Full disclosure, I've been diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, and depression. There's a lot going on upstairs. I believe some of that leads to my creativity, but unfortunately it also leads to a lot of discomfort, awkwardness, pain, sadness, self-esteem issues, self-awareness issues, and many more side affects. Please discontinue reading this if it causes you to experience any of these symptoms, and consult your therapist. If you don't have one, get one. I actually do mean that. I don't care who you are, a therapist can do you some good. Get one. Hopefully your health insurance will pay for it. If not, then congratulations! You've joined the ranks of the many whom the system has failed. I'm currently one of the lucky ones. Right now, anyway. My health insurance took a serious dive a couple of years ago, and I started getting billed for my sessions. I couldn't afford to see my mental health doctor. I went nearly a year without seeing her. I think it may have done some serious damage, going without for so long. Today though, thanks to my incredible wife and her far superior insurance compared to what we used to have, I am back at it and trying to figure things out.
Anyway, I digress. As I am oft to do. "Yes, yes, Jamie. You are an advocate for therapy. And we know how you feel about our shitty health insurance system that denies us health. Get off your soap box and get to the silly stuff." Well, folks, this one is not a silly as some of my other posts. In this post, I've decided to get real and give you a glimpse of my strange brain. I nearly said "broken", but I'm trying not to be too negative. I tend to beat myself up enough on my own time, no need to do it in front of all of you in my blog.
Something I've been looking into this last year or so has opened my eyes a little. "Neurodivergent" is a big word. It essentially means the brain isn't typical. "The" brain in this particular case would be my own, of course. I've always known I was a little different. I never quite fit in. To be honest, I never cared to. "In" wasn't incredibly appealing to me. Still isn't. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a total recluse. I have friends. Three of them. I have three friends. I have a lot of acquaintances, but I don't hang out with them. My three friends are guys who sort of get me and accept me. I say sort of because I don't think anyone truly gets anyone. We can get close, but we all have some parts of us that we just don't share with anyone. Sometimes not even with ourselves. But these dudes care, they share, they accept, and they love. I can't ask for more than that. It's more than I feel I deserve, but that's just the depression talking. Gotta stuff that kind of talk down. It's ugly. And it's not nice.
Neurodivergent sort of means different. Which is very vague. My understanding of neurodiversity is pretty limited. I'm still learning about it. And connecting with it more and more as I go. Last night, I went to a talk about it. As I sat in the audience waiting for it to begin, I started writing out my thoughts. I'd like to share them with you. Here goes...
I arrived at the Autism Awareness event, "Redefining Neurodiversity". After some minor confusion about which building it was in and where I should park, I figured it out and followed a couple of people in a set of double doors. Once inside, I immediately located the restroom so I could empty my bladder just in case I had to pee in the middle of the talk and get completely distracted by the discomfort. This is my habit, though I hadn't really analyzed it to this degree before. But that's what it is, a habit that attempts to relieve (pun intended) a likely distraction. Much of my life consists of distractions, and actions to eliminate them.
Afterwards, I approached a table topped with various pens, pads and stickers adorned with the Autism Awareness logo. They were, I'm assuming, free to anyone. I was interested, but too anxious to grab anything. Instead, I waited patiently behind a man who was checking in (we had to pre-register). As he finished, I stepped up and said "Hi". She replied with the word "hi", and I gave her my name. Unfortunately, she was following up the "Hi!" with a "How are you?", but I accidentally walked right over it with my haste to get the human interaction over with. Despite this, and without missing a beat, she found my name and told me with a kind smile that I was all set. On the inside, I felt like I completely flubbed the interaction and seemed like a jerk for interrupting her. On the outside, I smiled, said thank you, and looked for the door to the small auditorium.
I had to decide where to sit. Fortunately, there were plenty of seats to choose from. But, unfortunately, that's almost worse. Because now I had more choices. More opportunities to choose wrong. That said, I've endured worse things in life, so I found a seat in the aisle of the second row, made the decision, and sat down. There was no one next to me, which was exactly what I was going for.
As I sat waiting for the talk to begin, I became aware of how physically uncomfortable I was. Not the seat, necessarily, although the arm rests had weird edges to them. I'm really talking about my body. I decided to wear my yellow Cons with the green laces. They're what I wear when I care what I look like (make of that what you will), but they are not built for comfort. My toes, it seems, have grown a half size wider it seems. These shoes are tight up front! I also wore my favorite Mr. Rogers sweater that I borrowed from a roommate 25 years ago and never returned (Don't worry, I don't wear the sweater very often, and I rarely run into her. Sorry Kendi!). While I love this sweater, it is of a wool knit variety and can be a bit scratchy about the neck. I found my neck to be irritated at several points throughout the talk, causing me to adjust and readjust the collar. And I kept getting itches on my face. I felt like every time I scratched at my beard or neck or hairline or nose, the speaker saw my movement and turned to look in my direction, causing me to worry that I was distracting her.
