Neurodivergence doesn’t always express itself in the form of perfectly-hewn sentences and logic.

This week, I got skewered for tripping over a sentence six months ago, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. Over the last four days, I’ve earned the label “The transphobe” because I muddled a few words. Contempt-filled people turned the incident into a fabrication of bigotry. They've insisted that anyone who speaks to me should consider themselves the enemy. I’ve even had friends cut me off. When I tried to create distance from those people, they began coming to my DMs and journal. When I tried to escape by deactivating my Fet account, they came to my email. I’ve been harassed, smeared, and lied about for four days.

I’ve tried apologising. It didn’t work. I tried explaining what I meant. That didn’t work either. I tried swearing off activism. Nothing worked. Many of the attacks have been viciously ableist. They’ve been mocking and judging me for failing to remember an incident in February. They’ve done all this as a demonstration against hatred.

I’ve spent most of my life with active epilepsy. I’ve taken a lot of temporal and occipital lobe damage, so I can’t always remember what the pet with the meows is. I’m somewhat face blind, so when I choose movies, I make sure they don’t have too many characters. I can’t remember their names, let alone tell the difference between their faces. I often lose my ability to spell fifth grade words, and I’ve frequently gotten lost on my way out of the door. I’ve spent a lifetime relying on the kindness of strangers to pick me up off the side of the road or direct me back home. I don’t always use the right words.

My cerebellum is wrecked, too, so I’ve tried to pay with a Woolworths card at Mr Price. No supermarket teller has ever mocked me for my confusion. This does not happen on Fetlife. ‘Round there, if you don’t have an impressive brain and even more impressive language abilities, you will be mocked.

I’m good with words, but as a creative person, I can’t find my way around an equation and have to count out numbers on my fingers.

Neurodivergence doesn’t always express itself in the form of perfectly-hewn sentences and logic. Some of us are only bright on good-health days. Your neurodivergence doesn’t always play out like my neurodivergence. Your brain makes light work of certain things, and mine can manage entirely different things. Autism is not the only form of brain anomaly on the planet, so please don’t mock me for having different brain woes than you.

Even in the neurotypical world, people have different talents. So you can remember things. Excellent, but can you be kind to those who have different abilities than you?