Subjective Experience: Or How Prince Knew it All Along

“I’m not a woman. I’m not a man. I am something you will never understand…I’m not your lover. I’m not your friend. I am something that you’ll never comprehend.” (Prince. Sigh. what a babe)

How many of us super smart nonbinary neurodivergent weirdos can understand what Prince was saying there? I’ve wanted to just exist as myself in the world. Other people find me confusing and irritating and disruptive.

Because I am.

I think there are a lot of people like me. People who don’t fit into boxes or descriptions or scripts. People who are able to encounter themselves and others and situations with openness. With curiosity. With acceptance of it simply being what it is regardless of my opinion or thoughts on it.

It’s such a strange concept to me. To be emotionally activated by things I can’t change and/or are none of my fucking business.

My boss decorates her office a certain way? None of my business. Not in my power to control.

The clerk at the coffee shop has a beard and wears a skirt? None of my business. Not in my power to control.

I do, however, experience enjoyment at the unique expression. My brain likes a little variety in my surroundings.

Maybe my neurodivergence has made me so practiced at accepting and adjusting to things I don’t understand and are completely out of my control. Expectations around weddings. Expectations around small talk and family gatherings. There are so many unwritten social rules and expectations that don’t make sense that I’ve simply had to notice, accept, and move on while performing compliance.

It’s a privilege of the neurotypical to be unchallenged. To float through life on currents of rules and order. Muscle memory of scripts and social rules.

But like weightlifters who skip leg day there are muscles and strengths that atrophy in that kind of life. You don’t practice learning and adjusting to things you don’t understand when you don’t question anything. You don’t become adept at radical acceptance if there's no challenge to your comfort. You don’t learn emotional regulation if the world around you bends to your discomfort, or doesn’t present any discomfort at all.

When my brain is juicy and spry. When the dopamine is pumping and the verdant web of neural connections is vibin’ high. When those conditions are just so I’m able to navigate the world with joy and ease. Jump from a social interaction to a mechanical task and back to a social one and into a mental endeavor. Transitions are easier. The tasks are easier.

Some days my mental landscape is like a dry desert. My axons and dendrites are too far from each other or there’s not enough juice to support the jobs needed.

What dries me out? Who the hell knows anymore. Nutrition? Breathing? Exercise/physical fatigue? High sensory input days using up my neurological resources and then having a “hangover” where i need to recover? Emotionally taxing days doing the same? Supplements? Methyl folate? B6? B12? Ketosis? There are so many things that suck my resources in ways that other people have more resilience for.

How I perceive myself dictates the image I present and the package I put forward. The body I was issued does not dictate my gender expression. My gender experience dictates the body I wear. The avatar I pilot.

The label given me isn’t my truth. “I’m not a woman. I’m not a man. I am something you will never understand…I’m not your lover. I’m not your friend. I am something that you’ll never comprehend.”

This is revolutionary and disruptive because it weakens the control that has been held by the system. The control that stated what was listed on a birth certificate was the script for the rest of a person’s life.

It used to be that the external world was given more validity than the internal.

You yelled. I felt scared. You didn’t yell LOUD so I shouldn’t feel afraid. The volume of the yell is more valid than the experience of fear. 

That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? If I feel afraid it doesn’t matter how many decibels your sentence was. My fear is real. My subjective experience is more valid than the objective measure of the interaction.

Times have shifted and subjective experiences are given more and more validity. This erodes the control that has been held by systems that benefit from shame.