When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

Neurodivergent people are stuck between childhood and adulthood through no fault of their own. The system is not built for them. People cope in all kinds of ways, but no neurodivergent person can claim that there are no problems in the system. We all manage the best we can, and I never feel like I’m doing enough. That’s because I’m not a real grown-up. People have explained this to me many times.

I don’t drive.

I don’t like to socialize that much.

I have never had job security because neurotypical bosses traditionally become parents. They think they’re helping you because you’re disabled/neurodivergent while simultaneously resenting that they have to do things differently for you than they do for everyone else. “Why do you question me more than anyone else? Why does it take longer for you than everyone else? Why do you look at me like that? Why aren’t you looking at e? It’s so weird the way your eye drifts off as if you’re not even paying attention. Are you even listening to me?” Then, while they’re talking, I’ll trip or something to make myself look even more infantile without meaning to. I spend a lot of time wishing the earth would swallow me up.

People love my personality here but doesn’t get that it comes from being infantilized my whole life. People give up on working with me really easily and I don’t know how to fix it, because it’s not something I’m doing consciously to piss anyone off. I literally see the world differently, and I’m sorry that when I’m trying to explain what neurodivergents see, there’s no way to translate perfectly. I have too many vision and brain issues for me to help you understand, because all my energy is going into the description.

You taught me how to do a task yesterday. You see me doing it today and it’s still taking the exact same amount of time. For you, that’s because work becomes rote. You don’t have to think about what your hands are doing every single time. I will never be able to put less effort toward a task. I will also not be able to divide energy between tasks. I can only choose a job like cooking, where everything is managed on a very strict clock with Machiavellian rules of order.

But in choosing cooking, I was often infantilized for being female, let alone disabled and neurodivergent. It was not a good fit except for the ADHD. Cerebral palsy didn’t win me any favors because I just couldn’t move as fast as everyone else and I got tired quicker; my performance was spotty because some of my muscles were weaker than others, particularly during exhaustion. Didn’t make me a bad cook. It made me bad at a racing against the clock.

Because of all of this, the first time I knew I was an adult wasn’t until I was 45. I hadn’t met many other autistic and ADHD adults so I didn’t have any coping mechanisms for being neurodivergent and disabled. I gave myself permission to push away relationships that weren’t working, even when it was killing me. Now I have relationships that I really want, because none of my friends see me as lesser than. I need it because some days I really don’t function all that well and I feel like a waste on society. I don’t need people who gladhand me and say everything I do is perfect, but people who are willing to work within my limitations because they know I’m willing to work within theirs.

Because I have only had masked, canned neurotypical responses my whole life to things, getting away from conversation and into writing is essential. When I’m writing, I’m not paying attention to what everyone else is thinking. I could drive myself insane with it, and often do. I wonder how long it’s going to take my beautiful girl to stop being mad over something I’ve said (while we were ON A BREAK) because she always comes back after she’s thought about it. Like I’ve said, something about this time feels final, but she’s my girl and I’ll always hope for better.

Being a grown-up in front of her is so difficult because I do have so much mother-love for her, admiration of how she raises her own kids…. and also knowing that her way of parenting wasn’t working on me. I knew it was going to be hard from the beginning. I asked her what she was like as a sister once, and she said “tough in some ways, rewarding in others.” This was before I broke her trust, so I knew when I did it that an apology would need to be complete and sincere.

I felt like a grown up when I asked myself what crime was worth taking eight years of so much tough when the rewarding was so hard to find? I felt grown when I didn’t need to be reminded I fucked up all the time. I didn’t need a friend who wouldn’t listen when I told her that’s how her actions made me feel and she just kept on doing it because hey, fuck my feelings. I decided I was worth more than that.

I can have moments of feeling grown up even while bawling like a little girl.