I didn't actually die. It just felt like a part of me was dying. Like

maybe this life is kind of cool. It was so

much more devastating than any relationship breakup I have ever been through, by

a margin of a huge amount.

You are entitled to every feeling, even when you want to turn them off

and never feel them again. But also, I think, like, we

should normalize that this happens and that it's probably just

part of growing up and growing older. But it still hurts. And

it's allowed to hurt. All right, here we go. I'm gonna

pretend I'm pushing record. Cause that feels right. Okay, I'm pressing record.

Boop. Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. I

go by L2. Yes, you can call me L2. Everybody does.

It's a long story. It's actually not that long a story, but we'll save it

for another time. Welcome to Different Not Broken,

which is our podcast on exactly that. That there are a lot of

people in this world walking around feeling broken. And the reality is you're just different.

And that's.

So I want to talk a little bit about

breakups, but not the kind of breakup

that you are probably thinking about, even though they're kind

of all the same thing. But I just been thinking about this

lately, and I've written about it before. I don't think I've ever talked about it

before, like on a program or anything that we've done. But

I think it's important. It came up in our super top secret

project with the wonderful pilot participants who have been

amazing to work with, but somebody brought it up like

a week ago, just kind of the disintegration of certain

relationships and how it seems to be, I don't want to say

repetitive, but it's common, I think, especially in

neurodivergent friendships and very hard to navigate, very hard

to figure out. And so I've been through a couple of really ugly

relationship breakups in my life. I think I was with

somebody for a very long time before I met my husband. And

everybody around us said that we were gonna get married. I think we were probably,

eh. We were old enough, but not old enough. Like, I got married when

I was 25, and I still think I wasn't old enough. We all treated it

like it was a relationship. It was, it was. We were together a very long

time. And it ended

definitively. It wasn't like it kind of petered out and disappeared. It ended

definitively. I was crushed. I thought I would never

recover for what felt like eternity. And it really like

a month. But this was a time in my life when

38 was like, I'm never going to be 38. That's so

old. Ouch, ouch. Younger me. But

anyway, and it's funny, I remember I was

working at a, a huge music store then and there was an

album that came out with a song on it called Sober.

And to this day, I don't know if it's about actual sobriety or just about

healing, but she basically says, like, it's been three months and

I'm still sober, meaning I'm still figuring

this thing out. And they played it in the

store while I was working. And I kind of looked up and went like,

wait, I think it's been three months. And it had been like exactly three

months that day. And it was just about how, you know, three months in,

you could be better, but not there yet. And I was like, wow, I kind

of, I really feel my life right in front of me. This is wild. And

it just happened to be playing over 105,000 square

feet of retail space while I was having this giant realization while

ringing people out for their $10 CDs.

I remember that being like a milestone where it was like, oh, okay,

it's been three months and I'm not great, but I'm getting there. And then not

that long after that, I was driving home and that song

by, I think it's by Chris Daughtry came on. I think

it's called over you. The few times in my life where I've like heard songs

that I've heard before and realized either they

meant something different to me then or they meant something different in

general than what I had originally perceived. And I was listening to

it as a person who, I think that was the moment where I was like,

oh, wait a minute, I am living my life. I'm like super happy. I have

friends, I'm busy. I don't need that person anymore. I think I did

actually get over him. That's amazing. Awesome. And I felt

very empowered as a 20 something year old

minimum wage worker who wasn't quite out of college yet. I was like,

oh, the future's in front of me. I don't need that person. That guy's a

loser. And that was the first time I remember feeling that way. But that's like

a very typical breakup trajectory. I was young enough that

it felt like it mattered, but it really didn't matter. A couple years

later, I met my husband. So that's kind of

very typical relationship stuff. I think most People

who have been in long term relationships or more than one long term relationship

have had a similar experience where it ends,

it's heartbreaking. You feel like your life is over and then

one day you wake up and you're like, oh, I didn't

actually die. It just felt like a part of me was dying. Like maybe this

life is kind of cool. Maybe I'm going to stick with this thing. And you

move in a different direction and eventually you meet someone new or you don't. Like

that's not a requirement. As a person who's been

happily married for a very long time, being single sounds kind of great.

And I don't say that as a person who wants to be single, but seriously,

like being single and living alone and like not having anybody

who expects you to put pants on ever, that sounds delightful.

