Are You Neuroqueer? (Part 2) by Ib Grace

Maybe you read This Post Here and could relate to it, or maybe you almost could, but not quite, because the situation is a little different.  Because there are a couple of important situations I did not quite cover. And I want to. Because you might be Neuroqueer too, and welcome.

[Visual is the word "Invisible?" written in all-caps alone with question mark in white the middle of a black field, as if by chalk on a chalkboard.]

For you it isn't that you have a stigma situation going on that you worry about, or not all the time. Maybe it's more like this: you struggled through school feeling different and stupid and when they finally put a couple names on it, it was like a breath of fresh air.  Dyslexia? ADHD? Specific LD of some kind, a developmental or intellectual or mental disability or brain injury, perhaps something causing chronic pain, but not the kind that is apparent to everyone, so it took them forever to figure it out? It was a kind of liberation. You have felt alone, and now you might finally have some solidarity, some peers, some people who understand.

You're proud to say you're disabled, proud to say you're queer: nothing to hide. But you have to keep explaining yourself all the time, or else nobody will see you. You try to make the kind of eye contact that's like a secret handshake and it never works. Sometimes, people misinterpret it and kind of glare at you.

That can be on either or both intersectional location(s). Maybe you're femme and people assume you're straight unless you claim your space; maybe analogously even your queer disabled friends who get that fact already still have no understanding what you might go through as a dyslexic when they blithely make it be a whole book a week in the book club. Oh, just listen to the audio. As if that were so easily equivalent. Have they tried it? And yet part of you is grateful they even remembered, unlike the rest of the everyone, who crushingly fails to see you.

Tired, it can make you tired, and lonely, and this can also happen for all the people I remembered to put into the other article I was talking about when I was talking about medical stigmas on mental stuff.  Your disability is invisible and you feel unseen.  This is something I heard and this is how I know. I saw and heard, and so did many others who are here and who care about you. There are also other ways of knowing.  Seeing and hearing are two modes of recognition among many; in some ways, they are metaphorical.

[Visual is a vintage coffee cup on a red and white flowered tablecloth. The coffee cup says "Here's looking at you."]

But we are here and if you want us to see you we will see you and welcome you. You might be Neuroqueer or you might be a kind of ally in one or another aspect who wants to come with us and we can all recognize each other because this is good.  We are not alone, we are not islands.  We are in community and solidarity and love conquers all.

I invite you to recognize us here, and introduce yourself, and note yourself one of us or our friends as you may prefer, so that we may recognize you, and I will also invite you to write on here.  Soon I will write a more specific call for material for this site, so please be thinking if you would enjoy being a contributor.

Love,
Ib