What Nobody Tells You About Being ND

 “And you can have it all

My empire of dirt”

 That sense of blankness when you’re about to write something important (at least to you), is a terrifying part of my writing process, or so I’ve found as I’ve paid more and more attention to how I write and what I write. So, here I go with a cup of tea and a lotus biscoff biscuit in my hand, making a typo like a pro to tell you all, I will tell you all…yeah, Eliot beat me to this one.

It is an often repeated saying that there’s a first time for everything and anyone who happens to follow me on Instagram knows that last weekend was spent at the Apeejay Kolkata Litfest, a gala event with lots of insights and thought provoking conversations; not to mention travel on buses and in cabs, selfies and group pictures and a controversial plate of fried rice which was served to us in jail.

So now that we have gone to prison for our vices and guilty pleasures about literature (for we are as much what we read as we are what we wear), let’s take a look at how I feel on the Monday after the AKLF. Put simply, I feel like a herd of elephants in the seventeen stone category (minimum) did the mamba on my spine.

I was glam itself for the past three days – good clothes, ties, blazers, excellent watches and lots and lots of smiles . Bertie Wooster would have modeled his article on “What the Well Dressed Man is Wearing” on me (assuming of course that Bertie Wooster was a real person).

But that brings me to something else, am I real? I ask this because I went from an outgoing and adrenaline crazed junkie listening to luminaries talk literature, psychology and book covers to a man in his dad’s clothes, sipping tea and doing whatever this is so quickly. My WhatsApp is full of chatter about the event, but my phone is on silent and my head hurts and I’m so twitchy that the sound of the doorbell is making me jump out of my skin.

 I sort of zoned out a second and had to read from the beginning to get back some sort of bearing of what it is that I was writing. Apparently, there’s another event coming up soon but I’m pretty sure that I won’t be able to attend it because this event has set my social batteries to a point from where its just work and books for a minimum of two weeks and no skipping workouts (especially leg day) for a straight week.

I don’t even have the energy to try and make this article a little less chaotic. I feel like I’m birthing a little trickster demon using the pixilated ink as a substitute for blood and keystrokes instead of chalk to draw Aldebrand’s Pentacle (tell me you’ve read Johnathan Stroud without telling me you’ve read Johnathan Stroud).

I suppose that now that the trickster demon has appeared, its time for my last trick.

This is what nobody tells you about being neurodivergent, not even the internet. Typically, before this aspect of my psyche took hold and assured me it was here to stay, I would be able to attend such weekend long events or have 15  hour days without balking. In college, I would be the most unhinged party animal and for the longest time in corporate, I drank the equivalent of a small plantation’s produce of coffee to function. I now realize that these were the small signs that nobody indicated that such blatant disregard for my physical and mental well being was tomfoolery.

So I guess, this is now me and my overstimulated, plump arse against the events I want to attend and the cooldown periods attending said events will have!

 

*JUMP* Doorbell!

 

The Bilge Master