You talk too much. in Like No One Is Reading

My mother always told me that. Teachers, bosses, friends. Everyone. I talk too much.

It is the worst and most painful of all of my trauma responses, the most difficult for me to deal with, because of ADHD and rejection sensitive dysphoria. I feel the overwhelming need to explain myself, to overexplain little things, because I really, really just want to be heard and understood. Or, at least, heard and accepted.

Every time I get interrupted, especially if I’m talking about myself, what I’m feeling or thinking, what I’m going through, it feels like another little part of me dies inside. The little part of me that I was trying to let out, to express in words, just curls up in a ball and dies. No one wants to hear her, understand her, or accept her. No, they just want to fix her, make her stop being like she is, make her easier to manage, easier to deal with.

I have been told by almost every significant person in my life that I’m “not easy to deal with.” I’m overwhelming, intimidating, too much. I’m too much for someone else to deal with. It makes me feel like a flat tire someone can’t afford to fix so they just throw a spare on and throw the flat in the trunk and forget about it.

There are still parts of me that make me feel like I still don’t fit in, not really. I’m still not fully accepted for who I am, for my neurodivergent personality and my “annoying” ADHD traits. Like, I’m fun and good and all that, until I start talking about the things I struggle with, and then it’s like, “Why don’t you fix this thing about yourself?” And that’s the thing, you know. There’s no cure for what I am. There’s no fixing it. There’s managing it and mitigating it, but only sometimes. I can’t always. Sometimes I’m going to talk too much, sometimes I’m going to express things about myself that might make someone feel uncomfortable because they don’t know how to process it or accept it as a fact of who I am on a fundamental level, and I really just need that to be okay.

I wish I could find a space that I could fit into where exactly who I am is okay. A space with other neurodivergent people who experience the same things I do. I wish I had more neurodivergent friends to talk to but all I have are strangers on Twitter and the neurotypicals in my life who don’t really understand because they can’t. It would be like a white person trying to understand what it is like to be a black person. We can’t. It’s impossible. We can never fully understand what that’s like. That is our privilege, and it is the privilege of neurotypicals, too - they can never fully understand a neurodivergent mind.

Sometimes I just want someone to listen to me, to hear what I have to say no matter how long or how many words it takes me, and have them just… listen and accept and say they love me. I don’t need more ideas or tools to “deal with” my illnesses - I have all I need. Sometimes, one of those tools is talking. And, when I’m using that tool, I just want to be allowed to do so uninterrupted. I just want to feel like, for the first time in my life, someone respects me enough to just let. me. speak. Let me speak until all the words are out and then have an opinion on it (if you must), but please. Just let me express myself without interruption. I would love to know what that was like just once in my life.