THAT WAS BEEP BEEP

This is Beep Beep was a side project featuring a character called Beep Beep, doing relatable things generally themed around neurodivergence. I did other neurodivergent-related things under the banner of This is Beep Beep, such as bionic reading tools, and information guides. But anyone paying attention may have noticed that I’ve not touched the project for a few years now. Also over the last few years, in my IRL career, I was heavily involved in neurodivergent-related side projects, but like with This is Beep Beep, I’ve been slowly stepping backwards, disappearing into the background, hoping no one will notice as I become less and less involved. Why? I don’t like the scene. I’m still passionate about improving workplaces, and ensuring the world is as fully accessible as it can be to allow an equal playing field. But the people in these circles? Yeah… to explain, I must go back to where it started, not far don’t worry, just a little step backwards. When I was two years old, I was referred for speech therapy, and by three, I was identified for autism and ADD and sent to a specialist school. I did well enough there that at the age of five, they decided I could now enter mainstream school, like a rehabilitated hedgehog released to the wild, just to the side of the M56. And like the dead hedgehog on the motorway, the success of this integration could perhaps be debatable, but two months later I was referred to a child psychiatrist. – Behavioural problems, social problems, depression, labels started stacking up like boxes in a hallway, except none of them contained anything useful. And somewhere in that corridor of files and professionals, something happened that I still can’t fully understand, – the autism and ADD diagnosis didn’t follow me forward. It was as if it had been quietly dropped behind the filing cabinet, like it had never occurred, and in its place, this other word arrived in all its 80’s compassion, – retarded. A lovely catch-all word people say when they’ve decided they’re done trying to understand and realise that cruelty is far more efficient. I didn’t know any of this at the time, I only found out because as an adult, I asked for my complete medical records. Annoyingly, it was only a year before this that, at the age of 39, I was diagnosed again with ADHD for what I thought was for the first time. But with that diagnosis, I then felt relief, because whilst the diagnosis couldn’t change the past, at least it finally named it. But then, suddenly, everywhere I looked, people were identifying with it, talking about it, wearing it like a rubber bracelet, posting lists of traits like horoscopes, and yes, I know the statistics, I know more people have it than we used to think, I know awareness changes identification, but emotionally? Emotionally I hated it. I’m not saying they don’t have ADHD. I’m not trying to revoke anyone’s label, or gatekeep suffering, but if they had ADHD, but not my childhood, then that label no longer explained my childhood. I remember, I was alone. I was the broken child in the room, the one who stood out, and given the clear understanding that I was not like the others. So when someone then told me I’m one in ten, it didn’t feel like a comfort in solidarity moment – it just felt like invasion – a theft. Then the TikTok trend came along, and it stopped being an explanation and became a personality aesthetic, a club, like a vibe, to some content genre. And I don’t want my reality turned into someone else’s self-discovery hobby. They took the label and stripped the cost, taking the last remaining artefact from the wreckage and turning it into decor. It’s like watching tourists buy souvenirs from a disaster I barely survived. I didn’t ask for any of this, I didn’t choose my childhood, I would happily return it for store credit, but it happened, and it took years of alcoholism, self-hatred, dissociation, and suicide attempts just to, in a counterproductive manner, survive. So when someone tries to tell me it’s basically the same as forgetting their keys a bit more often than average, something inside me flinches like it’s being erased again. And then I feel guilty for feeling that, because what kind of person gets angry that other people found comfort in a label? But the anger isn’t really about them, it’s about what was stolen from me. It’s about the fact that I did have an explanation as a toddler, and it was ignored, and replaced with a word that allowed everyone else to stop trying. It’s about the years of punishment masquerading as education. The years of being treated as a problem to be managed rather than a mind to be understood. I know how that sounds, – bitter and defensive, and gatekeep-y, like the neurodivergent version of “I liked that band before it was cool.” But when people casually identify with the same label as one I was using for my trauma, it then downplays my past. It’s like telling someone with flu that you had a cold once. Depressed? – yeah I was sad once. It’s almost dismissing, like I’m being told to get over it, because look at them, they’re fine, so why am I not? Because maybe it’s the wrong label? Or maybe I have ADHD, but that was not the only cause of my experience. Like if two people trip up, but only one falls into a thorny bush, both have same cause, but completely different outcomes. But now I have once again lost a label for my childhood, because it no longer explains my past, just an element to it, for my past was not one-in-ten, my past was just me, – one. And it’s left me full circle, leaving me once again, the one standing out, – no label, just broken. :: REFERENCES :: This is Beep Beep – …/beep/