Contemplations:Late Diagnosis
Tales of a Misunderstood Neurdivergent
Hey Freinds,
I couldn't sleep after the dog woke me at 2:00 am. So, naturally I am going to write, right?
So, brace yourself, here we go…
I never expected to be diagnosed as neurodivergent at forty nine. Not after thirty years in recovery. Not after working as a chaplain in hospitals, jails, courtrooms, ERs, & living rooms where grief hangs around in the air like Arizona dust. Not after walking with other people through their trauma. But, you know what, life always saves a plot twist for the middle of the book.
The truth is, I did not get here by accident. Anxiety had been building for years in ways I could not name. Panic attacks that hit out of nowhere. A nervous system that never fully settled. A kind of hypervigilance that lived in my bones. So I went to EMDR, thinking I just needed to unclog whatever fear was left in the pipes.
But trauma is never tidy, predictable, or just “gotten over.”
The moment everything began to unravel was not the drowning itself. It was walking into my own home with my daughter and seeing law enforcement pulling a family member’s body out of the water. CPR happening on the side of my HOA community pool, and the curious onlookers, oblivious to my daughters & my pain. The surrealness. The helplessness. The disbelief. That kind of scene froze itself into my nervous system. It becomes a loop your body keeps replaying long after your mind pretends it has moved on. It really bites the big one.
That is complex grief. Not one trauma, but layers. Not one loss, but echoes. I am grateful EMDR helped to crack it all open for me.
Under the trauma, I started noticing something else. Lifelong patterns that had always been there but never named. The overwhelm. The shutdowns. The masking. The obsessive focus. The alexythymia. The way conflict lands in my body like a punch. The way noise feels like pain. The way I could disappear into theology, metaphysics, mythology, consciousness, & quantum mechanics for hours.
Autism. ADHD. The quieter, camouflaged versions.
Now, at fifty two, I know you do not get to rewrite your childhood. But suddenly you understand it. Every moment of feeling different, too intense, or hard to read started to make more sense to me. So did my life choices. Chaplaincy over traditional church ministry. Contemplative spirituality over organized religion. Writing sci-fi worlds shaped by mystics, monks, & metaphysics instead of surface-level storytelling.
A late diagnosis does not erase the confusion, the relational ruptures, or the years of feeling misunderstood. But it gives them context. And context is its own mercy & grace.
It helped me understand why rebuilding relationships, especially w/ family, has been both beautiful & complicated. It helped me understand why estrangement carved a hollow space inside me that still aches at times. It helped me understand why love can feel overwhelming, why conflict feels threatening, & why my intrinsic world is often louder than the extrinsic one.
It also made sense of my gifts. Intuition, empathy, pattern recognition, creativity, depth, & the ability to see the metadata beneath almost everything. Those were not accidents. They were wiring.
Now, in my early fifties, remarried, sober, writing my second sci-fi novel, rebuilding life gently, learning communication differently, & learning trust differently, I finally understand the operating system I have been running on for decades.
Not as an excuse, but as clarity. As grace. As a way to stop beating myself up for being someone I was never designed to be. I am not weird or defective, I am just wired bit differently.
I am no longer worried about trying to fit into a neurtypical world.
I am not done learning. I am not done growing. So, maybe that is the point. Complex grief does not disappear, but it does soften. Trauma does not vanish, but it integrates. Neurodivergence does not get cured, but it can be understood, honored, & lived with compassion.
If there is one thing these fifty two years have taught me, it is this. Most of us are trying to make sense of the story we are already living. Sometimes it takes half a lifetime to finally understand the language of your own mind & soul.
Getting diagnosed did not fix everything, but it handed me a key I did not know I needed.
Now the work is simple. Learn who I am. Honor who I am. Heal what needs healing. Keep becoming the man God imagined when He made me.
So, in conclusion, what parts of your story started to make sense only after you looked back with new eyes & a fresh mindset?
For what it's worth.
Shalom,
Jeremy E.