#ADHD lack of brakes

[helenwhiteart-blog]

Hyperfocus!

Hyperfocus is a very old friend (sometimes foe) of mine, as alluded to many times before in these posts which, face it, probably wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for this propensity I have to hyperfocus because writing is both the target and the outlet of this tendency. If I didn’t channel the fruits of at least some of my areas of hyperfocus into writing, I would probably burst! For the early part…

[mamoonde]

i really really really love the idea of wei wuxian revolutionizing modern cultivation over breakfast and conceptualizing these different theories simultaneously because the adhd brain has no brakes and the only reason it took him a decade to publish all these ideas was because he could not stick to a single train of thought long enough to finish (verbalizing) it, let alone put it down on paper coherently.

the only reason he even got to publishing them eventually (and enrolling to cultivation theory grad program to get on that track) was because one morning, his undergrad thesis advisor, lan qiren, finally got fed up and sat him down for an early morning progress check-in because it was midterm season and wei wuxian still hadn't decided on a topic.

wei wuxian, fueled by an unhealthy amount of redbull and three all-nighters, finally word vomits all his 'convoluted' ideas which he'd thought were uselessly obvious and redundant (because he's gone over these like a bajillion times, it's very plain-as-day to him, so he probably just hasn't read the articles that say these exact things).

lan qiren, teacup frozen halfway to his mouth: ...first of all, i only understood half of how you got to these conclusions, which only means they are indeed too convoluted and will need to be pared down; secondly: you have never mentioned any of these ideas before. why.

wei wuxian: oh. haven't i? oh well, i just thought, xyz, because, obviously, abcde. which is really what the 2 centuries old law on ghjkl was alluding to, right? and so, logically, xyz.

lan qiren: [mind blown, screaming, good gods this is the same child who's always tardy and spent freshman year pulling on the metaphorical pigtails of my straight-laced nephew?!?!??!??!?!] ..again, why...how have you never even spoken or submitted these ideas?

wei wuxian: because!!! they're so obvious!! surely, it's been published somewhere already? i can't be the only one to connect these dots, surely??

lan qiren: incredibly, you are. no one else has even thought to question tradition nor pursued more thoughts on the law of ghjkl, with half as much...sound arguments as you seem to have. in the past century, the focus of modern cultivation has tended towards practical uses and tools, some fine-tuning, perhaps. not entirely new theories.

wei wuxian: huh....

lan qiren, sighing, feeling a migraine: your problem with your thesis is not a lack of focus or ingenuity, but likely to be more a lack of recent, evidentiary sources. you will need to become very familiar with the university archives and dig deep for sources that will back up every argument you make.

he jots down notes on a paper. "you will also need to strictly adhere to the structure and methodology of these articles, especially given how radical your thesis will be. if you are diligent enough, you may just be able to submit your thesis without too much of a delay." he slides the list of materials to a gaping wei wuxian. "depending on your output then, we can discuss the possibility of submitting this for peer review."

"peer review." wei wuxian repeats. "as in, that thing where some uppity committee of old coots put their stamp of approval for it to become the reading materials of undergrads like me. you're joking."

lan qiren chooses to ignore the sentiment about peer review committees being uppity old coots, especially considering how he can't completely deny it on account of some of his colleagues, but also as a member said peer review committee, he isn't exactly pleased about being lumped in the same category.

wei wuxian backtracks at his unamused look. "right, you're not joking, of course you're not." he slowly inches the list towards himself. "right, yes, i guess i'll uh, get to it then. ok bye."

----

idk, just, waves hand at wei wuxian candidly explaining new modern cultivation theories over cheerios at 2 in the afternoon to lwj who's trying to help him structure his grad thesis, getting mind blow dick hard at how this messy genius who's talking with his mouth full of half eaten cereal is the object of his affection....

wwx: --oh, oops, your highlighter fell

lwj: mn

wwx: ...aren't you gonna get that?

lwj: it's fine; i'll pick it up later. finish your thought.

wwx: right... i'll pick it up for you!

lwj, fighting for his life, trying to think unsexy thoughts: NO! sit. finish your meal, and then your thought.

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Hi everyone,

As I said earlier, I wanted to post more about ADHD burnout. I found an article that explained it pretty well. This excerpt is going to be long, so I apologize in advance:

ADHD Burnout

What is ADHD Burnout?

It’s possible that you’ve heard of Autistic burnout; however, ADHDers have a unique experience of burnout. Symptoms of ADHD burnout more broadly include:

Lack of motivation

Inability to concentrate

Guilt

Depression

Anxiety

Poor productivity

Irritability

Cynicism

The overlap of symptoms and comorbid conditions can make it difficult to identify when ADHDers are truly struggling with burnout, though.

ADHD burnout is often something a little deeper. It refers to the cycle of overcommitting and overextending that leads to fatigue in people with ADHD. It involves taking on too many tasks and commitments, and then the subsequent exhaustion that happens when we’re unable to fulfill all of our obligations.

Why do people with ADHD struggle with burnout?

1. We’re overcompensating and overcommitting

Growing up, many ADHDers experienced the crushing weight of expectation. Whether it was caregivers or educators, we were often told that we weren’t trying hard enough. It felt like we were always just shy of reaching our full potential.

In actuality, we were being asked to function like neurotypical children, and without adequate support for our ADHD brains and executive dysfunction struggles. This is where many of us internalized the idea that we were lazy, careless, or unintelligent.

These false beliefs can lead to overcompensation, in which we compulsively try to please people and make up for these “shortcomings” we think we have. We’re constantly striving, though the goal posts keep moving on us.

This tendency to people-please can be carried into our adulthood, and is a recipe for overexertion. It also makes it difficult to admit that we’re struggling, because we don’t want to let others down. This relentless effort to appear neurotypical is often referred to as “ADHD masking,” and can be a source of real fatigue for people with ADHD.

2. We feel guilty for resting

When we’re already combating a stereotype of laziness, many of us feel guilty about resting. It can feel easier to be in constant motion (whether we experience hyperactivity or not!) because it feels safer to be doing something than risk the judgment that can come with doing “nothing.”

We might even believe that if we were to allow ourselves to rest, we would never get anything done, because we would struggle to get started again (task initiation is a big struggle for us). The irony is that denying yourself rest is the quickest route to exhaustion, and can exacerbate ADHD symptoms. It can be hard to pump the brakes and practice rest when there are so many negative associations with it.

After a lifetime of being told to “try harder,” it can feel counterintuitive—sometimes impossible—to try less and rest more

3. We struggle to recognize our limits and set boundaries

Part of executive dysfunction means that we have trouble sequencing, initiating, and organizing our tasks — which are all symptoms of ADHD. This also means we struggle to estimate how much time and effort something will take, making it easy to overcommit by accident. We may also struggle with setting boundaries.

As people-pleasers, we were discouraged from having boundaries at a young age. We may struggle to say “no” for fear of disappointing others or being rejected (something we’re already sensitive to anyway; this is known as rejection sensitive dysphoria).

As we accumulate more and more tasks, it can begin to feel unmanageable, leading to the dreaded overwhelm-shutdown. This is a freeze response that can happen when we’re unable to begin or complete a task. This “stuck” feeling can exacerbate our anxiety and make it difficult to move forward.

How to avoid ADHD burnout:

There are some golden rules for preventing burnout that I think are crucial for ADHDers to remember. Here are a few:

1. Affirm your self-worth

Your worth is not dependent upon what you give to people, and your sole purpose in life isn’t to make everyone but yourself happy. As the saying goes, “Don’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm.” You are inherently valuable, regardless of how useful, productive, or helpful you are to others.

2. Practice saying “no” without apologizing

You can’t be everything to everyone, and your capacity is not limitless, no matter what your brain tells you. Give yourself full permission to say “no, I can’t,” “I don’t have time for that,” “I’m not available at that time,” and every other variation on that. You may disappoint someone, sure!

But you aren’t responsible for managing other people’s emotions.

3. Overestimate how much time something will take

This is a general rule that I find quite helpful. Take the amount of time you think something will take—and double it. It may feel absurd at first, but it’s better to overestimate than to underestimate, and this will help you get a stronger sense of your limitations.

4. Commit to rest

Notice I’m saying “commit to rest” and not “practice self-care.”

Some of us (certainly not me…) have turned self-care into another set of expectations we feel the need to fulfill. Let that go.

Instead, practice: laying down, daydreaming, deep breathing, and anything else that helps you reset.

5. Ask for help when you need it

It’s okay to struggle, and it’s okay to ask for support when you do struggle—whether that's therapy, your colleagues, an ADHD coach or a manager at work.

Workplace accommodations and school accommodations can also make a huge difference.

6. Drop the mask

Many neurodiverse individuals try to mask their ADHD and/or autism by not letting others see them sweat—but this doesn’t allow us the opportunity to be helped and supported when we need it most.

You deserve every resource you need to thrive—don’t convince yourself that you have to do this thing alone.

As always, the full article will be below if anyone wants to read it.

[bread-tab]

using anxiety as a coping mechanism for lack of impulse control (adhd or whatevs) is like driving around with your regular brakes broken so you're using your parking brake instead. kinda works, maybe? but it's fucking terrifying and will probably end in carnage

[ooc-miqojak]

People love to say they support neurodivergent people - but I've found that this is lip service, more often or not, because it requires a lot of patience - and the ability not to assume the worst about a person (especially in a digital space). Every ND person is unique, and has their quirks! But in an online space, I've found that people just tend to assume the worst about you, and kick you/block you/ghost you for your behavior or words, instead of taking the time to have an emotionally mature talk about what happened, and explain why this thing that happened/thing that was said was upsetting or problematic - you're never given the opportunity to explain that you meant no harm. Many of these people, in my case, I've spoken to at length when I was getting to know them about how important communication is - if I've said or done something upsetting, I can't read your mind! I have to know, before I can amend things, and adjust my behavior.

Sometimes I'm oblivious to what I've said/done, because my 'normal' is different. For instance, I love to debate - not argue - but debate. It's interesting to see others' POV! Variety is the spice of life after all, and if we all had the same beliefs and outlooks, that would be boring! But for some reason, most people seem to see a debate as an emotional argument? It's as though you can't disagree - not even respectfully - without people assuming you're angry or mad or attacking them. I don't understand people who get intensely emotionally invested in these debates (when they're not about typical hot button topics, as I don't do religious/political debates) - to me it's like a football player claiming someone on the opposing team was legitimately attacking them, not tackling them as a normal part of the game.

