Unmasking.

Do you feel like you are crazy?

Living with undiagnosed neurodivergent conditions certainly takes its toll on you, and this was a poem I wrote on one of the many days I felt boxed, drained, and fed up with the highly neurotypical environment we live in, that refuses to accommodate anything else. This is the Do You Think You Are Crazy? poem. For those that feel crazy, I hope you relate to this.

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Do you feel like you’re crazy?

Like the thoughts just won’t settle,

Spinning in circles,

A whirlpool in your head,

And no one sees it,

No one hears it.

*

You try to speak,

But the words are trapped,

Caught in the space between

What you want to say,

And what comes out—

A mess of fragments,

Unfinished thoughts,

And you feel yourself disappearing.

*

Like your mind’s a locked door,

And you’re the only one inside,

Trying to make sense of the scribbles,

The fragments, the pieces,

But the puzzle’s all wrong.

*

And maybe you wonder—

Is it me?

Am I just broken in ways

That no one cares to see?

Maybe,

Maybe I am just crazy.

*

But no one asks,

No one listens,

So you drown in silence,

In thoughts that don’t belong,

In moments that slip through your fingers,

In a fog so thick you can’t find the light.

*

You just want to scream,

But the noise is already too loud,

In your head, in your chest,

In the spaces where there’s no release.

*

Do you feel like you’re crazy?

Because maybe that’s the only way

To make sense of what you can’t explain—

The storm inside,

The quiet on the outside,

And the feeling that you are somehow lost in the middle.

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I feel avidly crazy, every second of the day. I try to put the pieces of me that are misaligned back together, try to make sense of the parts of me that don’t fit. I search for reflections of myself in others, hoping that if I see enough of me in them, I’ll finally feel whole—but I never do.

I read the self-help books. I sit in therapy. I meditate. I do the breathing exercises. I try every single thing the world tells me will help, and yet—somehow—I still feel like a contradiction. A walking paradox. A storm shoved into a world that only allows sunshine and orderly forecasts.

“Get your shit together,” they say.

But mine is spread across multiple toilet seats I’ve used along the way. I left them unflushed, thinking maybe that’s where I belong, that I’ll come back for them soon enough. But I never did. I don’t even know the way back. {I wanted this wordplay to be philosophical, but it just ended up being a comic mess instead, lmao SMH. My sisters are cracking up at my expense, but imma leave it here regardless. We win some, lose some, but show all…smh another miss lol}

Moving on….. forget that just happened.

I wrote a poem expressing my rollercoaster life journey that never seems to stop or halt. The feeling that no matter how much you calm down, you cannot stop being on full go. Like typing incessantly without slowing down to check or proofread because the voices in your head never stop talking, because your body itches and cannot seem to just for once be composed, so you keep going till you crash and look back to see you haven’t made any considerable progress in the slightest. Because I never learned how to slow down. I never learned how to pace myself. And I wish I could.

I leave my belongings behind every time.

I go places I can never return to.

I start over and over again, only to trip and fall along the way.

It’s a cycle, a relentless rollercoaster, and I’m always on go.

I wonder how powerful I could be if I could just function like everyone else. I think about taking anxiety pills. I consider it, really. But I know they’ll dull me. I know they’ll strip away the very thing that makes me me. They’ll take my chaos, my creativity, my madness—and then who would I be?

So, I stick with my broken record of a brain. Because even though it’s a mess, it’s mine. And sometimes? Sometimes, it’s fucking brilliant.

So here’s the second poem capturing these complex thoughts. Here's "Full Stop."

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When do I end?

When do I know to plant a full stop

like a seed in the soil of a runaway sentence,

to end the ramble before it drags me under?

My brain, a train with no brakes,

words spilling out—

comma, comma, pause,

but never the end.

*

I speak, I write, I think—

all at once,

a storm that doesn’t know how to rain in parts.

So, I sit still.

Because stopping is better than being at full go.

*

But the stillness is loud.

A lump in my chest,

a scream caught in traffic.

How do I move it?

How do I stop without breaking,

without crashing into the shards of my own thoughts?

*

They call me crazy.

Say I’m a child,

an untamed thing that needs composure.

So, I scrunch myself small,

fold into the corners,

try not to be a hurricane,

try to be quiet,

but the storm never sleeps.

*

It spirals inside me,

shifting in circles,

a galaxy of unspoken words

that never land on paper.

I want to send the text.

I want to say what I mean.

But where do I start?

How do I end?

*

Self-help books call me:

scatterbrain,

spiraler,

a thing that needs fixing.

But I’m tired of fixing.

Tired of pretending the chaos is broken

when maybe it’s just me.

And perhaps the world i live in—

Maybe.

*

I don’t need neatness.

I need someone to sit in the storm with me.

And the stillness too.

Someone who doesn’t fear the wind

or the endless commas,

who doesn’t try to plant full stops

where they don’t belong.

*

But instead lets me be—

a sentence that trails,

a thought with no end.

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This is the diary, journal, and poetry collection of an undiagnosed, possibly AUHUD individual, a complexly beautiful girl, with a spiralling mind. And although self-diagnosing is never the option, in a world of uncertainties, such a diagnosis helps us understand where we fit.

Yes, some boxes are a whole lot narrower than others, so it's important to find a box that fits in the whole of you or at least tries to accommodate and respect the parts of you that might derail off.

