The Story Of Me

I struggle. It's a difficult thing to admit, but I do. I grew up with challenges that were not recognised: borderline working memory, dysgraphia, processing difficulties—and the beat goes on.

Invisible challenges can be a curse! You may note that I do not use the words disability or neurodivergent in this piece. Those words are like sand in my mouth! I am cognitively challenged and Neurodiverse. I am not some divergent statistic, some outlier: I am an ordinary member of a diverse society, although differently abled from the mean. With that laid bare, let me get on with the 'story of me.'

Fate is a cruel taskmaster. I always wanted to write, but dysgraphia held me back. I love poetry and reciting, but working memory puts a kibosh on that. I cannot read aloud, even at a primary level. I work very hard and accomplish a fraction of what others do at a much higher cost in energy.

Working memory and the processing issues that come with it mean I do things much slower than most people.

This challenge caused much consternation throughout my life, as I was constantly pushed to go faster and try harder. Which, try as I may, I could not!

My working memory operates like a three-register system. When I try to grasp information for a fourth, the entire apple cart is tipped over, and I lose all that information and have to start again. Think about that: Teachers, employers, and others chastised me because they thought I was not listening when, in fact, I was making herculean efforts to assimilate their instructions.

I tried desperately to take notes in class like other students, but that effort yielded no legible notes and a forgotten lecture. Damned if I did, damned if I didn't—a veritable zero-sum game at its finest!

Those efforts are physically exhausting! Yes, working your brain can drain you physically. So before you judge me with what you think you know, walk a few miles in my shoes! Imagine if you could only remember three numbers of a telephone number before they all got lost, and you had to start over again.?

Try calling an AI help system, and the information comes at you so fast that you must go through the menu ten or more times before you have what you need written down and then not be able to comprehend your own writing. Dysgraphia, remember? Fuck me! My shoes take a lot of filling!

So, think before you judge. Do you have the cajones to walk in my shoes for 64 years? Yes, admittedly, I am cranky because my effort to understand things gets nullified when someone interrupts me.?

Let me think! Injecting words (did you mean ...?) topples my precarious apple cart. It is like the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, in which Phil relives the same day over and over because he is stuck in some perverted time loop. Toppling my apple cart is my time loop, my kryptonite, and my curse! Over and over and over, ad nauseam!

The abovementioned issues are why I chose to leave work, stay home, and raise my child. She is an accomplishment I can be proud of. She has empathy, understanding, and respect for diversity: she is considerate and kind but not a doormat. I have done my job: the job I could do, and I did it well!

I can count the people who know a little bit about my struggles on the fingers of one hand because I keep my struggles close to my chest. If I tell people, I am told I am playing the sympathy card; if I don't, I get the 'you should have said something' line. Either way, it is a no-win situation, so I keep my mouth shut and just keep on keeping on.

Now, think about my lived reality before engaging in that gossip about my perceived laziness or why I no longer work a day job! Walk that mile: live my life, struggle my struggles... Reality awaits! Now, whisht up!