Yup, you’re reading this right. In past weeks and months since I started writing and actually interating more with social spaces, I stumbled upon quite a few ND folks. Seeing their experiences in the open gave me a lot of insight into how they see the world, what they struggle with and how they cope. This started playing into my introspective mind (I tend to think about, question and critique my actions and thoughts a lot, sometimes to my detriment) because I began comparing and correlating my experiences and how I view and experience the world around me. And the observations are … exciting and terrifying at the same time.
Why these in particular? It’s exciting because there’s so much I relate to which makes me feel seen, heard and understood. Terrifying because the amount of experiences I can relate to is staggering and looking back at how I grew up, it fills me with … almost a crippling dread seeing how much may have been withheld from me, be it out of ignorace, lack of knowledge or negligence. The emotions and knowledge I gained recently, combined with the experiences of others are starting to raise THE question in my mind more and more loudly: “Am I neurodivergent? Was I just overlooked and never diagnosed properly because nobody knew and I never had the urge to pursuit it further?”
Now, my dear reader, you might be asking: “Rawi, how can you be on the spectrum? You seem to be leading pretty normal life ...” Well, let me stop you right there. You said normal life. What is this “normal”? How do you define “normal”? I bet that you will say is what YOU consider “normal”. But that’s not the definition. Because there is no “normal”. “Normal” is in fact highly subjective which is a problem with definitions for these can be neither subjective nor have so much wiggle room. And believe me, “normal” in this case has so much wiggle room that it’d make a seesaw look rigid.
Anyway, pardon my micro-rant, the reason I’m seriously questioning my divergence is due to me noticing a lot of traits in myself that are typical in ND folks (funny using divergent and typical together like this). Let’s list them out and se for yourself why:
I don’t do well in gang mentality. In fact, I utterly detest it
If you remember one of my previous “Behind closed doors”, you already know I’m a bit of a social mess and bad at handling groups. However, there’s another trait I didn’t mention there and it’s exactly what’s stated above. I really don’t play with the mentality of “gangs” or worse “cults”. More often than not I start clashing with the core idea which eventually leads me to stepping away from said group. Futhermore, I highly despise the need for “unity” in groups like that. Seriously, you wanted me because you found me interesting. Why do you spend so much energy trying to erase me?
I have unusual interests
I mean, that part is rather obvious. And while there’s a fair share of people who think running around, dressed up as various characters just because they like it, it’s still something that raises eyebrows. But that’s probably my only oddity in this sense.
I’m a “lore-freak”
I know this sounds weird but it very much aligns with the traits of neurodivergent folks interest in information that many would consider trivial. If there’s a subject that grabs my interest, I get the urge to at least know a lot even if I don’t interact with it. Reminds me of my child years being absolutely crazy into planes. I remember building kits (clumsily, mind you :p) because I just liked it. I memorised many of the various stats and properties. And part of that still remained until this day.
Same goes for game or movie franchises I fancy a lot. I can spend hours soaking up wikis and other sources just so I can get some complete image and to fill the holes in my knowledge. My brain becomes a sponge that desperately wants to become a solid brick.
I get sensory overload from noise
While I don’t mind loud noises per say (I had a B-52 — yes, that one — fly over my head at an air show and I had no problems), I’m super sensitive to certain types of noise which make my brain go into a shutdown or start driving me up the wall. This former is especially noise of a crowded area, where all the voices and sounds create this “shapeless blob” of noises and my brain in en effort of trying to make some sense of all of the input just starts “frying”. The latter category is types of noises that really disturb my comfort, mainly when I’m at home. These include drilling, loud engine noises from the outside or, wait for it, a door latch that’s not properly closed and being noisy because of draught. Yes, that metal-on-metal clicking can legit send me into a fit of anger.
I get empathetic to my detriment
This is not necessarily an autistic trait (I feel a little weird typing “autistic trait”) but I do get affected a lot by feelings of others or events in general. One amusing comparison you could make is that I’m like a Betazoid from Star Trek universe (a human-like species with extremely strong empathetic abilities) except I can’t control my abilities well enough. This is both a blessing and a curse; blessing because it helps you understand others but a curse because you feel everything around you this much more strongly and knowing you have limited abilities can be extremely demoralising.
I have an unusually eloquent way of speech
Something you may have noticed from my writing style or my interactions that I “talk like a book“. I’ve always been on a bit more “wordy” side once you can get me to start talking but lately I’ve been noticing a pattern that makes me imagine myself as if I was wearing a fancy suit and a monocle while either speaking or writing. It may just be my own perception though.
I have a really vivid imagination and the ability to “feel” the image
Another trait that I wouldn’t necessarily consider being typical for neurodivergent folks but considering the way they (we? … not yet. At least not until I get myself to find out officially) experiences things, strong imagination (or lack of in case you’re on the opposite end of this scale) might fall into this category. I can “lose myself” in entire worlds of my fantasy or let myself “feel” as if I was my characters (all three are based around who I am and essentially an expression of who I am so it’s not surprising). This can be a distraction but also a form of escapism in my aresenal. And it’s quite neat if you find someone who doesn’t mind “playing along” for a bit. So yeah, description of a being “an overgrown kid” is sometimes accurate.
Alright, that’s probably all I can say about this pondering about the twisty maze that is my brain, riddled with questions and musings and silly ideas. Am I divergent? Well, only someone more qualified can tell. For now the most accurate answer would be “I’m not sure the internal compass feels like it’s heading towards ‘yes’”.
R.R.A.