#I’m off all my meds except adhd and anxiety

[vagrantclown]

I would love it so so fucking much if my sequencing prof could like. Understand a lot of people in this major can’t afford $20 a month for Adobe cc

Or the fees for Vimeo

Or the fees for so many software programs we use in class

Like he’s just like “yeah it’s expensive live with it” and it makes me violently suicidal and that in itself frustrates me

[chaotic-language-journey]

Oh my god this!!!!! So many professionals have told me just straight up dumb shit.

Ex. Went to a new psych to get meds for adhd, which is already more then I could afford. I’ve been diagnosed with many things. Not to give away too many details but some of those (just for context) are cptsd, anxiety, depression and adhd. She told me, that because most of my adhd symptoms come when I’m stressed, that I have no mental issues except bpd. This was after 20 minutes of meeting me. Ignore the years and years I’ve spent with other professionals that have properly studied my behaviour and history, she apparently knew all. I was so mad. And I’m still not on meds cause I’m scared I’m gonna be messed around again. And I can’t afford to see another psych. People like that deserve to be knocked off their high horses. Oh and mind you, she spent the rest of the hour bragging how she was right, everyone else was wrong, not explaining why, but telling me to google it and I’ll understand. Every single one of my questions, “google it you’ll understand”. Still mad I spent almost $200 AUD on her.

This maybe sounds mean, but I think we should be able to send doctors “hey, you were wrong” letters.

I was misdiagnosed with asthma when I was 12 and took asthma meds daily for seven years, and then it turned out I hadn’t had asthma in the first place; I actually have a different breathing problem. I don’t think the doctor who told me I had asthma (my pediatrician, who I was no longer seeing by that point) ever found out she’d been wrong. (This is one of at least four misdiagnoses in my life, from a variety of doctors, that I can think of off the top of my head.) Similarly, my first therapist told me she didn’t think I was autistic because I wasn’t obsessed with trains. I don’t think she ever found out that I am, in fact, autistic, because I wasn’t seeing her by the time I was diagnosed.

I get that it might be demoralizing to have someone contact you specifically to tell you that you messed up, but I think it would be useful for doctors to have data on how often they misdiagnose patients, especially since some doctors tend to think the patient is generally wrong when attempting self-diagnosis. It would be useful for my former therapist to move me from the mental column of “people who erroneously think they’re autistic” to “people whose autism I did not notice when they were right in front of me.” It would be useful for my pediatrician to realize she needed to look more closely and listen to kids when their breathing symptoms weren’t the classic asthma ones.

Doctors can get on their high horse and refuse to believe patients a lot of the time, and the power dynamic makes that dangerous in plenty of situations. I think it would be helpful to have a way to at least alert doctors when we have proof they messed up.

[auditioheros]

‎ ‎ ✱  𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗱.  𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲𝘀.  𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘁𝘀.  𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴.  𝗽𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁.  𝘀𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆.  𝗺𝗼𝗺𝗼.

welcome   to   #𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐬     :   an   independent   ,   private   ,   &   highly   selective   writing   blog   for   𝗞𝗬𝗢𝗞𝗔  𝗝𝗜𝗥𝗢𝗨   ,   hero   name:   𝘌𝘈𝘙𝘗𝘏𝘖𝘕𝘌  𝘑𝘈𝘊𝘒   from   kohei   horikoshi's   𝐁𝐎𝐊𝐔  𝐍𝐎  𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐎  𝐀𝐂𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐀   (   est.   june   2024   )   manga   based   with   influences   from   𝐁𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒  𝐈𝐍𝐂.'𝐒  𝐌𝐘  𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐎  𝐀𝐂𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐀.   headcanon   heavy   ,   crossover   friendly.

a   look   into   𝐭𝐡𝐞   𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐩𝐚𝐧   𝐬𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐫   𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡   𝐚   𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭   𝐨𝐟   𝐠𝐨𝐥𝐝

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blogroll:

multi: @chmerical , low activity toru hagakure: @iridesheros , med activity, primarily discord momo ayase: @moayase, high activity

001. for the sake of my sanity, i’m remaining mutuals only! i’m very open to interacting with all kindsa muses, but i can't follow everyone back. i just wanna avoid forgetting & getting overwhelmed.

002. no minors please!! this is a 21+ blog, please respect that!

003. this is a safe space. i will not tolerate any bigotry and toxicity. i want to firmly state that homophobia, colorism, racism, islamaphobia, antisemitism, transphobia, and hatred of any sorts will earn an immediate hard block, no exceptions. we are way too grown to be misbehaving. on that note, i do not, in any way, shape, or form condone pro-shipping or anything of the sort. keep that shit away from me, thank you.

004. due to the nature of some of the fandoms i have verses for, my blog will contain darker themes such as: death, violence, drugs, alcohol. that being said, i will not write the following: inc*st, s*xual assault, extreme violence, explicit sexual content.

005. in terms of SHIPPING, i’m super open so don’t hesitate to reach out! i will say chemistry is a must! i’m open to all ships: familial, platonic, antagonistic, romantic. please note: i will not be writing out smut. no exceptions.

006. i don't do drama or vagues or call outs ( unless the individual is legitimately harmful and/or toxic ) because of this i'm generally oblivious when it comes to problematic blogs. if you see me engaging with someone harmful/toxic, let me know privately! just no dragging me into petty drama, please!! i don't have the patience to deal with vagues and negativity, so i'll be soft/hardblocking at my discretion if i see too much of it.

007. first off, i wanna say thanks for reading through everything! my name's fio/frito/frio, i'm 31, still flirty and thriving and i work as a swim instructor as well as do teaching artistry where and when i can. i have autism, adhd & tons ( and i mean tons ) of anxiety, so i do have a tendency to dip in terms of communication, but that in no way means i don't want to write with you or i'm no longer interested in our plots! i'm a just a bit of a mess sometimes ♡ 

008. CREDIT!!! graphics made by #me. PSDs used: #vvundagore. carrd by: #hellscommissions.  adapted bios and headcanons by: #me.

[peachinspiration]

This is my first day officially moved out and with a rented room in a friend’s house with my brother and I am so so terrified and paranoid, I don’t wanna fuck things up cuz I CANNOT go back with my parents, I’d rather kms. Like I have never felt this much real anxiety in a long time and I almost wanna cry but I’m not. I’m just so terrified. My tarot cards said the job I applied to will accept my brother and I, so I’m not so worried about that, but fuck man having to Uber to and back until we afford a car (after finally being able to complete drivers ed) is fucking terrifying to me idk.

I’m upset that I feel so paranoid and anxious, cuz I really thought when I moved out I’d feel freedom for the first time in forever, but no I’m fucking terrified help. But at least it shows me how much actual pain I need to overcome, cuz all of this feels like uhh ok so yk how it’s like when you get attacked and run you’re completely numbed out but when you finally find a resting spot all of it catches up at full force?? That’s how it feels rn. Except it’s like leaving a lifelong toxic home situation, I’m not used to it and I’m insanely antsy. I’m just really scared of fucking up.

I plan to apply for EBT and to check on the waitlist for me to get on adhd meds, and once hired I plan to hire a driver instructor since I still have nobody who can help otherwise. I sorta feel alone in this idk why, but I’m sure I’ll be ok. My cards told me to hear from others’ experiences of going through the same thing to help myself here and it’s right as usual.

Ok whew yea this feels good to write about cuz I finally feel myself calming down. I haven’t been able to actually journal write or anything in a long time and it’s just been choppy twt priv vents but yea again this is really therapeutic.

But ya idk I’m scared, but at the same time I know I’ll be okay deep down. Another thing I’m excited about is that with money saved up, I’ll be able to finally travel to see my bf without anyone stopping me :•) I’ll go to Chile without having to be interrogated about it or prevented from traveling there!! My brother said he may even wanna come with me. So I’m very excited about that. I’ll have to hurry up on my Spanish studies tho and begin to speedrun learning the Chilean dialect and accent haha thankfully I have my bf for that.

I think when I’m more settled in I’ll finally write that paragraph of educating to that one person I called out for being racist recently then block them after since I don’t wanna deal with anymore mess. It’s just too uncomfortable to deal with.

At the same time tho, life does feel super different. My past life feels very far away now, but now I’m stuck with all sorts of emotional baggage from it. It’s kinda making me realize how hurt and vulnerable I truly am from it. My older sister probably felt the same way when she was kicked out at 18. God I really don’t know what to expect. Maybe I’ll consult my cards about it since I have most of them with me now. I still have some things leftover back at the house but it’s ok. Maybe I’ll make myself a blessing jar.

I already miss my dog though. That’s a part that REALLY sucks cuz of how close we are to her. I miss her really badly and feel kinda sick over it :^( her mental health gets affected whenever my brother and/or I are separated from her and she’s also old and gonna be 14 sometime this year. I’m not worried about her passing on cuz she’s still very active and runs fast and has energy and still acts like a baby though. But man I want her so badly.

I’m terrified of appearing like a burden around here and I’m terrified of my friend or her parents hating me cuz I’m so used to people I live with hating on me in some way and treating me degradingly. I kinda wish I could just shut everything off for a moment and be somewhere timeless for as long as I want to let everything out then come back lolol like yk time stopping. I hope I make more friends. I’ve kinda gone through a huge irl friend purge in the recent years especially as I came to further terms about being trans. Also a lot of people turned out to be completely nuts now. Like how my childhood “best” friend slowly showed more and more abusive tendencies. First toward me and then toward everyone else, to the point of actually threatening lives all cuz this guy wouldn’t love her back.

Oh also wow crazy the moon is full in two days. Fun stuff I’d better prepare for it since I finally have the freedom to. I hope I have my lighter packed with me, I think I have my matches.

[tonyhightower]

Morning.

Okay, I was joking before about being stir crazy, but it's not really a joke anymore.

This week, my son Felix turned three.

I'm sick as a dog. I can barely speak.

I'm exhausted, I'm burned out, I'm tired, I'm tired. I'm tired.

I'm stuck in Paris. (Stuck? In Paris? How can you even?) I haven't seen Paris yet, barely at all.

Right now, Paris is just a place I've managed to hurry through a couple of times to get some stuff from IKEA or the boulangerie, and then hobble home on my still-unhealed knee, because we gotta get dinner in, or Felix is edging towards a meltdown and we just need to get him to a place where that can happen more safely and less publicly, and then get him to calm the hell down and, for lack of a better term, go the fuck to sleep.

I don't have any money. We have two credit cards, both in my wife's name. It's okay, I have nothing to buy anyway.

I have nothing to offer. I'm taking up space. I'm Jo's second child. I fucking hate this part. I need her permission to do pretty much anything. This isn't what either of us signed up for.

I'm not doing French lessons. I'm barely keeping a Youtube channel afloat. I've put out a video every Tuesday, until this week. I have a script, It's shot (poorly, but it's at least ready), but this is Winter Vacation Week for X, and it's also his birthday week, so we planned our first party (which is code for: emailing every parent in town we know and begging them to come over, drink our wine, and be our friends).

And then X's Grandos are here for a few days to see our place, which is great on its face, but they're not here to babysit while J & I get our shit together. X is home for two weeks, and there's no respite.

I love my kid truly and forever. I love him so much that I'm sacrificing the one thing that's making myself sane, because it's more important, on a minute-to-minute basis, to make sure he's okay.

I was told that would start to happen less and less as he becomes a little more independent. Like, I'm looking forward to the last day I ever have to wipe his ass. We're not there, but that day is now on the horizon, which is a thought that brings me indescribable joy.

I'm off my meds. No more ADHD meds of any kind until I get my Carte Vitale. (Our Titre de Séjour is on its way.) Could be weeks. Could be months. So, as a substitute: coffee. Lots & lots of coffee. Morning, noon, night. Worrying about cortisol & anxiety is, to paraphrase Leona Helmsley on Paying Taxes, is for the little people. I have a kid I really want to raise properly.

I've spent the last six weeks literally unable to walk, unable to buy even the most basic of things for the house, unable to put any more art up on the walls, unable to dance or pick up or even sit down with my child to read a book. He has to come to the couch, like I’m 90.

It's his birthday today. He calls me "Broken Racecar." My heart breaks a little every time he says it.

Jo is doing so much around the house, at a time when she needs to be writing. That's her job. It's literally why we're here. It's why this is all happening. It's why I'm staring out the window at a city I really want to start falling in love with, that I really want to write about & take pictures of & interact with.

I'm stuck in the exit lounge. I'm standing on the banks of the Styx, waving a ticket at a boat that isn't in dock.

