Another Neurodivergent Queer Writes A Blog!

Oops… That was longer than I’d imagined it’d be! I stopped posting back in Jan. after I found myself having to confront the emptiness of the experience of getting this degree that I’ve wanted since I was a child. What comes of it, all the time spent toward this PhD, and the degree itself, remains to be seen; but the time to see is nearly here all the sudden. There is such a mix of emotions in me, like a hurricane over waters warmer than they ought to be. The only thing to be done, I’ve realized, is to write it out to be free of the storm.

So I’ve started a memoir about the last 18 years of my life, from 2005 when I first stepped onto a college campus up to the present moment, focused on the barriers I was able to surmount and the many others I was not, and how colleges can make themselves more inclusive to/for neurodivergent folks. In the present DEI rush, I fear that neurodivergent students are being left aside; but we deserve to be included and given the space to flourish. We are no less capable of greatness than neurotypical students once the unnecessary barriers disabling us are removed. So my task is to make that clear to as many academics and administrators as possible. Fingers crossed.

Finally it’s spring in Tucson after an exceptionally difficult winter, having caught the tails of the majority of the storms that soaked California. It was cold and wet, often sunny and cloudy on the same day. Potentially restorative to the aquifers, but also not great for the cacti. When they freeze, the water in their flesh turns to razor-bladed crystals of ice. There was actual literal snow on the ground twice this winter, about an inch one day.

I know y’all north of here are rolling your eyes or worse, but an inch of snow in the Tucson Valley is exceedingly rare. There’s always snow up on Mt. Lemmon, but almost never down here in the valley below. It’s been raining once or twice a week most of the winter—as if I’d stepped into spring in Michigan or something! Rain again early next week. This unstable weather is specifically what I come to Tucson to get away from because it is so problematic for my ability to function as I need to be functioning. (I’ll save my rant about the necessity of functioning at such a high level as a constant state later…)

But now at last the Mulberry beside me on my front porch is pushing out it’s foliage and the berries are larger by the hour in silhouette against a clear sky full of radiant light. And beside it the aloe-patch is suddenly waist-high with budding panicles, many of the lowest buds already on the verge of opening. But this patch out front is behind compared to the two patches of aloe behind my house, who bloomed already a week or so ago, collecting so many bees swirling around them like electrons around nuclei. And the Desert Senna are yellow clouds eight-feet tall, all around Tucson again. I can basically sit outside in shorts and a tanktop again for most of the day, even if I have to start my mornings and end my nights in pants and a sweater.