Dear Editor,
I am a new reader of your magazine. Reading it shone an unforgiving light on a niggling feeling in my gut, which would rear its well intended, but confusing, head during discussions about serious issues. Try my passionate and stuttering best, I couldn't express opinions in a manner that could ever have been seriously considered. Simply put, I couldn't 'get' the language to explain my thoughts from my brain, out of my mouth. The verbal process feels like digging through peanut butter with one of those stick-to-the-wall hand toys.
The stigma of having ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) made me think I didn't have a right to an opinion, as intelligent discussion takes rationality, remembering facts and appropriate language use if it is to be considered acceptable. Neither BPD nor ADHD are known for those qualities. If I can write an essay on something, I can hit it out of the figurative ball park, but verbal discussion? Yikes.
Verbal discussion can't be avoided in my friend group, where a quiet game of dungeons and dragons can evolve into a dice hurling debate over increasingly specific issues quicker than one can say 'roll initiative'. More to the point, verbal discussion should never be avoided under the banner of 'disability', 'triggers', 'politically incorrect opinion' or the new cringe call of something being 'cancelled'.
My response to constantly coming out of discussions as a citation-crisped, peer-review roasted pulp intellectually us...