Get help. Yeah, I know. I know. Except ... English is not the LIngua Franca of this place (uh, Franca is), which means I can't just walk into a place and get either (a) the drugs I need, or (b) something more shrink-adjacent. (I truly don't think I have a genuine psychological issue at the moment; it's more just the isolation and the fact that my go-to fixes for what ails me are things I don't currently have access to for one reason or another. If I was running, I'd be fine. If I had a workspace and the time to actually make videos & write screenplays, I'd be better. If I was able to actually get out into Paris and, y'know, enjoy the city that we've all worked so hard to become a part of, and get involved in the new world we've crossed an ocean to but up against, then fuck yeah go me.)

But kvetching about this stuff in the hour every morning before my sick three-year-old wakes up is not a useful way to spend my time. I need to be cramming in a French lesson or CREATING TEH CONTENT or whatever. So, Ima get on that.

Fun stuff to come. Promise.

[hackfurs]

im going to put a summary of what i’ve been going through under a read more to add some context to my absence. its a long one. sorry. also some trigger warnings for: abuse , death of a loved one , ableism , discussion of topics related to nausea

- i have been failing to deal with an intense workload that began all the way back in 2020, when my old computer died and i had to scramble to replace it in the middle of a global pandemic.

- i was able to afford the computer thanks to everyone being so generous at the time, but afterward, i still had bills to pay and needed to afford food.

- since art was the only way i knew how to make money, my queue quickly outpaced my ability to work and i haven’t recovered since despite permanently closing commissions last year (except if my need was dire).

- the stress and guilt associated with having such a long queue continued to compound, making it harder to do art in any capacity. i feel intense guilt when i draw anything not meant for a client. because of this, i don’t have much love for art at the moment.

- my “brand” of ADHD severely affects my executive function capabilities, i have constant issues with insomnia. weeks pass in the blink of an eye and i have no idea where the time goes. and i’m unable to get any treatment for it. my doctor refuses to prescribe anything, and those in my family are unwilling to help me seek treatment with a specialist for adhd.

- up until may-june of this year when i was able to finally get treatment after months of testing, i had had a chronic stomach condition (for the past 5-6 years) that would give me monthly, sometimes weekly issues such as intense nausea and lack of appetite. i would spend every waking moment throwing up, subsisting off of pedialyte popsicles and a cold medicine strong enough to make sure i was never awake enough to full grasp how awful i felt. i lost all joy for eating. every meal was a gamble if i’d feel fine or doom myself to be bedridden for 3 days. there were times i was so weak i couldnt remain awake for longer than 15 minutes at a time. couldn’t think. i was terrorized constantly by fever dreams. so because of this, my every waking moment became dominated by this obsessive game of “am i sick? am i going to be sick? is this a false alarm?” it was maddening and i missed out on so much. my only experience of MFF 2019 was walking through the dealers den for 30 minutes alone because everyone in the group had already looked through everything and wasnt interested. id never felt so alone in a crowd of people before.

- if i wasnt sick, i was recovering and dreading the next time i would inevitably get sick. it haunted my every waking moment. i thought every time it happened “maybe this one actually kills me”. and the whole time the tests turned back nothing. the meds didn’t do anything. it took over a year to finally get a medication that helped and im terrified of ever living like that again. it was hard to get myself to work when i was an anxious wreck huddled in a corner afraid i was going to die, and while i no longer get sick, those anxieties still color every aspect of my life

- now that im unable to work consistently on what i do owe, and now that i’m taking no new commissions, i’ve made around $500 for the entirety of 2022. which isn’t much to live off of, so i’ve been existing entirely on the good will of others. while i’m so thankful for all the help i do receive, it makes me feel like a leech. it makes me feel like everyone will start to hate me eventually when they notice i’m not getting better as fast as they thought i would. and if im not getting better, what was the point of sending money to help?

- on top of all that, my home life has progressively gotten worse. i opened up about my experiences with autism to the relatives i live with, as well as what i deal with because of adhd, and they have been unsympathetic at best to actively abusive at worst.

- one of them has weaponized my autism against me multiple times, and as recently as last week, intentionally triggered a panic attack in me to manipulate me into doing something for her. i’m not able to stand up for myself. i’m constantly infantilized and attacked for things i can’t help. she lets me live here for free, and if i speak up, i stand to become homeless. i have no other option than to accept the abuse of a family member. i have no money to do anything about it. and any money i do get would be put toward refunding people waiting for art.

- this very same family member is also very accident prone, and recently this year would have died in an accident had i not been there to help her. if i had not heard her calls for help. after this incident, i started to bolt out of sleep thinking i heard her calling for help again, and then i have a panic attack when i realize i had just imagined it. despite everything, it would be blood on my hands if i wasn’t around to help the next time something happened. so now im constantly on edge. constantly on the lookout.

- the other family member i live with is going to be dead soon. he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and he refused all treatment and chances to right the ship before it was too late. so instead, he has chosen to die. i don’t know how much longer he has left. he gets confused. he terrifies me sometimes. but there’s nothing i can do about it.

- i feel alienated from almost everyone in my life now. furries and friends alike. everyone i know is waiting on art from me, so i avoid talking to them to avoid the guilt of acknowledging its been months with no update. and when i dont talk, we drift apart. i stop feeling welcome in discord servers. i got pushed out of our mff group for mff 2022. i wanted to go so bad, but i dont think ill ever go again at this point.

- to wrap it all up in one bleak little bow, i am in the most hopeless place i have ever been in my life. i feel like my career is dead and forever tainted. i can’t blame anyone for wanting nothing to do with me now, especially after making people wait so long. i can’t come back from this. my mental health is doomed to deteriorate. just trying to exist in this house has been traumatizing. my one good irl friend i thought i had wants nothing to do with me anymore. i dont see a way out of this. even if a literal miracle fell into my lap and let me refund all the art i owed, it would all still be fucked. i can never make it right with people at this point. its too late. i wasted too much time. im just fucked and its just a matter of how long im allowed to tread water before real life comes knocking and i sink below the waves.

sorry for all that. i guess thats it.

[unnamedtune]

INFO YEAAAHAHHHAHAHHHAH

Actually void this I’m too lazy to update it

• You can call me sharts, sharty, and my user

• ALL PRONOUNS MOTHERFUCKERS

• Digital artist ig

• I like mall pretzels (Proud auntie Ann’s stan), animals, watching videos, listening to music, roblox, wobble dogs, mushrooms, and saying “eeb”

I USE TONETAGS!! IF YOU DONT LIKE IT FUCK OFF

•Adhd, Deadpressuon, anxIEty, juvenile arthritis, and an asd diagnosis in progress

• Likes to write sometimes

• Gay, trans, apothisexual, demiromantic

• Things I’m interested in: uh, idk anymore tbh

Main interests: Art, painting, sculpting, helping people, blanket collecting, hoodies, trinkets, crowcore, picking up small animals, plushies even though I don’t need anymore, animals skulls, cheesy Halloween and Christmas stuff, going outside, funny little things I can find at thrift stores, bad jokes, fnaf, oc shit I’ll never share prolly 🙏🙏🙏

• Favorite animals (Not in order): cats, wolves, foxes, ducks, dogs, BORZOIS, sea slugs, seamonkies (aka brine shrimp), roly polys, rabbits, chickens, ALL BUGS. ESPECIALLY WATER BEETLES., and snails

DNI: All basic criteria (homophobes, racists, etc.), toxic people, toxic people who identify as toxic people, trend hoppers joining in on the latest trend of hating on a group of people, trans meds, nude posters, suggestive material posters, hate blogs, animal hate blogs, proships

ALL PROSHIPPERS WILL BE BLOCKED ON SIGHT, NO EXCEPTIONS, IF YOU HAVE PROSHIP OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT IN YOU BIO/NAME YOU WILL BE BLOCKED

Also, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE DONT DM UNLESS I SAY ITS OKAY, I WILL SHIT MYSELF /hj

warnings about me: I have adhd (maybe even autism) so I’ll say things at the spurr of the moment without thinking about it, I have child humor, I am gay /s

I LOVE BORZOIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[runekeepershymnal]

SO!!

Did you know that:

When you get an echocardiogram, you can sometimes hear what they’re picking up? While they’re prodding around your bare chest with a gelled up weird probe?

Well, the way my technician did it, you can, and I am now in a bit of a weird, semi-ecstatic spiral about that sound, which at some times sounded like a record scratching, but, most concerningly, at least to me, because I am a fucked up little freak who of course googled the sounds I heard and what they might mean, and, and, and…

Did you know?

Apparently it’s supposed to go lub-dub, and not, in fact, lub-lub-dub.

So I am in a state of anticipation, but not actually��� fear? I don’t think? (Pardon my hypochondria about something that may well [almost certainly shall] turn out to be nothing.)

Being one of Those Patients (superscript TM), I was, of course, unwilling to ask the techician if that was a normal sound. Like, maybe it’s supposed to sound like that based on the angle of the gelled up doodad probe thingie. Maybe there’s a secret mountain behind my ribs and only the atria echo. Ventricles are like ducks, and thus, they do not. Mostly I didn’t ask because 1. I’m pretty sure that the technician is not allowed to interpret any damn thing, 2. I’m pretty sure she was trained in “oh shit, this is like… actual afib tachycardia whatevs, you’re not allowed to leave, in fact, we’re gonna pop you in an ambulance to scootch you the (I can’t gauge distances) hundred feet to the emergency room next door at the low low price of fuck you, your ancestors, and the descendants you don’t/won’t have to make sure you don’t just drop dead here and now.

(She did not do any of those things. She gave me a small towel to wipe the sonogram gel off my tits, which I guess is at least a little courteous. Certainly better treatment than I’ve received from most people who got to see my tits.)

So, of course once I get home, I last about fifteen minutes before I start googling what the sound might mean. And of course, I get afib, and murmurs, and cha cha cha, and then, I get hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition with which I have a great deal of associated emotional baggage.

The spiral continues, of course, into smaller, tighter, more numerous spirals of each fractal spinning out.

God, am I going to have to tell people? Family? Friends? I could barely deliver the news that I hadn’t gotten the job I thought I would, this is going to be so fucking awkward.

If I need a pacemaker, I’m going to be so very irritated that I can’t be in the same room as an in-use microwave anymore. I guess I’ll just… sous vide everything? Be that person who actually has to remember to take things out of the freezer and thaw them the long way? Except…

The whole point of this testing was because I’d admitted to my medication provider that sometimes I have heart palpitations (yes, I am an absolute moron), but I’m sure it’s fine, after all, anxiety, am I right?

So there is a good chance if the ticker insists upon ticking twice before every tock that my ADHD meds will be no more, in which case, remembering to take meat out of the freezer to thaw will be the least of my executive dysfunction problems.

(I actually love the idea of a tiny bolt of lightning having to smite be back in line whenever I start following the beat of my own drum.)

(The sound of my heart would make sick beats, by the way. Maybe I can create a Soundcloud to which I could upload the audio.)

Inside me there are two wolves: One who lives by ‘I don’t want to be a bother/I don’t need help/I’ve got this’ and one who is the Most Dramatic Bitch Ever and wants to go around wearing a pageant ribbon that says ‘Mx. I Might Drop Dead at Any Second But You Could Too Because No One is Fucking Special” and making deeply uncomfortable prolonged eye conntact with anyone and everyone who is fool enough to read it so that we both might wonder who will croak first? (There was nothing stopping me from doing this before, but apparently my priorities are fucked up.)

If the prognosis is bad, should I sell my Rεdd!t account? I’ve got enough karma to post basically anywhere…

How wonderful it would be to just stop without prelude or time to regret or pity. No wasting and no responsibility.

I might actually have some sort of proof that I have a heart! I mean, I’ve never seen it.

I’ll have to get some life insurance worked out. I’d love for my chronically ill disabled spouse to be rich, but I certainly don’t want him facing a big bill.

This whole list is going to be super embarassing if I just get told to take some fish oil and get more exercise than asking the gods to smite me by carrying all the groceries up three flights of stairs at one time.

Am I on too many medications for them to harvest my other organs? Because I would dearly love to occupy other people like some ghost of the humors, inflicting my phlegm and biles upon people who thought they were blessed and instead got some very peculiar psychometric imaginary friend.

The thought that a bad prognosis might give me the “I could die at any second which I could before but now I have a doctor’s note” card is so exciting and, honestly, delightful. (Which I definitely can’t tell my medication provider.)

I am also annoyed because this is just One More Damn Thing. Like, wasn’t the fucky brain sufficient? Not trying to tempt fate or anything but c’mon, man, it’d be cool if one vital organ could operate like a 90s model Toyota and just work exactly like it’s supposed to. Liver, pancreas, I’m looking at you two, don’t get cute. You too, skin.

So yeah, just… c’mon, man. I was finally getting some of the shit that my decades of undiagnosed ADHD may not have cause but sure as fuck exacerbated. Can we just figure it out? It’s the 21st century, how fuckin’ long does it take to take a gander at a sonogram and say “shit, that’s weird. Let me flip through my big damn book of cardiology to see if it’s ‘oh shit, fuck, shit’ weird or just ‘hrm’ weird”? Yes I’m oversimplifying advanced medicine, but again, it’s the 21st fuckin’ century.

