Many individuals like myself—and women in particular—who are neurodivergent, historically and even now, are seen as unreliable narrators of our own lives.

Words Count | Hollay Ghadery on Writing While Neurodiverging

Only the Sock Speaks: On Writing While Neurodiverging

When my first book came out in 2021—Fuse, a memoir of mixed race identity and mental illness that dove into my long history of eating disorders, addiction, OCD, self-harm, and anxiety—many readers commented on its unusual structure. Unlike many memoirs, it’s not chronological. It's structured thematically. A veritable Jackson Pollock of feeling. Any loose chronological organization owes thanks to my editor, who convinced me that as a memoir, I needed to root the reader in some vague notion of time. 

Which was fair enough.

But this grounding impulse didn't come naturally to me. I don’t set out to be purposely abstruse, it's just the narrative drive of the stories I tell originate in the how and why more often than the when and where. 

I'm not sure I’m explaining this clearly. I feel myself—the self I speak with in my head—slide out of frame like one of Dali's deflated clocks. Let’s try again.