Sensory Soul

Hi. It’s me, Lucie, your neurodivergent friend, sibling, partner, person at the supermarket who looked like they were having a totally normal day… until they suddenly weren’t.

I want to talk to you about what you don’t see.

You see me smiling and making conversation, but you don’t see the script I rehearsed in my head for twenty minutes beforehand. You don’t see the mental flowchart I created on how to respond “correctly” to you, because every social interaction feels like decoding a language I don’t quite speak.

You see me on the school run, showing up (often late!) But you don’t see the absolute mental gymnastics it took to get there: the 42 alarms, the 5 “just five more minutes” snoozes, the pep talk in the mirror, the war I had with my clothes because everything felt “wrong” on my skin.

You see me smiling at the party, nodding along, laughing at the right times. You don’t see the internal meter ticking down—each second making the lights brighter, the music louder, the voices sharper, the fabric more scratchy. You don’t see me retreat to the bathroom just to breathe. You don’t see the sensory hangover the next day.

You think I’m overreacting when I cry in public, when I melt down “over nothing.” But it’s not nothing. It’s every tiny thing that built up and had no place to go. It’s the cup of overwhelm that got one last drop too many. It’s not weakness. It’s overflow.

You see what I show you.

What I think is acceptable.

What I’ve trained myself, sometimes painfully, to perform.

You don’t see the aftermath. The shutdowns. The three-day recovery. The self-doubt spiral. The silent scream when I realize I misunderstood something again.

You don’t see how hard I try.

And that’s not your fault. But now that you know, I hope you’ll understand why I cancel plans sometimes. Why I need things explained more than once. Why I go quiet. Why I isolate.

And I hope when you see someone else doing those things, you’ll give them grace too.

Because behind every “quirk” is a survival strategy.

Behind every “weird” behaviour is a brilliant mind trying to keep pace with a world not built for it.

So please… be kind. Be curious. Be patient.

You don’t need to get it to get me. You just need to care.

Sincerely,

Someone Doing Their Best (Even When It Doesn’t Look Like It)