the wounds of loneliness and inadequacy raw with a sanding belt.
So, I just need to get through the next few days as a misanthrope. The video, the balloons and my dogs, will make me smile! Brea also gave lonely and/or hurting people a moment of joy today as part of her pet therapy role. That also gave me some meaning.
In conclusion, I am not a fan of birthdays, but that is not because of aging. This might be due to autistic traits, coupled with depression, coupled with the timing of my birthday relative to other important events, and my need to be irreverent and contrarian. I can’t blame it all on being autistic. I think that is important.
And, finally, although I wanted to, or expected to, feel miserable on my birthday, an e-card and a bunch of balloons made that virtually impossible.