A shout out to all my relations, especially the ones who have called me out for the ways I have spoken of we, (or written of we, more precisely, as written and spoken are mostly the same for me–I feel safer, mostly, in writing, but they are mostly the same for me). (I’ve come to a place where I love being called out, because it causes me to see things differently, and I feel that that’s what we’re here about: hearing and seeing and feeling and smelling and tasting and thinking and emoting about things differently).
As I speak about me and we and neurodiversity, it’s easy to think I’m suggesting that all people labeled as on the spectrum will see themselves in the same ways that I see me.
I don’t think that at all. The things that I speak of are just a suggestion.
It’s not about me, even though I’m speaking about me. In sharing my process, I’m simply sharing a process that processes differently from how we’ve been taught a healthy person is supposed to process.
The process of learning about me in the context of neurodiversity is a process of seeing myself, and seeing myself reveals that I have certain blindnesses–to time, to inner pictures, to fast-moving emotions, to a certain range of facial expression where many people meet.
And I have been reminded of these blindnesses, often.
Believe me, it’s a whole process.
But every blindness opens another window–the blind see differently. And having recognized my blindnesses, and the windows that they open, I hope that in sharing and celebrating these differences, then having differences in the first place becomes normalized (if anyone’s reading this, normal or not). The we I speak of is simply the subset of people who have been reminded often of their blindnesses, but rarely celebrated for the windows these blindnesses open, because these windows are mostly invisible to most people, (because invisibility is the nature of windows), so most people don’t meet us there, and not being met there, there may not be a lot of conversation there to make people’s windows feel seen through.
But I have a language specialty, because of my blindness, which describes the world I cannot see inside. It sounds made up, but if you look up aphantasia, you’ll see that there are a lot of languagers among us. It’s just our specialty. We make symbolic words for the spaces in us that we don’t see. It’s just a brain thing. It’s special, but also nothing special. Sometimes the way we use language is referred to as visionary, and that makes perfect sense, considering it is simply the way our visual process is rerouted through language. The ways our brains are wired are weird, sometimes. But also nothing special. It’s just the way we work.
My blindness to time opens a window through which I see how people operate, and how they spend their time, and sometimes seeing how people spend their time and energy is alarming to me, and so I sound an alarm to the community about spending less time on productivity and more time on being we, in all of the ways that we can be we, outside of productivity. Because productivity is not really serving us well, honestly. It would serve us well to be a little less productive and a little more connective and present. That’s just what makes sense to the ways that my brains are wired to make sense of things. It’s weird, and also nothing special. It’s a present.
And my blindness to my own fast-moving emotions allows me to see the fast-moving emotions of the whole world, frankly, and frankly, that’s more than a bit unnerving as well, and so my nervous system sounds an alarm. So sometimes, if I sound like I’m sounding an alarm, or being alarmist, it’s because, instead of my own emotions, to which I am blind, my nervous system is feeling the fast moving emotions of the whole wide world.
And frankly, that whole wide world is terrifying. I wouldn’t really wish it on anyone. Being terrified is one of my specialties. Being terrified is not weird–it’s just terrifying. If you’re a specialist in being terrified, my heart goes out to you, because it’s terrifying af. fr. I feel you.
And that being said, because my face is blind to expression, my face doesn’t reveal that I am terrified inside. Believe me, I am mostly terrified inside. But people have often told me that my face is kind of a safe public space. Maybe my blindness creates a blank canvas that is safe to project on, and maybe they are projecting. That’s mostly been ok, but sometimes people’s projections are ouchy and dangerous, and add to the terror I feel inside.
Being terrified inside, there are few spaces where I feel truly safe. And so I spend a lot of my time trying to cultivate safe spaces. It’s nothing special. It’s just the product of my specialties. It’s just what makes sense for a person with my sensibilities to spend my time doing. And I notice that in creating safe spaces for my self to just be itself, many in my community feel safer to be themselves as well in those spaces. Or at least that is what they are telling me. I’m not always sure, but that is what I believe they are telling me. That is what inspires my advocacy.
In advocating for myself, I am advocating for my community, with all of their various and variegated specialties that are different from my specialties, but equally special.
When I was a kid, they used to call the class for autistic and neurodivergent and differently abled kids the special class, and the bus for autistic and neurodivergent and differently abled kids the special bus.
Isn’t that special?
Actually, it seems like a way of excluding what’s special. But maybe it was just a special place for the special folks to be special. I’m not sure. I wasn’t included.
I am full of spaces inside of me that are not sure, and where I don’t feel included, even inside of me. It’s a whole process. It can be exhausting. Even though it’s exhausting, it kind of makes sense, even though the sense it makes is kind of a drag.
I never felt included in the normal class or the normal bus. It was kind of a drag. I wonder if I would have felt included in the special class or the special bus. My particular specialties cause me to experience that we all share the same classes and the same buses, and that those classes and buses are inclusive, even if only metaphorically. I know, that’s a whole metaphorical can of worms, but that’s how I feel. I feel inclusive, and that’s why I use the word we the way I do a lot. It’s just what makes sense to my sensibilities.
That being said, I don’t speak about the facial expression space. Faces are public spaces, and highly personal, and speaking about them is terrifying to me, because it’s so easy to speak about them in ways that are different from how people speak about themselves, inside. So I don’t speak about them. But I feel about them, and the way that I feel about them is like a fun secret, because I secretly love everyone’s faces. And I notice that people’s faces light up in spaces where they feel safe to have their faces light up. So instead of speaking about people’s faces, I try to make safe public spaces for people’s faces to light up. It just makes sense to do so, for someone of my sensibilities.
So no, I recognize that my blindnesses are just my invisible windows to seeing the whole world differently, and I don’t imagine that every neurodiverse person sees things in the ways that I see them (or is blind to things in the ways that I am blind to them, or that their invisible windows are the same as mine). And I’m having a hard time imagining a person who imagines a world that completely includes all of the things we all see through all of our invisible windows. Maybe that person exists – wouldn’t that be weird? I wonder what they would look like…
So no, I don’t imagine that everyone’s specialty is just like my specialty, or that anyone will see themselves in the ways that I see myself, but just that everyone’s specific specialty is something special, and everyone’s self is a self that is worthy of being seen. And being that language is my specialty, I advocate for specialty in general, which doesn’t always look like me, but which is nonetheless special and sensible and real. We each really have our own specific and sensible specialty, which is worthy of being seen and appreciated.
So that’s the we I mean when I speak about we. Being special speaks to me. We’re special, you and me. Really!
Make sense?