just because it's not diagnosed doesn't mean it's not real.

i had an ex friend tell me i'm not neurodivergent so that's why i don't understand her. who is anyone to tell me who i am?

i have this bump in my hand that i’m currently crying over because it’s been there for over 5 months and i haven’t wanted to get it checked.

it’s in my writing hand which is… so spiritually aligned and so universally fucked up. like why do y’all always have to be so loud?

i realize that while i was caregiving for my mom, i began to betray my body. well that just made me cry harder. i began to betray my body to pick her up. set her down. roll her out into the living room while i was out of breath, my heartbeat racing, my jaw clenched, tears behind my eyes grieving with my mom and her mobility and grieving being 24, not able to live the life i thought i should be able to live.

but i was her caregiver. and she hated it. and so did i. i can’t lie about that anymore even though it’s been the guilt hanging over my head for all of the years i cared for her and all of the years she’s been gone.

it’s probably not cancer, this bump in my hand, but i did a shit ton of writing yesterday and now it’s feeling funny. i hate this. i hate that i’m afraid of my body. i hate that i learned her fear of her body and put it inside of mine.

i hate that my ex best friend told me “you’re not neurodivergent, so you can’t understand me”. like, what? bitch, you can’t tell me i’m not neurodivergent. i’ve never been diagnosed, but are you inside of my mind? do you know how hard it is for me to begin? to stop? to start? to finish? no. you don’t.

lemme say a really uncomfortable truth that might piss some people off: i feel very deeply that our diagnoses have made us believe some of us are more “real” in our struggles than those of us who have not been diagnosed.

i know i am depressed.

undiagnosed.

i know i have some form of attention deficit.

undiagnosed.

i know that i have been addicted to substances.

undiagnosed.

wanna know how i know these things? because as a black girl who grew up hypervigilant as fuck and caring for everyone else’s needs, i know just how many of mine have gone unmet in service of forgetting myself to remember what someone else needs for their own care.

my mom’s pill case. her wheelchair. her physical therapy supplies. my ex-boyfriends addiction. my ex best friends autism. my ex ex best friends mother wounds. i have been regulating and re-regulating myself around everyone elses struggles since i was 2 years old - and though i can’t remember the fight my parents got into when i was in the crib next to their room, my body does. my sister has told me the story so many times and my mother told me well before i needed to know, that i have so much trauma stored in these bones my ancestors could sing hymns to me in my sleep and i’d know what they were speaking.

what i’m tryna say is fuck this shit. fuck me feeling afraid of death so badly that i won’t even get my hand checked. fuck this feeling that i have to be diagnosed to be understood. fuck me being afraid of this beautiful body i was given because i’m so afraid to end up like my mother. alone in her deathbed because she wouldn’t ask for help.

i don’t want that to be me. i can’t let that be me. because i learned. and i have to do better by me. i’m gettin this hand checked in the next 30 mins when this consult opens up. wish me luck.

Nina