“You’re just looking for attention.”

Today a comment online was made to me that I just wanted attention by saying I was neurodivergent. This is the exact reason why for 50 yrs of my life I just dealt with things and tried to be something I wasn’t. THIS is why I thought I was a burden if I said anything or asked for help or admitted I didn’t understand something. THIS is why I was also diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and trauma. Years and years of suppressing and denying what I needed to feel okay in a world not made for me and the horror I felt if anyone found out. Years and years of a programmed internal voice telling me daily that I was dumb..not enough..couldn’t get it together..overly sensitive, afraid of everything and I wasn’t worth the trouble to be patient with my slow processing. THIS is why I was thought of as shy when really I just decided to just not take a chance of speaking..period..to avoid the humiliation of making a mistake or unintentionally offending someone. THIS IS WHY I cried so many unnecessary tears wanting so much to belong and just have an easier go at LIFE.

I will be damned if I shut up now that I know all of that was a lie drilled into my head intentionally and unintentionally that I didn’t get to be who I was because I simply wasn’t like most people. I will be damned if I go back to masking so everyone else can feel comfortable but ME. Keep telling me I’m trying to get attention and I’ll make a god damn movie about undiagnosed neurodivergent life and just HOW MUCH and the lengths I went to, to NOT bring attention to the deep dark secret that was me. I’ll write a book about it. I’ll scream it from the rooftops every day for the rest of my life about who I am and what it took to be here today to even be able to say I AM IN FACT NEURODIVERGENT AND I COULD CARE LESS IF THIS OFFENDS YOU OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE WITH MY TALKING ABOUT IT.

But what gets me…what makes me see RED…is that people like this will do this to a young girl out there who hasn’t experienced enough of life yet to develop the thick skin needed to tell someone to fuck right off and what that will do to her. How that will crush her existence and something she has no choice in being born as. How it will affect her choices and decisions in life. And it will make her feel she is somehow very wrong. How dare people do this to people. How absolutely selfish and entitled do you have to be to do this to someone.

I will not go back to who I was and the thing people wanted me to be. I can not. There is no going back to not knowing. And I will not shut up about it. The least I can do now is help those after me to have an easier go at LIFE. Just an easier go at every day life. A life of understanding why we feel what we feel and KNOWING it isn’t wrong. Just that alone comes with talking about it and normalizing it. And hell ya I want attention. Ive been living in the background most my life. Possibly more than half my lifetime and I’m here. I exist and many of us do and the more we talk about it the more others understand they are not alone too and look out when they do. Look the fuck out when every child who needs to know and understand what that means and is told from the start they are in fact neurodivergent. Look the fuck out when they are given the tools they need to navigate life from the start and accepted for who they were born to be.

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