Strange children and existential belonging

I never really knew I was strange as a child.

I knew I did not want to participate in the bizarre social rituals of cruelty and power that governed the playground. I knew other children could be mean to me, though I rarely understood why. Even now, I do not always know why I seem to set certain people off immediately, but I can feel them bristle before I even speak.

Sometimes when people learn they are neurodivergent, they describe themselves as feeling like an alien studying human behavior from the outside, but that was not and is not my experience. If anything, I have always felt extremely human and earth-bound; an animal of this particular planet.

As a child, my confusion came from understanding the social rules well enough to see them, but not understanding why anyone would want them. Why humiliate someone weaker? Why pretend not to care when you obviously do care? Why say one thing while arranging your face to communicate another? Why build belonging through exclusion? There are so many scripts I will not follow and there are ways of circling around a subject where I will go straight through, but this does not stem from a lack of understanding, but rather a lack of compliance.

What I’ve come to realize is that I never thought I was a strange child because I read a lot of books, and so many of the characters I read about were more like me than like the children I struggled with on the playground.

Alice and I shared vivid dreams of talking animals. Mary Lennox and I, sad and alone, discovered a hidden garden and brought it back to life. I finally had siblings when I joined the children in Narnia, traveling through the portal in a wardrobe. I related most to characters like Lisa in Corduroy, who found a slightly damaged bear and couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him in the store. And of course there was Matilda, who found her own solace in books and learning, and ya know, a touch of telekinesis.

I was never alone because I belonged to a literary family of smart, strange, curious children.

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