From Reddit r/disability
The comments are informative as well….
So I have a frontal lobe abnormality. This makes me unable to conversate normally with other people. It also makes me more spaced out. When people ask me questions they get impatient because I don’t always answer right away. I also am confused easily. Since I can’t draw from my memory bank the same way other people can I am really unable to get in debates or discussions with people about different topics even though I’m interested in them.
Because I’m often times unable to draw from that memory bank. I don’t think that most people realize when you call someone a moron or stupid or an idiot online that it can be taken really personally because that person may have a disability that makes them this way. When people get impatient with me while interacting with me in real life, it makes me feel badly, but the thing is I have no control over it. I do not look disabled therefore people treat me just like anyone else however I am not like everyone else.
As far as I know this brain injury occurred when I was very young so I have always been like this. People have always thought that I was on drugs or that I was an airhead. I have been called flaky and ditzy more times than I can count. The thing is I’m not I’m really interested in a lot of very academic topics. I’m also really good at doing a lot of things that even average people cannot do. But I have so much trouble connecting with people because I literally feel like I have nothing in common with them and like I’m harboring the secret that my brain is not processing the information being given to me the way they think it is.
I wish people would think twice before being too hard on someone who is too slow to come up with an answer. Or being hard on someone because they don’t have good retort or argument in a discussion or debate. People like me aren’t stupid we’re different. If people were more patient and understanding and just gave people like me the time they would see that I’m not a dumbass.
I guess my point is that people should really just stop using the word stupid to describe other people. If I don’t explain myself in a way that other people understand it is because I am trying to translate what they’re saying into my own language in my head. It’s not really all that different from speaking a foreign language and using English as a second language. It takes me twice as long to comprehend the words coming in. I say um a lot , and like, and the reason I do this is because it is like a placeholder or a pause that allows for me to have time to come up with what I need to say. Yet I am constantly given a hard time for it.
