#all three of my brothers were diagnosed with either ADHD or autism while they were little kids

[hersterical]

I worked a retail job at a certain American superstore that was so agonizingly boring I swear it felt like I was experiencing physical pain at times. I thought I was going to literally die of boredom. I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD yet and didn’t know that this wasn’t necessarily a normal experience that everyone goes through (which explains a lot).

There was one day where I spent nearly the entirety of my 6 hour shift untangling this big ball of necklaces. I was hardcore hyper-focused on this task and it was the best day of work I ever had at that store because I was not bored at all. I also hyper focused on fixing this customer’s watch for about an hour while they were shopping (this job did not train us at all so I learned a lot by trial and error which was usually frustrating but sometimes fun). As a result of all this I neglected the rest of my area so it was a little more messy than usual (not by much though, and with the reputation this store has literally none of the customers would care). So at the end of my shift one of the managers came over and saw that my station wasn’t as tidy as usual. She flipped out and tore into me for five minutes after my shift was ended and refused to believe me when I told her what I spent my shift doing. She even threatened to go watch the security footage, which I encouraged her to do if she really cared about it that much because I was being honest. I truly hate being bored so much that untangling necklaces is enough to entertain me for nearly 6 hours and I literally could not bring myself to stop. When she was done yelling at me, she took all the necklaces that I was nearly done untangling, threw them into a cardboard box, which she then tossed into a trash can. I went home and had what was in retrospect probably a panic attack.

It didn’t seem to occur to her that my brain just might work differently than hers and even if it did occur to her, I doubt she would’ve understood what exactly that meant. I was confused because I didn’t understand how it could possibly be THAT unbelievable and feeling distress over the fact that I once again was unable to control myself because I was simply just the worst. Not long after this happened I began to suspect that I might have ADHD.

There was another retail place I worked at before this that was way better. It was a smaller chain store at the mall. I got to play whatever music I wanted (within reason) and I had a specific task that they wanted me to complete each shift that took up most of the time spent not helping customers. Even if that task wasn’t completed or if the store was maybe a little messy, the management was cool as long as I was doing something else productive with my time. On days where I got my assigned task done quickly I would usually just re-organize the Funko Pops again so that it actually made sense. It was so much better because they communicated their expectations clearly, trusted me when I told them what I had done, and gave me more freedom to accomplish those tasks. There were stretches of agonizing boredom, but they happened less often, lasted for shorter amounts of time, and I was able to listen to music that I actually enjoy. And it was encouraged that the customers saw me being happy and having a good time even if it was at the cost of a small degree of professionalism (it was a toys/game store and it was also encouraged that I was familiar with the products so I would also occasionally spend time playing with some of the small fidget toys and stuff in front of the customers or that they see me carrying around a stuffed animal or whatever). It was far from a perfect job but compared to the other place it was basically paradise to my stimulus seeking undiagnosed ADHD brain.

adhd is so embarrassing ur basically like “I have to have fun right the fuck now or I’m throwing myself off the roof” 90% of the time and you also have very little control over this

[ichayalovesyou]

Hey so from your blog I understand you are neurodivergent? Correct me if I'm wrong. If you are, sometimes I wonder if I have Asperger's Syndrome. When I look back on my childhood there are some questionable aspects that I got over, I think, but with a lot of effort. For example I used to watch the same movie over and over again till I had big chunks of it memorized and I played it in my head when I went to sleep? And I was obsessed with puzzles, I did and redid them many times. And lots of repetitive things. Also I don't know if I was just being sensitive or something, but I always cried at the tiniest disapproval of adults.

I'm sorry if this comes off as stereotypical, but those are things my peers found weird and not actually "normal" and it was pretty hard for me to get over them.

Lol I don't even know where this is going, I guess I'd like to see some insights from a neurodivergent person, because I've never had the chance to interact with one. How did you figure out you were neurodivergent? Can a person on the autism spectrum learn to communicate effectively with other people on their own? (because I think I can do that, but it's not always a pleasure haha).

