By Karen Connor
From the beginning
I was born neurodivergent. With that came a lot of challenges but also some amazing characteristics. I had a really hard time sitting still and sometimes I still do. I always needed to have at least one of my legs going and the more excited or anxious I got, the faster my leg would shake.
As you can imagine, concentration was also an issue when I found the topic uninteresting or when I got distracted my other kids in my class. This got me in trouble sometimes and it didn’t help that I was a goof and loved to make my friends laugh.
Even though there are frustrations with some neurodivergent characteristics, there are a lot of characteristics that I am so happy to have. My favorite neurodivergent superpowers are the ability to hyperfocus, being quick witted, being highly creative, and the ability to recall memories with great clarity.
Here is an example of what I mean by hyperfocus; When I was young and got overwhelmed or in trouble, I would go into my living room and sit on the floor. On a sunny day, I would be mesmerized by how the sunlight shone through the front window, creating shadows on the curtains and by watching a beam of light sparkling as it touched all the way to the floor. I would trace the lines of the different hues of color the sunlight created on the curtains with my eyes, following every curve. Even though I didn’t know it at the time, that was my first experience with hyperfocus. Doing this made me look for other things to “trace” with my eyes so one day I looked up and noticed we had a stucco ceiling, so I traced the peaks and valleys of the stucco with my eyes as well! In an inner world where nothing ever sleeps, this was my way to slow down, through hyper focusing, even though I didn’t realize I was doing it. This allowed me to tune out the world and calm my ever-flowing thoughts.
Another way I tapped into hyperfocus was by colouring and playing board games, I could play monopoly for hours. My sister and I had lots of colouring books, and we both took a lot of pride in working hard to stay within the lines of the pictures we coloured.
Believe it or not, I could actually sit and watch tv, for a while. My favorite shows were Woody Woodpecker and Bugs Bunny which always made me laugh. Another show my sister and I watched was the Miss America Pageants, we also watched fashion shows with runway models. I found myself in awe of the model's beauty, their makeup, their clothing, the attention they received and the emotions evoked in both the winners and those who did not win.
I loved music as well and was highly influenced by Madonna and Cindy Lauper. I even tried tapping myself singing, with a tape recorder. Unfortunately, at the time, I didn’t like the sound of my recorded voice, so I didn’t sing in front of people for a very long time after that.
Bringing the energy up a notch
The rest of my time, about 90% of it, was spent in a high energy state (hyper mode). What did that look like? Endless energy, ideas, desire for excitement, no fear, always challenging myself for more.
Gymnastics, swimming, doing tricks off a diving board, track and dancing were my things. With endless amounts of energy, I had to find ways to get it out or I would go crazy because as a kid, I didn’t know how to properly handle it, and I would make my poor family crazy too. Again, even though I didn’t know I was doing it, I found ways to cope and let out my energy. One of my favorite things to do was to make an adventure out of daily trips to the general store. I couldn’t walk on the sidewalk, like normal people, I had to sneak through people’s backyards, climb over fences and remain unseen, pretending I was being sought after by bad guys.
Following along that theme, I never took the easy route either. I always wanted to explore, take the road less traveled, walk through the hole in the fence, go through the woods and walk down the path that led to somewhere unknown. It excited me to know that no one really knew where I was and thankfully my best friend was happy to follow me and do whatever my mind dreamed up.
For a while, I even had the younger neighborhood kids coming to my best friend’s house to hear made up stories. We got 0.10 cents per kid, and I would be the storyteller. I either asked kids to give me some ideas and I would go from there (improv) or I had to quickly think on my toes because there was no way a young kid was going to be able to plan a story to tell in advance, at least not this neurodivergent kid.
Another thing I loved to do was to explore people’s houses. I always got excited, hoping I would find a secret passageway or a secret room.
The last big thing that influenced my childhood greatly was my introduction to horror movies. In the 80’s, my uncle was one of few people that had a satellite dish and a recording device to record the movies on. He couldn’t wait to bring me a new tape with at least 3 movies on it.
I also loved fantasy and superhero movies, wished unicorns were real and that some people had superpowers…