Votive support for that. But also I

love my husband and he's kind of neat and he makes fairy parties for my

kids and so. But anyway, that's not even the kind of breakup I want to

talk about because that was hard and difficult and felt devastating

at the time. And I wasn't sure how I was going to go on with

my life. And then I did and everything was fine and it got better as

a result of it. And I'm very, very grateful that that person broke my

heart. So it hasn't been a thing in a while, but

as a person who has been through a real relationship breakup that

truly in some ways change the trajectory of my life.

That's still not the most substantial breakup I've ever been through.

And I think this is probably really common for,

you know, neurodivergent people who don't always find people they're

comfortable with or who like click with someone and click

really hard and then not having that anymore feels really

bad. I was friends with somebody for a super long time.

Like the kind of friend that I could like call while I was in the

bathroom. Like that kind of close. Like there was no boundaries, there were no

limits. We talked about everything. We.

It was like everything inappropriate. And I'd known her for so

long, certainly before we were adults and then we kind of went into

adulthood together and you know, she really felt like the other half of my existence

for a long time. Sometimes we'd go a couple weeks without talking

just because life. But we were usually on the other end of

the phone for each other. And she was my first phone call when something great

happened and she was my first phone call when something awful happened and same thing.

And we would Drop everything and drive to the other one. We lived a couple

hours apart. It was a really important

relationship in early adulthood because it was

somebody who knew me well enough. I could make mistakes, I could say stupid things,

I could do stupid things. You know, the kind of friend who would be like,

I think this is dumb, but I'm down for it if that's what you want

to do. Like, those friends are important when your prefrontal cortex is still

developing. One day I woke up and she just kind of

wasn't there anymore. And there wasn't, like,

a fight. There wasn't an argument. I had been kind of

hard to be friends with for a while, but to this

day, I don't think that was it. We had gone through four years of infertility.

And my social skills, anytime there's significant

stress or trauma, my social skills are the first thing to go. You know, I'm

sure I had not been a very connected friend during that time period, but also,

like, she couldn't be involved in a daily basis because she didn't live here, but

she was involved, and she knew what was happening, and she knew that it was

hard. And she was also at kind of a different place in her life where,

you know, when you're going through infertility, this is what I did. I don't know

that anybody else does this, but when I went through infertility, I was like, any

person of childbearing age who

is potentially looking to have a child right now who is going to sneeze and

get pregnant needs to get out of my life, because I've been doing this.

We're years into this, and it has destroyed

my entire brain and my entire body. And I think I didn't have

the capacity to be a good friend during that time period. And maybe that was

part of the problem. It's entirely possible that that was part of the problem. But,

you know, I did eventually get pregnant, and I thought that would be the

first really excited phone call. And I'm sure we talked.

I don't remember the screaming excitement that I thought I

would get from the person who I semi love most in

this world. And then just, like, little things like,

huh, I would have thought I would find out about that before I find

out about it on the Internet. Okay, that's fine. Oh,

I knew this thing was going to happen, and I thought she would call me

and talk to me about it, and she didn't. Oh, okay. That's weird. Then

you, like, gaslight yourself, right? You're like, I'm Making all this up. This is all

in my head. This is not a thing. But then you're so far in your

head about it that even though this is somebody who you can talk to about

anything, you're like, I don't want to bring it up. I don't want to be

the person who's making a thing out of nothing. I'm being overly sensitive.

I'm six months pregnant. Of course I'm being overly sensitive. Everything's

in my head. This hasn't changed. And then

she didn't RSVP to my baby shower or something like that, like something that your

best friend would be at. And I was like, okay, well, there's something

there. But like, I'm going to give it time to breathe. I don't have the

mental and emotional capacity to deal with this right now. At the time, obviously, I

was very pregnant. My kid was six weeks early. And then my dad died when

she was six weeks old, and he had been really sick for the whole year

prior. And so it was just like there was a lot going on and that

was not the thing that I was focused on. To her credit, when my dad

did die, she did everything right. No question. She did everything

right. So it's not a question of, like, whether she's a good person or not,

because that's never been part of the considerations. I don't remember what happened, but

I just remember finding out that I was being. I don't want to make it

sound like it was about me. It wasn't about me, but I found out that

they were doing something. I don't even remember what it was. Something that

if we were still those friends, I would have been included

in. And I had no idea about it. And I found out about it on

the Internet and I finally sent a text that just said, I

really would have thought you would have given me a heads up if you didn't

want me involved in this. But I got the message now and I was like,

my dad had just died or had died a couple of months prior.

