I’m a Neurotypical Living in a Neurodivergent Family and I’m the Odd One!

The moment I realized I was the "odd one out" in my family, I was just trying to bake cookies. A normal, straightforward activity, right? Preheat the oven, mix the ingredients, spoon onto tray, done.

But no. My sister, Emily, came in, took one look at my setup, and gasped, “Oh my god, you can’t just use the recipe as it is!” She grabbed the cinnamon, extra chocolate chips, a dash of cayenne, and a sprig of rosemary.

“That’s…not in the recipe,” I pointed out.

“It’s my flavor experiment. People love a culinary adventure!” she replied, confidently. The result? “Brownie Cookie Bites with the Element of Surprise” (the surprise being that half of them tasted like spicy soap). But did anyone blame Emily? Nope, it was apparently my fault for not having the vision.

Then there’s Dad. He’s a self-diagnosed "mad scientist." He once tried to build a "family time" machine to make us all arrive to events exactly on time—a noble goal, except this "time machine" was just a series of clocks and watches rigged with buzzers. He called it “synchronized punctuality.” All it did was scare the dog and beep every 15 minutes like some anxiety-fueled orchestra warming up. And every time we were late somewhere, he’d sigh deeply and say, “If some people had appreciated the genius of my invention…”

And don’t even get me started on my brother, Jake. He’s got ADHD with a side of boundless enthusiasm, so he’s always leaping into random hobbies with the intensity of a caffeinated squirrel. One week he’s into knitting—scarves everywhere. The next week, he’s decided to learn fire poi in the backyard, and I’m out there with a fire extinguisher just in case. Last I checked, he was learning to juggle knives. (Spoiler: He's terrible at it.)

The thing is, they all see me as the buzzkill. I’m “too cautious” (for refusing to eat the cayenne-cinnamon-rosemary cookies), “too close-minded” (for politely suggesting we get a calendar app instead of relying on Dad’s elaborate machine), and “too square” (for maybe not wanting knives flying around in the kitchen).

But it was my mom who really took the cake. She’s a multipotentialite, meaning she believes she’s got about seven or eight vocations. She once spent three months convinced she could speak to animals after watching a documentary. She’d crouch by the dog and ask, “Daisy, are you fulfilled? Am I feeding you emotionally?”

One night, after I interrupted her “therapy session” with the cat, she looked at me with profound disappointment and said, “You’ll understand someday.”

“Understand what?” I asked.

She paused. “Everything.”

And with that, she walked away, leaving me alone in the kitchen with her cat whispering schedule written on a whiteboard.

So here I am, neurotypical in a world of fascinating, brilliant, but profoundly different people. They think I'm the odd one, with my habit of following recipes and my aversion to knife juggling. But hey, maybe they’re right. After all, it is kind of boring to always know what your cookies will taste like.