Feel free not to respond to this, I don't want to bother, but you seem..... Approachable😂. I'm not one of those people who self-diagnose through an internet quiz and try to make themselves appear special....You know the ones. I'm genuinely curious haha. I'm probably fine, it would still be interesting to see your response. Thanks.

I’m going to be perfectly real with you

I do not have an official diagnosis for anything aside from “generalized anxiety” but I only got the chance (until very recently) to get therapy for a year.

But I do feel like there’s a difference between wanting to feel “special” and going into self-diagnosis territory half-cocked. And looking at your life, tallying up the evidence, making an educated guess, and then making an effort on finding out whether or not you’re guess is correct from a professional.

For instance, in my case (I’m about to get into “tragic” backstory stuff just to give a clear picture):

I come from an emotionally abusive situation in which, even when I had teachers, pediatricians or other moms suggest I (at the very least) had ADHD my mother got offended, denied it and insisted I was fine. In fact, the only way in which she has treated my as any sort of neurodivergent is the “generalized anxiety” diagnosis I got from the six months of therapy I got 7 years ago. Even then she uses it as a tool to invalidate my feelings. She never considered it may be a symptom rather than a source until my baby brother got diagnosed with autism.

My family has a loooooong history of autism/adhd and other mental illnesses, all of my siblings and cousins above the age of 3 have one or both, I also wouldn’t be surprised if my father has autism and my mother has ADHD even if they went undiagnosed from the same stigma that kept my mother from getting me help (and only getting my younger sibling help when essentially forced by the school system.)

It was only really when my brother exhibited behaviors and got an autism diagnosis (and my mother and I started reading up on the topic) that I realized just how many of my behaviors were associated with textbook autism. I looked at my baby brother and I saw myself, the biggest difference between us is that I was hyper verbal (talking a bit before 18 months) and he was totally nonverbal until he was almost three (both of which, are symptoms of autism) that I really considered the possibility. Even my mother suggested I may be right, better late then never I guess.

I exhibit many of the exact behaviors you describe that are associated with both adhd and autism, I lined up toys, I drew the same picture on one sheet over and over. I take comfort in compulsively watching movies and shows over and over, I (for lack of a better words) stim sing and use movie quotes and references as eccholalia as stress relievers (especially in new social situations). I cried at the drop of a hat, when I was angry I’d repeatedly hurt myself by banging my head and arms against the myself or walls. I also do the “happy flappy arms” when I’m excited or nervous, I have a special interest in writing and making music (I have a hard time thinking about pretty much anything else). I had lots of trouble socially until about high school and none of my friends are neurotypical (or straight lol). So, I think it’s safe to say that I am either on the spectrum, have ADHD (which exhibits a lot of similar symptoms).

When I found this out, I started treating myself like I had these things instead of beating myself up for being “weird” and my mental health improved significantly. Mind you, it’s still not great because I am not (yet) in therapy and live in an overcrowded, emotionally abusive household, but I am making concerted efforts to remedy both. I’ve got my first therapy session in almost a decade arranged for next week and plan on moving in with another, less crowded, less abusive parent.

The best thing I can suggest is, read up on what you think you may have, look at the symptoms, compare them to you’re own, write it down, write how you feel about it. But more importantly read other people’s experiences with autism and ADHD, while medical professionals can help you get access to diagnosis and (if you need it) medication, sometimes the personal aspects get lost in the machine. At the same time of course be careful who you listen to, there are a lot of organizations and people out there who want to “help” by trying to force us to act “normal”, acting neurotypical does NOT equal living to enjoying your life to its fullest potential. On the flipside there of course people out there with and without diagnosis that will promote unhealthy thinking patterns and coping mechanisms, you’ve got to think critically and decide what is best for you.

Not all of us can get therapy, not all of us will get diagnosed even if we do, especially if you’re AFAB and have autism, or if you’re “well behaved” (ie pass as neurotypical) we slip through the cracks all the time. Try to get therapy anyway, a diagnosis can be really helpful (but in the case of autism it can also be detrimental because of the sheer amount of ableism around it, again, read other people’s experiences).

It’s okay to act on the idea that something is wrong, you know when something isn’t right with you, not even your parents can define that for you (I learned that the hard way). As long as you don’t wallow in it, operating under the assumption you have autism and/or adhd, using the tried and true coping mechanisms, being gentle with yourself, can be very, very helpful.

