I was taking notes during a fight with my wife.

Not to build a case. Not to win. I was trying to hold the shape of the argument in my head. My working memory couldn't hold the map. So I was building it externally.

Charlotte didn't see map-building. She saw me tightening my defense.

Later, I said something I didn't have a framework for yet: "I have a pattern of hearing things that you're not saying. And I don't know how to fix that."

I was describing working memory fragility. I just didn't know that's what I was going to call it months later for Substack.

The hardest part of being neurodivergent isn't having different needs. It's that explaining those needs requires the exact cognitive resources that are already impaired.