I've never been officially diagnosed with autism, but it's pretty clear to anyone who has spent more than a moment with me that I am neurodivergent. One of the ways my brain works is that I am very literal. Many times in my life, my literal thinking has led me to some funny conclusions. For example, in grade 12, a teacher told us we were going to "talk about a cool cat named Maslow." For years, I tried to understand how a cat came up with a pyramid of needs. No harm came from that, and eventually, I realized it was just a funny story. But that hasn’t always been the case. They told me Santa took back the doll I really wanted because he saw me being naughty My parents went hard in on the whole "Santa's elves can see you ALL the time" thing. And I believed them. My life became about being performatively good. I got really self-conscious, especially about "bathroom stuff." This deeply shaped aspects of my core personality—the people-pleasing, ...
There’s an ache in my leg that isn’t just pain—it’s an absence and a presence at the same time. It feels like muscle withering at the core of my being, like something that should be there is slipping away. Not just pain, but a hollowing. It’s not sharp, not sudden. It’s a roaring ocean getting sucked into a singularity, a force collapsing inward while still somehow pushing against me. It’s an ache wrapped in emptiness, a paradox of feeling too much and not enough. I’ve searched for ways to explain this—turns out, others with nerve damage, muscle atrophy, and degenerative conditions describe something similar: 💥 “Negative space pain” – like the ghost of something that once was. ⚡ “Static electricity in reverse” – a charge leaving instead of building. 🌌 “A star collapsing in on itself” – a force losing its own shape, but not its intensity. Medical terms call it neuropathic pain, denervation atrophy, dystrophic pain… but words like that don’t capture the existential ache of f...