#neurodivergent breadtab

[bread-tab]

"stop making [media] your whole personality"

ah... okay. yes. so.

first off:

there's this neurodivergent thing, where you use an interest as a filter for processing the world.

for some people that is called a "special interest," for others with different needs it is more of a "hyperfixation;" there are far more variations than i (or the field of psychology) know how to describe now. if you want to understand the difference there are people who can explain those variations better than me. but i can tell you what it feels like.

you discover something.

it doesn't matter what it is; you find something that speaks to you, something you can connect to, and it becomes a bubble of safe habitat from which you can rest from and explore and connect to all the other parts of this strange chaotic world.

a source of joy. a source of illumination.

it's like you're a person who has lived all their life in dark caves and you find something that glows.

these interests can be anything.

(literally anything; i personally derive meanings that you could never imagine from ✨ drainage ditches. ✨)

but very often, they are stories. tv shows, books, movies, comics, songs, podcasts, minecraft improv streams, cartoons, web serials, whatever

these things are:

tangible. you can hold them in your hands, replay them, turn on the subtitles, take screenshots, read the sheet music

and yet

real. they form a genuine connection from your (isolated, untranslatable) internal world to other (formerly unknowable) people and the rest of the universe

they create meaningfulness

and they exist because humans find these incredibly effective soul-deep ways of communicating to one another.

now, appreciating stories, that's not a neurodivergent thing. that's a human thing.

the point of relevance here is that experiencing an extreme love for stories is a neurodivergent thing.

it's a very common neurodivergent trait which often gets mocked, portrayed as childish, and used as a pretext for infantilization and bullying.

(and it is also a trait of young people in general, to take stories very seriously in a way that looks silly to adults, and that is something that many people (regardless of age) try to bully out of each other.

what good is that doing anyone?)

"stop making [x] your whole personality"

listen, you. get down off that goddamn embankment and climb down into this ditch with me. dip your toes in this oily water. watch the stars and city lights ripple into constellations you've never seen

now look me in the eye

you need to understand that no matter what lowbrow, cringey, problematic or otherwise not-to-your-tastes drivel you might be complaining about today,

you are talking about the phenomenon of creativity

you are talking about a transcendent catalyst of human emotion

and yes that includes the overmilked disney franchises, it includes the formulaic shippy fanfictions, it includes whatever brightly-colored cartoon this website is obsessed with this year (and will be having incredibly dramatic meltdowns over next year), it includes the cheesy action movies and the fanservicey anime and the badly-designed video games and the milquetoast tiktok "literature", it includes the indistinguishable scribbles of some random five-year-old and/or famous fine artist and/or precocious elephant

i get it. you care about real life and touching grass and shit. you have taste. just take the stilts off your horse for a second, okay?

i know you're probably sick of "let people like things" discourse

i would just like for you to stop for a second and take a deep breath, and let the stench of whatever is in this mud puddle wash over you (yeah i know, ew, but you'll be fine) and consider

what is so bad about having a cringey personality, anyway?

and maybe you will think better of making "stop making [some silly moment in the universe] your personality" into your personality and maybe you will come off as a little bit less of a snob/ableist/ass and maybe you will have a slightly better outlook on life among humans.

that's all. yeah you can get out of the gutter now. thank you for coming to my ted talk—

ooh wait, look, a bottle cap

[bread-tab]

strangely specific plurality experience:

you are an anxious person with an alter/headmate/part of you who is naturally more assertive than you (perhaps that's even their role in your mind/system)

you see someone else with a similar configuration stepping back and letting their assertive part speak on charged topics

you think, "wow, i should encourage my other part to write about this! i really appreciate their opinion and they're willing to say things i never would"

you ask that part, "hey, you wanna go do that?"

answer: "nah. the only reason you actually want to participate in that is for external validation. i'll just validate you now and save us the trouble. also you should hang out more with your IRLs, touch grass, and get a drink of water"

"... oh. okay"

yet again, you scroll past the internet discourse without comment

[bread-tab]

my nibling, at the age of three months, is already showing signs of neurodivergence (very similar to both his mom and myself as babies) and i'm handling this by giving him The Big Squeezes, waving my fingers hypnotically in front of his eyes, and dancing with him to energetic electronic music to help him get to sleep

[bread-tab]

every time my glasses get dirty every day i am filled with resentment and childish pique, i procrastinate, my eyes are clouded by a dozen types of horrendous greases until i finally give in to the indignity of taking off the devices that allow me to focus on whatever's in my hands and i hold them in those blurry blurry hands and spray invisible liquid on them and squint and squint and squint

and then i put them back on again and wow!

Vision

[bread-tab]

my last in-person final is today. so exhausted. im definitely in that stage of "augh my schedule is being tossed like a salad, please come back structure" but also "fyeah SUMMER VACATIOOOON" can't wait to spend several days in a row not doing homework AND not feeling guilty

[bread-tab]

being sick always messes with my brain, but just now I heard a car go by outside.... and instead of thinking "ah, a car".... I thought "ah, a notification. oh wait no, that's an IRL notification "

...glad I didn't try to drive anywhere today