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I’m no professional, so I could be wrong here, but two people, one of which has it, have suggested I have EDS. The more I look into it, the more it seems to line up with many of the issues I’ve had throughout my life.

And the doctor I went to about an old ankle injury, who told me I’m hypermobile, and that it was definitely affecting my ankle and its ability to heal, is here saying “yep no signs of EDS on my end. You’ll have to go to a geneticist about that.”

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are you normal about disabled people. are you normal about visibly disabled people in public. are you normal about wheelchair users. can you treat them like people instead of obstacles. can you look them in the eye. can you say hi to a disabled person without making an awkward reference to their disability first thing. can you mention disabled people without acting like they're some rare endangered species. can you talk about disabled people without feeling pity, sadness, or grateful for your own life. can you open the door for a disabled person without making it a big deal. are you normal about disabled people

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I’m in so much pain that I can barely stand and the dog keeps jumping on me and bc of the angle I’m sitting at, to push him off (hes heavy as shit and I can’t deal with that right now) I have to use the limited strength I still have left in my legs which is also extremely painful bc of the angle (lose - lose). And my mam is fucking laughing at me. Constantly. She thinks it’s so funny while I feel like my hip is going to dislocate.

And then I get fucking fed up bc I’ve been in so much pain for hours now and I can’t even grab some pain meds bc I can’t walk. And so I push the dog particularly hard after he gets the worlds largest amount of slobber all over my only clean pair of trousers. Again, I’m really fucking frustrated and honestly I’m starting to get genuinely upset. And my mam is laughing again. And I tell her about my trousers. And she laughs and says that I can just go up and change and she can throw them in the wash for me. And I inform her that I’m in too much pain to walk right now. And she says “did you not get yourself pain meds?” And I say “I am in too much pain to walk right now.”

And she just stops talking. Not even a sorry. Not an offer to grab some for me. I can’t even self-sooth bc my self-soothing behaviour is fucking pacing. I’m stressed and I want to cry but my brain won’t let me while I’m in company so ig I’m just going to have to suffer more.

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Being disabled but not looking disabled honestly sucks ass.

Need a seat at the bus station because your heart is trying to explode and you can't breathe? Sucks to be you ig, you don't need a seat beacause you can walk.

Sitting in the priority seating on a bus or train because you physically can't stand up any longer? Fuck you, you're stealing seats from those who need them.

Use the lift because your body is incapable of surviving the stairs? You're a lazy, unfit, piece of shit.

Wear a sunflower lanyard so that people are aware that you are disabled? You're an entitled arsehole and deserve to die.

Honest to god it's a fucking nightmare. I'm not able bodied but, because I look like I am, I can't possibly be disabled. What is wrong with the world? Why are people so damn intolerant?

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rb to give the previous person a fucking break because life aint life-ing the way its supposed to life and it fucking sucks.

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Absolutely terrible that my self-soothing stim thing is pacing, something becoming increasingly less possible due to my injury + shitty joints

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Having to spend the past 10 minutes explaining to my sibling that yes, fiction influences reality, but that one random person shipping a toxic/abusive couple and posting art about it is not telling people to go beat their partners. Like if you don’t like what they ship stop looking for it. It’s not a crime to like things you don’t, even if those things are crimes irl

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nobody talks about the fact that you can have all this crazy shit in your head, and want to open up and talk about your feelings but no matter what, you just can't make out the right words and properly put your thoughts and emotions into words

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being disabled will really have you thinking/saying things like “yeah i’m not really THAT disabled. as long as i take my meds twice a day (and as needed), eat and drink exactly the right things, keep the perfect balance of being active and resting, the weather is stable, and nothing unexpected happens AT ALL… i’m totally FINE! i probably should not even call myself disabled at this point because i’m doing so well!”

if you don’t want to call yourself disabled, that’s fine and it is your choice! but if you’re only “fine” or “doing really well” when a bunch of different variables are all lined up perfectly, then maybe you are not fine actually. just a thought!

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At a meeting to discuss gender equality and thank fuck for my table agreeing with me on the fact that gender takes too much priority. It shouldn’t be “how can we get more women in this and more men in that” it should be “how can we make sure that anyone of any gender can participate in this with equal ease/difficulty”

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What Does Executive Dysfunction Look Like?

Here, while focused and not overstimulated, I asked The Kid to draw an apple and spell it:

He is able to write the word apple all by himself, from memory. He knows how to spell apple, and he knows that he knows. He needs a simple visual aid to draw an apple himself, his apple resembles an apple (as drawn by a 6 yo, anyway).