Hope this helped <3 💚🖖🏻💚

[ourimpavidheroine]

I’ve gotta say, I’m really enjoying these stories. Also, your late father sounds like an amazing man. I can really see the inspiration for LoLo come out in your mentions of him.

When my mother got pregnant with me - a planned pregnancy, they were young when they married but I was born 16 months later - my father knew from the get-go that he wanted a girl.

This was (and, I am sad to say, still is) an unusual thing for a father to wish for. Most fathers wish for a son. My Dad, however, was raised by a drunken, abusive, narcissistic man and he was afraid that if he had a son he’d just turn into his father. He thought a daughter would help him break that cycle of abuse. 

When I was born he told the nurse who brought me out to him in the waiting room that I was an angel, and Angel was the nickname that he alone called me.

He and I were very, very close, something that made my mother and younger brother jealous. (I didn’t really see or understand that until after he died when I was 26.)  There was nothing whatsoever or remotely sexual about it, which is what people usually assume when a father and daughter are very close. As my girlhood best friend said to me a few months ago, my father thought the sun rose and set on me, thought that I was his fairy princess. All of my odd, Autistic/ADHD weirdness was something he loved. I always knew he loved me not just despite my weirdness but because of it. (Something that my late wife did as well.)

My father was a brilliant man. He graduated high school at 15 and went into university to study architecture. Academically he handled it, but he was way too young to handle the social aspects as well as the responsibility of it and so he dropped out a year later. Things were apparently hellish with my grandfather and my Dad enlisted in the Army on his 18th birthday. This was 1965 and the US started sending soldiers to Vietnam. Not my Dad, though. He took some tests the military gave him and after boot camp spent his entire three years on a Nike missle base in the middle of Milwaukee, working on one of those huge old mainframe computers (you know, the kind with punch cards). I’m guessing they didn’t send the really smart ones off to be killed.

He taught himself how to be an architect through reading books at the library, including textbooks that he would sit and read at UC Berkeley’s library, even though he wasn’t a student there any longer. Then, after he had learned that, he read through engineering and physics textbooks. Then he read through every single book he could find that taught him how to actually build the structures he had learned to draw. He was completely self-taught, and the man not only designed and built complicated, Broadway-worthy theater sets he also designed and built houses from the ground up. He wanted to build a rock retaining wall at our house (which was located at the base of a hill and was on an incline) and so he went to the library and got a book about how Romans built walls and spent three years going to the local river to source variously-sized river rocks to build that retaining wall, which he did completely without any kind of mortar, just balancing the rocks perfectly. It’s still standing, 40 years later.

He always worked at very menial jobs - he was a line cook, a stocker in a supermarket produce department, an RV park manager, etc. He was terrible with money, didn’t understand it at all. We lived right on top of the poverty line. He had zero executive functioning and that caused a lot of problems for all of us and meant a lot of broken promises, too.

I am completely sure that like me, like both of his grandchildren, he had Autism and ADHD. Not diagnosed of course, they weren’t in those days, But he had them nevertheless.

He was a voracious reader and introduced me to sci fi and fantasy. On my eighth birthday he gave me his copies of The Lord of the Rings and had me read them. (This was 1977, trust me when I tell you those books were not a household name at that point.)  He’d wake me up at 3:30 am and we’d go fishing together, him with a thermos of black coffee, me with a bottle of orange juice and a box of Entenmann’s mixed donuts and we’d sit there in happy silence together, fishing and enjoying each other’s company. He was a wonderful storyteller and only once did he get angry with me. He never laid a hand on me or my brother but the one time he got angry with me he slapped me across the face and then the both of us cried.

He taught me many useful skills, like how to jimmy locks and how to walk through people unseen and how to learn on my own how to do things and how to make the world’s best pie. He always told me that I could absolutely anything I put my mind to. When I asked him once if that meant I could be a father - I was joking - he looked me straight in the eye and asked me if I actually wanted to be a father. When I told him no he responded that he had said if I had put my mind to it, and he wasn’t vouching for anything I pulled when I didn’t care.

