Happy to be Felíz: Rambling Through Life

NeuroSpark is celebrating Pride by amplifying the voices of neurodivergent members of the LGBTQ+ and gender-diverse communities. 

Felíz Felix is a queer female comedian and barista who has ADHD, loves video games, and her cat! 

What’s your name?

Hi, my name is Felíz. 

Who are you? 

Who am I? That’s a very interesting question. Hi my name is Feliz, I go by Feliz Felix. @shookiestthewise on Instagram. I like to do stand-up comedy and draw. Pronouns she/her/they. 

What’s important to you? 

My friends, the people I love, the parts of my family that I still have in my life, I know my cat’s damn important to me. I know being able to create, draw, make comedy, listening to music. Music, sounds, and rhythms are super important to me. The bonds and friendships I make in my life are really important to me because I feel like being myself and how I treat people, and how people treat me is something I hold in high regard.

What’s your spark?

I’d have to say anime is definitely one of my sparks. It’s definitely one of the things that make me light up. 

What’s your favorite anime?

A very, very tough question right there but if we’re gonna think about it like my favorite, absolute just generally over time favorite anime would have to be a show called Gurren Lagann. 

What games do you like? 

I love nintendo. Mario 64 was one of my very first video games I’ve ever played , and from there it’s just grown exponentially. I love Kirby, I love the Legend of Zelda series, I like some of the Donkey Kong games (not all), and then I have to say I like Earthbound (and Mother 3), that and Animal Crossing. 

Cool. And you talk a lot about Sonic, too. 

Oh!! How the f*** did I forget about Sonic the hedgehog? I LOVE Sonic the Hedgehog. I think Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the epitomes of one of the coolest things ever.

What’s your experience like being a Black, Dominican, neurodivergent trans woman?

I feel like I'm misunderstood, especially when it comes down to stuff at home with my mom. I was getting ready, and she doesn't even want to make eye contact with me or anything else anytime. I try my best to explain how I feel, but she's very much against it and she doesn't want to hear. Or, she just does not even care enough to know. So you know, that's what I'm used to sometimes dealing with, especially with a lot of cis-people that aren't neurodivergent. They mostly just don't want to hear a lot about those kinds of things, or they want to hear about it through their OWN perspective and as long as it's on their own terms. I'm not working on other people's terms, I'm working on my own. I'm doing my own thing so why am I stopping for you? That's how I always have to view it. 

They only want to understand and accept what they WANT to accept. How dare they think that they know the “appropriate” way of being?

Exactly. they only want to accept what they want to accept… and it's really annoying especially because I have ADHD. One of the things I had growing up is that my parents never took it as seriously as they could. Like my mom got me testing and I had my IEP, and I had those little special classes on the side when it came down to that. It was...I remember I'll never forget the time when my mom (and my mom still says this to me) she'll tell me to focus! And then I'm like, you know... I make a joke saying I can't! She's like ADHD is not an excuse for why you can't focus. I was like motherf**** it is! Like what are you talking about! Did you not miss the whole...extra “symptoms” that come along with this thing? And I just kind of get misunderstood there.

They think that all of this is in your control.

Yeah all of it, and it's not! You can't, it's not. It's not all in my control. It's even when it comes down to work, people...I'll never forget...I even had a co-worker at my new job who said, "Well could you just try your best to push your ADHD aside, and try your best to focus a little bit more on these tasks?"

I'm trying! But you know I can't just completely get it cut out of my brain!

How does that feel when they're telling you that? 

It feels very devaluing, and it feels like they actively don't want to understand what I'm going through, how I'm feeling, or what I currently have to deal with, because whenever it feels like I'm an inconvenience to them, I hate feeling like I'm an inconvenience. And I think that's all of us, but I absolutely HATE feeling like an inconvenience to people. So, I try my best to, you know, meet them halfway on certain stuff. Even though it makes me still lose a little bit of myself, but I try my best to at least still meet them half-way, because they don't understand. And if they're not gonna actively understand, then I mean like, to a certain degree, I can't really force them to.

Well when you say that you try to meet them halfway, right, it makes me think of masking... Do you feel like you have to mask with people at work in any way? Or do you just own yourself. Because based on what I see from you, you just own who you are.

I just own it.

You don't try to dilute any part of yourself, which is why I love you so much.

Thank you.

Seriously 

Um no, I just f***** own it. 

I've had other people try to put me down and talk down to me and just make me not really feel all that good about being myself, but I just know that at the end of the day I'm stuck with me. I go to sleep with me. There's no other man, there's no other woman, there's no other person, that's in my bed that whenever I go to sleep at night that's going to be sleeping next to me. There are people in my home that do live with me, but they are not living my experiences.

Okay so you're living in a very un-affirming environment. So what is helpful to you?

My cat, my friends online, just being able to overall write comedy. Writing stand-up comedy always helps me take away the seriousness of really tough situations in life, because it makes them powerless.

Nice.

And if I'm able to make a joke about it and then carry on with my life, then it makes it so much better for me not to make it feel like it's beating me over the head like it's a bad thing, or that I'm a bad person or anything else like that. It helps alleviate me from the stress that I feel. So stand-up comedy is definitely one of the bigger ones.

That, and drawing. I like to make art and I like to be creative. Writing and drawing have always been one of the things that I've been a very good outlet for me since I was a kid. So that's some of the things.

Any advice for people wanting to show up as an ally?

If I could give out some advice from people that are trying to be an ally for people like us that are queer and neurodivergent, is to try your best to be understanding, be patient, validate our identities as a person, and what we have been able to discover about ourselves.

Try your best to come to an understanding for the person that we are, and work along with us, because we're working along with you. We have to deal with it, we're called names and stuff like that and we have to deal with them. It kind of drives me crazy that some people think that they are the center of the universe because they don't have ADHD or they aren't autistic.

They think everyone should just be that way.

Nah, clearly not, because if you don't have ADHD and you're not autistic, you probably got something else going on, it's just different.

I try my best to tell them who I am and what I identify as, I try my best as far as that goes, but if you just ask, I'll tell you.

Do you usually tell people you're neurodivergent?

If you just ask, I'll tell you. It's not something that I usually say... "Hi I'm Felíz, these are my diagnoses, you want to check out this super smash brothers fighting edit that I just watched?" I'm happy to show you that.

If people want to follow you and support you, what should they do? 

Follow me and support me at @shookiestthewise on my Instagram profile and check whenever I’m doing my comedy sets because that’s where I put on all my updates about where I’m going to be doing comedy. 

What are your dreams?

My dream is one day to have my own Netflix special where I get to ramble and do my stand-up comedy routines while simultaneously being able to do art, and promote all the artwork and stuff that I have. And simultaneously while all that’s going on, I have a family, I have people that love me and I have friends and family that are there to support me. 

What message do you want to share? 

Strive to be the best version of yourself that you actually ever could be, and continuously get better each and every day because each day is just a blessing. I like that little quote from Kung Fu Panda that Master Oogway says. He says, “The past is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is today, and that’s why it’s called the present because it’s a gift,” Something like that. I know it’s something like that and I always lived by that little statement. Tomorrow I don’t know what I’m going to be doing tomorrow, or what I might be doing the next hour, but what I will do is cherish the moment I’m in right now and try my best to be better than what I was from yesterday.

And I’m cherishing my moment with you right now. 

Thank you so much! 

NeuroSpark is dedicated to celebrating this community all year long. We’re also working to create change and education. If you would like to share your story with us, please reach out to info@neurosparkhealth.com. Thank you.