Am I Neurodivergent Ken Barlow?

Or balls to masquerading.

I’ve been feeling really off recently.

But a different kind of off.

(God, it’s like Keats, isn’t it.)

I’ve felt “off” for most of my life. What’s changed is how I cope with and approach it. Before having my son - and thus not knowing I had OCD with a possible sprinkling of ADHD and ASD - I would spiral. I would look inwards and try to fix it. What’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? Why can’t I just be happy? In relentlessly asking those questions, I unknowingly answered them.

Questions, doubts, introspections that I thought would dig me out of the hole kept only getting bigger because I kept digging to get out of the hole that was only getting bigger…you get it.

Since learning more about the way my brain works and treating myself with a boatload more compassion, when some real stimulus comes up in the real world, I throw it back out into the universe instead of only internalising it. In other words, I keep looking up, instead of down and convincing myself everyone is, metaphorically, staring at me. There’s a liberation in that that I can’t quite put into words. So much for being a writer.

If it’s “all in my head”, in that nothing actually happened in my actual life, I just worried that it did, or could, or should, then the first step is even realising that that’s what’s happening. Then I try to cut off the spiral. I simply won’t allow it. It started with me telling myself “I’ll solve that later”. Pretending to my own mind that I was telling the truth. I knew later wouldn’t come. Like telling a kid “we’ll see” when they ask if they can go to Disneyland tomorrow. We all know what it means, my brain/child included.

So, I’m no stranger to feeling out of sorts, askew, off. But my new offness is different. I’ve subconsciously been lobbing it in with the usual until I realised that I know exactly what this is. I’ve known all along, I just couldn’t see it.

I’m not pretending anymore.

Or as much. With everyone and with regard to every THING in my life and that’s causing different reactions from people around me. That’s the offness. The unknowable thing that’s different this time. I’m not taking on all of the responsibility AND trying to hide it. I’m not masking as much as I’ve always done. That makes me behave differently or certainly come across differently and other human beings are adjusting accordingly. I just haven’t told anyone else that.

I’m not faking that I like to be around people for more than I’m comfortable with. I’m not concealing that I’m not quite understanding what’s happening or expected of me. I’m putting it back out there. I’m asking what people mean - watching them struggle to explain it. I’m saying no when it was always a people-pleasing yes. I’m taking time for myself when I need quiet. When I need to be alone. And I’m doing it, somewhat, unapologetically and that’s causing teething problems.

The first being that I haven’t really let anyone else in on this plan. I’ve just “changed”. When really I haven’t, I’ve just stopped pretending. The second being I’m having to actively shun the guilt that builds up inside me like a shaken bottle of pop and KNOW I can bear it. It’ll subside, like the anxiety, it always does and like with anything - resisting compulsions included - practice makes perfect.

So maybe this offness, is an ON-ness that I’ve never really allowed myself the permission to feel. Will it get easier? I hope so. Is it always a good thing? No, probably not. Spiritually, the idea of being your true self is not just applauded but revered. However, that’s not how the real world works. Things need to be said or done, whether you feel like it or not. And that can be good for you, in some instances.

The third hurdle is that, shockingly, my true face under the mask looks a hell of a lot like the same person from the outside. I don’t appeared to have changed but there’s certainly been a shift. It’s effectively signalling that to other people that’s the hard part.

Finally, I think the most painful piece of this puzzle is knowing what was masking and what’s just YOU. I’m forty this year, I’ve been inhabiting some of these behaviours for much of my life. Aren’t they just me, at this point? I always think of Ken Barlow in Coronation Street (British soap). If you’ve been playing a character on TV for forty years, at some point aren’t you just playing yourself? Weirdly, I met William Roach, the actor who plays Ken Barlow, when I was about 8 years old at a tour of Granada Studios in Manchester. People were swarming him for autographs and I had my disposable camera in my hand and asked for a photo. He said “no photos”. Maybe I should absorbed that lesson 30 odd years ago. Say no. Be true to who you are, even if it makes others uncomfortable because you’ve bypassed polite societal norms.

Well, climbing out of that Ken Barlow-shaped rabbit hole, I’ll end with this. No-one and I mean absolutely no-one has a real clue as to what’s going on and if they’re getting it “right”. Everyone is winging it and navigating each moment as it comes. We’re human beings not machines. We’re too affected by variables beyond our control. And trying to endlessly micro-manage how you come across is unrealistic. No-one can possibly know what to do all the time.

Except for Ken Barlow. He’s probably known all along.