Your Wish
lmao okay i wanna preface this by saying i’m not diagnosed, but we’re pretty sure. (lol). i’m not trying to romanticize it, this is just my experience. MY experience. no one else’s.
No, being ND (neurodivergent) wasn’t always accepted, or cute, or “only vaguely weird”. Sometimes, like tonight, you retreat into yourself. Your friends refer to this phenomenon as the "doorslam". You have the ability to talk, physically, but it’s now painful. You want to lie down and sleep with your earplugs in for hours on end, not be perceived, and not have to talk. Not need to explain yourself every moment to others in order to advocate and validate yourself so that you may be accurately understood and perceived.
God, it’s exhausting to even think about. Breathing hurts - not literally exactly, but your throat tightens up. It hurts. You aren’t sure if this could be described as a “non-verbal” moment, probably not, right?
You have a blank face, and respond only in, “No,” and “I don’t know.” You feel bad for coming across as rude, but don’t know what you can do about it. You want to dig into your skin, pull, and expose your organs. You don't.
You feel like a mannequin being pulled tighter and tighter by your thin puppet strings, feeling the tension trying to break you. A specific section of your head hurts - it feels like someone is inserting a metal pipe into your skull or brain like a straw. It would be great if someone would slurp all of your worries right out! Yum.
And what can you do but endure? What can you do but take it?
Even those that you love you don’t have the anything for right now. You feel simultaneously guilty and tortured.
It (whatever "it" is), probably isn't dissociative, but you don't feel alive. Not exactly suicidal, but not exactly safe, either. Or maybe you are safe and you're making it all up for attention. Maybe it's the stress, which cues the voice of family, an exasperated, accented, "From what?"
No, in actuality, your headspace is true neutral, blank, an endless globe of blank-canvas-white. Your face is expressionless. Your body is warm, too warm, uncomfortable aches from God-knows-what. That's it, you must be alive, because that warmth would not be possible without life.
You become too conscious, in the blankness of it all, of your breathing and begin to breathe manually. But then you start thinking too much about how you are breathing manually and it freaks you out. What if you have a panic attack? You have chest pains, but it's probably nothing.
You close your eyes and only in your mind, you are slapped.
You get your wish.
