I am neurodiverse. I am diagnosed dyslexic, dyscalculic,
and dyspraxic—this last meaning that I often am unable to locate information.
You might be familiar with walking into a room and having to look around for
where you put down your keys. I have this experience within my brain,
misplacing names, for example, or the connection between a face and a name. I
am also almost certainly, though without formal diagnosis, autistic.
Neurodiverse people sometimes describe their
condition as a superpower. I think I understand why, the need to reframe a
story of lack, but, at least in my experience, it isn't a superpower at all. I
am not a superhuman, I am a (super) human (as are you). For me, my
neurodiversities are both a blessing and a curse.
A blessing is the gift of God’s goodness. Blessings
are the overflow of that goodness, a gift that keeps on being given, and is
never retracted. Blessing is the invitation to live a particular life, that no
other lifeform can live in your place. Blessings give permission, delegate authority,
and say, “Go, take your place in the miracle of life.”
A curse is a limitation placed upon us, for our own
good and for the good of others. Curses are always themselves limited in scope
and duration, and always overcome by repentance, that is, a change of mind.
Curses are the negative expression of blessing, the page to the ink. They save
us from ourselves, from the misdirected desire to be independent of others,
while at the same time keeping others dependent on us—from any messiah complex.
They push us, willingly or unwillingly, towards interdependence—which we
embrace through that repentance, or change of mind.
My neurodiversities are a blessing, to me and for
others. I am super creative. I am capable of super focus—note why some people
speak of super-powers—while also super-easily derailed. I see things from a
different perspective, a perspective that other people value because it shines
light on their neurotypical blind spots. (Though mine is not the only or only
right perspective, something that immature neurodiverse people often fail to
recognise.)
My neurodiversities are also a curse, to me and for
others. There are ways in which I will never be independent, or dependable. To
an extent there are skills I can learn and tools I should employ to manage
this; but skills and tools can also be fashioned into a persona, a false
projection of who I want you to see (and, often, who you want to see in me)
masking those parts of me that I do not want to be seen, because I am too
easily ashamed of them. That persona isn’t bad in itself, but it is false. The
particular curses of my neurodiversities—the ways in which I routinely
misunderstand others and am in turn misunderstood; the wifi signal inside my
mind dropping out at the most unwanted moments; a host of others—the things I
have so often tried to hide—are the very limits that should cause me to seek
others whose blessings compliment my curses, just as my blessings compliment
their curses. At 50, the persona of competence is simply too cracked to hold or
hold on to.
The curse is a gift, as much as the blessing: the
blessing sending me out from God further and further into the world, the curse
calling me back deeper and deeper into God; my true self being found held in
this creative tension.
One of the things I do is keep an eye on clergy
posts being advertised. Not that I am looking for a new job, or change of role,
but because I take an interest in clergy wellbeing. One of the things I notice
is how many contexts are seeking, or offering opportunity for, ‘an exceptional
priest.’ As a direction of travel, this causes me concern. It is, perhaps, a sometimes-necessary
place to begin, but—ironically—has its own in-built limits. Being exceptional
turns out to be curse, as much as blessing. If we recognise this, all well and
good; there will be pain, but it will be creative, cooperative. If we fail to
do so, there will be a lot of destructive pain along the way.
