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Initial thoughts:
My ideal birthday party. I've never had a birthday party, ever. Yes, you read that right.
* cake
* presents*
* being surrounded by people who genuinely care about me
* a nice dinner
* calls or texts from people who are curious how I'm doing
* Whatever normal people do on birthdays. I don't even know what people do to celebrate big birthdays. I've never been to a birthday party for a notable birthday.
Here's what my 35th birthday consisted of:
* a psychiatry appointment for medication at 10 AM
* A prescription for one med instead of two
* Lots of sleep
* Watching Two and a Half Men and Star Trek because I'm bored
* crying in my shower because I really thought, just this once, I'd get a birthday party. Like, even just a little something.
I'm thankful to those who left birthday wishes on my timeline. I'll be sure to make this next year the best yet. But I think the moral of the story is, I have no spoons for anyone else's birthday parties until I can actually get a feel for that experience.

Response from friend: First, a very happy belated birthday. Next, I've learned that unless you specifically mention that that's a thing you want, at least for me, I've found that the older I get, the more I end up putting that birthday party experience together myself. And also, the older I get, the more that typically involves less and less as well. So maybe one year, I'd have people over, but the next, I'd have less people come with me out to dinner. Either way, the fact remains that generally, it's me that has to decide what I want and where we're going. And if it's to my house we come, then still, those hosting details are still mine to plan out.

My response:
1. Honestly, lots of ex-witnesses have some tough feelings surrounding birthdays. I'm far from the only one in that boat. And I do realize that the norm, as we get older, is less and less birthday fun and having to ask for it. But I think most people are missing that when no one has ever shown you what birthday norms are supposed to look like, it's hard to know what's even appropriate to ask for. Birthdays feel like an entirely new collection of social norms that are familiar to everyone else around me but completely foreign to me. At the end of the day, it's not the party. It's the expectation that I'm supposed to know norms I was never really exposed to, other than to behave appropriately happy for an occasion I've never gotten to truly experience.

To be continued.