Here, while slightly overstimulated, I ask The Kid to draw a cat and write the word cat:

Though he definitely knows how to spell cat, he needs a visual aid here to do so. He also needs a simple visual aid to draw a cat, but even with an aid, he draws the parts in the wrong order. You can tell he's struggling to perform the task.

Here, absolutely overstimulated, I ask The Kid to draw a whale and write the word whale:

After 3 minutes of picking up the pencil and then putting it down again, with lots of echolalia, he makes an attempt. He needs a visual aid for both tasks. While he writes each letter in the correct order, their sequence is mostly random. He cannot draw at all in this state.

This is Executive Dysfunction. A symptom common in autism, and adhd.

A person with Executive Dysfunction is not making a decision not to do something (chores, homework, cooking, etc.) -- they genuinely cannot do the thing. At least not under certain circumstances, such as overstimulation or stress. They might require help and step by step guidance to get through it, or to abandon the task entirely until circumstances are more ideal.

This is a normal experience and not something to be punished for (by yourself or others). In fact punishment or the fear of punishment actually makes ED worse and more frequent. The only things that actually help the severity and frequency of Executive Dysfunction is patience and understanding.

This is also why functioning labels are outdated and inaccurate. You can go from 1 to 3 in the same day. Heck, the same hour if you're having A Time of It. For example, I go straight from 1 to 3, skipping 2 entirely when I look at road maps.

(Obligatory disclaimer: The Kid was not compelled to perform these tasks against his desire. I compiled these images over the course of summer break, when he requested the activity but wasn't always in a state to complete the activity. Then realized what a keen visual representation of ED this was, and that it could be helpful.)

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The mind numbing anger of chronic fatigue is getting irritable because you're so fucking tired but you really feel like you SHOULDNT BE.

You SHOULD be able to sit at a desk and do work. You SHOULD be able to just watch a freaking YouTube video. You SHOULD be able to just eat fucking lunch.

But you can't. Because your eyes are closing and it's like temporary death is taking you.

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Wow. Everything is terrible. Optimism gets me nowhere. Optimism actually makes the inevitable disappointment worse.

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I’m trying to look into therapy, because I really really need it, but I also need some help trying to find out what kind.

My mam insists that cognitive behavioural therapy is the way to go, but from what I’ve seen on it, it comes across more like “coping with how life currently is in a healthy way” than “addressing the problems at the source and working to resolve it (while also learning to cope with things you can’t solve easy)”, which is what I, personally, would prefer to do.

It’s also probably relevant that I have diagnosed adhd and autism and undiagnosed depression and anxiety (and a fair amount of trauma that I constantly doubt the existence of), which is why my mam suggests cbt. But it’s those very reasons and the fact that there aren’t many psychologists/therapists with experience treating audhd adults in my country within sane travel distance (can’t do calls for numerous reasons) that I don’t know if cbt is the right option.

If anyone has any information they can give to help I would be greatly appreciative!

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I love depression and anxiety and everything bad happening to me to create an awful concoction of suicidal ideation and every bad emotion at once that I literally cannot tell anyone about lest I be willing to subject myself to awkward stares or yelling about how I can’t have problems because other people have them

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You guys should make more intersex ocs, I want to see the intersex flag on character refs. Can we get women who are bears and cis gay boys with boobs? Can we get intersex characters who aren't 'futas' and instead actually depict intersexuality in a non-fetishistic manner? In a way that represents us? What about an anthro doe with antlers, or chimera cats? What about reptilian species who's sex is determined by temperature ending up square in the middle? How about characters who don't know they are intersex? What about intersex animals, dragons, monsters, literally split down the middle, half male half female. Infertile characters, agenital characters, characters with 'wrong' sex characteristics. Men who can't stand to piss. Women without ovaries. People who look like me. Characters who exist in settings without a medical establishment telling them their body is wrong? Gandalf big naturals. Intersex flag. Write settings where Intersexuality is represented thematically accuratly, and is natural and normal.

Write more intersex characters

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I left my towel I was using for physio folded up neatly away from the dog and anyone else and made sure my mam 100% knew about it.

and she comes to me saying that she picked it up and tossed it at the dog and then deemed it dirty and threw the THIRD FUCKING TOWEL I’VE HAD TO USE into the wash, only telling me after.

Then proceeded to once again ignore me after I said I was upset.