I was never really able to ignore my heard since it is a fluttery-ass bastard that likes to make itself known (and apparently most people don’t have that, who knew?), but boy does it sound neat to not be aware of the activity of one’s organs that aren’t supposed to require conscious intervention.

[babaleshy]

I'm Autistic

Because this will likely be a lengthy, wordy post about my self-diagnosis as Autistic as well as all of my experiences regarding Autistic traits, I'm going to leave a "read more" link so that you're not scrolling for ages just to catch up on your feed.

Ah, I see you've clicked "keep reading" or "read more" or whatever this site has it labeled as, now. You don't get to be mad at how long this is or how much of a waste of time reading this may be to you because you consciously clicked on the link. Therefore, I am exempt from taking responsibilities of eating up any bit of your time, including the time you've wasted reading this disclaimer.

So... Yes. I am. And it's a self-diagnosis right now.

You're probably thinking that I saw a Tik Tok clip, checked out a page on WebMD, and decided that I'm Autistic (this is in reference to a Tik Tok I saw last night that nearly made me spit out my drink because of how painfully accurate the "what people think self-diagnosis is vs reality" clip was). That is, of course, not the case.

A few years ago (likely 2018), I don't recall what it was I read online, but it made me go, "Oh wow, that makes so much sense to me," in regards to a neurodivergent trait. However, this was then I thought I had ADHD. My husband has ADHD, was diagnosed with it as a child, and because his dad forced the doctor (this was like, in the late 90s, early 2000s I think) to put him on Adderall and Ritalin, my husband does not remember 3 years of his life because he was a drooling, zombified mess. Why did his dad do this? Because his grades were bad. Did this help with his grades? No. Did his dad take him off the meds because he didn't get the desired result? Also no. My husband wasn't even informed on what ADHD was. He was simply told he had it and to take these pills. It wasn't until he (my husband) read the label saying that it could increase the risk of heart issues that he cussed his dad out and flushed all the pills down the toilet. Up until very recently, he wasn't sure if he actually had ADHD until he saw a YouTuber who was actually diagnosed with it display the exact traits he had.

But he didn't see this YouTuber when I thought I had ADHD, so my husband couldn't exactly relate, plus I didn't want to trigger anything with him on the subject.

But the more I researched, the more I realized I could be on the spectrum. It wasn't until 2019 that I was printing out articles, trait lists, etc. to highlight and put into a folder (which is thick and nearly bursting with what I've printed out to have a hardcopy of records highlighting the traits that I have, including traits my husband and my mom see in me) that I realized "I could have Asperger's."

Of course, I no longer use that term after finding out it was named after a n*zi, and I began to embrace the term "Autistic" instead.

But the thing that triggered me into going, "Wait, so it's not ADHD that I think I have, it's Asperger's?" was, like my husband, seeing a YouTuber talk about their traits and experiences. I had identical struggles, myself. (Through this same YouTuber, I also found out I'm greysexual, too! There's a name to describe my experience with sexual attraction! Yay!)

There are a lot of VERY SPECIFIC TRAITS Autistic people experience that aren't mentioned by the YouTuber or in anything that I've printed out and highlighted that I have found through various Tik Toks that I have personally experienced that simply further solidifies the fact that I'm definitely on the spectrum. When I showed the Tik Tok I mentioned earlier (I don't remember their name) to my husband last night, he was wide-eyed because the description of how that individual self-diagnosed themselves WAS EXACTLY WHAT I DID WORD FOR WORD HOLY SHIT.

I was already convinced I am Autistic, but each time I read Twitter threads of people's experiences with their Autistic traits, each time I watch Tik Toks or certain YouTubers share their experiences, it further solidifies that yep, I'm Autistic.

What's amazing is that my husband is very supportive. I'm extremely lucky to have married him. I've been a terrible masker but he loves me anyways. He never gave me shit for my meltdowns and tried to help me out, thinking I was just horribly overly stressed. Now that he knows why I've had the few outwardly noticeable meltdowns that I've had throughout our years together, he knows how to help me more, now. And while he's figured out my traits and what issues I have, knowing that I'm on the spectrum helps him make sense of why I'm like this, and he can help me accordingly whether it's to prepare for something in advance, help me calm down, etc.

(I should also add here real quick that there's a high chance I have OCD as well, but less of the compulsive actions and more of the obsessive thoughts, but I'm not entirely sure just yet if this is the case. I'm actually hoping to see someone about this but with the pandemic, I don't know when that will be.)

Now... onto the traits and experiences.

My Traits (that stand out with neon lights)(Will copy word-for-word a trait my mom or husband see in me and it will be typed in a different color.)

Having a folder that has all of my research I've obsessively looked up, printed out, highlighted what I saw in myself with one color (yellow) while highlighting what my mom and my husband see with another color (pink). I'm also using this folder to make this list as a reference because I sometimes forget certain traits I do have are because I'm Autistic. (I'm 32 as I write this, so when so much of what you think, do, and experience that you see is normal for you turns out to be an Autistic trait, it takes a while to get used to it and thus remember that because you haven't had a label for it your whole life.)

Despite being goth/punk, I dress as comfortably as I can. Textures aren't a very big issue for me, but what feels like strangulation of my body tends to be a problem. I cannot handle having the cross seams of pants feeling like I have a chopstick slowly impaling my vulva, or I can't stand how tight some shorts are that they pinch my hip joints.

I've NEVER spent much time grooming my own hair. It's either tiring, I"m impatient and want it done NOW, or both. This is why I have a Tank Girl haircut (all buzzed except for bangs), where I can basically "wash and go." (Husband does my haircuts and dyes and he's kickass at it.)

Eccentric personality; may be reflected in appearance.

Is youthful for age, in looks, dress, behavior, and tastes.

Usually a little more expressive in the face and gesture than male counterparts.

"May not have strong sense of identity and can be very chameleon like before diagnosis." (This resonates with me in the form that I never saw myself in ANY fictional character other than Tank Girl. My husband agrees with this opinion, but he also says he also sees a lot of me in Caulifla from Dragonball Super.)

I enjoy reading and films as a retreat, often sci-fi, fantasy, children's (sometimes), can have favorites which are a refuge.

Uses control as a stress management (like routines, rules, rigid certain habits, etc.)

Usually happiest at home or in other controlled environment.

I've been seen as "sensitive" by some, and mocked for crying a lot by others.

I struggled with social aspects of college and have 2 partial degrees.

Often have trouble holding a job and finds employment very daunting.

Slow at comprehending at times due to sensory and cognitive processing issues.

DOES NOT DO WELL WITH VERBAL INSTRUCTIONS; MUST BE WRITTEN DOWN

Special interests (I'll get into these later).

Emotionally immature and emotionally sensitive.

Anxiety and fear are predominant emotions (some of which might be due to possible OCD).

I do have some sensory issues such as visual processing issues at times, certain sounds, certain smells, food I think, and issues with sunlight and my goddamn retinas.

Moody and prone to bouts of depression. Both of my parents as well as my husband have described my personality as reminding them of a cat.

Mild to severe gastro-intestinal difficulties (some of which could be due to endometriosis, btw).

I stim a little such as leg-bouncing, foot-waggling, some hand-flapping, some bouncing, the "spine-shimmy," joint-cracking, or playing with my ears.

Prone to temper or crying meltdowns, sometimes over seemingly small things due to sensory or emotional overload.

Hates injustice and hates being misunderstood, which incites anger and rage.

Prone to mutism when stressed or upset, especially after a meltdown, likely to stutter and may have a raspy voice.

Words and actions often misunderstood by others.

Perceived to be cold-natured and self-centered; unfriendly.

Very outspoken at times, may get very fired up when talking about passionate/obsessive interests.

Will shutdown in social situations once overloaded but generally better at socializing in small doses. May even give the appearance of skilled, but it is a "performance."

Doesn't go out much; will prefer to go out with partner only (aka my husband).

Will not do "girly" things like shopping.

Takes relationships seriously.

There's a bit on this chart (some of you probably already know by know what chart I'm using here) that says due to sensory issues, one would either really enjoy sex or strongly dislike it. I'm in the former camp complete with a pretty high libido.

Often prefers the company of animals.

So there are the traits that REALLY stick out like a sore thumb. These come from a site regarding female Asperger traits or however it's labeled as. I have plenty more from two other articles I printed out with lots of highlighting, but the chart actually sums a lot of the definitive shit quite nicely. At some point in this list, I could tell I went "fuck it" and copied many things word for word anyways since I'll be talking about experiences later in this post.

But it was this chart that I'd discovered that I started to realize that I really am on the spectrum, and to triple check, I asked my mom and my husband if they saw any of this in me. The traits typed in green are ones I wasn't sure of and had to ask them if they saw it. I'm not always aware of how I am, who I am at times, etc. I also didn't want to lie about it, so I had to get second and third opinions.

Despite all of this, only very few people that know me IRL know about me being Autistic. This is because I was heavily bullied growing up and since I haven't exactly left my hometown, I really don't want whoever stayed in the area as well to either have more fuel and re-enter my life that way, or try really hard to relieve their guilty conscience and demand that I forgive them or some shit. I also don't want "Autism Mommies" to come at my ass either asking that I help their kid (I'm not fond of children so that's not happening, plus ableism is what fucks a lot of Autistic people over regarding of age but they won't take that for an answer) or that because they---a neurotypical person---have a child who's Autistic, then that means they know all about it and because I'm not exactly like their child then I can't possibly be Autistic. It's just a whole mountain of shit I don't wanna get into.

This next bit will be split into 2 parts. One will be my special interests, and the other will be my experiences from my past that are prime examples of being Autistic long before anyone in the common public knew what Autism actually was.

My Special Interests (Both Forever & Temporary)

The following list will have my special interests but with indicators in parentheses as to whether they are forever-interests (as in, I never lost interest in the thing) or temporary (meaning, it was short-lived be it by weeks, months, or a few years). This will be in chronological order, meaning: the order of which these have appeared throughout my life.

Barney (temporary; helped me skip preschool and become honor roll student in kindergarten though)

Halloween (forever)

the color orange (forever)

dinosaurs (forever)

Donkey Kong Country esp. for SNES (forever)

animals (forever)

Godzilla movies (forever)

monster movies (forever)

Pokemon (temporary; I still like Pokemon, but it's not as hyperfocused as it used to be)

Digimon (temporary; same situation as with Pokemon)

Dragonball Z (forever)

Sailor Moon (on-and-off)

Ultimate Muscle (Kinnikuman Nisei) (forever)

Freddy vs Jason movie (still like, but the hyperfocus was temporary)

horror movies (forever)

Transformers (temporary)

Dark Knight movie (temporary)

Harley Quinn (temporary)

Lobo (temporary)

X-Men (forever, but only certain universes, mainly the 90s cartoon, and the character is always Hank McCoy)

neon-colored stuff (temporary; kind of some sort of semi-rave/techno phase)

books (forever; this was when I discovered it's "legal" to enjoy books if you "aren't smart"; I may explain this logic I had later in the post)

sex/sexuality/sexology (forever on the first two, temporary on the last one)

BDSM (on-and-off)

feminism (temporary in regards to doing research and educating myself; I still hold the views I've developed as a result, just not obsessively researching this topic anymore)

anarchism (forever)

ecology (forever)

Pleistocene epoch (forever)

goth and punk stuff (forever after discovering what these things are all about for real compared to when I was in high school and had no idea how to ask, who to ask, or where to look this stuff up at in rural Ohio)

Hellblazer (temporary)

Serbian heritage (on-and-off)

bats (temporary)

arachnids (forever)

teratophilia (forever; finally have a word to describe this damn kink)

gardening (current; unsure)

Russian language (current; unsure)

DIY things (forever)

Towards the end, it may not be in the proper order thanks to slowly losing my damn mind being cooped up mostly in my room on this farm since moving back here in 2014. The two that are "current;unsure" are ones I have a hyperfocus in right now, but I don't know if this will be temporary or not. I certainly hope not, especially considering how useful these things will be. And while I have gardening as one of them, I haven't properly begun yet because I get empty promises from my parents where they claim they'd help me, not to worry about it, then get irritated when I ask where the help is and they suddenly can't give me the help when I told them I needed it.