I'm at home with this, like, tiny premature baby.

I'm grieving everything in my whole life. And then

also this thing. And

I certainly have never gotten over the grief of my dad dying. And that's something

that I live with every day. And the kid is now nine,

so she's slightly less troublesome in some ways and significantly

more troublesome in others, like in good ways. But I don't know, it's like she's

been raised by mouthy, irreverent people or something because she's mouthy and

irreverent all the time. It was probably

five years before it didn't

render me to tears. Anytime I would think about

took so long to

start feeling like I was capable of making friends again. To start

feeling like maybe that wasn't the only close female friendship I'll ever have.

It was so much more devastating than any

relationship breakup I have ever been through by a margin of a

huge amount. And again, I say that as somebody who's been in

serious relationships before, like relationships that were supposed to be forever.

Relationships that broke up before I ended up in the one

that didn't. So it's not like I don't have any experience with

that kind of loss. But to this

day, aside from my dad dying,

nothing has ever hurt as bad. And I think that's something we

don't talk about enough. I think we

act like the only relationships you

grieve or you have long term feelings about

are romantic ones. Outside of romantic relationships that are designed for

procreation and furthering of the species. You just pull up

your bootstraps and get over it. That is not what happened.

That is not what happened. So much so that

at one point I finally reached out and was just like, I just need

to know what happened. Like this was years later,

years later. And I thought I was reaching out because I was

healed enough to deal with it. And it was something that I had done tons

of work on to try to feel better and more confident and less

kind of traumatized by it. And the response that I

got was not. It wasn't bad, it

wasn't mean, it wasn't aggressive. It just was not. I think

I still wanted to hear what five years later, that it

was still all in my head.

I think I still wanted to hear what five years later

that it was still all in my head. What are you talking about? This has

never changed. Nothing's changed. And obviously it had changed. Obviously it had

changed. There was nobody I was calling from the

bathroom anymore. Obviously it had changed.

But when that wasn't the answer that I got and it shouldn't have been the

answer that I got. Like that would have been a complete denial of reality, which

would have been a totally different version of gaslighting that I don't know how I

would have handled. I realized how not healed I was

because I got so upset and so hurt by the response. And

the response was reasonable. It was reasonable for

somebody you hadn't talked to in a while who had not been that

important to you. But then you start going through the like, maybe I was never

as important to her as I thought I was. Maybe I misunderstood our

friendship. Maybe I didn't understand 12 years

of. Or 10 years or whatever it was. And that

was five years in, and I still had a really visceral reaction to it.

The reason this comes up, we've been working on a new project with

some individuals, many of whom identify as neurodivergent, many of

whom identify as femme. And this topic that keeps coming up is

this idea of neurodivergent femme friendships and why

they're so hard to keep and why so many of us feel like we have

like a kind of a friend graveyard, for lack of a better term. They're still

alive. Not that kind of graveyard, but just like a

list of people you can look at. Oh, well, yeah, we were friends in high

school, but we don't talk to anymore. Oh, yeah, we were really close during this

period of my life. They don't carry through. They don't carry through. And

I'm. I'm very fortunate. I do have friends who have carried through. My very best

friend in my whole life. I've known since I was nine. And he and I

can talk once a year. We talk usually more than that, but sometimes he

sends me to voicemail. Don't send me to voicemail. You're the only person I call.

It doesn't matter. Like, I could call him at 3 o' clock in the

morning and be like, I need a smoothie. And he

would be like, I don't know why you're calling me, you're an idiot. But like,

how do we get you a smoothie? He doesn't live here, so he can't get

me a smoothie. But if he lived nearby, he would. His mom is the first

person I call. I call his mom before I call my mom. I'm very close

with her. I talk with her more than I talk with him. But we've been

best friends since we were nine and there is nothing that has ever

like not talking there. Doesn't matter. It just means that we're both busy and

we're gonna catch up eventually and he's gonna cut straight to the core of

me because he's known me since I'm nine. And I'm gonna get really mad that

he was able to reduce me so quickly. And then he's gonna do

something amazing and I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna do something amazing and he's

gonna show up and he was in a really horrific car accident.

God, probably six years ago now. I can't believe that. So horrific that

the police report said that it was vehicular

homicide. And the police officer did not realize that he was still

alive. And thankfully, the paramedics got there and

realized that he was alive and got him to the hospital. And his neck was

broken, and there was all sorts of really awful stuff, but he got through

it. And he at one point, sent me a picture of him

with his. It's called the halo. It's the thing that, like, keeps your neck

straight, that they, like, literally drill into your skull after you've broken your spine.

