I’m too much. I talk too loud. I talk too long. I cry too easily. I’m overly sensitive to the words and feelings of others. I’m too worried about what other people think. Too focused on my special interests. I take the floor and then forget to deliver the punchline. I’m overly concerned with being understood. I make too much eye contact and dominate the conversation.
I’m not enough. I forget to ask good questions about the other person during small talk. I’m too quiet. I don’t make enough eye contact. I forget items on my to-do list. I burn the toast. Or worse, that time I overflowed the bathtub. I forget to remind my child to get their shoes on in time to be out the door. I can’t say “yes” to all the social events. I can’t follow the conversation in a crowded restaurant. I can’t remember your name. I couldn’t remember the word, entrepreneur, as I attempted to relay a story. It was like a missing puzzle piece. I couldn’t snatch up the word at the required moment and so my story stalled.
The world presents a cookie cutter shape and expects me to fit neatly, packed inside. The parts that don’t fit are my failings. I forgot my homework and missed recess. I sounded rude or self-focused, but really I was just exuberant. I need to run to the restroom at inopportune moments with an uneasy stomach, and I note where the restroom is and my proximity to it as we walk into a new building. I had a contribution that didn’t make sense but actually it did; I didn’t get to explain the tapestry of context.
Slowly I’ve been unraveling myself from the shape I kept for so many years. I’m spilling out, kinked up and coiled and squished, but now that I’m out, I’ll never fit back in again. There’s no going back- I don’t think I could fit back in even if I tried. Now that I’m free, I’m even more sensitive to sound. I have less tolerance of loud crowds. I know my energy and efforts have value and I’m trying to expend and share them with more intentionality. I’m stepping away when I find a chronic pattern of not being seen or heard. I’m listening to what my stomach and aches are trying to tell me. The body knows. I’m working on unlearning the idea that the parts of me that don’t meet the expectations of others are my failings. They are just me. Some things I may want to tweak. Others I should simply protect and honor.
I was enough all along. I am worthy.
I’m standing on a precipice of change. At least, I hope I am. I want others to be seen and heard and I’m missing the mark every day but also trying, thinking, learning. When I’m dismissive of others or myself, I look at how I want to do differently next time.
It’s a journey. I’ve never fully “fit in” to neurotypical standards and expectations, but now it’s becoming a little more on my terms. That person I was wired to be isn’t secretly a failure, even if I have to remind her of that, daily. She’s wired to be different. As we create space for people and especially children to have the permission, margin and capacity to be different and still be counted and viewed as worthy, we start rewriting the internal narrative. Let’s make that step together.
More soon!
Christina
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