But I also don't engage in 'sub-text' as many neurotypicals do, either - to me, it's not only a waste of time, but a quick way to end up tangled in miscommunication. I say what I mean, and I tell people this... and they'll still apply some hidden meaning to it that is entirely fabricated... then get angry at me for sub-text that isn't really there. (When I was reprimanded in an online space earlier this year, I kept asking what I did wrong... and got told that I was arguing by asking what I was being scolded for/why I was being condescended to.)

ADHD people are regularly called 'passionate' - so much so that I almost want to roll my eyes when I hear it, now... but it remains a decent word to explain, for neurotypical people, our seemingly 'over the top' behaviors - be they positive or negative. And I've had people online assume I'm mad, or attacking them... when I'm just excited... or "passionate." Emotional dysregulation can be hell - some compare it to a car with no brakes. Normal people apply the brakes before the words come out - ADHDers lack those brakes. It means I try to be hyper aware, instead, and apply the Fred Flinstone brakes. I don't always catch myself, either - and in-person/on voice chat, this can result in things that seem rude - like interrupting others; but this isn't meant to be rude, and I don't realize I've done it! I'm excitable, and with the way ADHD works, I feel as though I have to get this comment out before I forget it! If I have to hold onto this thought, I'll either forget it, or spend the entire time the other person is talking trying to hold onto that thought, and miss what's said. But other people just tend to assume I'm being rude by interrupting - so I told a friend I upset this way that he's allowed to notify me in some manner when I've done this - because I don't want to be rude! I don't want to steamroll a conversation - and sometimes I need a gentle reminder that I've done so. I often jokingly compare myself to a jumpy golden retriever - I love people! But no one really wants a big dog jumping all over them, even if the dog means well - sometimes you have to say 'down', and the dog will stop jumping! They just forgot not to do this unwanted behavior because they were so excited!

Emotional dysregulation to me is like my emotions are a volume dial on a radio that was cranked way too high, and the dial broke off. The volume is permanently too loud - which is great when I'm happy, and devastating when I'm sad. But I don't get to turn them down, either way - the volume is stuck at max.

So yeah, sometimes people online need a little grace - a little patience, and for others not to jump to the worst possible assumption. Your normal isn't the same as everyone else's normal, and you might have to take extra time to understand where someone is coming from, and what they meant. Sometimes you might need to explain something that seems obvious to you, but it isn't to someone else. Sometimes that 'rude' thing that happened wasn't at all intended to be upsetting/rude, and talking to the person who said/did that thing can clear the air, and they can apologize and note that this is something they should not do or say, or that they should be more aware of.

Sometimes, the dog is just jumpy and excitable - not aggressive.

[frivolous-pastel]

This is likely not news to anyone actually experiencing the disorder themselves but

A lot of the time different aspects of my adhd result in me constantly feeling as though I'm in a car with faulty or even nonexistent brakes

The thing about adhd and procrastination is I procrastinate important things in both personal and work areas of my life, but it's not laziness or lack of caring, because I am in AGONIES of stress and terror over NOT doing these things. I even procrastinate things I actively WANT to do which I have been eagerly anticipating.

[asterekmess]

Werewolves and Why I Love Them

So, hi, my name is Tali and I’m a werewolf addict.

I’ve been pretty much obsessed with werewolves since right around the time I turned twelve. The entirety of Teen Wolf aside, I’ve loved them for years. I wrote my first novel about them. I dream about them regularly (like two days ago, for instance). The majority of my original fiction is about werewolves.

For the longest time I honestly didn’t understand why I loved them so much. I mean sure, I’m in love with nighttime and am fucking entranced by full moons. I guess that helps. But it always felt like so much more than that, to the point that I used to wish desperately that I would find out I was a secret werewolf and just hadn’t changed yet, in the same way other kids wished they had magic powers. My husband and I joke pretty often about how I’m just a lil more wolfy than is probably normal. Or catlike, we can never decide.

There’s a reason for that, that I’ve found makes so much fucking sense???

I’m neurodivergent. Specifically, I have ADHD. I’ve always had it, bc that’s how it works, but you’d be surprised at how much elementary school’s strict structuring and constant supervision can keep a people-pleasing, terrified of rejection, neurodivergent kid under control. I masked most of my symptoms and I masked them well. Even at home, to the point that although I was diagnosed really young, my mother was insistent that I had no need for medication or therapy to help me deal with the altered development of my brain.

Then came middle school and my rebellious stage, where I finally stopped acting the way other people wanted me to act. Boom. ADHD symptoms galore, and my mother was flabbergasted. I was about Twelve.

Cue the werewolf obsession.

It was only once I started learning about all the symptoms I’d just assumed everybody was dealing with and figured out how to examine the ways that my neurological disorder effected my life, that it all started to make so much more sense.

Dude, werewolves are basically hyped up embodiments of ADHD.

Now, do not misinterpret me. I’m not comparing ADHD people to dogs or animals of any kind. That’s not what this is about.

This is about werewolves being almost painfully realistic representations of many ADHD symptoms from inside the ADHD person’s head.

You see ADHD people onscreen rarely, and usually when they show up they’re presented in much the same way Stiles is in the first episode. Jumpy, Distracted, Hyperactive, Addicted to meds. It sucks. And even when there is good representation, what the audience sees is almost always the neurotypical point of view rather than the pov of the actual ADHD person. You see them doing things for seemingly no reason, reacting to nothing or getting worked up over tiny things. Even the good rep doesn’t really encapsulate what it’s like to be inside that person’s head.

In my experience, werewolves get that shit right, even though it’s on accident.

There are so many things we relate to werewolves that actually express ADHD symptoms incredibly well.

Noticing sounds that other people can’t hear. (The buzz of a lightbulb or the hum of the fridge)

Getting hopeless distracted by other people’s conversations, even if they’re all the way across the room, just because you latched onto their voice.

Having strong reactions to scents and tastes and textures, that leave you nauseous around certain foods and keep you from being able to walk through the chemical aisle at Wal-mart (or is that just me?).

Impulsivity that makes you do things even you can’t fully understand, including things that you didn’t actually want to do.

Emotions that run so high you don’t know what to do with yourself.

That constant buzzing under the skin that says be more do more be more do more until you just want to run until you exhaust yourself.

Zoning out and losing literally all sense of time, occasionally with a bout of memory loss.

Constantly being on guard in public and adjusting everything from your behavior to your personality just so you can seem “normal.” Until it’s like you’re two different people.

Being unable to properly express yourself with words and it getting so fucking frustrating that you want to just growl and bite and scream (howl) to make them back off until you can think again.

Having things about yourself that some people call gifts but that others call a curse and not knowing which one to believe.

Right down to routines (wolves are on a monthly routine) and meditation or focal points (anchors) being the only way to deal with the sensory overload and calm yourself down.

Lots of ADHD people I know are really tactile. It makes perfect sense. Touch releases happy chemicals and we are perpetually lacking the happy chemicals. I myself love tactility, if only from literally one person. The concept of “puppy piles” is so fucking nice I can’t even describe it. It gives me a fucking serotonin high just thinking about it.

The reassurance that the concept of “packs” brings, a community of people just like you who accept you and let you be yourself? People who will accommodate you without blaming you for making their lives more difficult? That is so much harder to find than you think, even amongst other neurodivergent people.

Not to mention, when a werewolf freaks out about the loud noise or jumps at the slam of a door across the house? People just accept it. No one questions it, cus’ “They’re a werewolf.”

Werewolf shows or books or fanfic show a werewolf acting in a way that ‘normal’ people would find incredibly weird, but from their point of view. They let the audience hear the noise that made the wolf react. They alter the lens (sometimes really badly) so that you get a visual representation of the wolf’s vision tunneling so they only think about that one thing right now and none of the rest of the world matters.

No calling them ‘obsessed’ or ‘sensitive’ or ‘paranoid.’ No viewing them as ‘That annoying character who freaks out at nothing.’ Now the audience can see the cacophany of having that mindset and those feelings. They actually understand.

When I read about werewolves, I feel like I’m reading my own fucking thoughts. Yes, my dude, I totally feel you. The squeak of that person’s brakes might not bother anyone else because they can tune it out, but you can’t and it feels like the loudest sound in the world. No one else can smell that scent on the bed or the couch from like three weeks ago, but by god it’ll give you a fucking headache when you’re trying to sleep. Running off all that energy must be nice. I too lose my temper at the tiniest things for no discernible reason and have feelings so intense that I can’t breathe. I feel you about there being too much going on all the time, and I can’t get my homework done either.

It’s no fucking wonder that Stiles fits in so well with werewolves.

For ages I thought I was a total freak for being so obsessed with werewolves, but it’s just because I relate to them so damn much. Mystery solved, I can go back to my fanfic in peace.

Tldr; Werewolves are good ADHD rep and you won’t change my mind.

[soufflefcrged]

so here’s the thing.  part of my adhd / other neuro divergent things that happen is that i can become really invested in plots and threads and ideas that we have for our characters -- which is great -- until my brain goes into panic mode because i must be too invested and i’m obsessing / hyperfixating and i just know i’m coming on too strong and that i’m going to overpower my writing partner with all the thoughts and wishlists and aesthetics and everything that my brain spirals off with when it latches onto a particular verse, thread, relationship, whatever

so then i force myself to put the brakes on it and dial myself way back which has the unfortunate side effect of stifling my muse for that character / plot / thread / kills muse in general for any of my writing because i am now anxious about coming on too strong or upsetting people and all the other anxiety issues i have get set off and it just spirals into me being utterly paralyzed and incapable of accomplishing much at all because anxiety and all the other things that compound on each other 

this also makes it very hard for me to approach people for plotting or even respond to introductions / plot ideas and ooc convo starters from people i don’t know / haven’t interacted with before bc my mind races with all the ways convos could go and of course it all ends up in worst case scenarios so i end up just freezing and not replying to people or taking literal weeks to reply to an im or ooc inbox thing bc what happens if -- 

so please.  know that 99.9% of the time my inability to talk to people, or if I seem standoffish, or that i’ve suddenly lost interest in things, it’s entirely on me and is generally not a lack of interest but an over investiture of interest and me freaking out about making people upset or annoying people. 

also, if you relate to this you are totally free to reblog it. 

