Difficult

‘You’re being difficult’, ‘you are difficult.’
‘You’re stubborn’, ‘you’re rigid’, ‘you’re being black and white’.
Just a list of more ways we are difficult.
‘You’re too much’, ‘you’re hard work’, ‘you’re exhausting’.

Difficult. Difficult. Difficult.

We can detect the exasperation in a person’s voice long before they know it is there. We can feel the wall of internal resistance rising up, a barrier of self defence.
Frantically, we try to adjust. We consciously, achingly, try and perform flexible, colourful, easy thinking and being. Contorting ourselves into something that can respond in a way that is going to be acceptable, that avoids the inevitable belittling cry; that we are ‘difficult’.

We shift and squirm. Do a soft shoe shuffle. Tie ourselves in knots.
We people please. We stop listening to ourselves. We loose ourselves.
Until exhausted, we can’t.

When we can’t, we stop.
We stop masking. We stop pleasing.
We become ‘difficult’.

Backed into a neurotypical corner, that frames our neurodiverse traits as less than, as things that need to be fixed. That sees stubborn, not knows what they need. That see’s rigid, not anxiety. That see’s black and white, not trying to find clarity in uncertainty.

We become labelled ‘difficult’ because we are not neurotypical.
We become labelled ‘difficult’ because neurotypical is synonymous with normal.
We become labelled ‘difficult’ because we are exhausted, desperate, trying to survive.

But.

Are we being stubborn, or are you insisting on something that is sensorily, cognitively or physically impossible or painful for us?
Are we being rigid, or have we been put in a position or environment that is causing so much anxiety we are unable to process?
Are we being black and white, or are you presenting something in a way that we can’t make sense of?

Are we being difficult or are you being neurotypical?