He also told me that I was the strongest person he’d ever met and when I scoffed at that he shook his head and said, “Angel, most people see you and they have no idea at all what’s inside of you and what you are capable of. There is nothing in this life you won’t overcome. Someday, when we’re both dead, you come find me and tell me I’m wrong.” (So far, he has not been wrong.)

He was a functioning drunk; he only drank after 8 at night, however. Just enough to make sure he’d not be hungover in the morning. He was a night person and all his life only needed about 4 hours of sleep to be completely rested.

He loved movies but he hated to go alone and usually took me. Not all of these movies were appropriate for kids my age but there it was. When I was eleven he took me with him to see The Elephant Man and I broke down completely, devastated and sobbing, horrified at how cruel people were to the lead character, just because he was different. After the movie we sat in the car and he held me until I was done crying and when I was all done he told me to never forget how the movie had made me feel and to remember that no matter how different people were from me they were all human and deserved kindness, compassion and understanding. This was a lesson I have tried very hard to live throughout my life. He took people at face value, and that included everyone. I don’t think he was particularly woke based on 2021 sentiments but he tried very hard to treat people equally and that included queer people during the AIDS crisis, too.

He was a feminist and believed women should be equal to men. He walked the walk, too: he cooked, he cleaned, he changed diapers, etc. And by that I mean he did them as par for the course, as part of his daily life. He did not rely on my mother’s emotional labor to remind him to do shit. He just did it because things needed doing and he was a grownass man, not a man-child. He did not consider caring for his children as babysitting, either.

He liked to sing. My mother and brother have opera-quality singing voices - for real, both of them are quite gifted - but his wasn’t like that, it was just a perfectly ordinary, passable baritone, just like mine is a perfectly ordinary, passable alto. He sang and he whistled when he was happy and I do the same. He used to make up funny little songs and rhymes on the spot, he had a gift for improvisation that way. I wish I had inherited that but alas! No.

Even when he was a boy all of the neighborhood kids would come to him with broken toys to be fixed. He quite genuinely liked kids and even teenagers and spent a lot of time working with the local high school drama department, building the sets, working as the stage manager and setting up and working the lights and soundboard (he taught himself to do that as well) and even directing some of the plays when the drama teacher was out on maternity leave. To this day I still get contacted by people who were in school with me or my brother who tell me what an influence my father was on them, the special things he did for them to make sure they knew he was paying attention and cared. One guy a couple of years ago contacted me on Facebook and told me that he got into some trouble after high school, even got imprisoned for a few months. My father visited him in prison and afterwards took him to AA with him, became his sponsor, helped keep on the straight and narrow. He named his oldest son after my father, in fact. I hear a lot of those stories.

He loved books and he loved music and he taught me to love those things as well. He fell in love with my mother when he was seventeen and married her five years later and came to regret it - like his father, his wife was an abusive, narcissistic person. He stayed with her, though, until my second year of university, when he abruptly walked out on her, went to AA and quit drinking. I asked him about it later; he told me that he had wanted to leave her for years but knew that if he did he’d never see me or my younger brother again. The courts in those days automatically gave kids to the mother and my mother was an accomplished liar and would have told the courts anything and they would have believed her. Once I was out of the house and secure, then he was done. (The fact that my brother was only fifteen and left to fend for himself with my mother was...not good. Not good at all. My father was not perfect and he was not a saint and that was a mistake that still has repercussions today.) He did not do enough to protect me from my mother while I was growing up, however. He regretted it, he told me later. I understand now that he was constantly walking a knife’s edge, trying to keep her satisfied enough so she wouldn’t try to take me away from him, but it took therapy long after he died for me to really understand that.

His special interest was model railroading and he built these amazing, intricate landscapes, all by hand and by scratch. The man took latex molds off the sides of rocks to build mountains with and built buildings out of tiny pieces of wood and such. I spent many hours with him as he built, listening to music and reading or just laying there, thinking my thinks, or sometimes chattering nonstop to him.

