A Personal Reflection on Neurodivergence, Embodiment, and Identity

Some stories begin with a diagnosis. Others begin with a feeling.

A question that hums beneath the surface, waiting to be named.

Mine began with a hum.

A quiet, persistent sensation beneath the skin of my life. It was there in childhood, louder in adolescence, and still here at fifty. Not a scream. Not a warning. Just a tone. Subtle. Steady. Unresolved.

For much of my life, I carried an undiagnosed medical condition. A fistula that led to chronic bleeding. It was painful, yes. But more than that, it was unspoken. As a child, I normalised it. As a teenager, I hid it. And as a man trying to wear the costume of masculinity, I quietly absorbed the message that this discomfort was mine to bear alone.

I didn’t have language for what I was feeling.

So I created it.

In my mind, the bleeding became a kind of male menstruation. I wondered if I’d been misidentified at birth. Maybe I was somewhere between. Not quite girl. Not quite boy. Something else. Something quietly hybrid.

This wasn’t delusion.

It was confabulation.

Not in the clinical sense. But as an act of adaptive story-making. My neurodivergent mind doing what it does best. Creating coherence where none is offered. Mapping the space between science and silence. Holding shape without solid ground.

My story kept me intact.

Diagrams and Dualities

I remember the biology textbook clearly. A diagram of embryonic development, labelled and logical.

It said we all begin with the same foundational anatomy.

It showed testicles forming from ovaries. A penis stretching from an elongated clitoris.

To others, it was science.

To me, it was recognition.

A visual confirmation of what my body had whispered all along.

Gender isn’t fixed.

It’s formed.

And maybe, in my case, not fully.

Body as Question, Not Answer

There are still days when I look at myself, quietly observing, and I don’t see male genitalia in the way the world expects. I see retracted testicles. A penis that softens into clitoral ambiguity. Something in-between. Something that floats.

That’s the word that fits most.

My gender floats.

It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t advertise.

It observes.

It listens.

It doesn’t preference one over the other.

Some might call it androgyny. Others, non-binary.

I don’t need to name it.

I need to respect it.

The Role of Neurodivergence

Much later in life, I came to recognise my neurodivergence. Possibly ADHD, AuDHD, dyslexia. That recognition opened doors. It gave me a frame to understand my abstract patterns, metaphorical logic, and the way my mind clings to meaning like it’s magnetic.

It also gave shape to the hum.

Because neurodivergent people often sense what hasn’t been said.

We feel what hasn’t been named.

We see pattern in the fog.

We make maps where there are none.

For me, gender has never been binary.

It has always been a frequency.

Reclaiming the Continuum

I used to think something was wrong with me.

Now I see my body was a message, not a mistake.

The fistula

The third nipple

The bleeding

The question

The diagrams

The silence

The hum

Each one part of a larger truth.

Not a diagnosis. A continuum.

I don’t need to explain it anymore.

I trust it.

Resonance Identity

I am not bound to either shore.

My gender is mist, not monument.

Floating. Quiet. Self-witnessed.

It does not declare.

It drifts.

It listens.

It lives in the space between naming and needing to be named.

That’s who I am.

Today.

And maybe tomorrow too.

For Anyone Reading This

If you’ve carried a body that didn’t make sense

If you’ve written stories in secret just to stay whole

If you’ve heard a hum no one else seemed to notice

You’re not alone

There’s nothing broken in you

Your truth may not shout

It may not arrive with certainty

But it will arrive with resonance

And that is enough.