Member-only story
Are you neurodivergent?
a poem, written in so many versions and never published, until now.
Are you neurodivergent?
I hesitate to say
‘we’re all neurodivergent
in a truly diverging spectrum’
for its baggage
as misleading and invalidating
for people who are neurodivergent
in the sense that they are in
the minority.
But by definition of a spectrum
you will find people who are
slightly below threshold,
or who missed the boat
and cannot be diagnosed,
or who stump doctors so much
that they fall in the cracks
or whom cannot tell
where masking stops
and ‘authentic me’ starts.
I’m cautious about representing
by using a label or category or
membership to something that
could be one of my own,
or might not be.
I don’t need permission
to implement things individually,
to identify that fidget/sensory toys help
to identify that I need social breaks
along my other kinds of breaks:
eye breaks from screen,
physical breaks from moving,
brain breaks from Having Thoughts,
I need my No People Me time.
Whether it’s neurodiversity or introversion
or both, or neither,
I have had to sit with the uncertainty
of never knowing and not letting
the never knowing to prevent me
from damn existing.
