So it turns out, I am neurodivergent. And it only took me until I was 51 years old to realize it. What it means is that I have spent my entire life trying to pass for normal and hiding behind a mask, trying to act like everybody else. But it turns out that all of the things that have supposedly been WRONG with me my whole life are the things that are actually RIGHT about me. I need to embrace and be grateful for the inborn traits I have that make me extremely intuitive, intelligent, and capable. That give me vision and creativity and a wide scope of interests and abilities. The quickness of my perception and reception of information and the way my mind works to organize this information and constantly want more and better and increasingly diverse information is what makes me ME and I don’t want to pretend to be just like everybody else anymore. I want to fully embrace my differences, that is, my understanding and the sometimes seemingly psychic knowledge that comes from it, my drive towards perfectionism and exacting standards, my idealism and focus on fairness, my tendency to feel everything intensely, whether it is wonder at all the unspoken agreements that make society and highways work or frustration at the shortsightedness of governments that don’t feed and educate children properly.
To get my thoughts in order, and to consciously take on my false self and deconstruct the false beliefs I have held almost my entire life, I plan to start journaling extensively. Whether digitally or in a notebook, I can’t decide. Maybe digital is better since I usually have a phone with me, but I feel like writing by hand is more of a direct connection with my mind. Or maybe I will just start publishing my extremely personal thoughts right here in this blog.
Maybe neurodivergent is applied to any and all lately, but I still like it for me. Because I can honestly say, without the advent of this word, I would have just kept thinking of myself in terms of someone possessing an excess of certain qualities, rather than someone possessing a mind that works and perceives the world differently from others. It’s a huge lightbulb moment.
overeducated & understimulated 