[kyoko0001]

So I got re-diagnosed with ADHD recently and got on proper medications for it. I say re-diagnosed because I had been diagnosed in childhood multiple times, but my parents refused any sort of therapy or treatment for me. I’ve spent my entire life self medicating in various ways and beating myself up in an attempt to just be functional. 

I gave up on normal years ago!! After so many teachers, family members, and friends just telling me to be quite. Just pay attention. Just make a list. Just try this app. Just stick to a routine. Just write it down. Just don’t be so sensitive... I seriously wonder sometimes if I just... human wrong? 

The things my parents and teachers constantly told me run on repeat in my head every time I notice the gap between me and ‘normal.’ I berate myself by saying I am just being lazy. I am not trying hard enough. That if I can only do better, read another self help book, find a new app.... That I could be normal too. Everything would click and I could get my shit together. 

Over the years I think I myself have become my biggest bully... and I learned to bully myself for the natural way my brain works because a bunch of uneducated adults and teachers told me I was purposely failing because I just didn’t care. I learned that I didn’t deserve love, empathy, or basic human respect until I ‘grew out of it’ and that was so deeply ingrained in me, and my inner critic got so big, that I thought I was just... bad. Not even broken! just offensively wrong to everyone and anyone I came across.  

When I was a kid and still in catholic school we would stay after school mass for private prayer or reflection and I would look around at all the statues and crosses and wonder what I did to make god hate me. 

Let that sink in. 

I thought my parents and teachers hated me because god had made me bad. and no matter how many prayers I said, how often I went to confession, or how much repenting and apologizing I did to those statues... nothing changed. 

I don't have a unique experience. I am sure a lot of you relate to this and I am fucking sorry. 

I only graduated in 2015 guys. I’m 23. Those same ignorant teachers and school administrators sill work with kids just like me every single day and I wonder if they understand what a negative impact they can cause. Not just on kids with ADHD... but any kid who doesn’t have a perfect home life or is struggling with mental health issues. We are called liars. We are told we are faking. We are told we just want attention. We are called dramatic. We are told we are lazy. That we lack work ethic and if we don’t want to work at McDonalds for the rest of our lives we better get it together. 

The thing that always frustrated me the most... is that I always tried.

It was never about not trying. 

I don’t think I am more overwhelmed as an adult then I was in school... but I think I am more aware that it is not normal for things to actually be this hard. I’ve been in therapy for like... 2 years now I think? I needed two years of therapy to deal with the complex trauma from my first 18 years of life to even get to a point of being able to show myself enough compassion to not instantly shut down the thought of “well maybe I have no reason to lie to myself and everyone else about how my brain works?”  

Yes. 

I have a lot of genuine fear that I am making the entire thing up for attention and all those teachers and my shit parents were right all along. That really I am just lazy and life really is this hard and it wont get any better because everyone procrastinates or gets distracted every now and then. 

I know I am not alone in this ether. Tons of people feel this way about their mental health because our society treats mental health differently than other forms of illness or trauma. You wouldn't worry about faking a broken arm or a failing kidney. 

I was shaking as I waited for my appointment to start. I was terrified that I wasn’t going to be believed even though all I had to do was tell the truth. I was afraid to say that I felt like the coping skills I had learned on my own through self help books and therapy were not enough and I wanted to try medication. I was afraid she was going to think I was just a drug seeker because I have self medicated with different things in the past to try and quite my head down enough to function. 

Instead I felt listened too, validated, and not alone. 

I had my first day at work today on my new medication and FUUUUUCK is there a night and day difference. I don’t act any different in a social setting but guys... . My head was quieter then it has been in years and instead of crying in the bathroom because I was overwhelmed... I had to take a quick cry brake because it was 4:30 and I actually got everything done I needed to without my brain pulling me in 50 directions all at once. 

Do you know how much energy you have at the end of the day when you’re not spending your entire day mentally berating yourself over the fact that you are doing everything but the thing you need to do? Do you know how much time I save when I don’t have to start from the beginning of work tasks over and over every time I get interrupted because I loose my train of thought and don't want to make a mistake? 

After I got out of work it was not straight home to smoke some weed and vegitate because I am out of spoons and transformed back into my natural gremlin state. I stopped and put gas in my car, I did my dishes, I walked the dog, and I worked on my fics some while still getting downtime! I still got to play on tiktok and obsessively check the election results. 

My energy level, concentration, and mood have been consistent the entire day. That NEVER happens. 

I get to go to bed tonight knowing I did every fucking thing I was supposed to do today and honestly... I have no clue how many years its been since I could say that. 

Today I wasn’t just functional... I got to feel normal. 

[thewhumperinwhite]

Guardian Angel

OKAY SO LISTEN. this is not the update anyone was hoping for but sometimes the only thing that’s gonna keep my contrary adhd brain from Abandoning a project is to Invest Energy Somewhere else for a while. case in point, I've been plugging grimly away at both café and wkw for weeks and written ~500 words total, and then I wrote this whole thing in About Twenty Minutes.

So uh. You know how FBI is an au of an Actual WIP I have about vampires? Well this is... technically also that but it’s a lot closer to the actual canon of that WIP. If you don’t know anything about FBI or those characters, that’s great, you’re in the same spot Karim is here lmao.

Also this is heavily inspired by this very good spn fic, which I keep coming back to despite not being active in that fandom at all anymore. This goes in a very different direction than that, but they open in similar ways.

Also please note, the main character of this is a young teenager, and there will be some mild underage whump, but this is my official promise that there is no underage sex in this story. 

Anyway uh let’s get this..... car wreck underway I guess

TW for: car accident due to reckless driving resulting in serious injury (or by rights it should anyway); body horror; animated corpse (of a sort); religion/Christianity.

----

For about—let’s say—the first fifteen miles away from his house, the thrill of the stolen car and his notable lack of driver’s license was enough to keep Karim in his own skin, not spiralling into rushing panicky thoughts. After a while that thrill starts to fade into the background and every time it does he hits the gas a little harder, and the new speed is enough for him for another fifteen miles until he has to hit the gas again because his brain is catching up with him.

Which is to say that when the thin pale shape of a human being stumbles out of the bushes along the side of the highway, Karim is going easily a hundred miles an hour, and no amount of slamming on the brakes is going to get him to stop in the hundred feet between himself and this person’s human body.

He hits the white shape at, optimistically, sixty miles an hour. It shoots up the car’s hood, cracks the windshield with its skull, and disappears over the top of the car. Realistically there’s no way the quiet hard thump of the body hitting the pavement many feet behind the car is audible over the sound of the car’s squealing brakes but it feels like Karim can hear it, can hear the accompanying crack of bones breaking against the asphalt.

The car rolls to a stop, and Karim spends several unfathomable seconds staring at the windshield, not bloodied but almost completely starred with a huge spiraling crack just off the center, and all he can think is, no, no, no no no no no oh no oh no.

Then he hears a muffled groan from behind him and dives for the car door, tumbles out onto the pavement on his hands and knees, scrambles back toward the pale body squirming and twitching in the middle of the left lane behind his mother’s SUV.

Somehow there’s still no blood, even back here, but it is immediately clear that there is something seriously, deeply wrong with this body.

“Motherfucker,” it says, and Karim freezes a few feet away from it, still the most horrified he’s ever been and now also very confused and between those two feelings no longer able to move. The voice issuing from the ruined and twisted body sounds, at most, annoyed. It flops horribly onto its back, like a boned fish, and rolls its head awkwardly on its shoulders to face Karim. “Going a fucking million miles an hour on an—” The body stops speaking, and stares up with wide shocked eyes in its colorless face.

“Karim,” the dead thing says.

Karim stumbles back a step, the horror already overfilling his chest growing and mutating so fast he loses his footing and falls painfully backwards, scraping his palms as he catches himself to stop from sprawling completely. The initial all-consuming terror of having killed a person with his mother’s car is turning into a—different, harder to parse all-consuming terror.

Because every instinct he has is telling him that this thing that just called him by his name is a corpse.

Watching it sit up on the pavement, in a hopefully unconscious mirror of Karim’s own half-sprawled pose, is like watching a marionette puppet being controlled by a very unskilled puppeteer. It’s movements are jerky and uneven; it falls back when it puts its weight on one of its arms and the leg on that side is stuck out stiffly in front of it and bending in places that aren’t joints. And above its wide filmy eyes its forehead is starred with cracks like an egg dropped on a hardwood floor.

“You’re alive,” it says. Its voice is—completely normal, which is somehow the strangest thing about it. About—him.

“I—I’m so sorry,” Karim says, starting to run on autopilot now, fumbling in his pocket for his cellphone, “I’ll call, I’ll call an ambulance, I’ll—”

“I don’t need an ambulance,” the dead boy says absently. He leans forward, his mangled arm hanging useless at his side, though he doesn’t move like he’s in any pain at all. “You’re—holy shit, you’re a baby.”

Karim blinks, away from his phone screen, up at the dead boy. He looks—older than Karim, but not by that much, like a college student, maybe. And he’s looking up at Karim with alarm that’s almost horror, like Karim is the weird mangled abomination here.

“I am not,” he says automatically. There’s still no blood, anywhere. There’s—he can see that the skin of the boy’s head is broken, but it’s not bleeding, not a drop. 

The boy searches his face with his weird foggy eyes, still leaning forward. His hair is short, maybe even buzzed in the back, and it’s a dull sandy-brown, above a face that might be handsome if it wasn’t gray-tinged and bloodless and cracked open.

“What year is this?” the dead boy says urgently.

Karim stares at him.

His arm is dangling limply at his side and his leg is definitely broken in more than one place and Karim did that, which will continue to be true regardless of whatever else is going on with this guy medically, and Karim has no idea what to do about that, is almost paralyzed by the desire to physically twist time back ten minutes and have this not be the moment he’s in right now.

But he can’t do that, so he answers, “Uh, 2009?” in a high squeaky voice like it’s a question, instead.

The dead boy’s eyes go even wider.

“It’s,” he whispers. “You’re,” and then he stops and looks at the ground. He raises his still-working arm to scrub across his cracked forehead, maybe tries to raise the other one, winces.

