Last week, a friend and I were having lunch: They ordered a quinoa bowl and I got a salad, both of which came with a fork. I made an off-hand comment that I would’ve made regardless of my dining companion or location—and maybe other people who know me have heard me make a similar observation countless times: “This fork is too big,” I said, because to me, it was.
I wasn’t expecting a revolution when I said it, I just don’t like big silverware, I never have, and I’ve always had strong feelings on the subject and often-inexplicable criteria for what passes for “appropriately-sized-and-shaped-flatware.” The friend agreed, and added an off-hand comment of their own: “That’s a neurodivergent thing.”
I had no forking idea.
What came next was one of those life-changing conversations that you never see coming—except for the fact that when you start to look back with awareness goggles, everything look a little bit different and a lot more obvious. Connections beget connections and I launched into a monologue, getting more and more excited as I flipped through the card catalog of memories in my mind: I loved the tiny cocktail forks at my grandma’s house; they had smooth handles and tiny tines, and the proportions felt just right.
I always thought of myself as an overly-sensitive, shy, intense introvert with quirks: I am sensitive to smells, sounds, sudden movements, and other peoples’ moods. I notice a lot of things, I think about a lot of things, I live a whole life in my head and appear to have done nothing to the outside world. I don’t like crowds or roller coasters; I get motion sick in cars, busses, and on boats; I love New York City and I almost never feel queasy on the subway.
I can hyperfocus on actresses, art projects, or songs, but mostly I don’t feel focused at all; I have 10,000 things I want to do at all times, I start projects then get frustrated and live in chaos for a while. Then one day I manage to pay a parking ticket the day before it doubles and I take a shower and make myself something that would pass as a meal and I go to bed at a reasonable hour; I rewatch shows and re-read books because I love knowing how it all ends.
I touch everything, but went through a phase when I was beginning kindergarten where I refused to wear socks at all. I remember fighting with my mom in the morning before school, insisting that I could feel the sock seam and couldn’t bear it. She tried to accommodate my seemingly impossible preferences in the early ‘90s before Facebook groups and TikTok therapy; “That’s just how socks are made!” I remember her saying, and she’s right!
Turns out: My brain is just different from yours! My lived experience and genes and generation and location and inherited trauma all mixed up with whatever I ate in the early 90s (a lot of processed meat and cans of things) have created what I call myself.
There’s nothing wrong with me.
However, this is a blanket apology to everyone I’ve ever interacted with—in person or just online—for any disconnect in communication or misunderstanding. Now that I understand myself more clearly—after reading one book, watching a handful of tiktok videos, and following exactly 2 neurodivergent meme accounts on instagram—I realize I may not have always been so clear.
I’m the princess who searched 38 years for the pea only to find out that what I’ve been looking for are people who can not only feel the fucking pea, but also care which fork you would eat it with: Context matters. Visual design can trump negative sensory input, but it has its limits. Nostalgia is a powerful motivating force. Sentimentality matters. Sometimes I just like a specific fork and can’t really tell you why. But more often than not, I can talk at length and in-depth about precisely why the fork is either correct or not correct.
I also—and here I think, is the most important, and hardest, thing to remember—try to do so without judgement (or use those old masking skills for good!). I do not generally expect people to care about the same things I care about. But it’s so nice when they do. I am also not saying that any fork is wrong for you. I am simply telling you this particular fork is wrong for me in this specific situation.
I do not care if you choose that fork!! It is not a threat to me! In fact, in a most cases, I would prefer you do. Especially if that fork makes you happy. I would also love to hear your thoughts on the pros and cons of different utensils.
There are enough fucking forks for everyone.
If you read about masking or ADHD or sensory issues or autism, or any list of symptoms and think: ah fuck! This sounds like me! You’re probably right! I’m not a doctor but diagnoses are expensive and arduous and depleting. Can’t you just all believe me? Just this once?
Knowing how exhausting it is to keep track of it all for just myself, I can imagine we’re all pretty tired of the bullshit. Take off that mask bébé! I want to stand on a street corner and proselytize to the neurodivergent among us: I see you! I hear you! Of course I do, because I hear everything, including a great deal more than I would like to and also, somehow, not always what I really want to keep.
I save voice memos and re-read books and try to process it all or at least keep a piece of it to return to later, a portal back to the actual memories that I can never, ever catch in the present completely. I take tests and checklists and google symptoms; I’m so sick of coming out of things. Of explaining myself. And of not explaining myself. I don’t want to declare yet another identity.
But then, of course, I called my mom today, after devouring the book in two days, to diagnose her, several family members, and declare that I had figured out my whole past, and reconciled it with my present in less than 48 hours. I’m sure there’s a neurodivergent meme somewhere that says everything I’m trying to say more concisely and in a way that would make me instantly share it with a handful of my top instagram DMs.
“It’s me.”
”It’s us.”
But we’re not all like this. Like us. Like me.
It just makes sense to me that I sense things differently from some and similarly to some others. Nothing is sexier than when the senses overlap—when you say “I feel the exact same way,” and actually mean it. I wish we were taught to find our people from the very beginning; to love ourselves and others wherever and however we overlap, not hate the ones who aren’t for us. Ignore where we diverge, and focus on where we converge. Isn’t it nice that we all have certain things in common?
It’s nice to feel seen. To feel known. To spread some of the burden around. To delegate. To know that while I and you may indeed be unique—we also all have access to an infinite well of humanity—both past and present—to draw upon. We’ll never reach the end of understanding ourselves and others and I hope I never stop discovering new ways of looking at myself and the world(s) beyond me.
How fun!
How terrifying!!
There are an overwhelming amount of lives to be lived, investigated, and interpreted and I think neurodivergent people are just as valuable or as fallible as those who see themselves as neurotypical—I think if suspect you might be one or the other, you probably are! Or, more likely, we’re just all on the ~spectrum~ a word so perfectly neutral and nearly impossible to misinterpret that it must have been decided upon by someone who thinks as deeply about words as I do about forks. But don’t take my word for it: I only have two days—and 38 years—of experience.
Hahahah yes to all of this! I only recently came to discover not everyone shivers when they imagine eating with a big spoon, and learned that neurodivergence often leads to ‘specific little spoon’ cutlery obsessions. Your giant fork would have sent me into a tail spin!