And he sent me a picture of him wearing that. And he had a tie

tied around his head, and it looked so silly. I called

him American Injury Warrior. I was really proud of myself for that one. And

to this day, still very proud of myself for that one. But

he will always be my best friend. The point that I was saying is that

when he got into the accident, his sister called me.

I saw the area code, and I was in a meeting,

and I was like, well, that's weird. I haven't gotten a call from that area

code in a while, but I sent it to voicemail. And then she called again,

and I was like, oh, God, this is bad news. And so I picked up

the phone, and the first thing she says is, okay, he's okay. They didn't know

his status at that point. He was still in surgery. It was terrifying. And so

I was like, I'm gonna jump on a plane. I'll be there in a couple

hours. And you should know I don't fly. So that was,

like, a big deal that I was like, all right, I'll be there in a

couple hours. And his other sister was like, no, don't.

That is when you guys show up for each other. If you show up here,

he is gonna think that he has been given a death sentence.

She was like, I will put you on the phone with him later. You guys

can talk if you wanna come later, once we're through the worst of it.

Absolutely. But if you're the person he sees when he wakes up,

he will think he's dying. And I was like, yeah, that's. That's

accurate. That's correct. So I did talk to him that night and told him that.

And he, to this day, does not remember that conversation. But

the drugs were good, as they should be when you've had your neck

broken. Anyway, I have those relationships. I have those

friendships. I know how devastated I would be if anything ever happened to him or

if for some reason that relationship went away. But I also know that that relationship

is not going anywhere. It's been my whole life. He would

literally have to be body snatched for anything to change.

And I think I thought this was that too. And

that's probably why it was so devastating, because

it wasn't. And I don't know what changed, but something changed. And she's right,

something did change, but I don't know what it is. So it's come up a

couple of times that there are a lot of neurodivergent women who feel like they

can't maintain relationships with other females. Well, women,

that part of the human experience is foreign to

them. And it's not for lack of trying. It's not like they

don't have any experience having friendships

and maintaining relationships and whatever. It's not

that. It's just for some reason this one part of the

experience doesn't work out for them. And I identify

with that so much because I can. Again, I can think back to this.

I call it my montage of curly haired brunettes. Because for whatever reason, they're

all curly haired brunettes. Like people who

were so integral to my world and like the first phone call and

then all of a sudden like, just not. That grieving

process is as important as

any other grieving process. It doesn't deserve less respect

or less attention or less validation.

Because it wasn't a relationship where you're expected to make

babies. Not being your life partner does not mean you didn't expect them

to be with you for life. I just think it's really important to say like

that. I mean, we're probably almost

10 years in now and finally in the last like two

or three years, which is probably indicative of

some of the bigger changes that I've made in my life as a whole. But

finally, in the last two or three years, like, the burn has started to calm

down. It doesn't sting quite as much. It doesn't pop into my

head constantly. But that grieving

process took longer than. It took

longer than any other grieving process that I've ever

been part of. My dad included. I'll always be grieving my dad. But I

mean, people's dads die. And

as much as I wish I could go back in time and have

my dad not die, that is not a story that you don't hear

of, like, people's dads die. And I understood he was

sick. I knew all of his medical history. I knew that this was coming. Whether

I wanted to admit it or not, it made sense. I could find

the sense in it. As much as it was devastating and completely

disarming and really, really almost felt

impossible at times, it still made sense. Dads die and

sick people die. I understand that

it wasn't a part of my everyday. It didn't

render me incapable on

the regular after a certain point. I mean, it still creeps into my regular day

to day thoughts, but it just. It just made sense. And I think I

knew what to expect there and I felt comfortable with that

process and that was okay. That was not

what this was. The questions, the

perseverations, the feeling really small,

the feeling like I

just wish I knew what happened. The feeling like I didn't have any answers.

The feeling like I had lost the other end of the phone.

You know, before there had always been somebody on the other end of the phone.

And now it felt like that wasn't there. And that was really weird and uncomfortable,

all of that. It took years. It took

actual years. You know, we're talking about 10 years on. I'm at a

place now where the sting's not there, but when I see it happening in other

relationships, I feel that still. And it's not as dramatic, it's not

as drawn out. I'm slightly more reasonable about it.

