Tag: neuroatypical | A Banana Peeled

My particular brand of neurospicy

Posted on September 8, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

For the first twenty years of my life, I felt like I was an alien without the manual for being human. Part of that was because I was the kid of two immigrants who did not want to be in America. Or rather, one of them did not want to be, and he was the king of the castle. We had very little interaction with American culture as my parents spoke Taiwanese at hom (to each other, but not to my brother and me), had only Taiwnaese friends, and did not watch any American TV. We did not go to the movies or listen to the radios. My father demanded Taiwanese food, and my brother and I wanted American food. We preferred pizza, mac and cheese, and the like.

Side note: My favorite part about church was that we went to a fast food restaurant afterwards. Usually McDonald’s or Burger King, but sometimes arby’s or Wendy’s. Then, for one glorious meal, I could eat a delicious Big Mac or a chicken parm (at BK) or a roast beef sandwich without being shamed for it.

Side note II: For decades, I thought my mother liked cole slaw and always gave her mine when we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Turns out she did not, but she felt she had to eat it because she did not want it to go to waste.

I did not realize that I was also just…diffreent. I didn’t think of things in the way other people did, but I didn’t know why or how to correct it. For example, other girls liked to play with dolls; I never did. I like stuffed animals because you could cuddle them and they felt squicshy and comforting. I didn’t realize until much later that this was because of my sensory issues, but I always felt better after hugging a plushie.

I also felt as if other kids were talking to each other in a language I could not undrestand. I remember going through the motions and hoping that no one would notice that I did not know what the hell I was doing. I basically shut up and didn’t say anything that would make me a target.

In addition, my father had a weird idea of what was supposed to be kept ‘secret’. The example I always give is when I was a kid, he and my mother were out playing tennis with some friends. Another woman from church called and asked for my father. I said that he was playing tennis with some friends and thought nothing of it.

Neurospicy is the new neurodiverse

Posted on January 22, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Neurospicy is the new word for neurodivergent. I’m not sure how I feel about it, and I say this as someone who is pondering whether or not I am–neurodivergent, I mean. In the last few years, I have heard it being called neurodivergent, neuroatypical, and neurodiverse. Neurospicy is a newer one, and I think I like it in a casual setting, but not for something like an office. Just like I wouldn’t use queer in a more formal setting, but I would with my friends.

I only started thinking about this issue seriously in terms of myself a few years ago. Why? In part because I did not present in the typical way, which I learned was more based on male behavior than female behavior (as are most medical diagnoses, sadly). I learned about a decade ago that the hyperactive thing was a drastic simplification of the matter. There was also a hyperfocus aspect that people overlooked when they talked about the inability to focus. Those two things (not being hyperactive and being able to focus with a laserlike precision) made me dismiss the idea that I had ADHD for a long time.

I kept getting drawn back to it, though. Things like being repeatedly told you’re lazy because you wouldn’t (couldn’t, actually, but it looked like wouldn’t) do simple things like check the mail or recycle empty boxes (the ones my cat, Shadow, doesn’t want). I would castigate myself for being lazy, which didn’t help, of course. I didn’t even learn of the term ‘executive function’ until about five years ago.

I did hear about hyperfocus before then, but I still didn’t think it was me. Until I read more and more about it. How it presents it women, I mean. I no longer identify as a woman, but I definitely grew up being treated as one. Oh, and it’s often talked about as a kid’s thing, when it’s definitely not.

The other complication is that I have trained myself from a young age to overcome some of the symptoms without even knowing it. I have, er, had a phenomonal memory. So I can overcome the shortcomings like being bad with details by brute force. I was also trained to take care of other people’s emotions so I was forced to pay attention to other people to an unnatural degree. I also have an off-the-charts EQ and can read people like books to an extent that makes them uncomfortable.

To not be or not to be

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I’m struggling. The reasons are long and complicated (and, yes, family-related), which I’m saving for another post. I will note that I had an actual meltdown while last talking to my mother. The result was my sleep immediately going to hell (had my first four-hour night sleep in a while, and how the hell did I EVER used to live on that? Regularly?), my brain fragmenting, and my energy completely dissipating. But, again, not the focus of this post.

In this post, I’m musing about all the ways I’m just…not. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll do my best.

Every since I was a wee little Taiwanese American girl (well, not so wee and not so little) growing up in the lily white suburbs in Minnesota in the 1970s, I was different. Some of it can be seen in the previous sentence. Hell, a lot of it. I was fat, unhappy (difficult childhood), Taiwanese American, super smart, and just…weird. I didn’t watch much TV and we rarely went to the movies. I didn’t listen to pop music until much later. I have an apocryphal story about how the first pop song I ever heard was Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant when I was in the sixth grade.

Side note: I just spent a ridiculous amount of time Googling exactly when the song came out and discovered it charted in America in April of 1983, so my apocryphal story could theoretically be true. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a way of underling my otherness.

My mom made my clothes including dresses which I hated. Still hate them. Skirts are fine-ish, but not my first choice. I wore one to my nieces wedding, but honestly, if I had some really swish (both literal and metaphorical), I probably would have worn them instead. I don’t wear makeup or use beauty products of any kind. There’s a reason I’m mentioning this, which I’ll come to later. I got fun of for bringing Taiwanese food because this was waaaaaaaay before ‘ethnic’ food became so popular.

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