A Little Off
Sept 11 2022
Language changes.
I was once eccentric, a character
weird, at worst.
Thought of as different
interesting
a little off.
. . . Maybe a lot!
Now
I can confidently say
I am neurodivergent;
it's my brain, not me
I was born this way.
But what am I
if not my brain?
And so, nothing really changes.
Except now we talk about fate
the accident of birth
wonky DNA,
and not about agency
mistakes
the casting of blame.
The explanatory power
of a single word
amazes me.
Like the crippled, handicapped, disabled,
the challenged
and differently able
I now have a ramp
a level glance
a cut in the curb,
a place
in the public square.
Now
with this understanding
self-acceptance comes more easily.
And instead of endlessly circling
as I dissect my choices
and question the past,
find myself looking ahead
owning what I have.
If the reader has been wondering about my singular focus on writing ( a poem almost every day!) this might explain. I have enough features of Asperger's (high-functioning autism would be the more correct terminology) to have self-diagnosed as such. One of those typical traits is a very passionate focus on some very narrow interest. More hedge hog than fox, one could say; more specialist than generalist. This is the first time I've ever written about it. Probably the last. Because I'm not at all comfortable with confessional poetry, or poetry as therapy.
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