“I’m sorry,” Karim croaks. “I should— I gotta get you to a hospital.”

The dead boy shakes his head. “I don’t need a hospital,” he says, “I need a church.”

Karim feels himself gasp sharply. “Oh god,” he says, “Oh no, I’m— sure you’ll— make it, man, you’re—” He laughs, the sounds grating and hysterical in his own ears. “Look, you’re not even bleeding!”

The dead boy blinks up at him, and then he laughs, throwing his head back, and it’s a full, pretty laugh, sparking up toward the darkening sky— and when he lifts his chin Karim can suddenly see a bizarre pattern of marks all over his neck, a dozen little dots, in pairs, clustered around where you would look for a pulse on someone you weren’t sure was alive.

“That’s not what I mean,” the dead boy says, his eyes squinty and warm with laughter, and then he takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly, staring at Karim, the smile fading from his pretty dead face. “Christ,” he says softly, and then, again, “Karim.”

Karim takes half a step back. “How— how do you know my name?”

“Ha,” the boy says, “that’s—” He tries to push himself to his feet and hisses, falling back like his broken leg won’t take any weight. Karim takes a step closer, unable to keep from reacting to obvious pain that he definitely 100% caused. “Actually,” the boy says, “I—would love it. If you could give me a ride. To the nearest church before I try to answer that. Karim.”

Karim stares at him. “What?”

“Catholic would be best if you’ve got it,” the boy says, with the air of somebody who knows he’s saying an absurd thing and is trying very hard to play it off. “I’m sure another kind would work but I’d just as soon not—” He shifts, winces a little; Karim looks down at his leg and squeezes his eyes shut, he’d momentarily forgotten how awful it looks. The boy laughs, sounding slightly hysterical. “I’d just as soon not drive around between a bunch’a churches if it’s all the same to you. Save you some gas money, huh?”

“Why,” Karim says, and he forces himself to look at the boy’s leg for real. There’s a place beside the— crooked, displaced— kneecap where Karim can see a strip of skin missing, and the exposed flesh is pale and bloodless; he feels his stomach squeeze in panicked nausea. “Why would you need a church right now.”

The boy sucks his teeth audibly, bowing his head, and then spreads his still-working hand wide with a fine-you-got-me shrug. 

“Because,” the dead boy says, “I need holy water to put my leg back together.”

Karim blinks. Blinks again, for good measure.

“What,” he says. He shakes his head. “What. Why would that. Why.”

The boy looks away, tilts his head like he’s doing math in his head, and says slowly, in the voice of someone trying a gambit they’re pretty sure won’t work. “Because I’m... your guardian... angel?”

Karim narrows his eyes. The boy could at least have the decency to say it like he means it.

“Okay,” the dead boy says, and nods like he’s trying to psyche himself up. “Okay, yeah, no, that’s fair, I— Hold on, I’ll— I’ll show you.”

The dead boy sighs and shakes his head. “This is gonna fucking suck,” he mutters, and he closes his eyes. 

At first Karim doesn’t think anything weird is happening— that an evening breeze has just kicked up. But as the wind gets stronger and he can see pebbles and bits of loose asphalt skittering away from where the dead boy sits on the pavement, it becomes clear that the sudden rush of cool air is coming from him. His sandy hair is whipping around his head, too, like it’s in a stronger wind than the one Karim can feel, and Karim realizes a second late that there’s— light coming from him too, a cold white glow growing so slowly he didn’t see it at first.

The dead boy lets out a shaky breath, his face creasing in concentration, or maybe pain.

Karim stumbles backward, hitting the back of the car and pressing his back against it, staring at the dead boy. The wind picks up and the light suddenly flashes, so bright that Karim throws up his arm to shield his eyes— and through his fingers, he can just see that the light beaming from the empty air above the dead boy’s shoulder blades, where it almost forms the shape of two enormous wings out of thin air and dust.

The wind and light sputter and die roughly in unison. Karim lowers his hand enough to stare at the dead boy in— he’s not sure what feeling, actually. Possibly terror.

The boy’s hair settles back against his cracked forehead. “Oh, good,” he says, breathing hard, like he’s just run a mile on a hot day. “It worked.”

Then the dead boy sags sideways and flops limply onto the pavement, and lies still, like corpses generally do.

“What the fuck,” Karim Mun says, with feeling.

[helenwhiteart-blog]

Coping with the particular dynamic of your neurodivergent family

When a group of people share neurodivergence in common, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are all the same or even relate to each other that well…very far from it…since as the saying goes, when you have met one autistic person you have met one autistic person; we are all divergently divergent, being each divergent in our own particular ways. When you put that mix of qualities together in a…

[bubonickitten]

Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Previous chapter: tumblr // AO3

Chapter 6 full text & content warnings under the cut:

   CWs for Chapter 6: some ableism &internalized ableism (re: ADHD & anxiety); panic attacks; one (1) swear, because Jon is BORED and he CAN'T HANDLE IT and it is A MOOD. SPOILERS through S5.

   Chapter 6: Rude Awakening

   Jon is back in that blank vacuum, and time is doing that thing where every moment feels like an eternity. He suspects it might have just as much to do with his innate intolerance of boredom as it does with sensory deprivation. The lack of any sort of stimulation in this place is unbearable. He never has been able to sit still for long periods of time, and he can’t even fidget here, for fucks sake.

  It’s like he’s a child again...

  ...seven years old and lying face-down on the kitchen floor, swinging his legs in the air, complaining loudly about how there’s nothing to do. Normally, his grandmother might snap at him to go outside and stop pestering her, but a vicious thunderstorm is passing through and she won’t let him play in it – and besides, he’s technically grounded.

  Just two days ago, he had wandered off after being forbidden from leaving the yard. Again.

  In his defense, there was a cat sunning itself just beyond the fence, and he wanted to say hello because he loves cats but his grandmother won’t let him have one, and then the cat stood up and yawned and trotted off, and obviously he had to follow it, and then – before he knew it, two officers were escorting him home. Again.

  His grandmother had been shocked to find the police on her doorstep with her intractable grandson in tow – she hadn’t noticed he was missing – yet again.

  After they left, she was furious with him for embarrassing her like that. Again and again and again. 

  So, now he’s under house arrest – a new term that he had picked up from the officers: “Your grandmother is going to put you under house arrest if you keep wandering off like this, kid.” The first couple times, they had found his meanderings and adventurous nature cute, albeit worrisome; by the third time, the charm had worn off and the weary indulgence vanished along with it; by the fourth time, he received a stern dressing down about safety and recklessness and making things difficult for his poor grandmother; and now, the fifth time, there had been a not-so-subtle warning about contacting social services to investigate neglect....  

  With each scolding, Jon would feel appropriately abashed in the moment, but it never took long for it to fade into the background, drowned out by a mind understimulated and screaming for some novel distraction. Somehow, courting negative attention was preferable to receiving no attention at all. When adults were being charitable, they called him precocious and clever. When he was testing their patience, though, he was a difficult child, a nuisance, a bother – and he had a tendency to exhaust even the most tolerant adult’s patience very, very quickly. He's always been... difficult.

  God, why is he even thinking about this? Is he really so starved for something to occupy his attention that he’s digging into the annals of his childhood?

  (Yes. Yes he is.)

  He throws his head back with an aggravated sigh. Or he would, if he had a body here, but whenever there’s no dreamer around to witness him, he’s an incorporeal mind floating in nothingness.

  What he wouldn’t give to be able to just jiggle his leg right now. Tap his fingers. Play with his hair – or better yet, Martin’s; his hair was always so soft and he would always lean into Jon’s touch like a cat. It will probably be awhile before Jon gets to touch him again. If ever. What if –

  Stop, he tells himself. You’re only going to catastrophize, and then you’ll get depressed, and then you’ll be useless. Why are you always so difficult? You –

  He throws the brakes so quickly he can almost feel the screeching halt. Crashing a train of thought like that is like ignoring an itch. Itch, itch, itch, the word echoes in his head – and now he wants to scratch at his worm scars.

  Wait, no, don’t think about them – it’ll just make you itchy, and you don’t even have a body, which means you won’t be able to scratch, and – and, yes, now you’re itchy, and – damn it, can’t you just sit still and clear your mind for five sec–

  “Um. Hello, Jon. Do you… mind if I call you Jon?”

  Wait. Is that…   

  “I mean, you don’t actually know me. It’s just, well. ‘Archivist.’ It’s so formal, isn’t it?”

  Oliver! Finally, Jon thinks with relief.

  “Dreams are like that, you know. No matter how lucid you think they are, there’s always that part that just drags you along. Guess I don’t need to tell you that. At least, not right now.”

  Oliver. Oliver, can you hear me?

  Oliver sighs. “Wish I could tell you why I came here.”

  Apparently not.

  “Wish I knew why I came here.”

  When in doubt, blame the Web.

  “Sorry to go on, I – I don’t talk to many people these days. Putting my thoughts outside myself, it gets a bit, er, clumsy.”

  Jon knows the feeling.

  “Be easier if you could talk back, right? Ask me questions, have it tumble all out?”

  Easier, sure. But far more unpleasant.

  “But no. It’s – it’s just me. Wish there was a better way, but touching someone’s mind, it’s not as simple as that? Doesn’t always make things clearer, you know?”

  Again, Jon does know.

  “Still, I gave the old woman a statement, so maybe I owe you one as well. That’s how it works, right? Give your terror, give your dream?”

  Unfortunately.

  “It’s not like I don’t have them to spare.”

  Preaching to a choir, Oliver.   

  “Let me tell you about how I tried to escape.”

  No – let’s – can we just move things along?

  “So. My name is Oliver Banks. In my other statements, I used the name Antonio Blake, but…”

  Guess not.

  This probably counts as a live statement, and Jon had been keen to avoid those this time around. He wishes he could cover his ears, shut his eyes, block it all out – but then again, even if he could, would he? That familiar single-minded fixation is settling over him like a heavy fog, and it’s as unnerving as ever – a craving that he doesn’t want to indulge, but once he has a taste, it feels right. The guilt never comes until after the need is satiated.

  It’s nearly impossible to stop a statement once it starts. His mind starts to go fuzzy, restless, full of static and pressure. He’s always wondered: is this what compulsion feels like to the ones he turns it upon?