Speaking of whom, the speaker was a wonderful autistic woman who was a successful author of four books, had taught at a university, and was a lawyer for a few years. Now she travels, giving these talks about neurodiversity. The core of it was essentially that we all have different brains. There was, of course, much more to it than that, but I'm terrible at recalling details about anything. I'd make a terrible student, I think, at least in a normal class setting. I wouldn't retain enough to get solid grades. But I do enjoy learning about new stuff, despite retaining so little that "learning" is stretching the definition a bit. I collect a set of vague ideas, some accurate, some misunderstood or misinterpreted, and the rest completely fabricated (through no effort on my part). Yeah, I'd make a terrible student. But I'd make an even worse witness. Trish likes to joke that Judge Judy would tear me apart if I were ever to set foot in her courtroom. "Um is not an answer!" and "If you tell the truth, then you don't have to have a good memory!" would definitely be aimed at me if I were to ever appear in front of her. But I digress...
The seat I had chosen was wrong, of course. "How can you choose wrongly, Jamie?" Well, let me tell you. I chose the one seat in an auditorium that sits 315 people (I know this because there was a sign that said so) that put me at an angle where the podium's microphone was directly in front of the speaker's face for about 80% of the talk. It obstructed my view of her face in such a way that it comically appeared as though she had a very large, black nose. This, of course was extremely distracting. While I heard much of what she said, I definitely found myself occasionally zoning out on her cartoon nose and having to snap myself back into the present. It doesn't take much to distract me, as you can tell.
Toward the end, someone walked around with a microphone for anyone to ask a question. A woman directly behind me was one of the people who wanted to ask something of the speaker. So I found myself crouching down in my seat and lying my head down on my shoulder so as to not block their line of sight to each other with my gigantic neurodivergent head. Chalk this up to further evidence that I chose the wrong seat.
After the talk and the Q&A, some of the audience gathered in the cafeteria, where they had some fruit, crackers, cheese, and cookies. One could have the opportunity to approach the speaker in this new setting for a more direct conversation if one desired. I sat at an empty table off to the side, eating a cookie and watching all the people who were not too chicken to talk to her. After a little while, I awkwardly stood up to go home, sneaking one more cookie when no one was looking.
On the way out of the cafeteria, a woman said "hey!" as I walked past her. I turned, panicking that I rudely walked right in front of her or something, but it turned out to be a girl I knew like thirty years ago. Someone my brother dated for a while. We chatted a bit, caught up on where we were at in life these days, gave each other a hug and parted ways. Despite the conversation being pleasant, running into people I haven't seen in a long time is very uncomfortable for me. And I'll be completely honest with you, I have been known to spot someone and sneak out before they see me. It's not that I don't like some of these people. It's just that I am antisocial to the degree that I will occasionally hide from people.
As I headed towards the doors, I passed by the table with the pens and pads and canvas bags with the Autism Awareness logos again. Yet again, I eyed a bunch of free stuff I didn't have the courage to take. And I love free stuff! Strange... I went for a second to-go cookie, but I couldn't take a pen. The fact that there was a stranger behind the table with the potential to talk to me if I approached probably had something to do with it. God, I'm socially awkward sometimes!
I got through it. I survived. And despite how this description of the event sounds, I did actually enjoy myself. Yup. This is me enjoying myself. All awkward and uncomfortable. But it was a good experience. I learned some new perspectives (and then retained very little of it). But my life is lived very much in the now. Later, when I've forgotten much of it, I can't enjoy it as easily. So I gotta do it in the now. Later doesn't really exist for me.
So that's my brain. What did you think of the tour? I'm sorry that there were still a lot of hallways in this tour that were roped off and inaccessible. I can't show you most of that. Not yet. We don't know each other well enough yet. I haven't opened up enough yet. And honestly, even I don't go down some of those hallways. They're dark. And scary.
I hope getting real like this didn't turn too many of you away. Perhaps the freak show factor kept some of you reading on. That's fine. I'm ok with that. I wish more people talked about their freak show brains with this kind of detail. I'd love to take those tours. I'm very interested in your hallways. Feel free to share them with me. There should be an email address and/or a way to message me through this website. Write to me. Let me know that you are engaged. Truthfully, I'd like the encouragement that someone is interested and still reads my blog. Let's talk. Well, no. Let me rephrase that. Let's write. Talking can get scary. There's all that eye contact and awkward pauses and no time to think about what to say before I blurt out some dumb shit. Write to me. Give me a tour. Or ask me a question. I'm open to a written discussion. Let's engage!
Until next time... thanks for reading Whatever This Is.
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