I have only posted here once every few months since my ex and I decided to call it quits, but I have a mountain of partial drafts saved with unedited half thoughts and feelings. I have used writing as a tool for processing ideas and feelings since my adolescence. I find that I can organize my scattered thoughts best when I get them all onto paper and then can start sorting them into more coherent paragraphs, editing until they accurately capture how I feel or what I am trying to say. However, it takes time and effort to organize my thoughts. I often spend long periods ruminating and figuring out exactly what I want to say – only to lose the threads before I can write them down or say them out loud. When I know I am going to be processing things out loud-such as in therapy-I have to jot down notes ahead of time, or even as we’re talking, so that I don’t lose the thought or question. Even when I write my thoughts down, it can sometimes be too overwhelming to try and find the threads that pull the disjointed thoughts together.
This is one of the downsides to being neurodivergent. My brain doesn’t work the way a “typical” brain works.
(As an aside, I actually don’t think there is a “normal” brain, or that atypical neural processes are necessarily a disorder, but there certainly is a way of thinking that has become accepted as standard or “best” culturally that I find myself outside of. I do hope we’re getting closer as a society to accepting neurodiversity).
I think this is why, even 19 months in, it can still be difficult to summarize “what happened” or make sense of the end of my marriage. If given time, I can get my thoughts together enough to articulate a lot of my feelings about what happened, and I’ve made a lot of progress in therapy with sorting through all the complexities. And yet, it continues to feel very complicated. I still feel like all of the feelings constantly resurface, and have to be processed and sorted all over again. It’s like I can’t hold onto the coherent explanation (or “closure”) for long.
The analogy I’ve come up with is imagining individual words like magnets you have put on a large magnetic white board. You have crafted the perfect paragraph–it makes sense, and articulates your thoughts perfectly–then suddenly the words all fall to the floor in a big heap. They’re no longer in the right order. Now they have to be sorted again. I know the cohesive thought is still there in the pile. All the words and even the memory of how they fit together are right there – accessible. I know I can put them back in order at any time. But if I don’t have the energy to do so, they just stay in he pile – a jumbled heap. They will sit there until I’m ready to organize it all once again. And I never know how long they’ll stay on the board before they inevitably fall off again.
I thought it would get easier to talk about over time, and I’ve actually found the opposite to be true. It’s less emotional to talk about, and I certainly have more perspective now then I did a year ago. But, I can never seem to capture the complexity of it all concisely or definitively. The more I simplify, the less authentic it feels. Time also brings up new questions, surprise triggers, and curve balls I wasn’t at all expecting.
I’ve been wondering if this is normal for everyone going through divorce, or if it’s harder for someone with my brain to process. Maybe both?
Woman Asunder 