  The static fades then, everything becoming sharp and clear and real, like a picture coming into focus. The Archivist is hungry, intent on every single word like a cat, motionless and unblinking, watching a moth beat itself senseless against a light.

  And the Archive – the Archive is ravenous. Its presence looms in the background in a way that it hasn’t since before Jon passed through the rift, weighing heavily on the back of his mind.  

  He gives up on trying to reach out and touch Oliver’s mind for the time being, gives in to the need, and listens as the story twines itself around and through his thoughts.

  When Oliver finishes his account several minutes later, Jon feels brighter, more alert, reinvigorated. The disgust and shame will creep up on him later, he’s sure, but for now, it feels right. He feels whole. 

  “Right,” Oliver says. “That’s, uh, it, I suppose. Maybe you heard me. Maybe you’ll dream.”

  Oliver, Jon tries again. This time, for the briefest of moments, he thinks he can hear a subdued hum of static. Can you hear me?

  “Then again, maybe I just wasted my breath – but I don’t think so. Honestly, I’m still not exactly sure why I’m here. But you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head.”

  You don’t need to rub it in, Jon mutters to himself. 

  “Easier to just do what she asks.”

  I beg to differ. The static picks up again, more of a persistent buzz this time. Oliver, listen –

  “The thing is, Jon, right now you have a choice. You’ve put it off a long time, but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but still too human to survive.”

  Yes, yes, I know. The buzz becomes a shrill whine. Oliver!

  “You’re balanced on an edge where the End can’t touch you, but you can’t escape him. I made a choice. We all made choices. Now you have to –”

  Oliver Banks.

  “Um?” 

  Finally, Jon thinks, exasperated.  

  “Jon?” Oliver ventures. “Or, uh – Archivist?” 

  I prefer Jon. 

  “Huh.” Jon can pick up a soft squeaking noise, as if Oliver just leaned back in his chair. “I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how you’re even doing this.”

  Neither do I, but I don’t exactly have time to contemplate that right now –

  “I suppose it’s similar to Elias’ ability to broadcast knowledge into another person’s mind,” Oliver muses, almost to himself.

  Oh. It… it is, isn’t it? That’s… not a comforting thought.

  “I didn’t realize it was something the Archivist could do as well. I thought your job was more… acquiring knowledge, pulling answers out of people, not impressing it upon them.”

  I’d… really rather not dwell on it, Jon says, tamping down the burst of fear that surges through him at the thought of comparing himself to Jonah. His mind has gotten trapped in that particular rut many times before, and it's never a good place to be.

  Either Oliver respects Jon's wishes or simply doesn't care to waste energy pressing him on the matter, because he drops it and moves on to the main reason for his visit.  

  “Have you made your choice, Jon?”

  I made my choice months ago. I just couldn’t figure out how to – how to act on it. How to actually wake up.

  “I confess, I’m surprised to hear you declare your choice with such confidence.” Jon hears fabric rustling – Oliver crossing his legs, maybe? “I was led to believe that you were… almost pathologically indecisive.”

  I… usually am, Jon admits, though Oliver’s phrasing is too incisive for his comfort. But I made my choice, and I’d like to follow through on it now.

  “Ah. Well.” Oliver sounds uncharacteristically perturbed. It almost reminds Jon of himself when he's unable to Know something. “Not sure why you couldn't before?” 

  Jon wonders if it has something to do with being newly well-fed. Or maybe he just needed direct contact from the End? Speaking of – he can feel Oliver’s eyes riveted on him, quietly observing and calculating as if trying to get an accurate estimate of the Archivist.   

  “But – but you definitely can now. The roots are...” Oliver falters, and Jon thinks he can feel him lean in closer. “There’s something… off about you. The roots, they look… sick. Wrong. And the threads are – are tangled.” Another pause. “Can you explain it?”

  Not here. I don’t want Elias listening in.

  “Doesn’t he have eyes everywhere?”

  Almost everywhere. The tunnels under the Institute are… a blind spot, sort of.  

  “And you would discuss it there?”

  Within reason, Jon says warily.

  He doubts whether Oliver would ever be an ally – judging from the statement he gave during the apocalypse, he’s too fatalistic to intervene one way or the other – but he doesn’t feel like an enemy, either. Maybe he would be interested in sharing information, or even just letting Jon bounce strategies and theories off of him? It might be helpful, having a mostly-neutral Avatar to consult.

  Also, there's just something… lonely about Oliver.

  If nothing else, it would be a break from the monotony for you, Jon adds.  

  “I don’t know how I feel about visiting the Institute again. Not out of fear for my safety, mind. Just don’t like the feeling of being watched. Feels… I don’t know. Slimy.”

  That’s one word for it.

  “Apologies. I’m not a wordsmith, if you haven’t noticed.” Jon can hear Oliver shifting uneasily in his seat now. He really is awkward, isn’t he? 

  I don't know, I’m sure you could put together a decent sermon on… existentialist philosophy, or macroeconomics, or the inevitability of death and taxes, or – or something.   

  “I’m not exactly pleasant company.” He says it matter-of-fact, but Jon thinks he can detect a trace of melancholy underneath the customary impassiveness. “People tend to be… unsettled when they meet a walking, talking memento mori.”

  No more unsettling than talking to an incarnation of paranoia and terrible knowledge, Jon says sardonically. Also, the vulnerability inherent to being seen. Maybe some of the more vexing aspects of academia as well. 

  Oliver chuckles at that, but cuts it short. It's almost like he didn't expect it. Jon thinks maybe he can understand. Go long enough without laughing, and when you finally do, it will come out sounding all wrong to your ears. Like an out-of-tune piano, Martin said once. You have a nice laugh, Jon. You just aren't used to hearing it, and right now it's a bit rusty from disuse.  

  “I don’t know that I was ever good company,” says Oliver after a moment. 

  Can’t be any worse than I am, Jon says lightly. Maybe you’re just out of practice.

  “Perhaps,” Oliver says evasively.

  Well, consider it an open invitation. Just... I don't know. Keep it in mind.

  “Not like I can forget anything.”

  Quite a curse, isn’t it?

  “I’ve made my peace with it.”

  I know, Jon replies. If he’s honest with himself, he can’t help but envy Oliver to an extent – how secure he is in his role, his tranquil embrace of his destiny.

  Jon isn’t being fair, though, is he? Oliver went through hell to achieve his current level of humble acceptance, and regardless of either of their current perspectives on fate and free will, the fact remains that they were both forced into making impossible choices under duress. They’ve both become something they never expected or wanted or asked to be, and... it doesn't seem like Oliver deserved it. On his good days, Jon thinks maybe he didn't, either.

  “I’ll… consider the offer.” Jon can detect just a hint of curiosity beneath the reticence.

  Before Jon can reply, though, he hears the door open and close.   

  “Can I help you?” Georgie’s voice, slicing through the quiet like the crack of a whip.

  “Oh, I – I’m a friend,” Oliver says quickly, clearly taken by surprise. “Of Jon’s.”

  “Are you, now.” The hard edge to her tone turns icy, and Jon can’t help feeling sorry for Oliver, pinned under that uncompromising stare of hers.   

  “Uh, y-yes.”

  “Right. Just haven’t seen you visiting before.”

  “Um, I’ve… been out of town!”

  If Jon had any control over his body, he would put his head in his hands right now. Apparently Oliver is just as bad at lying on the spot as Jon is, and unfortunately for him, Georgie happens to be a natural lie detector.

  “Right,” Georgie replies flatly. “The nurse didn’t say anyone else was here.”

  “Oh! Oh – oh, well. Sorry if I surprised you.”

  “It’s fine.”

  It’s not.

  “I’m Antonio!” Oliver blurts out, and Jon cringes with secondhand embarrassment.

  “Sure,” Georgie says, voice dripping with disdain. “I think you’re done here.”

  “Oh. Uh, right…” Oliver’s chair scrapes against the floor as he stands up. “Have I upset you, miss –”

  Bad move. Georgie hates being referred to as 'miss.'

  “No, you just remind me of someone.”

  “Ah. I’m sorry. Were they –”

  “Evil. Yes.”

  “Uh. Okay, then.” It’s almost funny, an Avatar of death itself shrinking under Georgie’s scrutiny. Then again, she would likely be a force to be reckoned with even if she hadn’t lost her ability to feel fear. “Well, I just – well, I guess I should just go.”

  “I guess you should.”

  “Um. Goodbye, Jon. I guess I –”

  “Goodbye!” Georgie says, putting on a transparently false cheery tone, and Jon can make out Oliver’s harried footsteps as Georgie ushers him out.

  Once the door clicks shut, Jon hears her approach him again.

  “Sorry about that, Jon, but you really don’t need friends like tha– wait. Did…?” More footsteps; then the door opens again, and Jon hears Georgie’s voice echoing distantly down the corridor. “Hey! Hey, get back here! I need to talk to you!”

  Jon wonders if Oliver's already gotten away.

  Oh, Jon thinks suddenly, she’s… not going to be pleased if she finds out I tried to make friends with the grim reaper. Neither is Martin, come to think of it.

  He feels a twinge of guilt and worry. He’s not yet woken up, and already he’s doing things that Georgie might see as careless and self-destructive. Still, though… he doesn’t think Oliver is evil, or even particularly threatening. If anything, Jon thinks he knows now how Naomi must have felt, watching some eldritch monster fumble a conversation like any other mundane human grappling with social anxiety.

  Well, what’s done is done. Oliver might not even take Jon up on the offer. No use worrying about it at the moment.

  He needs to focus on waking up.

       Unfortunately, Oliver didn’t explain exactly how Jon should go about waking up.

  His first instinct is to think of Martin. With practiced ease, he reaches out for a memory, and –  

  Jon has always had an unexpected sweet tooth. He never really mentioned it to any of his coworkers. It’s not that he’s self-conscious about it; it’s more that he just never thought to share unsolicited facts about himself. Most people would take one look at Jon and either assume he takes his tea black, or that he’d prefer to fix it himself – and the latter wasn’t an unfair assumption. Martin, though… somehow, he figured it out.

