Note: This is an unfinished draft, with tangents that may warrant their own separate pieces.
I’ve been thinking lately my neurodivergence, and specifically, about masking and judgement. I’ve made some new friends lately and had some wonderful chats, and in hindsight, the best ones were with neurodivergent (ND) people. This wasn’t a conscious decision, it’s just how it turned out. And I have had some nice chats with neurotypical (NT) people, they’re just briefer, and less interesting, because they don’t cover anywhere near the same amount of ground.
For example: While standing in the queue at TK Maxx, buying some gorgeous framed prints and a Basquiat hoodie, I noticed the man behind me was buying tiny canvases, and he’d mentioned something about an art box to his young son. After a few moments, I struck up the courage to ask him what an art box is.
So he told me, and it was interesting. He didn’t go into detail about why he liked them, or what he hoped to express through his art, though I did find out that he’s an illustrator. I think that with NTs, it’s either up to you to infer the feelings of the other person, or more likely from what I can gather, you don’t think much about them at all. (This is a very broad generalisation that I’ll come back to later, but for now, keep in mind that my intention is to contrast the differences, rather than disparage NT people.)
[@todo: feeling is the root of everything; NTs often seem to be going through the motions. More so with men perhaps?]
In contrast, last weekend I got chatting with a lovely young person called Ash, who’s the vendor at a market stall, selling handmade jewelry, small paintings, and prints of their illustrations. As I approached, they simply asked “are you local?”, and within a few minutes I knew so much about who they were, what colors they like to wear, how they feel about needles, why they make what they do (like the little macaroon earrings and cake paintings, which represent things their body can’t digest)… and so much more. And likewise, they found out an enormous amount about me too. I also learnt about color matching your outfits and even a bit of sign language, and why it can be useful as a market vendor. This was all within about 10 minutes.
In fact, one of the loveliest things was after about minute 2, when talking about clothes: I’d already said that I’m moving away from darker colors to bright ones, and went to say and ask something, but stopped myself from being too “deep”, saying oh, I nearly asked a deep question there. She said, go on. You have no idea how rare that is, to have that part of me accepted, the part that just wants to get to know someone. And it was so free and casual, almost like it was silly for me to worry about it. Of course, there’s a reason I asked, but I’ll get to that later. And the question, by the way, was something like this: I wonder if I’ve been using darker colors to mask myself, to blend in. Do you feel like your dark colors might do the same with you? And the answer was (I think): no, not really, and then we moved on. I wasn’t told off, I wasn’t judged, it didn’t linger, we just went to whatever was next, vibing off the conversation.
Here’s another example, from when I met the young woman on a train who really opened my mind up to the possibility of finding it easier to connect with neurospicy people: We were stuck in the hall part near the doors, because the busy train had no free seats. It was a 3-hour journey, and I’d kept to myself until about the last 20 minutes. Sitting to my left were the woman, her partner (who seemed neurotypical aka NT), and a rando called Tom (who was definitely NT).
[@todo: Ran out of steam. I want to finish the para above, then describe the 10 minute chat with Tom, how I learnt comparatively very little. I might also talk about DM’ing Jess the abstract artist, and the two train boys doing ping pong with films they’ve seen. Maybe talk about it being so easy to chat with my friend Charms, who we both strongly suspect has ADHD. And maybe talk about how for NTs it’s often about relaying info; for women it’s often relaying feelings and connecting though; but for NDs it’s relaying everything.]
[Then talk about how much freedom there is to just express your thoughts and feelings in the moment; also maybe about Ash’s cape and my internalised ableism mental response, which was to judge any person who wears a cape, and how that shocked me, but makes sense. Then also talk about how crazy hard it is to navigate the minefield of NT conversation, including masking and more judgements, eg the girl next to Ash who wanted to buy the coffin thing online, and how I didn’t know what the correct response was but certainly it wasn’t what I did].
~~~
[@todo: then I want to return to the title and talk about my main point, a draft follows:]
How I’m not allowed to ask “deep” questions, unless it comes time to talk about difficult feelings. Which is silly because if your main experience with exploring “deep” things is to avoid talking about normal regular feelings in everyday conversation, then no wonder it’s hard to talk about actually hard things, because you don’t have the vocabulary for it, nor do you have the experience of looking inward without disliking what you see (ie. because it’s pain that you’re seeing in that difficult moment).
But it’s really not that hard for me. Because my thoughts and feelings are all on the surface. They’re not buried, they always accessible, and honestly, they’re open to anyone who’s interested.
Part of why my feelings are so present could be to do with how I need to constantly self-correct to fit in. Masking, at this level, is more than just rapport: it’s creating and maintaining social scripts, practising conversations and body language, and copying habits, behaviours and even tone of voice from other NT people. Almost like being an actor.
So, in the same way that I learnt to pay attention to my body because I’ve been on a lot of mental meds for most of my life — and so, need to know if the dose is working and what side effects there might be — then likewise, I need to pay attention to every aspect of my social self, to be able to fit in, or at least, to just pass without getting judged. And sure, I could just shut down completely in social situations, but that’s really not me, so that’s not an option. So yeah, maybe I’m “too deep”, but part of why I am that way is to work out how to stop being called “deep” all the time.
…
But with NTs I’ve found that it’s ok to ask what someone likes, but it’s not ok to ask why they like it. Isn’t that silly? I think it’s some kind of emotional blunting, on a societal level, but which NDs either don’t subscribe to, or aren’t aware of.
…
It helps that my thoughts and feelings move quickly. I just got distracted by a text, and in the time between reading it and putting my phone down, I’d already had 2 conversations in my head with 2 different people, including the feelings we both might feel and what directions the conversations might also go in.
…
today (sat 4th Nov), granny and Rick told me they have a high volume of thoughts too, everyone does. They just don’t say th all. So I guess that’s the difference: that I don’t have the filter that’s needed to either stop them all coming out at once, or stop the paralysis I feel when trying to figure out which thing to say.
But one interesting thing is that, while I hold back and decide, they can reply to what I just said.
So it’s worth keeping in mind that I’m sharing so that we can have a chat, rather than, because I need to get all this stuff out of my head! So yeah, more pauses, more considerate. Focus on the person, not the ocean of ideas. Be calm. Be present.