I just think it's important to give yourself the

space to recognize that

relationships outside of romantic relationships matter. They sometimes matter

more. That is a real grieving process. And it's not

linear. Grief is never linear. It's not like one day you just wake up and

you're like, oh, I'm good now. Or like there's a date on the calendar, like

in 30 days I'm going to be fine. It's been 10 years, man.

Maybe longer than that. I don't know. What's time? Time is

irrelevant. But you got to give yourself space to grieve.

Whatever your brain and body wants to grieve. And that could be

an idea. It could be the idea of who you thought you were going to

be. It could be a job. I've grieved

jobs for way longer than I thought I would. It could be a

loved one. It could be property. Like it could be the house that you thought

you were gonna raise your kids in that you're not gonna get to have anymore.

Everything is built to an idea and ideas have

emotions attached to them. And when something that you hoped for

and had wanted for and had dreamed of is not gonna happen, regardless what it

is, you grieve that. And you should grieve that. And this idea

that you just move on and grow up and get over it is not realistic.

So if you are a fellow nerd or virgin

weirdo like myself, and that is something that you have struggled

with. One those really long, extended grief processes when

you don't have answers and things feel really insecure. I

see you. I get that. I experienced it.

And you are entitled to every feeling, even when you want

to turn them off and never feel them again. But also, I think, like, we

should normalize that this happens and that it's probably just

part of growing up and growing older. But it still hurts

and it's allowed to hurt. There is nothing wrong with you

if that's been part of your story. Because from the

conversations I've had, this is really common. We don't talk

about it enough so that we don't immediately internalize it as well.

I'm just clearly a bad friend. Maybe you guys are just in different parts of

your lives and there's no timeline on that. You don't have to wake up tomorrow

and just be okay with it. Your brain will take as much time as it

needs for

this week's small talk again, Remember, this is something we do every week. I want

to know something that you are super particular about

and why is it pens? Because if I were to open

the drawer of my desk, you would see easily 100 different

pension in little bins. They're cute. They're organized. Some of them are markers, some of

them are pens, some of them are sparkly. They're all some sort of fancy version

of gel ink or felt tip

or something. I cannot not buy a pen.

I have a pen. I have a type of pen that is my favorite. It's

a pilot precise V10RT. It also

comes. This does not prove my point at all. It also comes in a

stick version that I don't like as much. I don't know what's different, but

something's different. But it's fine. I have plenty of these too. But it's Pilot Precise

V10. It's a 1.0 tip and it's liquid

ink and I have them in every color you can

get them in. I don't have any blue around here and I know I

can tell you where to get them. I can tell you where you can't get

them. I have like a reorder button on Amazon because I buy them

so often. I don't usually buy them from Amazon anymore. I try not to.

They're more expensive there. And also I try to buy them other places, but they're

hard to get. The refill ink costs as much as a whole new pen

and they're expensive. So I know these are my favorite pens in

the whole world and I have purchased them for many years and they are the

best. And do not bring me a V7 or a V5. Get that nonsense

out of my house. No. We are here for bold

only. We are not fine people. It's not

welcome here. If you put a V7 in my hand, I will

have a visceral reaction when I write with it. And somehow some ended up in

my collection. Every time I find one I like tossed at the nanny, I'm like,

this one's for you. She's like, can you stop throwing pens at me? I don't

actually throw it at her. She just doesn't mind and she likes them.

Whereas I'm like, what is this traf? Trafe is Yiddish for non

kosher food for the uninitiated in the house. Anyway, I will

still buy all the pens. And I buy pens like literally weekly. I just bought

a new pack of. I was scrolling and they popped up. And of course they're.

They're fountain pens. They're kind of fancy. I like them. They're neat. They're not as

good as these. I know I'm not going to like them as much. I still

buy them. Something pops up that has a 1.0 ink, that's liquid, I will buy

it. Don't show up with ballpoint pens. Nobody wants that nonsense in my house.

Why did I need to buy glitter gel pens last week when I was school

supply shopping for my children? I don't know. Anyway, I could talk about

pens clearly for a very long time because I already have. So,

1. What is your favorite pen? 2. What

thing do you know lots about that other people just exist around.

Send those to me and we'll read them. Thanks for being here, guys. Have a

good day. Love you. Mean it.

I have a whole stack of the black ones because I bought new ones to

do these letter signings. I've gone through three of them in the last two days.

That's how many letters I've signed in the event that anybody wants to forge

my signature on a check.