  It took some trial-and-error, though at the time, Jon never noticed that Martin was deliberately trying to puzzle it out. Eventually he settled on the exact right formula, and Jon – well, by the time he realized, it felt like too much time had passed to remark on it. He was never very good at compliments anyway, giving or receiving. From that point forward, though, w henever Jon was having a particularly rough day – which, by their standards, was saying a lot – Martin would make Jon’s tea sweeter than usual. It was such a small gesture in the face of the horrors that permeated all of their lives, but in retrospect, it spoke volumes.

  Jon took forever to notice all those little gestures. He still feels like an ass for how ungrateful he was back then, but it just never occurred to him that anyone would put that much time or effort into learning his preferences, especially something so mundane as how he takes his tea. Jon barely put any thought into his own comfort, let alone that of others.  

  But Martin isn’t like Jon.

  Jon has long marveled at how kindness seems to come so naturally to Martin. As much as it might seem like he just preternaturally knows the exact right things to say and do when he sees someone hurting, though, it was never effortless: Martin cares deliberately, painstakingly, actively. He prides himself on that attention to detail, on all the little acts of kindness and consideration that, when put together, make him the most thoughtful person Jon has ever met. 

  Of course, Jon also feels a wrench in his heart every time he thinks about how and why Martin cultivated that caretaker skill set in the first place. They talked about a lot of things, after the Lonely, and the truth had come out little by little: Martin had never had anyone in his life who loved him unconditionally. From an early age, he tried desperately to curry favor with a mother who resented him for reasons he could not help and that she would never explain. It bled into all areas of his life. Every adult role model, every passing friendship, each of his few short-lived intimate relationships was a link in a long chain of giving and sacrificing and carefully policing himself to meet others’ expectations at the cost of his own vivid inner life – and never once did he receive anything meaningful in return. For too long, Jon was a link in that chain himself. 

  Martin had learned to measure his worth by whether and how he could be of use to others, and always found himself wanting. Jon could relate to that unhealthy preoccupation with making himself useful, but for him, it manifested as workaholic tendencies, harsh self-criticism, and a fear of letting anyone get so close that it would actually hurt when they inevitably grew tired of him – though at the time, he would have said he just had a preference for his own company. (Funny, in retrospect; he's never been good company for himself.) Martin sought to be noticed and loved; Jon ran headlong in the other direction, unable to tolerate the vulnerability of being known or the risk of being abandoned.

  He suspects that Martin would be compassionate regardless, though. And it's admirable, it's beautiful, it's brave, and Jon loves that about him – but Martin shouldn't have had to go through hell in the process of nurturing that trait. Trauma didn't help him grow; it only twisted his definition of caring until it became an instrument of self-harm. As they navigated their relationship, Martin did get better at setting boundaries and communicating his needs. It never made him any less compassionate towards Jon or anyone else. He just learned that he deserved compassion as well - from others and from himself.  

  Jon will always be in awe of how after everything – how Jon treated him in the beginning, how Jon left him alone and grieving in the aftermath of the Unknowing, how thoroughly the Lonely pervaded his life – Martin never once lost that instinct. He admitted to Jon that by the time Peter threw him into the Lonely, caring didn’t feel natural anymore. He was too numb and isolated to really feel a connection to other people. His empathy had been drained away. But even in its absence, Martin still made the effort to care. He still believed that human connection was important, even if he believed that he couldn’t experience it himself.

  And after the world ended, when Jon was deep in his grief and hopelessness, Martin stayed by his side. Jon told him that this was no longer a world where they could trust comfort – but Martin responded with patience and kindness. He put comfort into a world where it seemed like none could exist, and Jon will always be in awe of how Martin could just… do that, and with such confidence – stubbornness, almost.

  Even after Jon lost him, the memories of these moments anchored him. To hope, to care, to try – it was worth it. Or, as Martin told him more than once: “The fog doesn’t go on forever, even if sometimes it seems like it.”

  Martin will be okay. He has to be. Jon just has to find his way back to him. He’s done it before; he can do it again. He just has to wake up.  

  “–m trying – help – came to me.”

  Lost in thought, Jon almost doesn’t register the voices. They’ve been there in the background for a few minutes now, he realizes belatedly – they just hadn’t penetrated his conscious awareness. It’s like listening through six feet of soil – he curses his brain for immediately reaching for that mental image – and he strains to translate the dampened noise into coherent words.

  “I came to Melanie.”

  Georgie!

  “Well, sorry. Right now, I’m it.”

  Distantly, Jon can hear the steady ticking of a clock, and he spares a moment to be thankful that he couldn’t hear it the entire time he was asleep. It would have made his restlessness even more intolerable, and – as his thoughts veer off track, the voices go muffled again. Damn it.

  It takes him a few seconds to refocus his attention.

  “– don’t know why this guy would have left a tape recorder?”

  Basira.

  “You’re the detective,” Georgie says.

  “And you’re sure it was him who left it?”

  Jon didn’t hear this part the first time around, but he can safely assume they’re talking about Oliver.

  “I mean, the nurses said there were no others visitors, so…” Georgie takes a breath. “Unless it appeared by magic?” A pause; Jon can practically hear Basira’s eyebrows raise. “What, seriously?”

  “I don’t know,” Basira sighs. “The whole tape thing is… I don’t know.”

  To be honest, Jon doesn’t Know, either. That was always one of the things that the Beholding kept to itself, much to his chagrin. 

  “Right, well… I showed you like you asked, so –”

  Breathe, Jon tells himself. Time to wake up.

  “Shh,” Basira interrupts. Jon can hear movement nearby. “Down here.”

  Come on. Inhale –

  Jon can feel his lungs expand ever so slightly.

  “I told you.”

  Good. Exhale, now.

  Jon’s lungs contract, and some of the feeling starts to come into his extremities. He experimentally tries to move his hands and one of his fingers twitches, brushing against the coarse hospital linens. At least it's something. 

  “This is the one?”

  Wake up, Jon, he tells himself, attempting to overlay his thoughts with compulsion. He tries to wiggle his toes, but it doesn’t seem like they’ve gotten the memo just yet. Come on, this is the part where you woke up before. Just – just wake up –

  “Sure.”

  Jon feels a brief stab of panic – Why can’t I wake up? – and then he feels his heart stutter in his chest. A telltale pins-and-needles sensation begins to spread in his fingers and – this is probably the first time he’s been relieved to experience the precursors to a panic attack.

  It’s a good sign, he tells himself. You’re connected to your body again, so just – 

  “You don’t sound very sure,” Basira says.

  It isn’t working. Why isn’t it working?

  Come on, open your eyes –

  “I mean – I don’t know. It might be a different model, maybe? I thought it was plastic – but yeah.”

  Just sit up, just – wake up, Jon.

  Nothing.

  Neither Basira nor Georgie speak.

  The tick of the clock is deafening.

  Wait, Jon thinks. What if…

  “So what does it mean?” Georgie says eventually.

  Open your eyes, Archivist.

  His eyes fly open and he sits bolt upright with a gasp.

  “Jon!” Georgie yelps, jolting backwards as Basira simultaneously breathes, “Jesus.”

  Clutching his throat with one hand, Jon continues to struggle for air in deep, rasping gulps. Each breath comes with a sharp pang and an uncomfortable tightness in his chest, his lungs protesting after months of disuse and refusing to completely expand.    

  Eventually, although he can still only manage half-breaths, he looks up at Georgie and Basira. Intending to apologize for frightening them, he opens his mouth and – 

  The tape recorder under his bed clicks on with an earsplitting, static-leaden whine.

  Both women startle again, and Jon’s posture goes rigid, his other hand coming up to rest against his throat.

  Sorry, he tries to say again, but nothing comes out, and the tape recorder emits another blast of white noise.

  Basira and Georgie are watching him closely now – Georgie with concern, Basira with suspicion. Jon looks back with terrified eyes, panic blanketing him with all the weight of the Buried.

  No, Jon thinks to himself, not again –

  As his vision starts to blur, both trembling hands leave his neck and reach up to cover his mouth.   

  “Jon,” Georgie says gently, approaching his bedside again, “what’s wrong?”

  Jon’s eyes squeeze shut, sending two streaks of tears trickling down his cheeks, and he shakes his head frantically. He tries desperately to stifle the whimper building in his chest, but it’s creeping up on him anyway.

  “Breathe, Jon.” When Georgie rests her hand gently on his shoulder, he flinches violently away. She pulls back, holding both hands up palms-out in a pacifying gesture. “Okay,” she says evenly, “okay. No touching.”

  Jon has had these episodes for most of his life, and Georgie had witnessed more than a few while they were dating – though they were nowhere near as frequent then as they are now. It's been awhile, but Georgie easily slips into the same soothing tone she would always use. 

  His brain is already tuning her out, though.

  I can’t – I can’t –

  The Archive prowls forward and settles in just behind his eyes, an opportunistic vulture watching intently for its next meal. If he really needs to use his voice, the library is available for reference. He just has to –

  No – please, no –

  Who is he even talking to?

  Jon draws his knees up and locks his arms around them, curling his shoulders in and hunching forward to hide his face. He takes a shuddering breath in. It comes out as a strangled sob.

  What am I supposed to do now?

     End Notes:

Shorter chapter than usual this time since it was originally part of the previous chapter, BUT that kind of felt like a good place to end it for now. I hope to have Chapter 7 ready to go by early next week. Now we REALLY get into some S4 canon divergence.

Oliver's dialogue (up until the point where he starts having an actual conversation with Jon) is from MAG 121; Georgie & Basira's dialogue (up until the point where Jon wakes up) is from MAG 122.

So! For those who like Archive-speak Jon: yes there will be more of that starting next chapter. For those who don't: there will still be original dialogue too. I like writing him both ways too much, so expect a mix from here on out. (Some chapters may have more or less depending on what state Jon's in at any given moment. I'm playing around with some concepts.)

I should probably note at this point that a lot of how I write Jon's ADHD, anxiety, and other mental health stuff is heavily based on my own experiences with neurodivergence. It doesn't mean everyone experiences these diagnoses/symptoms in the same way, though. c:

[fierceawakening]

ADHD can totally lead to lack of brain-to-mouth filter, which can often lead to saying assholish things due to just not really thinking about the implications of what one is saying. I've definitely been guilty of this, much to my future wincing (and I've worked hard to put the brakes on). That said, the ex-girlfriend in the example was really rude and at-best thoughtless, and apparently didn't apologize. It does read more like deliberate cruelty to me, however, and I'd avoid her too.

