AIO? My 18th Birthday
For starters, me and my mother's relationship has always been slightly rocky, but it's mostly due to faults of my own. I turned 18 a few days ago. There were three particular instances relating to my mother that I found strange.
For a few months before my birthday, my mother was fairly insistent that I have some sort of party. I'm autistic and not too fond of large gatherings. My father knows this and had tried to reason with my mother but she was fairly insistent. I think I remember her coming up to me and saying "we're having a party on the 17th of May!" and me responding "Oh. Do I get a say in this decision?" I ended up accepting and somewhat enjoying the party, in fairness to her.
A few months before my birthday, she asked me how I wanted my cake to be. I told her I wanted it to be a single layer pink cake, but she decided it would be a white cake with two layers. This is mostly because I have a twin brother, but for some background, he is severely Autistic and hardly aware of the concept of birthdays. He was not going to be present for the party when the cake was served and he does not eat cake. The decision about the appearance of the cake hardly bothered me- she wanted to make it gender neutral for both of us, which is understandable. What did bother me a touch was that she asked what flavour of cake I wanted the tiers to be, and I asked for both of them to be vanilla because that is the only flavour of cake I actually like. She, for some reason, insisted that one of the layers be biscoff, even though I don't like biscoff. I reluctantly told her that it was fine.
On the actual party day, she had invited my 6 year old niece and 5 year old severely autistic cousin (I had asked her a few times if they could not come, as I find children incredibly overwhelming and stressful to be around). During the serving of the cake, she insisted that everybody should sing happy birthday to me because my niece apparently wanted to do so. I asked if we could not, because I hate being sung to on my Birthday. My sister (and of course niece's mother) told my mother it was okay and that we shouldn't sing. My mother kept insisting until I eventually compromised and let them whisper the happy birthday song to me instead.
I feel like I am being slightly dramatic and selfish and these are all, at best, small gripes. But I tend to be quite sensitive and I wear my heart on my sleeve. Let me know what you think.