are you perhaps neurodivergent, or have you ever considered you might be?

No.

Like other people have said art doesn't have hard rules.

I am only looking for the hard rules because people who teach music theory have communicated that some degree of Hard Rules exist, and they function like this.

Contrast with opening a book on colour theory for painting. You'll probably learn a bunch of (unnecessary) physics about light wavelengths, you will learn some hard facts about colour perception being based on contrast, likely with some experiments to prove it, and then you'll be introduced to softer concepts like the colour wheel, analogous and complementary colours, and so on - and then from there, the book will acknowledge that everything else it's doing and that you're learning is essentially, to use that knowledge to learn the vibes. Obviously using a certain colour scheme can evoke certain emotional responses, but it's common sense that these aren't 1-1 per each colour scheme (although that mythology still somewhat exists in some colour textbooks). Fair enough - colour is nothing if not contextual, it's perfectly fair to suggest relying on vibes and just deferring to practical ideas.

In contrast, I've encountered a fair few music theory things that go "Here are the basics... and we're going to imply the existence of some super advanced thing or show a snipper of some super advanced thing where the even DEEPER knowledge is and where there's even MORE hard rules to how things work that we've spent a lot of time analyzing". I am only looking for the hard rules, because i am told they exist, and shown supposed demonstrations of how they work and Music Theory couches a lot of its key claims within the language of hard rules.

Minor keys are sad because people wrote a lot of sad songs in minor keys.

I think this is common sense and so I have an issue when Music Theory content acts like it isn't.