Yeah. I think that sounds like deliberate cruelty too... which doesn’t really solve the issue, because the issue is “do some bits of brain wiring make one more prone not just to thoughtless behavior but to actual cruelty?” 

It seems to me the answer is sometimes (albeit rarely) yes, but I get the impression other people need the answer to be no, whether because they have understandable triggers around being called “bad seeds” or whether because it’s inconvenient politically not to be in “solidarity” with every possible brain variation.

[blue-shaded]

(1/9) i know there's speculation (from community and sean himself) that sean has ADHD, but i think he has something else. i have ADHD, but i also have nonverbal learning disability (NVLD), and his behavior is actually way more in line with NVLD to me. it's not commonly diagnosed because it's not officially in the DSM/ICD at this point and it requires a huge battery of testing, but the best brief way i can think to describe it is that it's kind of a cross between autism and inattentive ADHD.

(2/9) the basics of NVLD: stronger verbal than nonverbal abilities (e.g. chatty but poor abstract reasoning/math skills), better with auditory than visual info, need for familiarity/routine, bad with social cues, disorganization, poor planning skills, focusing on details + may focus on the wrong stuff, tendency to internalize negative emotions (and can develop depression/anxiety as a result), strong memory (often for odd things), and possible motor/spatial awareness difficulties.         

(3/9) sean does have traits of ADHD, like disorganization, chattiness, short attention span and need for stimulation, but there's so much overlap between ADHD and NVLD that a lot of cases of NVLD end up misdiagnosed as ADHD, or they're diagnosed together. and there's this lack of an ADHD quality that he has, i don't really know how to describe it but he lacks a certain energy that mark and a lot of other adults with ADHD have, and he needs mark (nobody else works) with him to get that energy.              

(4/9) there's also just some very not-ADHD stuff he does. he's stuck really firmly to a schedule with no real assistance and prided himself on his work ethic, which isn't usually an ADHD thing, but it fits very much with the routines and need for familiarity present in NVLD. he lacks the out-of-the-box thinking that's present in a lot of people with ADHD, and he seems almost afraid to try anything new if someone else doesn't do it first. he seems oddly wobbly/unstable when he walks around.       

(5/9) robin's apparently complained about sean being shit at timing things. sean's described things in incredible detail, like talking about where he was in his video game when mark followed him on twitter or telling that story about breaking his crush's ankle when he was 12. he overlooks visual stuff in his games (like his first Papers Please series) and had a really hard time with the math classes in Bully (though that could be a LD but it's hard to say). on to social stuff:            

(6/9) he overshares A LOT. he claims to be good at reading people, yet he hangs out with felix, gab, nopeify, and the game grumps (who aren't quite as bad as the rest but it looks like they talked up gab to sean while he was still with signe). the relationship between him and mark is weird - sean was practically glued to him and now seems to hate him, though i don't really know what that's about. he interrupts at times and seems to struggle reading the mood of a situation (e.g. interviews).         

(7/9) then there's just the fact that he seems to be able to slow down and "put on the brakes" and act normally as needed, which mark, who has ADHD, has never been able to do. he can go on a ramble but then pull back around to the original subject. he's not good at coming up with stuff on the spot, either, but everyone i know with ADHD is really fast at that. people with ADHD often switch careers/ideas a lot - sean does the same thing repeatedly even if it's not working.                  

(8/9) then there's the internalization, which, well, it's obvious - blatant depression and lack of self-care, he's mentioned having anxiety attacks and being anxious to please everyone, etc. at this point i've been writing these asks for over an hour and am practically writing an entire thesis at you, so i'll wrap it up with one more ask, but there's probably a bunch of stuff i've noticed and am forgetting to say.            

(9/9) it's really speculation and i don't want to say it as "oh he definitely strikes me as this", because NVLD really NEEDS the clinical battery of tests to rule out other conditions and determine the person's strengths and weaknesses, but it seems like a legitimate possibility to me, and i think that should be brought up rather than ADHD because NVLD and ADHD tend to use different management strategies and NVLD doesn't respond to ADHD medication. it's worth thinking about at least             - I feel like atleast if he talks to a therapist or psychologist he could get his actual diagnosis figured out. I really don’t know what’s holding him. Plenty of people get diagnosed at a later age, it’s normal. A lot of parents were not interested in getting their child’s diagnosis at a young age, to deny anything was wrong with their child, or not being able to afford it. If he really wants to preach mental healthcare and yet does nothing of the sort himself.. He MUST stop preaching it now until he has had his own tests, his own diagnose, and his own method of dealing with stuff. A lot of what you say anon really does make sense. I’m no expert on mental illnesses but it all does make sense.

[my-add-chronicles]

when half-assed is still a great choice: task management for us race cars

Half-assed is always a good choice. In fact, I’m of the opinion that for us it’s actually the ideal choice.

For me, I deal with a lot of black and white thinking.

The way I experience and plan my day, the way I try to coordinate time, the way I approach tasks. Habitually I find my default is to use an all-or-nothing approach. It’s just what feels comfortable.

But that comes with a lot of weaknesses and limitations. I tend to try to finish things all at once to fully utilize my limited, finicky attention span and emotional energy. I don’t trust or even know if I can handle doing something tomorrow, so if I do something today I want to finish it ALL today.

Because lord knows about all those half-finished projects am I right? Not to mention out of sight out of mind. Sometimes I find something a week later like ‘shit. I was going to do that’

So knocking off a task completely so it can’t be delayed or forgotten is always my instinct.

Another factor I find is, I tend to be attracted to finishing a project in a single sitting or a single evening because... then I don’t have to do it longer. The romance in procrastinating a paper until 6 hours before it is due is- you only have to work on the stupid thing for 6 hours. And when your default mode is perfectionism, and when you have limited emotional energy, sometimes knowing there’s a hard limit of how long you have to suffer through something is the only thing that allows you to get something done.

Unfortunately, for a lot of tasks that’s not healthy or realistic. While I embrace my natural approach to tasks, it’s good to operate within some boundaries, i.e. knowing when to give up (avoid losing sleep!) and making a conscious effort to remember to eat and drink water and so on.

But there are some tasks that are literally impossible to knock off the priority list in a single go because either they are a task you’ve been avoiding that has piled up, due to other more pressing priorities or life factors (i.e. my current mountain of clean laundry)... or they just never were things that were realistically possible to finish in a single sitting or a single day.

What’s my default instinct when I can’t finish a task in a single sitting? .... avoid it! Avoid and avoid and avoid some more. Unless they become an immediate barrier to immediate needs or have a negative impact on others, the task drops to the bottom of my priority list.

The irony is, a task that could have been done easily over a short amount of time but requires a little strategizing or just -looks- like something that can’t be done in a single sitting tends to be avoided and then ultimately absolutely becomes something that -definitely- can’t be done in a single day just because the task was avoided, (making the task even less attractive!). Not the best cycle.

For one maybe it actually could have been done in two hours but you didn’t know exactly how you wanted to approach it, or had a perfectionistic idea of how to work on it, or wanted to find a way for it to be fully done in one sitting before even being willing to start it... trouble is, time and time again, I find myself in that loop. Basically, while I am absolutely most efficient doing something in one sitting, doing things that take more than that is outside my comfort zone, which leads me to be pessimistic about the possible outcome/time required by default, when really maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad. Basically, making things harder for yourself.

After all, people with ADD are very momentum-based people. It makes plenty of sense.

It is EASIER and HAS LESS ENERGY COST to do things in one go than it is to repeatedly return to something over time. Why? Because our brains have trouble with transitions. Transitions drain us. Meaning, the act of transitioning itself is a conscious effort that costs more energy than it does for a neurotypical person.

A really ungraceful metaphor is.. we ADD folks are like race cars and neurotypical people are like regular cars. Race cars are designed for going fast. Race cars use a round track, ok? Those are designed for race cars- beautiful! Smooth sailing. We are cars that go real fast are good at soft turns, sudden lane changes, those quick small directional shifts... momentum! Zoom zoom! Regular cars are designed for normal streets.. they’re designed for slowing down with ease, for making a full stop in not much time at all, for making that 90 degree turn at the corner. ....We ADD peeps just kind of suck at brakes. We’re not built for that! Sure, we can turn at the corner like normal cars. But we default to normal race car speed so we would have to slam the breaks like SCREEEEEEEE—- and finally make a full stop before making that turn. And, we finish that turn and have to reaccelerate back to that race car speed, and since we slowed to a stop we have to use a ton of energy to reaccelerate back to normal speed. This is a pretty good explanation for how transitioning between activities or tasks or categories feels for someone with ADD. (Or maybe we’re like.. those manual transition cars, where they stall if you do it wrong? Lol I don’t know. I don’t even know how to drive I have no business making car metaphors)

I can’t speak on ADHD folks because they are the same yet there are some differences in detail for some. For instance, my mom has ADHD. She didn’t use that word before, but my younger sibling had severe ADHD as a little kid and I identified my own ADD at age 25 or so (harder to spot as a kid when you’re daydreaming instead of squirming in your seat). So my mom now has the vocabulary and it’s strongly apparent that both my mom and my mom’s father (my grandfather) have ADHD..

.. so for my mom who has ADHD, she is absolutely a race car. But almost more in the literal sense too. She is a high speed creature. The irony of ADD is that.. ADD/ADHD people LIKE doing a lot of different things. They get distracted easily. But honestly I wouldn’t even use the word distracted. We are ATTRACTED easily. We quickly spot and are drawn to many different things. We spot something and then have to re-evaluate our original course of action to decide if we should prioritize the new exciting thing instead.

The thing about my ADHD mom is, she can transition WELL! She lives like a race car but she can make those sharp turns! She can reaccelerate fast! It doesn’t even cost energy! I swear! That damned H serves her well. She is hyper. She is energetic. (I have a limited understanding of how much this varies between ADHD folks but that is my experience observing myself next to the way my mom experiences ADHD, and my younger sibling as well to a degree). My mom is seamless at transitions.