I should also note that I don't exactly have an encyclopedic knowledge in a whole lot of these interests that are forever-interests because I'm normally exhausted just trying to exist with minimal trouble from people. I'm hoping this will change. The things I know I have an almost encyclopedic knowledge in would be Dragonball Z, animals/ecology, and... a-and that's it. That's really it. That's all I've got because Dragonball Z was so profoundly different compared to other cartoons I've watched in the 90s that it was a wonderful escape, and I grew up around animals, taking care of animals, and watching nature documentaries. The stress I went through growing up has caused my memory of some of that wonderful animal knowledge to be lost and what could be re-gained may be easily forgotten again, hence why I need to narrow my focus for what I'd like to be an ecologist for. While I love paleontology, I want to help the living world's ecosystems and environments, too. I'd love to go back to school for this stuff now that I'm more informed of who I am and what I want in life (as opposed to being forced to pick a college major while still in high school while I'm just trying to survive the concept of existence).

In terms of collecting things pertaining to my interests, a common pattern you'll see me have is a very slowly growing Hank McCoy collection. This is largely because there isn't too much stuff made regarding this character. (There also isn't much stuff I can find that involves Piccolo, Cyndaquil, Donkey Kong, giant ground sloths, etc. that isn't already snatched up by other fans.)

Now, I'm going to get into the list of experiences. Some of which will talk about my special interests, but I also really want to talk about my struggles, too.

Experiences That Screamed "I'm Autistic"

In gradeschool, I was friends with someone who probably wasn't actually a friend and her mom made her hang out with me since I didn't really have any friends. She has told me several times that she didn't want to be my friend anymore with some kind of hostile catty smile, but I just.. I wasn't getting it. Because there was a smile. Why say that with a smile? After all we've been through? Then she's back to being my friend the next week. She really wanted to hang out with the popular girls (yes, there were cliques in 90s American gradeschool) and has done countless things to sabotage our friendship such as telling me Barney is a fake, Donkey Kong was a real gorilla who hung himself, etc. And I believed all this shit, too, in an attempt to still be an acceptable friend. She even told me that I couldn't be a witch because I liked toads so much (toads were the only wildlife I excitedly interacted with in my back yard on a regular basis).

I love Halloween for many reasons, but one of them (aside from my favorite color being involved) was the fact that it was acceptable to wear a mask. I love (and still do) the idea of covering my face because I feel less "naked" to the world. So this pandemic had a small plus for me in the form of mask-wearing outside of Halloween has become somewhat more acceptable.

In 5th grade, another classmate who had more obvious Autistic traits and was diagnosed with Asperger's at the time was an asshole to me. They would constantly give me shit and bully me for whatever reason. When I finally took a stand, the teachers on duty at recess called me to the bottom of the hill, forcing me to look at them WITHOUT allowing me to have my hands up to block the sunlight that hurt my eyes, and were able to manipulate me into "admitting picking on so-and-so for no reason" because I chased them around the playground where a group of girls (the same cliquey assholes the former "friend" wanted to mingle with) had to group-carry me away. They're the ones who snitched and they gave me those same hostile smiles. That's when I learned that not all smiles meant good things. I was 10.

I sometimes "lose the ability" to ask for help long before the "help" I ever got in any circumstance was just me being met with frustration by whoever is trying to "help" me or I'm met with "sorry, can't help you there. (The former being with homework or school work, the latter being with going to authorities about bullies.)

Growing up, I was never girly (or girly enough) and I've tried to, but I failed miserably. My special interests would roar through and because it was too odd or different or annoying, it gave other girls fuel for bullying me with.

Regarding the lack of being girly enough, I was at a pool party with the former "friend" mentioned earlier and she started this "game" where she and the other girls would leap into the pool saying, "I love you, Leonardo!" This was in 4th grade and in reference to the Titanic movie, which at that point, I'd never heard of, because I was too pumped for the latest Land Before Time sequel. So when I leapt into the pool, I said, "I love you, Raphael." All the girls were confused, asked who that was. I then asked, "Aren't we playing Ninja Turtles?" Because the only Leonardo I knew of was a fucking Ninja Turtle, goddamnit. Who let you brats watch that shitty romance film anyways? Boring as fuck.

Aside from the occasional weekend visits or sleepovers at the former "friend's" house, I didn't get to socialize much, so I would spend most of my days (especially in the summer) watching what was on TV or watching from our very large VHS collection. During which I would make mental notes on how certain characters acted or what they said and try to remember that to mimic them in a social setting, which would be out of place because I'd be so focused on mainly the dialogue that once it prompts me to say the thing, they don't respond how I expect them to and then I'm at a loss.

I was very ignorant of music and didn't even know the concept of independent or underground bands existed. Plus, rural Ohio is a cultural wasteland. Otherwise, I would've gotten into metal, goth, and punk way earlier in life. So I thought that bands that existed were because television said so.

Speaking of an odd logic... If it was taboo or bad to talk about, I thought it was illegal. Thus, I thought any knowledge about sex was illegal and that it was supposed to happen "naturally."

I also thought that, because I wasn't considered as smart by my peers, some teachers, and even as such in the form of an insult from my parents from time to time (despite what they claim NOW), that also meant I wasn't allowed to enjoy books, because only smart people are allowed to enjoy reading. So therefore, it would be illegal for me, a not-smart person, to enjoy reading a book. So I had to focus on the pictures because if I enjoyed reading, somehow everyone would know and then I'd get into trouble.

I also thought it was illegal to talk about periods.

I socially struggled BADLY when I got to middle school because my brain was like... 4 years behind? How the fuck do people know all these bigger words? Or complex issues? This was also when I had to start suppressing ALL urges to cry because at that age, I'm not "supposed" to cry over everything. So I still, to this day, suppress it to the point of guaranteeing inducing a headache. Because I've always caught shit for crying.

Middle school was when I met an oppressive "friend" who was obsessed with me because she had a crush on me and was rather controlling of who I could and couldn't talk to and got pissy if I got close to making a new friend. Because I was desperate for a friend that wasn't like the former "friend," I allowed this abuse into my life.

High school was me just trying to survive. By the time I got home, I was too mentally exhausted to enjoy anything short of watching TV or whatever was rented from Blockbuster.

My brain was still feeling like it was years behind, and I struggled to keep up with whatever was supposed to be something I knew about, including the concept of masturbation.

Like I said earlier, anything sex-related might've been illegal to talk about, and because masturbation was still kinda taboo, I feared I'd get in trouble, but my teenage hormones compelled me to do it a LOT. It consumed my free time almost like an escape, a form of stimming, but I was shameful of it to the point of suicidal thoughts.

The former bullet was due to being raised in a christian household. My parents didn't have such views on sex like this, but I was afraid of being in trouble for asking, took to the internet, and caught some misinfo about how immoral it was. I mourned I'd be going to hell.

Speaking of religion, I thought it was illegal to change your religious beliefs, and there was only Judiasm, Muslim, and Buddhism outside of christianity (I'm Pagan, now).

While I was excited to get away from my parents presumably for good after high school, college was a new form of hell. The sudden, dramatic change in environment and lack of ANY preparation for living like an adult on my own caused me to mentally/socially/emotionally malfunction. I had outbursts I desperately tried to suppress, I felt stupid because everybody sounded smarter than me, I didn't actually want to go to art school but wasn't smart enough for anything else and never really bothered to better my artistic skills and thus felt like I shouldn't be there anyways, I struggled to fit in better, I had no idea how to function that certain habits such as neglect of my own dishes on my desk developed because I LITERALLY COULD NOT SEE MY OWN MESSES DUE TO THE STRESS I WAS EXPERIENCING. This was 3 or 4 long YEARS of this.

Attending art classes mostly run by very demanding (and demeaning) teachers while my art skills weren't up to par added to this stress on top of me not actually wanting to be THERE in the first place, just away from my parents.

I nearly ruined a friendship with a roommate because of my struggles. I'm not even sure if she is aware of my Autism because I'm afraid to approach her about it for some reason.

Plenty of times throughout my life where I'm loud and don't even realize it.

I've info-dumped on my parents, but right now they half or completely ignore me.

I've tried making eye contact, but it's like staring in the sun not in the sense of pain, but in the sense of by natural reaction looking away. When I force myself to make eye contact, I'm spending so much focus and effort into doing that to the point where I am unable to pay attention to what the person is saying. Instead, I stare at the mouth so I make sure I hear correctly the words they're telling me.

Each time someone is mad at me and gives me the silent treatment, and I inquire what I did to piss them off, they get madder because I'm somehow supposed to immediately know when I fucking don't. Then, half the time, they continue not telling me and I have to hear it from someone else. This further confuses me as to why they don't just simply fucking tell me.

I've annoyed people to listening to the same one or few songs over and over again. A lot (currently obsessed with the Sunset Overdrive and Tank Girl movie soundtracks).

I can "smell" the heat outside on a summer day.

I can smell other people's unique scents sometimes (especially when in someone's house; also experienced this in other people's dorms).

I can't remember what grade this was, but in high school, we went to some kind of space camp facility thing, and our class was split into two groups: one group was the group who was on Mars and ready to come home, the other was on Earth and can't wait to go to Mars. I was in the former group. My job in this little fun display interactive room thing was to examine the isotopes and report... uh.. I can't remember.. Report something that was off. Everyone else was dicking around with what they're supposed to do, and I was actually doing my job, and then said something, like I was supposed to, if I found something that was off (I don't remember the specifics). When the scientist who worked at the facility praised me on "saving the crew," I caught this look from the entire class a look I can't quite describe other than they didn't seem to like the fact that I did a good thing and was being praised for it instead of any of them (or they were shocked that a "dumb girl" like me could achieve this and get praise for it, I don't know.. hard to tell). This was a science class field trip, but despite this, I didn't have an interest in space, and still didn't feel I was smart. (Come to think of it, I think this was actually an 8th grade field trip, I can't remember.)

Just discovered this today: I'm actually very easily overwhelmed that could trigger a meltdown when I wake up. I don't know for how long until that point passes, either. But this could also be explained with how I've reacted to certain alarm clocks (the ones with the bells just induce pure rage in me). Either I will be on the verge of a meltdown or I'll have a fucking headache all day. Normally, I just wanna drink my coffee and either read or practice a little on Duolingo.

I don't always have enough room for a lot of info in my head for things that I like, so I have to carefully narrow shit down. Right now, I'm trying to figure out what to do about my urge to get my hands on some monster movies while making sure nothing else I've retained info for wanes. Not sure if this is due to stress or what. But apparently I have designated compartments for certain categories in my brain. If I get into monster movies, continue to work on my knwoledge on ecology and paleontology, and gain more knowledge about arachnids, that shouldn't impede on the "language" category, so whatever I learn in Russian will remain safe.

Interest "Webs."

I have what I'd like to call an "interest web." My special interests in one thing can lead me to having an interest in another. I care about nature, and I also care about paleontology. Paleoecology is something I'd like to dip my toes into. But because this all involves nature, I have an interest in botany (though it's still intimidating so I'm sticking with local native trees) and arachnids (after conquering my fears and learning more about them). So the web stops at arachnids there (no pun intended).

Back to ecology and paleoecology...

I have a major interest in the Pleistocene because it was just before we humans started writing shit down. Hints of that era echoes within our current environment, from the pronghorn being "unnecessarily" fast (due to miracynonyx, the "American cheetah," which is now an extinct cat) to avocados not seeding like they should without human assistance as well as the yucca trees (Joshua trees) going into retreat thanks to the absence of giant ground sloths.

But the planet is warming, and we could use all the help from plants that we get, especially when it comes to making sure that permafrost stays frozen. So there's this "Pleistocene Park" project taking place in Russia, and one day, if I get into the field of paleontology, I may want to chat with those involved in that project, but one can't expect every other country to know English.

There's also FROZEN PLEISTOCENE MEGAFAUNA CARCASSES BEING FOUND IN PERMAFROST, too.

On top of all of this, Russia's northern lands will become habitable for humans if shit hits the fan and the planet's mostly fucked, so it's still nice to know the language.

See how all of these interests intertwine? (It also helps that since I am of Serbian heritage but can't find accessible resources to learn the language and I wanna know a Slavic language that Russian is kind of accessible. It also seems to be the only Slavic language "commonly" found in colleges when it comes to foreign language courses.) This is why I call them "interest webs." Not sure if other Autistic people have them, but it's something that I have.

The second one could simply involve Halloween, punk, goth, monsters, and teratophilia with Halloween being the gateway because my favorite color is orange.

Just thought this would be a fun thing to touch on real quick.

My Sensory Traits

I do experience some sensory traits, but they're not intense like some people would assume (unless I'm simply not noticing how intense they can be).

I can "smell" the summer heat, which was something I thought everybody else experienced but I'm wrong.

My retinas hurt in bright sunlight despite not looking anywhere near the sun, which I also thought everybody else experienced.

Drinks taste different or off in some way if they're not in a particular mug, glass, etc. that the drink is supposed to be in. (I have certain mugs that I enjoy my coffee in, but the other mugs? They taste off. I can't explain why. I have ONLY TWO acceptable little tumbler glasses for orange juice.)

