MELTEM ARIKAN

  Türkçesi Aşağıda 👇  How can one brain behave like a subconscious genius, knowing exactly what to do without ever having studied it, and at the same time go completely blind, failing to realise it has pushed itself to the point of collapse? Or how can I sense an illness in someone else from miles away, yet remain completely blind when someone I love looks me in the eye and lies? Better still: how is it that, just like in my play Mi Minör, which led to so many accusations, what I write later turns out to be disturbingly real, yet I can miss the schemes unfolding right in front of me? At times, it genuinely feels as though the universe opened a special technical fault report just for me. Hard to explain. Harder to live. Years later, I began to understand why. There are two systems operating in my brain at the same time, and unfortunately, they do not get along. One hears the whispers of the body. The other marches around with a diary, an Excel spreadsheet, and an invisible whi...

  Türkçesi Aşağıda 👇  Spirituality is sometimes spoken about in a way that, for a moment, makes you think life itself might be taken in by the language. As if, once you find the right word, reality will soften. As if, with enough awareness, a little surrender, a little frequency, and some tacit agreement with the unseen realms, life might begin to treat you more gently. As if, once the perfect affirmation is found, the washing will fold itself. Everything is energy... Everything is vibration... Everything is in the unseen realm... And yet, somehow, unpaid bills remain largely unmoved by cosmic consciousness. There was a time when I lived inside those grand words, too. Wholeness... Surrender... Possibility... Awareness... Integration... At a certain point, you really do begin to believe that if you go deep enough, the weight and ordinariness of life will no longer reach you. That the life you long for will one day become real. Somewhere above the clouds, beyond the ugliness of...

  Türkçesi Aşağıda 👇 "One minute." In preschool: "Son, you need to put your shoes on." One minute. In secondary school: "Hurry up, the bus is here, you need to leave!" One minute. In sixth form: "Dinner is ready, we're waiting for you." One minute. As a thirty-year-old man: "Your coffee is getting cold." One minute. In our house, a "minute" is not a unit of time. It is certainly not sixty seconds. It is a concept. A vibe. It's a vague, flickering promise sent from another galaxy, much like a train cancelled due to a "signalling failure", that never actually arrives. I used to go into full "Come on, come on, for heaven's sake, HURRY UP!" mode. My AuDHD (Autism + ADHD) brain and my son's PDA brain are essentially two different types of chaos trying to occupy the same hallway. During these "one-minute" standoffs, my patience would melt faster than a dropped ice cream in the summer su...

Türkçesi Aşağıda 👇 For those unfamiliar with the term, PDA stands for Public Display of Affection. To most, it is simply a romantic choice, a matter of personal style or a way to show the world they are happy. However, for a neurodivergent person, it is often far more than a stylistic choice; it is a complex matter of sensory regulation. There is a rather tiresome stereotype that autistic people simply "dislike being touched." This is a lazy assumption that misses the nuance of our experience. In reality, our nervous systems often process the external world like a blender, mixing every sound, light, and texture into an overwhelming slurry. Because of this, my "touch dial" is never static. At times, a simple touch acts as an anchor, tethering me to the world when everything else feels too fast. At other times, however, it can be the "final tab" that causes the entire system to crash. When I find myself in a crowded, noisy, or unpredictable environment, hol...

Türkçesi Aşagıda 👇 Sometimes starting something feels easy. If I’m interested, if it doesn’t stress me out, if I even enjoy it… sure. But other times, starting anything feels genuinely impossible. So I start putting it off. In a bit. Tomorrow. Later… As those laters never arrive, the stress builds. It rolls into a big tangled knot. And then comes the next layer: trying to get out from under it. Focusing on something I don’t want to do is ridiculously hard. Like when I need to write invoices, but end up alphabetising the bookshelf. Then I spot a book I’ve been putting off for years and somehow start reading it. Standard behaviour. My brain works differently. It’s part of being neurodivergent. Things like starting, switching, focusing, they all run on a separate system. Not always, but it really kicks in when I’m bored or the task feels pointless. It’s that my brain genuinely doesn’t care why it’s supposed to. Since I started understanding how my AuDHD brain works, it’s been easier to s...