That box for me is the neurodivergent box. It doesn’t try to hypnotize my brain to “normal” functioning or give me Adderall so I would just “calm down.” Being in an environment that welcomes your hyperactivity, quirkiness, and stimming habits is enough to get our spontaneous brain to relax, therefore I wouldn’t accept the lie that I am too broken to function.

The method of functioning is broken and too hollow, and that needs amendment—not me.

Here’s a poem that birthed my unmasking and allowed me to realize it was never my fault and instead the world we live in.

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I am 19. Black. African. Whole, not part,

Not mixed race, not “incomplete,”

I’ve got a healthy, functioning body.

But still, somehow, I feel… unfinished.

Like I’ve spent my life searching for the missing pieces of me

in places they were never meant to be.

*

I adapt.

Bring anyone in front of me, and I can tell you who they are.

I mirror their rhythm, shift my cadence to match theirs,

a chameleon cloaked in survival, masking for acceptance.

I’ve spent years becoming the reflection of someone else’s comfort.

But the cost of this adaptation?

It’s been me.

*

My voice drowned beneath the weight of what others wanted.

My interests buried in the shadows of their desires.

In love, I followed their lead.

In friendships, I mastered the art of disappearing behind smiles.

And all the while, my soul whispered:

What about me?

But I silenced it because I thought…. I thought I was too much.

Too flawed.

*

By day, I could fake it.

But by night? Oh, the night is mine.

When the world goes quiet, I finally hear myself breathe.

The darkness holds me gently, reminds me I don’t have to perform.

And my smile broadens,

Relief bringing forth the life I thought I’d lost.

There’s beauty in that stillness.

There’s freedom in being unseen.

*

But I am seen.

I’m seen as distracted. Absent-minded. Not enough.

“Distracted brain,” they’ve said in school.

“Sit still, pay attention, stop wandering off!”

But they didn’t understand:

My mind was never built to stay in one place.

It travels, it questions, it dreams of a world more vast than this.

They called it a problem, but maybe it was just… me.

Maybe it’s just who i was born to be…

*

Maybe the world was too loud for a mind that craved depth.

Too rigid for a spirit that needed freedom.

*

This world. This neurotypical world.

A world that demands we wake up and work,

Connect and grind, smile and show up every day like clockwork.

A world that tells you to “fix yourself” if you don’t fit the rhythm.

A world that doesn’t bend but expects you to break.

*

And for years, I did.

Until the breaking became too much to bear.

*

I bent. I broke.

I tried to fix myself. I prayed. I read the books, went to the churches.

I love Jesus, but even there, I felt the gap widen.

Because how can I find peace in spaces that don’t see me?

How can I exist in systems that were never designed for someone like me?

*

And then came the words: neurodivergent.

Autism. ADHD.

Labels that didn’t box me in but finally, finally explained.

I don’t have a diagnosis, no.

But I see the way my brain bends differently.

I see the stimming in my spirit, the burnout from masking,

The years spent twisting myself into shapes that weren’t mine.

*

But what if the problem isn’t me?

What if the problem is this world built for “normal”?

A world that calls us broken when we don’t walk the same paths.

What if the wave of neurodivergence isn’t new?!

What if we’ve always been here, hiding in plain sight,

Forced to adapt, forced to survive, forced to mask?

*

I think about how many of us have prayed for death.

Not because we wanted to die,

But because living in a world that doesn’t understand you is exhausting.

Because the constant battle to be seen, to be heard,

To just exist without apology is a weight no one should carry.

*

But I am here.

Still standing. Still finding myself.

Still navigating this complex, messy, beautiful thing that is me.

I am not incomplete.

I am not a problem.

*

I am Black.

I am African.

I am everything they said I couldn’t be and more.

I love the night. I love the quiet. I love the rhythm of my heartbeat.

The dance of Afrobeats, the pulse of hip-hop,

The whisper of jazz, the wail of blues,

The cry of rock and roll, the swell of classical,

The hum of reggae, the ache of soul,

The stillness of folk, the fire of gospel.

All of them, at varying degrees, as my brain pleases—

Because my soul was made to hold multitudes.

I am a paradox, a contradiction, a masterpiece in progress.

*

And I will not shrink anymore.

I will not mask to make you comfortable.

I will not mould myself into a shape this world demands.

*

I will take up space.

I will love myself in the quiet and in the chaos.

I will let everything align.

*

Because I am whole.

Because I am enough.

I am paradoxically magic.

Not with the flicker of wands but the breath of the Creator.

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I hope this sparked something in you. I had so much fun writing this!

I'm thinking of streamlining my article journals into this format because it feels so much more natural.

When I feel at my most vulnerable and creative, I’d rather pick up a pen to play with words and create poetry than cram myself into the structured box of long-form articles that never quite align the words the way I want them to. I still appreciate and applaud those who write in that style because it takes a lot of dedication.

However, since I am always writing poetry, I think it makes sense to combine my poems and align them with topics of interest for my articles.

I hope you enjoy this new style I wish to explore!

Next journal entry: Christianity and neurodivergency.

I love Jesus, but even there, I felt the gap widen.

Because how can I find peace in spaces that don’t see me?

I have so many other poems on that and so much commentary to add.

Until next time, this is MM’s world, and I hope you have much fun (with a hint of existential crisis) whilst exploring!

I appreciate you for sticking till the end.