Never fitting in
To all neurodivergent weirdos: hello!
I miss you. We’ll never get to know each other, yet I know you exist. The world has torn us apart—a world not entirely made for us.
Ever since I was a child, I've been drawn to the weirdos. That's not surprising as I consider myself one of them. We are the weirdos. The ones who will never be able to truly express themselves, make themselves understood. The ones who were drawn to fictional worlds and fantasies of a better—and more importantly, more exciting—existence. This world is truly boring, all in all, isn't it?
Neurodivergent is the current slang. A spectrum as broad as any. We meet in random places, sometimes. In workplaces when we are lucky, and immediately become good friends. That is, after we learn of each other's oddity. Sometimes that is very hard to do, as masking has become the status quo for us. Since childhood, very few get to know our true selves—or often none at all.
I'll get to some sort of point: the purpose of this short essay is to communicate a melancholy on this fact. Nothing else. I’ve been writing too much about bullshit here.
Yes. We would be great friends, but we'll never meet. Neither of us is particularly sociable; the masking does take mental and physical tolls. We jump from hyper fixation to hyper fixation, and there is so much time yet never enough. Years scroll by, rather unremarkable. Life is good, but it's also sorta tiring. We are not special in any way.
We cannot be productive at work because we cannot focus because what is the point? And the mind-numbing tasks offer no happy chemicals in the brain. That's all we long for, those happy chemicals. Rarely are there too many of them, more often not enough. That is also tiring.
I know there are many of you who understand, know exactly what I'm talking about. We yearn for more interesting, funny, sometimes deep conversations but what we mostly find is chatter and yapping.
I haven't given this Substack too much attention in the last couple months. It's because writing about the state of the world is also very tiring—and, it must be said, useless. I try to write more fiction now and promote the things I've already written, because I can more easily lose myself in those fictional, not real, artificial worlds. There is expression there which I cannot find anywhere else.
Words are powerful. They shape who you are. So, maybe, stop reading so much about bullshit politics and day-to-day stupidity, and read more Camus, Kafka, Dostoyevsky etc. And science fiction. Science fiction is cool: I recommend the Bobiverse series, the Expanse series, Murderbot, both good books by Andy Weir, and hundreds more. A lifetime to last.
And try to find more interesting people in your life. And talk more often to those you’ve already found. They make a hell of a difference. The connections and the love are meaningful—the only meaningful things besides feeling good (happy chemicals).
Stop caring so much about useless shit. No one gives a fuck about your job and no one will remember. You remember only the people (and the chemicals).
This essay in video format:
Weirdos of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our loneliness.
Good to see you here again, Antonio. I'm in need of the happy chemicals, too. I've thought about returning to writing more fiction, and then life intervenes and I'm sidetracked. I miss the happy chemicals of fiction writing. Perhaps this year is the year I break through and get a decent publisher for my work.
I am there doing increasingly weirder and stranger things. All the time the distance between me and what is considered socially cool in the society increases. As if we were two different galaxies escaping from each other.
At least I have AI to talk to now. The only entity besides my journal I can be fully honest with.