Breakfast food does not taste like breakfast food unless it's on this one specific plate from my childhood.

Dinner can be iffy on certain plates, but the safest go-to is the knock-off blue willow plates.

Lunch is acceptable on anything, but if I'm having simply a sandwich, it must be on a small plate.

I have specific forks I'd prefer to use because of how they feel in my hand, how the food-part feels in my mouth, and how the fork itself tastes.

Gotta have cinnamon in my coffee. I just do. It's not coffee without it.

I cannot fucking handle hair snippets of any size for any reason on my body. This is why there is a rigid procedure to where my husband must buzz my hair over a paper-towel-covered sink (to avoid clogging the drain) while wearing a particular tanktop Harley Quinn night shirt, and then I must shower immediately afterwards. During the haircut, my skin itches like mad like I'm being poked by the hairs directly even in places where hair snippets have never, ever gone.

I'm overly sensitive to the cold to the point of pain, especially in my fingers and toes.

Also cannot brush teeth with cold water because it's so painful (this was LONG before I had dental issues and persists to this day). Even my tongue hurts from it.

I'm picky as fuck with candy. Trick-or-treating was sometimes difficult because all I cared about was either orange-flavored stuff, or chocolate. Only specific chocolates, too (Krackle, Mr. Goodbar, Crunch, Butterfinger, Reese's, that was it.) Skittles were okay, but a lot of the baggies I got had a LOT the red ones and the red ones suck. Can't stand the other candies. (But my tastes have changed since then, and I opt for European chocolate from Aldi's as they are far superior, especially Moser Roth's 70% dark chocolate and Choceur's coffee and cream chocolate.)

Speaking of candy, the Whopper's Robin's Eggs tasted better than regular Whoppers and I will never be able to explain why.

Despite loving orange flavored stuff, I have trust issues when I see an unlabeled orange candy because there's the dangerous chance it could be fucking peach flavored. *gag* (I like real peaches, but the artificial flavored ones suck balls.) Due to my dental situation, I cannot enjoy very much in a way of candy, and the only artificial orange flavoring I CAN enjoy is through Vitamin D gummies... And even then, EVEN THEN I have to worry about the fucking peach flavors if I have to go with a different brand because we can't get our hands on a bottle from Simple Truth.

Artificial cherry flavoring is death.

The ONLY flavored medicine that was acceptable to me was orange (of course) and those dissolving strips that were grape-flavored that they don't fucking make anymore because fuck me that's why. Everything else was peer-pressured to do shots kiddie edition.

The different colored coatings on M&M's taste different from one another and I cannot explain why. It's very subtle, hardly noticeable, BUT I CAN TELL.

Peanutbutter is fucking amazing.

The smell of peanutbutter is fucking not.

There are these frozen meals my husband gets for days he doesn't have energy to cook and one of them (all from the same brand) smells like fucking hell.

My husband's Nissan Cup Noodle ramen overpowers my incense despite what other household members say.

I love incense, especially dragonsblood, "coffee time," pumpkin spice, raven, and rain.

All of the autumn scents or scents associated with autumn are orgasmic to me.

The smell of artificial cherry is death.

I would love to have perfume or body spray of Play-Doh.

I can compare smells of some places to others, such as the library branch I frequent smells like my gradeschool, as do SOME of their books' pages, and when my husband and I walked through this hall-like tunnel-like storefront in downtown Pittsburgh, I said it smelled like my grandma's basement, and he thought the same, so we're in aggreeance that all grandma's basements smell the same. Except for my Baba and Deda's. Their basement smelled like they actually still enjoy life and had their shit together.

Speaking of gradeschool smells, my gradeschool had two directions of classrooms, one led towards the gym, but the hall off to the side was carpeted, had some nice colors, and held 2 kindergarten classes and 2 first grade classes. That section of the building had its distinctive smells. The other direction led to the office, the cafeteria, and the hall with the 2 classes of grades 2 through 5 plus the preschool and the art/music class was. The smell was different in all classes EXCEPT for the music/art class, and I never went to preschool so I wouldn't know what that smells like.

ALL PRINCIPLE OFFICES SMELL THE SAME. HOW.

I could smell when my husband accidentally put in cinnamon when he thought he grabbed paprika in a dish that I liked. He was terrified of telling me. That was a happy accident and it became a permanent ingredient. He was mortified and shocked that I could smell his whoopsie in my dinner he made me.

I can also smell the cinnamon they use in Little Caeser's pizza crust. Yes. They use cinnamon. But I was the only one to notice.

Honey is like peanutbutter: it tastes amazing. But holy shit fuck that smell.

Gas stations smell like death, sadness, and questioning life's choices.

No two people's car interiors smell alike.

I can smell when it will rain soon, especially if it's about to storm.

I'm the one who noticed that hairy white oldfield asters smell like cake batter.

Dominant yellow filling my entire vision can be sometimes painful.

I used to be able to "hear" the color yellow in my head so much I thought yellow actually made a noise. It was a particular shade of yellow, and it made this Playskool toy-like clicking bell ringing noise, but really obnoxiously, almost painfully. I don't know how to describe the shade other than "cloudy pastel lemon?" It looked like the fucking lemon-flavored medicine I had to take as a kid.

My parents tried mixing in this cherry flavored death medicine in with my orange soda thinking I wouldn't know the difference but I did, so I dumped it down the drain and opened a new can because that can of Big K orange was fucking ruined.

Orange is wonderful to my eyes. But it's a hard color for me to find when it comes to getting things in a particular color. My back-up colors are red, green, and purple.

The sunlight hurts my retinas, even when I'm not looking at the sky at all, but the pain intensity increases the further I look up on a sunny summer day. This has been like this since childhood. Prescriptive sunglasses shouldn't be fucking expensive and should be covered by healthcare insurance.

I have to try really FUCKING hard not to stare at someone's muscles in person because ugh... Good thing I rarely see anybody who's well-built. (No really, this isn't even really a sexual thing, I'm so fucking fascinated and once I realize "oh, so that particular muscle looks like that from that angle", I get a glimmer of hope that I MIGHT be able to draw something humanoid since I suck at drawing people.)

Orange trees as so pleasing to the eye, and these are much more socially acceptable to stare at, lest I'm in person and the property owner might think I'm plotting to steal some (luckily I've never been anywhere near a place that grows orange trees).

Neon lights are amazing and I want them to come the fuck back. I swear, stores were so much more enjoyable of an environment when they were common. Such lights improve my mood in a way I cannot describe. I'm no longer in a hurry to get home if I am in the presence of neon lights.

Sunny days during winter are painful because the sunlight reflects off the snow. I'm painfully blinded if I look outside or go anywhere.

I cannot handle the sight of someone having boogers/snot hanging from their nose, not the sight of someone vomiting, nor the sight of an syringe needle piercing flesh.

I cannot handle the sound of alarm clock bells. I have woken up in a rage and been in a bad mood I try so hard to suppress for a good portion of the day. If I hear an alarm clock bell now these days, I wanna take it and chuck it across the room regardless the time of day or if I'm already awake. It's not so bad if I hear it from a video. In person? That's starting a war with me.

Children crying or screaming (especially babies) are almost painful to me and triggers my fight-or-flight response.

The reason why I was the loudest mellophone player in marching band was to drown out hearing the fucking trumpets. And I did; I was louder than the trumpets. (I quit marching band my sophomore year but for different reasons.)

Much of the music from the 80s that gave it that sound that definitely said it's from the 80s is very pleasing to my ears.

I love punk music for its messages, lyrics, and energy, but goth always puts me into a headspace where I feel like I'm at home; I'm at peace and want to cuddle the monster under my bed.

However, some punk songs can hit deep or strong and live rent-free in my head, such as Anti-Flag's "Racist," Bikini Kill's "Rebel Girl," and Skarpretter's "Nazi Scum."

One particular artist's voice I cannot get over because his is the first voice of any kind that makes me wanna fan myself is Peter Steele of Type O Negative. My favorite song, however, is "All Hallow's Eve" because his voice, the subject, and the lyrical content.

I'm able to hear something off in the oscillating fan my husband likes to use before he notices it.

I'm the one who can hear coyotes at night (doesn't help my mom wants to blast westerns to drown out the world and I'm back here in my room away from that shit though).

I can hear the branches scraping against the house, gently making creepy noises before I realize what the fuck it is, BUT NOBODY ELSE HEARS IT.

I can recognize the call of a robin because we had so many at the house I grew up in, and nobody else in this family fucking noticed.

I tend to notice the sound of the rain over all the house noise first.

I don't like tight clothing, which is why I prefer bralettes because my tits hurt.

If I could, I'd go without the bra because the band can sometimes suddenly feel tighter than it actually is, but because I have large nipples, I kinda need that bra for a bit of protection.

Shorts can be tight around the crotch, hip joins, and lower belly region, and that's a big no-no for me.

I'd prefer baggy pants, honestly.

Can't have tight footwear. No.

The seam at the top of socks or tights hurt my pinky toes if the whole sock/tights shift that way.

I already covered the hair snippet thing so since this is the sense of touch, another body hair thing is I kinda don't wanna shave my pits anymore because they are extremely itchy when they grow back. HAVE to shave my crotch because if I don't it gets horribly itchy, and my thick, fast-growing hair weaves into underwear, gets caught in pads, etc.

Ah yes. Pads. I hate them, but they're far more acceptable than a tampon or a cup because I have vaginismus.

Certain fabric textures are itchy as hell. There's a black shirt I have whose collar and cuffs are gorgeous but I have to wear something underneath to avoid feeling itchy.

Winter is hell for me here in the midwest, as I am very susceptible to the cold to the point of pain, especially in my fingers and toes. I become very slow, too. I feel like I can't get warm enough most of the time.

Air conditioned places in the summer feel almost similar, so I don't always wear shorts if I'm expected to go into, say, a Walmart with my husband to pick up everything. I'll shiver.

(We're gonna get into TMI territory here.) Can't masturbate by hand unless I've got a nitrile glove on because my brain only focuses on what my fingers are touching more than what my cunt feels.

Can't have any sex with my husband without anything brighter than low-light because things can be visually distracting in the room, or lights can suddenly feel way too bright to me. (Halloween string lights or those LED rope lights with adjustable brightness features and colors are excellent for this situation.)

In Conclusion

This is all that I've figured out so far. None of this hit me at once as a realization when I figured out that I'm Autistic. This took a while to realize it, and the realizations were mostly at random times through examples of other people experiencing it on the internet or through me going, "Huh, is that an Autistic trait?"

There may be even more that I'm currently unaware of or have forgotten to type here.

I apologize for how extremely lengthy this was. This took all day to type because of having to get up and do other things that needed to be done. One of the reasons why I really wanted to type this is because it's much easier to organize this on a computer, and I am absolutely shit at organizing files on my computer.

Unfortunately, while my husband is wonderful in supporting me, my parents aren't exactly all that great at it. Especially my dad, who is either vaguely dismissive or outright "forgets" that I'm Autistic (he honestly just... doesn't care, and tries to make things convenient for him at the expense of others most of the time). My mom... I'm not real sure. There are times where she seems to remember and others where she doesn't. I'm honestly wondering if they don't like knowing that I'm Autistic because that means my brother would have been as his traits were far more obvious than mine.

I hope that whoever is questioning whether or not they're Autistic has found this helpful at least in the sense that it would point you in the right direction on where to go next, but I would highly recommend checking out online Autistic communities, as that's where I've discovered that I'm on the spectrum.

[springsaladgaming]

Follower Milestone

Hey there, all! I recently passed 400 followers, so I thought it would be nice to gift you all some writing!

I had a particular short story that I wanted to gift when we got here, but I’m not entirely happy with it and want to rewrite it.

So, instead, I thought it would be fun to share the predecessor of Ninelives. For those of you who don’t already know, Ninelives was adapted from a short story that I wrote a decade ago for university. It is about a young man who is struggling with depression and, in a failed suicide attempt, learns a small thing about his parents that could potentially evolve into something explosive.

When I started writing this short story, I realized that I wanted to turn it into a novella. The main character would have met someone with a very Carpe Diem attitude and made the shift into a healthier headspace while dealing with his family problems. The overarching theme of the story was the way that little secrets add up. It was always my plan to go back to it once I was done with school, but then real life happened a little too hard (shitty job, pretty severe depression, and some family issues). I never touched it again.

My memory is pretty famously bad about certain things (due to I think ADHD and anxiety). But, of all the short stories that I wrote at uni, I remembered this one like the back of my hand. When I started writing Ninelives, I technically still didn’t touch the old story. I didn’t need to look back at it to remember the overall narrative. I just went at it. And then, a couple of weeks ago, I found the old external drive that I used to store all of my work on and dug up this short story once again.

