Hi! I’m a neurodivergent adult! And I wrote this while having a burnout induced breakdown! It’s about growing up, and I hope it reaches someone who needs it. You’re not alone.
I can still remember every time they said it.
”You just have to work harder than others.”
Things never came naturally to me like they did for other kids it seemed.
I had friends. But I always felt like a clown or a jester. Only there for entertainment and advice.
Communicating was always hard for me. There was always just too many things that always went unsaid. Things I could never pick up on. Things that just didn’t make sense to me.
I had to work for and learn things that seemingly came natural to everybody else.
I don’t mean things like art, or piano, or sports. No, I mean things like socializing, connecting, and understanding.
Human beings are social, pack-like creatures.
Humans need one another, because when you’re alone, you die. It’s as simple as that.
But when you’re growing up there’s no manual for ‘making real friends’.
When you start growing tits they give you books about that. But no where in them do they say ‘how to not sound sarcastic when you’re being genuine’, or ‘how to not overanalyze patterns that you just so happen to notice until you convince yourself that everybody in the room hates you’, and they especially don’t tell you ‘how to deal with the feeling that you’re an alien, you’ve always been one, and you’ll be one forever’.
Your disguise gets better over time. You recognize patterns and watch how everybody else does things. You learn how to talk like them. How to smile through the heavy feeling of being lonely in a crowd.
You make a few real friends. Friends you want to show your real self to. Friends who don’t make you feel like if you do you’ll be taken back to a government lab somewhere.
Friends who make you feel a little bit less lonely.
Math was always really hard. But you brush it off saying ‘nobody likes math’.
Science made a bit more sense. It just felt a bit more tangible.
Art was your favorite but you always get frustrated when the final picture doesn’t look like how you wanted.
English was easier. Grammar had rules you could follow, and writing was like a conversation but one where you get to say what’s actually on your mind, without any weird stares throwing you off.
You know what to do in class but something in your alien anatomy just won’t let you.
So you get sent to doctors, therapists, guidance counselors. You get special pills: one to help you sit still, one to help you stop crying, another to help lessen the painful side effects that happen to come whenever you grow tits.
And it’s funny because these doctors, therapists, and guidance counselors, it’s their job to learn you, and to understand you, but there’s just a disconnect.
You’re sitting on the carpet floor playing with the abacus at your doctor’s office. And you tell her you hear ‘angels singing’ when you look out your window. You tell her that your best friend has something called ‘cancer’, and that you’re not sure what that means but sometimes she’s not at school for a long time.
You tell her every single one of your weird, bizarre, alien thoughts and all she does is nod and write things down. When you’re done spilling your guts, she sends you into the hallway and your parents go into the room. 15 minutes later your parents come out of the room and you go home. A few days later, your parents are telling you there’s another pill you have to take.
You take it and you hope that this’ll be the pill that makes you happy. This’ll be the pill that makes you smart. This’ll be the pill that makes you normal.
And it never will be. Because you will always have to work twice as hard to end up 3 steps behind.
And part of you knows that.
I just want to let you know that pills aren’t supposed to “fix” you. Part of that is because you’re not ‘broken’. Pills are meant to soothe or lessen symptoms that make it difficult for you to function.
Feeling ‘alien’ is common when you’re neurodivergent but that doesn’t mean you’re alone. Everybody has somebody out there. You just gotta look for them.
gummygunk
areudirty
pixelskylines
kaledo-art
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