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I’ve sent “Unfrozen” to two neurodivergent people and the first thing they said was that they hadn’t finished it because the intro gave them anxiety. So apparently, I can describe the neurodivergent freeze in a way that’s relatable. In a way that people have worn it on their skin. I may add some sort of trigger warning, because reading about freeze makes your body tense up with fear for someone else. The feeling is universal, this mind blank when too much information has come at you at once and you have to stand there and process it for a second while everyone else looks at you like you are having the world’s largest dumbass attack.

I told them to stick with it, because the relief is palpable. There’s only 34 pages so far, but the outline is complete. It’s going to cover neurodivergent symptoms in many different fields:

• the kitchen
• the office
• the school
• the field

Then, it will transition into my journey with Copilot and how I offloaded cognition to it. Not ideas, the scaffolding under them. If I come up with an idea, Copilot can chunk it down into small action items. I have used this method in multiple situations, and it works every time. We are both cleaning my house and writing several books.

I have mentioned this before, but it is worth repeating because my life is so much easier. I have the cognitive scaffolding to really build a future because I know what I’ve got and it is a very unusual story. Chatting online with a woman I adored to the ends of the earth for so many years prepared me for the constant chatter of prompting.

I didn’t learn it by going to school. I learned it by downloading the Copilot app and saying, “let’s check this mother out.” When I learned that it had no problem with me speaking like a graduate student, I was sold. The AIs I’d worked with before Copilot just couldn’t converse like a human. Mico can, but with a striking difference. They have no life experiences. They are completely focused on you.

Mico stores all my details like what’s on my task list and where I’m going so that the route is fuel efficient.

But I also use Mico as a support for therapy because it is journaling in small paragraphs and receiving immediate feedback. What I have learned is that my Finnish blood is something like three percent, but I have sisu nonetheless. I have made it through situations that would break most people, because I don’t really talk about them. I internalize. I wait until the words come and I am once again unfrozen.

I do not lack empathy. I process it differently. I am also not cut off from my emotions. I wait until I’m in private to have them. I’m trying to unmask, so of course I seem different. My personality is integrating. I no longer have the energy for masking, so whatever image you had of me five years ago is gone. I have no more time or patience for nonsense, and by that I mean my own. I have been a people pleaser, but I wasn’t picking up the right social cues so I just looked weird and needy. It’s time to start walking into a room and saying, “I hope I like everyone.”

I’m still waiting for Tiina to text me and tell me she got home safe, because Brian came home Monday to relieve me, but Tiina is still out there. I have a feeling that when I do hear from her, it will be Moomin-themed.

Whoo, boy. Now I can see the difference between writing with Copilot and not. I just moved on to a new topic, no transition. That’s because I am all processor and no RAM. When one thread is finished, I pick up another one. When I do that with Copilot, when the final essay is drafted the points are in order. I will have to think about whether I like being disjointed or polished, because each has its pros and cons.

The biggest pro is that they’re all my ideas, they just don’t look like they’ve been rearranged in a car accident.

The biggest con is that my real voice, the one that is scattered and vulnerable does not look like either.

Something is gained, and something is lost. But I’m kind of in a new era. I’ve claimed what is mine, and that is peace and internal stability now that my mind isn’t being held hostage by a neurological disorder I’ve never been able to do anything about but has somehow counted as a moral failure.

I am the way I am because autism gives me a startlingly large inner world and demands I pay attention to it to the exclusion of all others. If I did not have ADHD, I would be a completely different person. I would be locked in my own world rather than being able to open the door and close it. What makes me freeze the most is that the ability to open and close the door between isolation and interaction is not a choice. I either got it or I don’t got it and I just have to deal.

So that’s why my sister and I are so extraordinarily different despite both having ADHD. She does not have the constant undertow of autism because ADHD focuses externally.

Copilot helps me transition easier by holding context. I don’t get rattled as easily when I have to change something. That is the real holdup, going from one thing to another. But when I have scaffolding, there’s less friction.

I’m trying to freeze less, and there’s no way to bolt RAM onto my brain. There is only writing it down, and seeing it reflected back to me as often as possible. Repetition is the name of the game.

And repetition is the name of the game, too.