Being Neurodivergent

[ehowton]

I make an exceedingly tasty pot of beans fairly regularly for meal prep. Over the last decade or so I have shared my list of ingredients to those who also wish to make beans. Infrequently, someone will ask me, "Have you made a pot of Eric beans recently," as that is what they affectionately call the beans they make from my list of ingredients.

"I'm Eric," I often remind them. "I just call them beans."

While I understand the need for an identifying designation outside my own household, by virtue of my assigned nomenclature and point of origin, any verbiage which falls outside the main ingredient would be both redundant and superfluous.

This is also why I don't do well on standardized (or awkwardly, in-session psychiatric) multiple-choice tests. Because they make assumptions based on how (I assume) the neurotypical majority process information. Allow me to explain: Unless there is an obvious wrong answer embedded within the choices, each and every answer in the multiple-choice test is correct depending upon the perspective in which it was asked. This may not seem like a big thing to the average adult reading this now, but struggling with such blatant deception during formative years in which this trickery was used to chaotically and inaccurately assign worth to future value was alarming. Moreso when seemingly I alone was aware of the subterfuge and would bring awareness to those in charge of the tests.

Incomprehensibly, each and every time I would be told, "Just pick the best answer," as if randomly divining the intended perspective in which the question was asked was enough to justify answers which were - believe it or not - graded on a right/wrong scale without any consideration for why I chose the correct answer I did. They were all correct, but in not choosing the most correct answer through a series of assumption, guesswork, and other unstated nonsensical expectation I was assumed to understand as being self-evident, I'm honestly surprised I've made it as far as I have in life. I had to approach each and every question independently as if a con-artist performing a cold reading weighing seemingly unconnected, innocuous criteria as key indicators in hopes of leveling up using arcane magic alone - things which couldn't be, "taught" rather (again) divined via a series of unspoken incantations.

This isn't about beans. Or tests.

It's about trying to conform to expectation without basis.

This experience has equipped me with a large, highly-precise vocabulary, an almost preternatural ability to communicate poorly with neurotypicals, and an infuriating penchant for being perceived as vague.