So it’s funny because it took a long time for my ADHD mom to understand me, her ADD daughter. Because for her, she operates like I do, but... for me, I’m sluggish. Transitions are hard. It takes me a long time to speed back up after slowing down. Once I switch to a new task, it’s like I have to start my speed from 0 again and rebuild the momentum. My mom can switch from one task to another and only lose a few miles per hour in the process of deciding what she’s doing next. She can jump right in with very little delay or mental energy cost.

Granted, she is a bad listener, and scatterbrained as fuck. What she lacks in attention she makes up for in her fast transitions. Yeah maybe she’ll forget what she was doing or what is being said or will suddenly change subject without realizing you weren’t done, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because she easily and quickly can change right back to your subject, or will remember what she was doing and return back to it after a short detour- and can do so without any strain. And that is how she is different from me, and why I needed medication and she got away with not being medicated for her ADHD itself. (Some of this is also age and experience, I know school was hard but like many of us, she didn’t realize she had ADHD and that medication was out there. And now she’s reached the point where it just isn’t needed).

So now maybe you understand why you approach tasks the way you do but.. what the hell is one to do?

Something I’m finding beneficial is:

Accept and love the way you naturally approach tasks. Don’t shame yourself for wanting to do things in one sitting. Don’t shame yourself for marathoning things. Like many human quirks, it’s a skill. It can be extremely beneficial, not to mention satisfying as hell. There are ways our brains work and maybe they will shift with time but so long as you are not being destructive and are still attempting to operate within healthy boundaries (remember to eat!), why the hell not do things in the way that comes easiest?

A favorite metaphor I like to use for this is: flow around the rocks, not against them.

Sure you can slam yourself against a task by forcing yourself to segment it or spread it out or multitask like a neurotypical person could. But it’s going to take you a lot fucking longer than if you just relaxed and did it your own way.

But the kicker is, of course.. sometimes it isn’t the best way. As mentioned, it has limitations, we have weaknesses. We are prone to black and white thinking, which translates to perfectionism. Which turns into avoidance.

So how do we compliment and lift up those weak aspects of ourselves?

My input is the principle that: half-assing is not only a great choice, but is the best choice

Then you go ‘What? Pfft, easy for you to say. I’m a perfectionist not just out of habit- stuff is important to me! I’m not going to half-ass things!’ ..bear with me.

If you remember, in your head, as a baseline principle, that half-assing things is not only a great choice but is the best choice... you can make wonderful progress at side-stepping your default habit of avoidance entirely.

Flow around the rocks not against the rocks!

You see, this is something neurotypical people even know the truth in.

There’s a higher probability for you to meditate for 10 minutes a day more consistently if you commit to meditating 1 minute a day as opposed to if you commit to meditating 10 minutes no matter what... what I mean is.. Ultimately, you will spend more days in a month actually meditating for 10 minute sessions if you commit to 1 minute meditations minimum (allowing yourself that flexibility) than if you were to be rigid and force yourself to meditate for 10 minutes every day and eventually burn out.

We people with ADD are attracted to black and white thinking. That also means we’re really attracted to all-or-nothing. Which means we are attracted to and romanticize rigidity. Because in an abstract sense, rigidity highlights some of our natural skills. But in the bigger picture, it becomes like the meditation principle. Yeah sure maybe your success will look better when you meditate for 10 minutes every single day, but in the end you are actually losing more in the bigger picture. Especially for people with ADD, rigidity is attractive but has never been sustainable or realistic with consideration for human nature. Yes, we love clean-cut results. But ironically having a clean-cut or a rigid approach rarely brings clean-cut success in the bigger picture.

So we have to do things in a way that feels sort of like doing things backwards

You want to have perfect results in your life? To be reliable? To not disappoint people? To function well? To finish things? To do things well.

Half. Ass. Them.

Half-ass them. HALF-ASS THEM!

..Ok here’s a catch-phrase that will help you both remember this principle and find the concept more palatable in making it clear how it actually will be beneficial:

HALF-ASS IS BETTER THAN NO ASS

Bonus: half-ass always leads to full-ass!

In this case we want the ass. (...I better not go further with this metaphor).

Use this principle with great strength and enthusiasm towards areas of life that habitually end in avoidance. Don’t skimp! Give that task a nice big dash of half-assing it.

If you create and embrace this attitude- this really warm attitude towards yourself, an attitude of approaching your life that says... hey..! I’m not going to stress about the outcome or about the most efficient way to go about this, I’ve already said I love myself enough to half-ass this..! I’m just going to dive in! ...then you foster a life where you can become more reliable, more practiced, and more happy and functional and yet still super ADD. Happy functional ADD life skills! Instead of forcing yourself to change, learning how to work with yourself!

It goes without saying- rigidity is the enemy. Or at the very least the barrier in which we should become skilled at flowing around. Get good at dancing, get good at the dodge. Learn your natural habits and flow around the rocks. This is a method of that.

I hope this helps! Best wishes and don’t be too hard on yourself. Your life trajectory may look different than other people’s, but ultimately you end up thriving and succeeding just as much as anyone else. Allow yourself the room and the permission to do this your own way.

[myfandomrambles]

Lorelai Gilmore Character Analysis (updated)

Facts:

Grew up with her an emotionally abusive mother. Including constantly degrading her self-esteem (constantly calling her a disappointment, the “big head” incident. Forcing her into uncomfortable situations. making her act and dress the way Emily likes.)

Parents not taking a large interest in her interests.

Emily wants to be involved with her life but not willing to accept her choices (we see this in her expecting to always know whats going on. but then telling her that her choices are wrong.) Also exemplified in her saying she knows everything about Lorelai only admitting shes wrong once (Rory’s birthday parties.)

Lorelai has very few happy memories of her father. stating he never really played with her or did things with her in general (forgiveness and stuff, the revival of prime for two times she mentions this)

She always forgives her parents. even when the severely cross the line (Emily with breaking up her and luke. Emily always pushing Christopher on the girls. Constantly throwing Lorelai’s mistakes in her face. Emily telling her she never loved her father)

Lorelai took care of Rory by her self-starting at age 16.

Lorelai worked her way up through her job with no college education ( i assume she didn’t graduate high school but I have no idea) then started graduated from business school latter allowing her to start her own business.

Emily and Richard tend to try and control Lorelai. basically using the blackmail of Rory’s education to make Lorelai come to their house. angry when she pays them back but still agrees to visit them.

Was in a long-term relationship with Christopher as a child. Was put in a situation where everyone wanted them to get married. Not wanting this to happen she broke it off.

Attempted to allow Christopher to be a parent but he refused this offer unless Lorelai would marry him.

Has trouble with romantic relationships. breaking off an engagement, having an on again/off again relationship with Christopher eventually marrying him to get a divorce a short time later. Also had a very turbulent relationship with Luke. until the final work things out (post og series into revival) worsened by both of their lack of communication.

is a very loving friend. planning the funeral of her neighbour’s cat, participating in every town event donating her time and skills.

Puts Rory before anything else in her life in every situation. sometimes to a fault being very over cautious with Rory’s dating and education.

has an extremely close relationship with Rory with it being a friendship as much as a mother/daughter thing.

Analysis:

Lorelai is an extremely independent person. She wants to do everything her way and often by herself. This is obviously epitomized by her leaving her parents and supporting herself mostly on her own.  She also tries to raise Rory in her way instead of the sheltered my way or the high way life of her parents. works to be the opposite.

Lorelai even in her independent state of mind she does tend to become over-attached to certain people throughout the story. This will happen with her boyfriend at the time. and then revert back to Rory.

Hides her insecurities and self-esteem problems with a strong bravado. These often stem from her childhood and parents. Feels guilt, anger, and frustration with her parents. She deals with these feeling by distancing herself. Another tactic she uses to cope is humour.

has a tendency to bit self-centred. Centring her wishes with the inn over Sookie’s. This problem can be part of her turbulent relations. Some of this is innate Lorelai but also comes from a deep need to control things around her.

self-sabotages often. Sleeping with Christopher when he comes when she knows it will hurt her. Porpously acting out with her parents to garner chaos (though sometimes I think its more of habit than trying to cause harm.)

Splits on people. Max around their proposed marriage, her parents multiple times (as a teenager, with paying the money, the luke brake up, yale etc.), Luke (with jess and April), Rory (Rory’s affair, quitting yale). Often to head off commitment.

Has a lack of self-control in social situations. Tends to speak when she shouldn’t, makes inappropriate comments (like bush and at Richards funeral), and be loud. She also uses humour to cope especially with her mom, so she doesn’t always attempt to hold it together.

Puts Rory before herself especially in the beginning. Her attachment to trying to never put her down sometimes to a point it is detrimental to them both

Has trouble focusing on tasks. Like homework, cooking, general stuff. She has a strong drive to do her work but finds completing the tasks hard. She does mostly get to what she wants.

She is loyal and loving. Helping her friends, throwing the bachelor and baby shower for Lane, painting for Luke, throwing April a birthday party, hanging out with Paris, babysitting for Sookie, and letting Kirk stay with her. One part of this is she has a deep maternal connection to anyone she has affection for. While she can be childish her deep compassion allows the emotion to have a maternal dynamic

Has a lot of old notions of classism. Believing the only way to get into a good college was feign richness by going to private school. This also gives a sense of entitlement she fights through the whole how.

Her communication skills are absolutely awful. This probably stems from her emotions neer being validated and a lack of taught coping skills.

ADHD:

Troubling focusing 

Is extremely easily distractible. Switching subjects often, talking fast and getting off topic.

Her space is always disorganized when she is working.

Had trouble getting things started but was okay once she got into the groove.

Always losing things asking Rory to find them for her.

Stims/Fidgets throughout the show. Repeating words as an auditory/vocal stim (coffee, coffee, coffee). Is often showing moving her hands around. Uses foods in this capacity as well.

Not only an existentialy restless but also physically restless. Finds her parents long dinner hard to sit through.

Always talking. This is just her personality but also seems to be used to defuse her anxiety.

Always moving and going places. the trouble with lots of calm places

Extremely impulsive. Makes lots of choices without thinking

BPD:

a pattern of unstable romantic relationships

Extreme and powerful emotions

tendency to self-destruct

Fave person in the form of Rory

works hard to try and fend off abandonment often by running the relationship before it truly is at that point

acts impulsively on thoughts and feelings

struggles to understand and express her emotions

Intense mood swings