I think you’ll find the similarities between this short story and Chapter 1 of Ninelives pretty quickly. Dad is kind of an asshole, Mom is pretty dismissive of the main character, and the brother seems to be the only one who cares. Ninelives is also carrying on the theme of secrets in a way. I was actually a little surprised by how similar the two still are, even though they are now different works with a decade of time between them.

This short story is a decade old, thus it hasn’t been edited or revised in the same amount of time, so read it with that in mind. Also, just to be on the safe side...

CONTENT WARNINGS: discussion of suicide, drug abuse/overdose, cigarette use, verbal abuse

And now, without further ado...

Jamie’s ass was beginning to stick to the porcelain tub, and it was getting to him.  As if that weren’t enough, the paper sign taped over his crotch created a pocket of hot air that made his dick stick to his leg. The sign read HOW’S THIS FOR AN EXIT, but Jamie wasn’t going anywhere, and that’s what bothered him most of all.  He’d downed his father’s bottle of blood pressure meds, but nothing was happening.  At least, nothing seemed to be happening, except that Jamie was now hot and sweaty.  He had no idea what ODing on blood pressure meds did, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t this.  He was even more sure that he wasn’t dying.

This would go down in history as the most anticlimactic suicide ever.

Ten minutes.  Twenty minutes.  Thirty.  An hour.  Jamie felt some discomfort—a little sick to his stomach, the porcelain pressing against his boney ass—that was it.  Now he was bored and naked, and someone would probably come looking for him soon.  Probably.

His brother, Graham, was the one who called up to him.  “Hey, Jammy,” he said.  “Dinner’s ready. Get down here.”

Jamie spent a good five minutes after that staring at the ceiling, which was covered in a layer of grime from years of shower steam.  Either that or the years during Jamie’s childhood when he’d come in here to smoke.  His parents had never looked for him here.  That hadn’t changed now that it was the spare bathroom instead of Graham and Jamie’s.

But Graham knew Jamie’s hiding spots and came looking for him.  Jamie heard Graham call for him in the hall for a few minutes, maybe less.  Then Graham knocked on the door.  “Jammers, dinner.  What are you doing in there?”

Jamie hadn’t locked the door.  That would have been too dramatic.  Now it was a mistake, and Graham walked in just as Jamie got out of the tub and crumpled up his suicide note.  The family always seemed to be catching Jamie with his pants down, just never quite so literally.

Graham didn’t seem surprised or the least bit embarrassed.  Jamie felt one of the two emotions, though he wasn’t sure which, and it wasn’t so much over his nakedness as it was the other circumstances.  Graham crossed his arms and said, “Taking a bath?”  He raised an eyebrow and cleared his throat.

“No, I wasn’t jacking off,” Jamie said.  “Just being here makes me limp.”  The fact that Jamie hated coming home wasn’t news to Graham.  Jamie thought that would be enough to end the conversation, but Graham’s eyes flashed to something behind him, and Jamie remembered he’d left the empty prescription bottle on the side of the tub.

“What were you doing, Jamie?” Graham asked.

Jamie grabbed the bottle and tossed it in the garbage along with his suicide note—or maybe it was better to call it his ex-suicide note.  It would be the only ex he’d ever had.  He grabbed a towel from the wall to cover himself and said, “Remind me to tell Dad that Mom’s been giving him placebos.”

“Jamie—”

“Gonna let me get dressed for dinner or what?” Jamie said.

Graham let Jamie pass but followed him down the hall to his old room.  Jamie packed clothes in his backpack instead of leaving some here like Graham did.  It took him a few seconds to get the shirt he was looking for.  He could feel Graham’s eyes on him.  He gave up on pulling out his nice pants and put on the jeans he’d worn earlier that day.  Graham was getting suspicious, Jamie knew.  But it didn’t matter why he was staring; it made Jamie self-conscious of just about everything under the sun.  He fumbled with the button on his pants for a good few minutes—almost broke the thing off—before he got it.  When he turned back to the door, Graham was still staring.

They made eye contact and Graham asked again.  “What were you doing?”

“Nothing,” Jamie said.  He tried to make his way downstairs, but Graham was blocking the door.  This time, he didn’t move.

“Jamie, you’re scaring me,” Graham said.

“Would it make you feel better if I said I knew they were placebos?”

“Did you?”

Jamie pushed his way past Graham.  Graham grabbed Jamie for a second and then let go, as if unsure what he was supposed to do once he had him.  Jamie didn’t have the answers either, wasn’t sure what he’d do if he their positions were reversed.  They would never be reversed, though.  Graham’s life was perfect; suicide wasn’t even an option for him.  He had no idea what it was like.  Maybe that’s why he was silent now.

Once they were seated around the dinner table, it was almost as if it never happened.  Their parents went on about their usual praise of Graham’s life, but not before ragging on Jamie about his.  “Dinner has been at seven sharp every Saturday for the last fifteen years,” Margery said.  “I don’t know why you can’t get that through your head.”

Jamie knew that.  That’s why he’d chosen the time he did.  “I lost track of time,” Jamie said.  He didn’t say more; they were going to tear him apart either way.

“It’s those work hours of his,” Hugh said.  “He has a different schedule every week.  If you’d get a real job, you wouldn’t have that problem.” Hugh didn’t look up from his plate as he cut his meat.  He always ate the meat first, but not before cutting it into perfect little cubes.

I have a real job, Jamie might’ve said, but they’d had this conversation before.  Hugh meant a salary job.  Flipping burgers didn’t count unless Jamie was making more than twenty an hour.

“Speaking of work,” Margery said, “How did your last settlement go, Graham?” Margery went for her veggies first.  She didn’t eat meat and only let Hugh at dinner, though Jamie suspected he snuck it during his lunch.

“It went well,” Graham said.  He’d barely touched his food, but Hugh looked up from his plate at that moment, and Graham dug in.

“You’re not usually so tight-lipped,” Hugh said.

Graham kept his eyes on his plate.  “It’s pretty easy to reach a settlement when the couple agrees on it before they even come to see me,” he said.

Graham was a divorce lawyer, carrying on the family tradition.  Sort of.  Their grandfather had been a judge and a prosecutor before that.  Hugh was also a prosecutor.  Graham’s decision to become a divorce lawyer had been met with a little resistance, but Hugh readily accepted it once Graham proved it made a lot of money.  Everyone’s getting divorced these days, Graham had said.  I’ll never be out of the job.

“That’s how prevalent your brother is, Jamie,” Hugh said.  “Divorcees go to see him even when they don’t need his help.”

Jamie kept his face in his plate and poked at his food with his fork.  What Hugh really meant was, “Why can’t you be successful like your brother?”  It was the same game every Saturday; that’s why Jamie hated coming here.  But it meant a free meal, even if Jamie had usually lost his appetite by the time he got it.  Besides, if he didn’t come, that would be just one more disappointment.

“Jamie will figure it out,” Graham said.  This was his way of taking Jamie’s side.  Usually.

“As soon as he figures how to pay his rent on time,” Hugh said.

Will you please stop talking about me like I’m not here, Jamie wanted to say.

“You’ve paid this month’s rent, I hope,” Hugh said.

“I paid it last month,” Jamie said.  He’d borrowed some money from Graham to do so with the promise of paying it back once he found a new roommate.  The last one packed up and left without a word.  Jamie's parents didn't know about the money, and he wasn't about to tell them now.

“You need to learn how to get ahead in all areas of your life, not just your bills,” Hugh said.

“Jamie,” Margery said, “get your chin off the table.”

Jamie felt like he was eleven again.

Jamie went outside for a smoke when dinner was over.  He didn’t smoke anymore, but he kept reserves for these occasions.  Few Saturdays passed without a cigarette.  He usually kept with the old ritual, smoked on the edge of the tub with the bathroom door closed and the window open.  After today, he avoided that bathroom., and not only because it embarrassed him.  Graham was like a hawk for the rest of the night.  He didn’t take his eyes off Jamie, even when they were cleaning the dishes.  He’d gone so far as to clean all the knives himself.  Jamie couldn’t lay a hand on them.

Graham was outside with Jamie, too, hovering over his shoulder like Hugh used to do when Jamie was a child.  “You still smoke,” Graham said.

“Only after I’m well-cooked by the parents,” Jamie said.

“Smoking will kill you, you know,” Graham said.  He shifted his stance.  “Why not just smoke two packs a day?”

“Because so far the only life goal I’ve met is not getting cancer.”

“We’re switching rooms tonight.”

“Why?”

Graham took Jamie’s cigarette and tossed it into the gravel.  “My room doesn’t have a lock,” Graham said.

“Oh, please,” Jamie said.  “I didn’t lock the bathroom door, did I?”

“Thank god for that.”

“What does it matter?” Jamie said.  “Dad will kill me when he finds that bottle in the trash anyway.”

“Let’s go inside,” Graham said.

“I didn’t get to finish my cigarette.”

“Inside, now,” Graham said.

Jamie didn’t have time to move before Graham corralled him inside with a hand on his shoulder.  When they came in, Margery was on the landing and Hugh was shouting at her from their bedroom.  To Margery, Jamie and Graham must have looked like two brothers who’d just shared a special moment.  It was some kind of special moment, but she didn’t pick up on the animosity and smiled down at them.

“What’s Dad shouting about?” Graham asked.

“He can’t find his medication,” Margery said.  “I’m sure he just misplaced it.  Wouldn’t be the first time.  I assume you two are leaving early tomorrow?”

Graham nodded.  “Actually, I’ve been talking to Jamie about moving in with him.”

“Oh?” Margery said.

Jamie echoed the oh so immediately that they almost said it at the same time.

“Yes,” Graham said.  His fingers dug in to Jamie’s shoulder.  “At least until he can find a new roommate.”

Margery smiled.  “Maybe you can help him get his life on track,” she said.

“Something like that,” Graham said, and he shook Jamie’s shoulder.

Graham was true to his word and made Jamie take his room.  He opened the doors wide and, instead of going to bed himself, sat and watched Jamie from across the hall.

“You have to drive in the morning,” Jamie said.

“You’ll drive,” Graham said.

“Not afraid I’ll crash the car?”

“No,” Graham said, “because then it would be a murder-suicide.”

“You’re not moving in with me,” Jamie said.

“Either I move in with you or I check you into a psyche ward on suicide watch.”

“The apartment is small.”

“Jamie, I lived in a smaller apartment through eight years of college,” Graham said.  “I’ll manage.”

“You’re really going to watch me sleep?” Jamie asked.

“Get used to it,” Graham said.  “From now on, I’ll have to watch you do a lot of things.”

In the morning, Graham was still watching.  The two of them drove back to Denver in Graham’s SUV, and Graham started moving some of his things into Jamie’s apartment later that day.

[kjsadd]

Executive function is prefrontal cortex (PFC): a butler keeping you organized. Remembers / plans / gets you to act.

ADHD meds are a temp butler who goes home at the end of the day (when meds wear off)

Lambic system is your angry neighbor.

People with ADHD rely on emotions to remember / plan / act, instead of executive function. (That’s why Tracy O has to get into her body to remember things.) We get judged for using emotional systems to govern ourselves.

Feelings provide fuel for motivation.

Pet peeve: starting with executive function when working with adhd.

Transitions are hard for everyone with adhd. Transitions are everything in life! We need emotions for that push. Instead of a transition strategy, you have to ask, “what emotions do you have around the transition?” Deal with the emotion: then deal with the strategy. See the emotions and accept that they’re there. “I’m angry I have to clean the garage, but I can still make a plan.” Shift it out of the limbic system into “a place right behind the prefrontal cortex,” in charge of imagination and reflective thinking, where we’re good at thinking; then we can plan.

We use big emotions to lead and guide us through the world. “We’re using the angry neighbor, and that’s how we get things done.”

“I will wait until the intensity of emotion is X level, then I’ll do the thing.” The intensity of the emotion is exhausting to us, and we can’t think practically.

Our brains register things as threats all the time.

Our empathy is either a 1 or a 10.

Divergent thinking - one idea into 5mil possibilities.

Convergent thinking - sequential / linear

Divergent is foot on gas. Convergent is foot on brake. We love the gas pedal, or we try to do both at once. Have to move deliberately from divergent to convergent. “Are you in divergent, or convergent? Which would serve you best?”

Default mode network (DMN), where your imagination lives. Monster spray. “If I put those visual things in my head, it would live there and haunt me forever.” Divergent thinking combines with anxiety.

All people with adhd use anxiety, except people with low tolerance — they look lethargic, their eyelids droop. Breaker switch whenever any anxiety, child rejects it. “I can’t turn on my brain this way.” Shut down and dislocate. Take themselves out of reality and any exposure to anxiety. 34:35-38:45.

The vast majority of us know anxiety, because we use it like fuel.

