Divergence

Neurodivergent.

If you look up an official definition, people dare to claim the word represents people with brains “outside the usual.” But neurodiversity was never meant to have any relation to NORMAL. If you have no concept of a “normal” in the first place, who’s to say what lies outside of that boundary?

But both Webster’s and the Cambridge dictionary stubbornly cling to their “different” meaning.

Because, as humans, we like to put things into boxes. And “same” versus “different” is the oldest—and most comfortable—classification in the book. It’s how we form groups and find solace when the world starts falling apart.

“Wow! You have a mole in the shape of Kermit the Frog on your wrist? Me, too! We should start a club!”

Except I don’t feel different.

Or divergent.

Or whatever you want to call it.

I think the way I look and react to the world around me makes more sense than the insanity I see in the “normal” people I move among every day. Struggling to find the logic in their actions and thought processes gives me a headache. And massive anxiety. From where I’m standing, the majority of the world is “outside the usual,” not me. But they’re somehow neurotypical?

Explain it to me.

It’s TYPICAL to move through crowds of people where volume levels top 85 or even 90 decibels without flinching, covering your ears, or looking for the closest exit. Never mind the damage inflicted on the eardrums or the subsequent acceleration of hearing loss. Just blissfully meandering through a constant assault on the senses.

“We have the same hearing aid! We’re so cool!”

Yet my need to protect the delicate tympanic membranes in my head is DIVERGENT. I embarrass people when I make faces, wring my hands, or put noise-canceling headphones on. Because I don’t want to suffer from ringing ears or a low-level headache.

The TYPICAL in the population stare at flashing neon signs, blazing electric advertisements, and super-jumbo-mega screens (the equivalent of watching a solar eclipse without protective eyewear…which I’m pretty sure they also do) without a second thought for the health of their retinas. They spend days and weeks glued to the hypnotic blue light of their personal robots, leaning closer and closer as they gradually erase their vision. Never pausing to consider whether or not they should preserve what little focus they retain.

“You can’t read the eye chart, either? OMG, we’re besties!”

But I’m DIVERGENT because I flinch away from bright lighting, don sunglasses on mildly cloudy days, use dark mode settings for everything, and complain about strobe effects. I suffer ill-timed jokes relating to vampires, hermits, and cave-dwelling. Because I’m holding on to the final dregs of my blindness with a death grip.

TYPICAL people address their daily (hourly) anxieties with toxins. They ply themselves with synthetic compounds, stimulants, quasi-legal substances, and vices driven to excess—soothed over with reassurance from TikTok and YouTube authorities working on one-line research provided by an AI summation. Running from one fad to the next, they destroy the fabric of their bodies and minds rather than confronting the disaster of their circling thoughts and memories. There is no question of consequence.

“If you want to end depression for good, join my Facebook group now!”

DIVERGENT little me sends people skittering away from my self-stimming. The absolute horror of someone watching me trace letters on the pads of my fingers or the top of my thigh to quell a moment of intense anxiety. So much toxicity witnessing my knee bounce in frantic jerks under the table. I cannot begin to calculate the bodily and mental damage inflicted by smoothing my fingertip over the top of my nail to find that one rough patch in the enamel.

Why would I ever want to be neurotypical?