I hate fireworks.
I have always hated fireworks. When I was a kid we had a very traditional fourth of July situation every year: backyard barbecue with friends, homemade ice cream, all that. I loved the homemade ice cream that my dad made, but on the fourth it was a dread-inducing sign that we were about to pile into a van and head down to the park, where I would sit in the van and sob for half an hour while fireworks exploded overhead. It was too hot in southeast Texas to sit in a car with the doors and windows closed, so Iād have to leave a door open. The mosquitoes took this as an opportunity to swarm in and snack on my blood while I held my shaking hands over my ears, unable to swat them away.
Iāve always been easily startled by loud noises. As a child, I was terrified not just of fireworks but of barking dogs, Christmas crackers, those little popper things that rude boys would hurl at the feet of anyone within throwing distance. Back to the Future was my favorite movie, but the opening scene where Marty hooks his guitar up to the loud amp and blasts himself off his feet had me cowering behind the sofa every time.
And balloons, oh god. At summer camps and day care theyād force everyone to do this relay race where youād run across a field to a folding chair, sit and bounce on a balloon until it popped underneath you, then run back and tag the next person. Every balloon I saw was already a ticking time bomb of terror, and now they wanted me to pop one on purpose? With my butt? I cried in the bathroom until the camp counselor forced me to participate, then I cried while bouncing on a balloon on a folding chair.
Why did my parents make me go to fireworks every year if I found them so terrifying? Why did the counselors make me pop balloons? Because I would grow out of it and because I was just being a baby, respectively. In the early eighties people didnāt talk about children with sensory issues, and sensory processing disorder had barely even been invented. You couldnāt have ADD unless you were a hyperactive little boy, and you definitely didnāt have autism if your verbal skills were normal for your age.
So the problem was me. I was the older sibling in my family, but I was just weaker somehow. My sister loved fireworks and dogs, and she loved Back to the Future THE WHOLE MOVIE, and as best I could tell she didnāt scan every room for potential loud noises the way I did. Other kids at school and camp didnāt make fun of her. They made fun of me, the kid who cried because a balloon popped.
I was just defective. Iāll emphasize here that my parents did not tell me I was defective, but neither did they reassure me that there was nothing wrong with me, nor did either of them take one for the team and stay home with me on the fourth. Iām still a little miffed about that.
Youāll be glad to learn that Iāve evolved some coping mechanisms to deal with my noise sensitivity. Subtitles, earplugs, avoiding loud situations, just generally getting used to being alive. I can be in a room with many, many balloons at a time and barely notice them. If one of them pops I might do a little scream-startle, but now when I do that it makes me laugh, not cry.
But also? Iāve learned to hide.
The best definition Iāve heard of neurodivergence is from Devon Price in Unmasking Autism: neurotypical people process the world from the top down, while neurodivergent people process it from the bottom up. Humor me by reading this long quote if you donāt mind.
If you want to understand Autism as a disability and a source of human difference at a glance, itās best summed up this way: we process in a careful, systematic, bottom-up way.
Allistic folks, in contrast, make sense of the world in a very top-down fashion. Theyāll enter a new environment, such as an unfamiliar restaurant, take a quick look around, and jump to reasonable conclusions about how to order, where to sit, what kind of service to expect, and even how loudly they should talk. Their brains will immediately begin to filter through sounds, lights, and other stimuli, and adjust accordingly. [ā¦]
Autistic people, on the flip side, donāt rely on knee-jerk assumptions or quick mental shortcuts to make our decisions. We process each element of our environment separately, and intentionally, taking very little for granted. If weāve never been in a particular restaurant before, we may be slow to make sense of its layout or figure out how ordering works. Weāll need really clear-cut indications of whether itās the kind of place where you sit down and get table service, or if youāre supposed to go to a counter to ask for what you like. (Many of us try to camouflage this fact by doing extensive research on a restaurant before setting foot inside.) Every single light, laugh, and smell in the place is taken in individually by our sensory system, rather than blended into a cohesive whole.
Because of this way of processing, a lot of people with autism/adhd have sensory issues. If you canāt filter out the tiny little details most people can ignore, then all those little details arenāt so tiny or little anymore, theyāre major things that affect your ability to live in the world. Maybe you canāt understand what someone is saying if thereās music playing at the same time. Maybe you can distinguish one weird dripping noise happening during a rainstorm. Maybe one balloon popping can ruin your entire day.
These days I can deal with fireworks, but I still donāt like them. On the Fourth of July and New Yearās Eve, I avoid them when possible, and I usually sleep in my basement to avoid the noise of the amateur displays on my street. Itās ok.
But I still wish that little kid crying in the van while mosquitoes ate her legs had known that there was nothing wrong with her.
Ok hi welcome to my newsletter about late diagnosis adhd/autism! Iām going to talk about some of the stuff Iāve been figuring out about myself, and speculate about the things Iām still working on. A few notes:
My adhd diagnosis is official, my autism one is not, and I havenāt decided whether to pursue that yet. The autism community accepts self-diagnosis for a number of reasons I can get into later. But if self-diagnosis is not something you find credible, this might not be the newsletter for you. I will say that Iāve done quite a bit of research on this topic for myself, and none of it was on tiktok.
I am not going to make any claims in here that I canāt substantiate, but this isnāt the kind of newsletter where Iāll cite sources for every single thing. Itāll mostly be about me. If you have questions or want to know where to find more info, feel free to ask.
If your reaction to this is, āso youāre afraid of balloons, that doesnāt make you autistic!ā Iāll ask for your patience while I draw the bigger picture. Iām going to tackle a few things at a time, and itāll add up eventually.
If your reaction to this is, āthis sounds exactly like me as a child, omg am I neurodivergent somehow?!ā you wouldnāt be the first. I need more than one hand to count the number of friends who have begun looking into adhd/autism for themselves based on things Iāve said about me. But everyoneās different, and while I can point you to resources, Iām not qualified to tell you about you.
Neurotypical/neurodivergent is a false dichotomy, of course. Everyoneās all over the place, itās not a binary. But Iām going to use NT/ND as a quick way to differentiate between people who have these issues in ways that affect their lives, and people who donāt. I hope youāll humor me.
Feel free to reply to any of my emails with questions or comments!