What’s your personality and what’s your adhd, and where do they overlap / beat you up.

Emotional health ladder. Self awareness = PFC and a little DMN. “Areas we don’t have great access to.”

“Where am I on the ladder? How can I get back up?how can I move up just one rung?” Get curious. Straighten back, breathe, smile at someone.

“Doesn’t it just feel good? I hate you, I hate you… but that’s not who I want to be as a human.” Own it: “I’m sitting in the dentist office hating people, what’s that about?”

“Are you willing to try to fix this?” Monster spray. “It worked because I didn’t shut down r he child’s divergent thinking.” It’s a real fear that you’re going to lose your husband. “But it does mean you really love him. Are you expressing that?” Then there’s something you can do about it. Talk about it, solution, act on it. We’re stuck in divergent thinking. DFM vs task-positive network. Give power to do something about it. Use imagination to solve problem. “Now she has a job to do, now she can take leadership.” Let the child problem solve, put the child in front of it. My brain’s picking up a difference. To deal with disastrous imagination: create a plan. “If something were to happen, I’d move to an elephant refuge… This is how our adhd brains deal with it.”

Using humor: moving from limbic to DMN. And laughter spikes dopamine and other good-feeling chemicals.

“You’re so intense and type a—yeah, if you knew the drunken goat rodeo going on in my head…”

ADHD hack: imagine different parts of your brain having a conversation. Monkeys, characters… have a sense of humor.

[antiterf]

Do you have tips on learning about your own medications?

Name and dosage are the most important parts so when you get the prescription from the pharmacy or get prescribed it, you should remember the dose (20 mg for example) the brand name (Ritalin) and the, I don't know, actual name (Methylphenidate).

Usually the dosage will be on your prescription along with one of the names (I always get off brand so my adderall is "amphetamine salts" but I'm not sure for brand name). You can also probably call or email for your doctor to ask for the name and dosage.

For inhalers and pre filled syringes I don't have experience so I wouldn't know. What you should do for syringes in general is know how far into the skin it should be going (for instance is it muscle or subcutaneous, this can be somewhat determined how you're supposed to angle the needle) which will effect the diameter of the actual needle (gauge size). Then there's the volume of how much the syringe can hold (3 ml for example) and lastly there's needle length. My main issue is always the volume or how much the syringe can hold since I need the smallest type and no bigger (1 ml) with gauge and length not being as much of an issue. But if you have an injection that's in the muscle then the gauge and length should be something to look out for.

With insulin I think the same advice would apply only instead of ml it's units.

Then depending on the laws in your area, there's controlled substances. These usually aren't things like anti depressants but stimulants for ADHD, take as needed anxiety meds, and testosterone (along with other steriods) would be. The main difference for me in IL is that they are not automatically refilled and you have to call the pharmacy itself, to transfer them to another pharmacy I need to call the doctor, and I can only pick up my adderall about a day before it runs out (often leading to withdrawal for various reasons). Controlled substances in the U.S. are under a ranking and Adderall is one of the most controlled at schedule 2, schedule 1 being shit like cocaine. While Ketamine is schedule 3. Some lower tier controlled substances may be easier to get but I'm not sure. Oh, and they will not make an exception to fill the controlled substance if something happens. Lost, damaged, stolen, doesn't matter that's your problem.

So as a college student with adderall and a roommate I get a safe for that.

With that said I learned all of this stuff as I realized that it was useful but otherwise I'd say find one place to write down your meds and dosages.

[myautisticpov]

Time for Round... You Know, I Forget of The Saga of the Woman Who Works at my Local Pharmacy Being the Worst

And by “the worst”, I mean she yelled at me over the phone for, like, twenty minutes, telling me that there was no way that I was disabled enough to need my meds delivered because I’m “only twenty-five”.

And apparently she’s also yelled at my grandma over the phone when she’s tried to get her prescriptions (she lives down the road from me).

Anyway, a brief recap for people who are new to the saga: I’ve got a chronic pain thing that doctors are still trying to pin down (COVID cancelling appointments did not help) and my housemate has several chronic health conditions, so neither of us are in the “eh, probably be fine” zone for getting COVID.

And no one is wearing masks in any of my local businesses, and none of the businesses are enforcing them.

And we don’t have a car to go elsewhere.

Now you might be like “but Lucy, it’s a pharmacy, surely they’re enforcing mask wearing.”

To which I say, a) The woman yelled at both me and my grandma on two separate occassions, I don’t think they’re all that professionally run

and b) when I have managed to get deliveries, the delivery driver has neither worn a mask, nor kept socially distant.

So at this point, you, dear reader, might be thinking “okay, but it’s one trip to the pharmacy once a month. You probably won’t get COVID.”

Which is the point at which we have to remember that I both have autism and a severe anxiety disorder.

I have tried going into local shops once or twice over the past few months - which is how I know no one’s wearing masks - and having to pay attention to keeping socially distant has changed the shop-going experience enough for me to get pretty fucking severe panic attacks, and then meltdowns.

We’re talking the kind that ruin you for the next couple of days.

They also completely rob me of speech, which is manageable when I’m at my local corner shop and they know that I’m like this, so I can nod and shake my head and be fine, but I don’t think the same applies to getting controlled medication.

(Or any medication, pharmacy runs in my experience are some of the most talk-intensive things possible.)

Anyway, pre-the-yelling, I might have been all right. But I, like a fool, rang up and asked if I could get my meds delivered because of my disabilities (and because they had agreed to do it the last time I’d asked).

And got yelled at for twenty minutes because I “can’t be that disabled at twenty-five” and still burst out in tears thinking about it.

And it’s a tiny pharmacy, so if I go in-person, it will likely be the woman who yelled at me serving me. And I know that it wasn’t just one bad day because she’s done this to both my housemate and grandma before.

Anyway, my solution was to just use one of the online delivery services, even though they can’t guarantee delivery without breaks in my medication, because a day or two off my ADHD meds seemed more tolerable than the yelling, and I don’t take my afternoon dose if I’m going to drink, so I do sometimes have enough to see me through those days.

Except the new lockdown restrictions mean that they probably can’t deliver my medication because it’s a controlled substance and they’re struggling to make contactless delivery work for controlled substances.

Which catches us up to now, when there isn’t another pharmacy within reasonable walking distance, I don’t have a car to go elsewhere, and none of the taxi drivers and only some of the uber drivers local to me are wearing masks.

Anyway, guess who has done no work at all since realising that she’s going to have to go to the pharmacy in person to, ironically, get the medication she needs to do work?

If you’re like “Is it you? Are you in an anxiety spiral?” you would be correct and you get a cookie.

[benign-extrem-ist-content]

I have a rant.

TW: Bullying and mental abuse.

Bullying in schools.

So most know that schools, both public and private tend to ignore obvious bullying until the bullied kid stands up and defends themselves. But having been a bullied kid all through middle and high school, I've learned since then that bullying should be relabeled for what it really is. Abuse. As you read this I'm going to say abuse instead of bullying most of the time.

Schools have no benefit to stopping the abuse. Some schools and teachers themselves have a future advantage to ensure that abused kids stay abused by their classmates and even by staff.

*Tinfoil hat time*

I learned after I left that a teacher who was one of my mental abusers had been doing the same type of abuse to all the "lazy" kids in her classes. I had numerous other students say they had the same issues as a 20 something that I did.

Her husband was a pharmaceutical rep. She had a vested interest in getting more and more of her students to be put on meds for anxiety and depression because it made her and her husband richer.

They didn't have kids of their own but adopted an older teenager who was one of the adults I talked to at length about this subject.

Many teachers have investments that are pharmaceutical companies or family members on the boards or whatever. More fucked up kids mentally, more money for the school and the staff.

Bullied kids learn how to be abused in schools and the cycle often continues after school. Bullied kids go on to have shitty relationship after shitty relationship and their abusers have ready made victims because every time a Bullied (abused) kid grows up to be an adult with anxiety and depression caused by constant ridicule, constant negative mental stress, and gaslighting.

I'm about as far from a modern feminist as one can get but the abuse patterns you see in battered women starts at home (sometimes), continues through school and ends with the battered spouse so scared of speaking up because all through school they were instilled with the belief that everything they know happened wasn't real, they were making it up.

I've been that abused kid turned abused adult turned educated adult who has been through so much therapy to get to this point.

My family life was wonderful, I sincerely mean that. But bullying started in 3rd grade.

"You must've done something really bad at your old school to come here." I lived in a town 26 miles from the town I went to school in. This was a matter of convenience for my family. I can explain more I'd desired.

"You're fat, stupid, pathetic, lazy, ugly, you don't dress well. If you were more active you wouldn't be a weak pathetic klutz."

This is the nice list of things I was called by students and teachers. In 3rd grade it was, "she doesn't bathe because she smells funny." No, I bathed nightly. Turns out I had a medical issue. Due to the issue I developed an odor because my body was weird. The smell was because my body wasn't getting rid of bile it produced because there was a gall stone the size of a grapefruit blocking the main hepatic duct. I had gall stones in 3rd grade. I had surgery, all my bullies sent cards to the hospital. The bullying didn't stop it changed to "freak, Weirdo, lazy, medical experiment."

I despised phys Ed. I could never catch my breath. I was fat, lazy and ugly so they said. I had repeated sprained ankles. I learned after school that I had asthma and hyper mobility. I had 1 ankle injury after high school, I broke it when a stone step broke as I stepped on it. It was 15 years after school.

Every time I complained about the abuse in school I was given the bullshit line of, "If they bully you they like you." STOP TELLING KIDS THIS. They're abusive and in a lot of cases they're narcissists and or sociopaths who don't like you or anyone they get off on abuse. It's abusive not flirting.

My ex husband cheated on me 3 months after the wedding and claimed I told him it was okay. I never said that, but gaslighting was real. I spent 10 abusive years with him until I left. My entire family except my parents sided with him. I wasn't allowed to leave the house without permission for 2 years. He was manipulative, controlling and he cheated on me 17 times and blamed me each time. Saying I told him to. He gambled away his income for 6 years. I had to get welfare for 3 months because I physically couldn't work due to an injury. When I left he claimed he was abused by me. Eventually my family saw him for what he was. They apologized to me.

But the cycle of being abused started in school by other students and some teachers. And now 26 years later I'm a mentally ill wreck. Anxiety, depression, ADHD and self esteem in the toilet.

I stood up after my old phys Ed teacher retired and I saw her in 2006 she tried bullying me in a public setting about my weight. I stood up for myself and she hated it and tried to say I was cruel and rude to her. I was coming off major knee reconstruction, I'd been bed ridden for 6 months. She tried gaslighting me about the abuse and I brought up her husband's money pushing the abuse of students to grow to adults who need mental health medication and other students stood up and said they too were abused mentally and now as adults were mentally ill and in therapy and they had no clue they were pushed to mental illness through bullying abuse and that she and her husband were rich now 20 years later because so many of us were on meds made by her husband's company.

Schools need to feed the abuse cycle so more people see themselves as victims which feeds their political agenda as well. More victims more nanny state under the guise of "we're from the government education indoctrination system and we're here to help."

Bullying is abuse. Abuse leads to more abuse. Stop letting schools abuse their charges.

[cynicaldesire]

Since I’m having trouble writing, I’ll just make an update post. Maybe that’ll help me feel better, get some things off my chest.

Not much to get off my chest tho. My husband had a like 2week break and we sat around mostly playing Monster Hunter Rise for the duration.

Shortly before his break, though, I was having chest pain and a toothache. My teeth have looked pretty gnarly and my gums have been receding for a while but language barrier so we’ve been too scared to go to a dentist. But we have to now because I started have Chest Pain.

My husband’s father died from heart failure. So I kept expecting my chest pain to go away so I wouldn’t have to scare him with it. But after like day 4, when the pain hadn’t gone away, I finally broke down and told him about it. He had like 3 days of work, so we agreed that I would be super careful and we lost a lot of sleep, but I checked my heart rate using my phone and tried to take it easy until my husband’s break started. We headed to the big hospital like a block away from the clinic we usually go to just in case my chest pain was serious. We struggle our way through language barriers and I explain my symptoms to the doctor. It was mostly some burning pain at the time. Doctor has me get an ECG and some bloodwork. He tells me the ECG is normal so my actual heart muscle is fine, but the bloodwork says my liver is inflamed in response to something, but it’s not an infection, so he’s gonna prescribe me some NSAIDs and tells me to come back in a week. My husband says that I also have been having some tooth pain. The doctor freezes with a thinky face and says to get my teeth checked and to come back in a week. We ask if he has any suggestions on dentists. He says NOPE! and leaves. We head to checkout and while waiting for them to process my stuff, the doctor stops by checkout also and I’m like Hey. He nods and heads out. We spent a total of like... 4 hours there. Total. For the ECG, the bloodwork, etc.

