The orb

I’ve spent my life assuming everyone’s mind worked like mine. Not in the specifics, but in the movement. I thought everyone was walking around as a stable shape with a shifting interior — a container that stays constant while the contents reorganize themselves depending on the moment, the environment, the people in the room.

The best way I can describe it is an orb. Just a simple, round orb. Like a hamster ball.

The outside never changes. It doesn’t warp or crack or expand. It’s just… the orb. But inside, there is a world of activity. Imagine the orb full of colorful, swirling, busy smoke that moves in patterns and flows I don’t even have to think about. It surfaces what’s needed, tucks away what isn’t, adapts, reorganizes, learns, predicts, plans, and responds. It’s never still. It’s never one texture or shade. It’s never one density. It’s always in motion, and that motion is who I am.

I can’t really envision that this isn’t how everyone operates. I can’t imagine any other way. I’ve been confused why expectations set for complex, moving realities are so FLAT. I didn’t realize that most or some people sync their orb and its contents. That there isn’t a complex recalibration on the other side of many of my conversations. I either haven’t realized or have not been able to face that my constant internal motion is a different, even valuable, way of metabolizing input and information. I just thought it was “how brains work.”

When I think about the dark period of my eating disorder, and other times I have betrayed my values or turned inward during pain, I picture a very different orb. It’s the same hamster ball, but the smoke has collapsed. Heavy, black, limp at the bottom. The saturation gone. The movement nearly undetectable. Even some of the smoke dripping out of the bottom. Depleted. Minimum viable substance to keep the orb fueled.

What’s profound today, while writing this from a place of fear, ambiguity, grief… is that I’m writing it as the colorful, alive version. Because that’s me! I’m not becoming it, I’m just the last to see that I finally got here. I’m remembering the dark orb from a distance I’ve never had before. I’m staying vibrant, busy, adaptable — AND my internal storm is once again giving me what I need to keep going, and with enough momentum to outlast this landscape.

That’s new. That’s never happened before.

When this illustration of my internal world occurred to me today, it was accompanied by the first time I felt capable of explaining my presence — both to myself and to others. Maybe it seems obvious, I don’t know. But to me, it makes sense that all this noise is just doing its best to keep the right things surfacing at the right moments… while the conversation hasn’t even moved a full sentence.

So, this is where I typically get nervous. Thinking of saying something about my brain being ‘different’. If I do, am I being dramatic? Prideful? Admitting some otherworldly flaw? Proving everyone right? If I don’t, am I failing to prepare myself? Am I acting out of protection or shame? Fear? Am I abandoning myself? Am I abandoning other people who don’t feel safe being themselves?

That last one is the one that gets me moving, honestly. There’s no selfishness to double‑check it against if it’s literally designed to keep another person from harm.

I don’t want to hear about how “my brain” works any differently than you want to hear about how YOUR brain works. I don’t mind discussing how we think, communicate, or approach support differently. What I don’t want is to be made to feel that different is bad. That my baseline makes me ‘less than’.

I’d love to analyze, problem-solve, and talk “brain types” any day, because I think it’s terribly interesting. I want to be able to picture how other people think. I always want the full picture. The full picture gives me tools to create an environment that best serves everyone. When I guess, I get it wrong sometimes. When I understand multiple viewpoints, I am often able to create a solution or system — or at least get a conversation going — that considers everyone.

So, my way of thinking isn’t something everyone has. It’s something I have. And it’s something I like. And it’s useful almost all the time.

And, I’m still the orb.