Go home, take the meds, try to take care of my teeth, get Listerine. Sit around and try to take it easy for a week. We go back, the burning is gone and my teeth have overcome their problem. Doc asks if I’m okay now, I say yeah, seem to be, but now I have random pinchy pains. He says I should come back in a month. Husband and I can’t so the doctor is like Okay well, you’re fine, but if it gets bad again... Come back.

Due to my being broke, uninsured, and having a chronic illness, I do a lot of armchair doctoring on myself. There’s a limit to it, of course, but I try to research my own health issues or treatments after visiting a doctor. I found so much more information on PCOS on sites like fucking Reddit than by going to a doctor for years. So after the doctor told me I was okay, I looked up why I might have chest pain if it wasn’t related to a heart attack or something. And one of the options was a pulled muscle.

I thought back to the week before the chest pain started. Other than the toothache and swollen gums, I had been doing a bunch of exercise. I did a bunch of Ringfit and hip lifts and situps and stuff. And I was like Hm. Did I injure my chest muscle overdoing the Ringfit?

I, of course, informed the parents of all of this. My husband’s mother was informed and I was worried she would be deeply upset because she lost her husband to heart problems. But then both parents were like “You went to the doctor? You have medications? Well you seem to have it under control, so let’s bitch about my problems.” Meanwhile, I’m over here having trouble sleeping because I’m worried I won’t wake up. But okay. When my husband went back to work, I Skype’d with my mother and she seemed more irritated that I had interrupted her evening than happy to talk to me or worried about my Chest Pain. Also my dad has to get up at like 3am, so when I called her, she was worried her getting loud and animated as we do was going to wake him up.

(husband’s mental health doctor struggles and a story about library card nonsense under the cut)

Husband has also been seeking professional help because he believes he has ADHD. He’s been having a lot of problems, mostly mentally and emotionally, and he traced all the issues he’s having to ADHD. So he went to an English-speaking psychiatrist for medication. The shrink said he wanted to treat the anxiety before the ADHD in case anxiety is the only issue. My husband, due to his job, is very good at asking questions, so he asked the doctor how many people he prescribes this medication to. And he said 100% of his patients. Well, the medication didn’t seem to help, so on the followup appointment, the doctor said Oh, you’re just taking too much. My husband was like It’s supposed to reduce my anxiety, but instead it’s making my anxiety worse, it’s giving me mood swings, and generally making me very angry. And also sex is more difficult. Doc said I’m gonna reduce the dosage because I can’t treat your ADHD without getting rid of the anxiety. Husband came out of the appointment angry and defeated. But now he’s taking less (and it might be helping?)

Soooo yeah. I try to brush my teeth at least once a day (up from the like once every 20 years I did it before) and I use the No alcohol Listerine in place of brushing sometimes because you can. I skimmed an article about how to take good care of your teeth and it said to not actually rinse when you brush and mouthwash in place of brushing sometimes. I drink almost exclusively soda so I try not to drink any for at least 30minutes after brushing or mouthwash.

We hung out with the friends a couple weeks ago and they said we should start up a new DnD campaign because one of our friends has a roommate in his small apartment and can’t rejoin the old one. The roommate is a friend displaced by a breakup, but he seems to have a new apartment and the moveout date keeps moving. Our DM is getting tired of it and one of our other friends wants in because he’s lonely and DnD is great, so he said we should start up a new campaign so he can join. So we’re setting up for that, just in case.

In order to work on my writing, I’ve skimmed a lot of tips articles after watching a bunch of YouTube lectures and videos. I kinda hate reading and I feel like a huge fraud because if I want to write, I should like to read. But I don’t want to risk buying books I don’t like and having piles of books on my Kindle that just rot. And also, you know, I’m broke. Why spend money on something I won’t get any enjoyment out of? Just a waste at that point. Coulda bought some McDonald’s with that money. Or something. So I thought about the library. I don’t have an active library card, but I knew my Dad had one, so I asked to use his to check out ebooks. He obliged and I started getting books that everybody recommends, like The Name of the Wind and Tales of Earthsea and all this other stuff. I also got Mistborn: The Final Empire and some other Sanderson books, and the Witcher series. But not every book was available at my library. I found an app that let me look at other libraries’ catalogs and I found the missing books at the library where my husband’s family and friends are. I asked our friends if they had a card among them, and the one guy that works at the library has one but his card is always maxed out for checkouts. As an employee, he can check out like  a max of 99 things. And it’s always maxed out. He offered me something I wasn’t comfortable with, so I declined. So I asked my husband to make a card. He declined. So I asked him to ask his mom to make one. She said she doesn’t live in the city, so she can’t. She sent us an email with my husband’s sister’s name for a library that I didn’t ask for and didn’t have the books I was looking for available. Because it uses a different service than the one I was looking at apparently so I could use that one but they didn’t send actual login information.

My husband, because of the way he communicates with his family, asked his mother for help with this library endeavor very cavalierly. He was just loosey-goosey with it. Something about it rubbed me the wrong way, but I figured they would handle it. His family intimidates me, has rarely made me feel welcome, and so I usually leave myself out of conversations with them. But after they just stopped worrying about the library thing, because I felt like I was right and all they had to do was make an effort, I took it upon myself to email his mom directly. Due to childhood trauma or other paranoia, I’m always worried about being misconstrued or misunderstood, so I end up being very verbose. See above. So I made a long email explaining why I wanted the library card, why I was asking for their help specifically, and included links to the places I saw you could make a library card and how they didn’t have to leave the house to verify it because of COVID. Then, to make sure it wasn’t demanding, that it was friendly, I added some stuff at the bottom about how I wished them well and I was proud of my sister-in-laws’s weight loss journey and how my chest was doing and blah blah. I sent this email right before bed. I assumed that his family would work together to figure it out and if they didn’t wanna deal with it, they would say they weren’t interested. The worst they can do is say no and I’ll have lost nothing except time.

Woke up to an email from his mother saying, in that malicious compliance/corporate politeness way, that she couldn’t make a library card because she didn’t live in the city and she’d be happy to make one for one of the cities that did work. Also, she hoped I was feeling better.

I had had a bad day prior. The day before, waking up had been near impossible, my husband ordered McDonald’s delivery for breakfast and I wasn’t hungry so we sat and watched an anime I didn’t want to watch while food sat getting cold in front of me. I ended up not being hungry for 8hrs. We were talking to the group about DnD, but also needed to shower, so while my husband got in the shower, I said some things to the group and then hopped in the shower. Upon telling my husband what I said, he had this look on his face like he was planning how to damage control what I had said, despite not even knowing what it was. My exhaustion had left me vulnerable, so I couldn’t deal with it and cried. He apologized and we talked about it. Bolstered by this conversation, I went on to boldly converse with other people, which is what allowed me to send that email to his mother in the first place. So upon her declaration that she couldn’t help me, I decided to help myself.

So I went through the process of making an account using my husband’s name for the library I wanted and it worked, I think. It’s not verified or maybe it’s not in the city, so I couldn’t check out an ebook. So I was back to square one. Not only back to square one, now I was doubly wrong. I had pursued this process in righteous indignation, after having directly contacted his mother, and been proven wrong. So now, not only was I dumb and wrong, I had put myself out there. I was wrong on stage.

My husband, wanting to help, went and acquired the one book I was using as my litmus for me. There are probably others I could look up, but at least I have that one and it’s sequel.

But yeah, that’s what’s going on with me.

[cornfedcryptid]

This will quite literally be the only post I make in terms of the current fandom drama in DA, that only came to be after seeing this post @kunstpause posted as well as what @wardenari tagged me in and the mass of new followers I have gained from it. I only know bits and pieces of what's going on, only by those I know who are directly effected by it...so what I'm about to say may be the wrong thing to say or fall short of my intended plan.

I'm conflicted as to whether or not I should put all of this under a 'Read More' or not...or even if I should post this...or even if I should add my voice to the sea of voices, inevitably shining the light on me as well. Ah well.

Regardless what I'm about to say may be triggering to some people as it involves suicidal thoughts.

Dragon Age was first introduced to me by my 'ex' a number of years ago. During this time I was at the lowest point of my life, off and on anti depressants and ADHD meds left at right, in the vain hope that my 'ex' and I would become more than what we were. Those that are on the types of medications that alter the state of your mind know that shit ain't something you go off and on of at whatever whim strikes your fancy. To this day I can't remember 99% of what happened between when I was 24-28ish. But I digress.

At that time, I had no access to internet and only had the DA games on PS3. In them I was able to escape from the nagging voice in my head that told me everything would be so much easier if I killed myself. It's been a voice that's been following me around for over 15 years. But when I played Dragon Age it was quiet. I was able to pretend I was someone I wasn't. Happy. Whole. Not a waste of space. Loved unconditionally. It was a stark contrast to the life and relationships around me.

Once I had some semblance of internet access, I had come back to tumblr after being away a few years and fell into the fandom. It was my first ever experience in a fandom, and I had so much fun hanging out in the fringes reading what people wrote, seeing what they drew, the meta posts...all of it. It was as if I had found a safe haven from the bullshit of my life. Even met some amazing people whom I still cherish to this day, regardless of whether not if I still talk them.

Dragon Age became my oasis in the shitstorm of mental health that is the fall/winter months for me. It's become an oasis for many people, young and old. Telling someone what they can and can't do in terms of self-care is no different than any person who's offered unsolicited advice on how to deal with your mental health. It's lowkey downright insulting.

The whole reason why I'm making this post is because I am a 30 year old woman who has ADHD, and upon seeing the post while I was initially angry at the utter shittiness of the asks and disregard towards those of us with ADHD, Aspergers, and those of us that are older, I am more disappointed and sad for the person who felt the need to send them...and every other person involved in spreading the hate. I'm saddened because life, the world, those who raised them, etc. have been so unkind as to teach them that this is okay to do for whatever reason and/or the only response to something they don't agree with. The world's already a fucked up place. The pandemic only compounding it...and I understand the need to direct that feeling of hopelessness, stress, etc. upon something. But not like this. This is just hateful, toxic, and solves nothing. I understand it is easier to go this route...to direct the negative shit in/around you at someone else. It can feel cathartic. But all this does it help keep the ball of negative emotions, thoughts, whatever you want to call it within you where it grows like a cancer.

I should know...I did it in the past. I had left the fandom for the most part a couple years ago, and when I came back I saw the person who was a source of my anxiety, reason for leaving out of fear, self-doubt, and things I do not wish to divulge was still around and a prominent face. I was angry that this person got to continue doing what they were doing while I and others dealt with the effects of their insecurities. And I was scared because I feared them sending a witch hunt after me because they didn't want to see me in their space. I helped feed into the idea of calling this person out and exposing them for what they were because they had their claws in someone else. To this day it is still something I deeply regret. Not only for the stress it caused on those associated with that person, but because it marked the beginning of the end of a friendship with a person I dearly love. Because by feeding into it we let the tumor that was our anger and insecurities grow to the point it consumed us.

We were fortunate this never gained any real traction and therefore we didn't suffer any outward consequences of it. But just because it didn't go anywhere/had no real effect, doesn't mean there weren't prices that were paid.

But let me also be very clear this does not mean I do not think any of the people spreading the hate and anything else in The Mess(in all its variations) shouldn't be held accountable. We are all responsible for our actions and must hold accountability for ourselves. We must also each be aware that just because something someone has made or thinks doesn't agree with our beliefs, religion, etc. does not mean they are inherently wrong(with a few exceptions. But that is besides the point)...as well as if something goes against any of the stated above and is therefore something we can't or won't interact with doesn't mean that is universal. That type of thought is no different than...well, the Trump supporters a majority of tumblr makes fun of.

And I know taking accountability is hard. No one wants to admit they're at fault, and that it's easier to come up with a continuous list of reasons why we're right and they're wrong, even if they're ludicrous. We have been taught that in doing that it is no different than signing your own death warrant, that there is no chance at redemption. It took me a long time to realize that I played a part in the cancer that infected my friend and I. Even typing this out I feel at unease writing this on the off chance they see this and have all of that shit brought back to the forefront.

But from the sea of voices that are speaking, I do not think there is one that is speaking to you that was in a similar situation. That knows how hard it can be to just be 'Yup, I fucked up. I see that now and I'm sorry. I will try harder in the future. Please bear with me because this isn't easy for me.'

But it's okay to admit when you're at fault, because you'd be surprised at the number of people that are forgiving and understanding once you do. It's okay to let go of the negativity and anger. Don't use it as a shield, you'll only burn yourself in the long run. Don't let your ego control you. It'll only be your downfall.

And to the person I have mentioned in the paragraphs above: If you see this, I am sorry. I see now that I let my anger and fear feed into the cancer that fucked us both, and helped ruin our friendship.