He called me, every single Friday night, right after the X-Files ended, right after the child’s voice said “I made this.” My phone would ring and we’d chat for hours, talking about the show (we both loved it) and whatever else. He lived about 5 hours away from me at the time and we did talk at other times during the week but that was our standard date. He died in the middle of Season 2 and to this very goddamn fucking day whenever I hear that “I made this” I wait for my phone to ring. And I cry every single time because he will never call me again.

I absolutely think that meeting my late wife via the X-Files was my father, watching out for me. When my twins were newborn and pretty much all I did 24x7 was breastfeed them I re-watched the entirety of X-Files on the DVDs I had and I’d talk to my father in my head, telling him about his grandchildren.

He’d always buy the new Stephen King books in hardcover and read them and then give them to me to keep. He especially loved the Dark Tower series but I haven’t finished the ones that were published after he died. I bought them myself but they are still sitting on my bookshelf, unread. I just can’t.

He died in the hospital after being in a coma for a week. The ICU nurses were very kind and showed me how I could turn off the life support machine if I wanted to and told me that I could be in there with him as long as I needed. They very considerately closed all of the curtains and closed the door to the room. I was alone with him in there and I turned off the machine and I held his hand and I sang to him as he died. I didn’t want him to be alone. 

He was right. I was strong enough to do that. It hurt, though. It still hurts.

He’s buried in California with a free military headstone because my comfortably upper middle class grandfather refused to shell out for a headstone and I was flat broke. Many years later I had a regular stone engraved with the words, “Go then, there are other worlds than these” and I placed it at our summer cottage here in Finland for him. I like to think that he and my late wife are keeping company. They never met here, but they would have liked each other very much, that I do know.

[steponmepinkjun]

Sara I hope you dont mind me dropping this kind of ask, I just dont have anyone to talk abt this topic in particular and i have seen you open up about being neurodivergent multiple times.

All this time I believe that im neurotypical and always have to progress through life the way neurotypical people do, but from like 2 years ago i'm starting to question if i really am one bcs when I read about neurodivergency I slowly began to see myself in the description. How does one get um.. Diagnosed? I feel like theres sth abt myself that i havent figured out yet and I just want to know and love myself better.

Also forgive me for not being articulate enough, this is something im working out on.

Okay so I am obviously not a doctor or expert on neurodivergency, but I've gleaned a bit of knowledge from the nearly three decades I've spent being ND. So heres my advise.

First, I would begin with identifying why you'd like to seek an official diagnosis. Depending on what it is you're trying to diagnose, there are advantages and disadvantages.

Officially being diagnosed with ADHD gave me a sense of understanding I never had, gave a name to the symptoms that had been, quite honestly, ruining my life, and most importantly gave me access to the medication that completely turned my life around and made me a functioning human being. Even though I was diagnosed late in life (ie after school/developing years), I was still very lucky—my psychiatrist saw what the six previous ones I'd seen didn't. Before that, I was in treatment for depression and anxiety since age 11, had seen 13 therapists, and been on over 15 medications, to no avail. I'm lucky because a lot of obtaining a diagnosis for ADHD relies on self-reporting and reports from your parents—which is fucking stupid considering adhd is genetic, so my adhd parent probably isn't going to see my behavior as abnormal, IF they can even remember my behavior or payed attention to it. Despite those things, I was able to finally get diagnosed at age 22, and it changed my life. However, despite the fact that I suspected since I was a teenager that I might be on the autism spectrum (my brother, father, and several members of his family are), I made the conscious decision not to seek an official diagnosis. The medical community at large is incredibly ignorant and biased in regards to diagnosing autism in women, getting a diagnosis is ridiculously expensive, and unfortunately where I live an autism diagnosis can put you at significant disadvantage in the court system (it's often used as proof that an individual isn't mentally competent enough to do things like stand trial or be given sole custody of their own children, among other things). Plus, autism itself isn't treatable, so in my eyes I saw no benefit to getting a piece of paper telling me what I already knew. That's a personal choice that no one can judge another for—your reasons for seeking diagnosis are entirely valid whatever they are, and you owe an explanation to no one. I only wish to point out that not all diagnosis carry the same cost/benefit.

Getting a diagnosis can be a huge uphill battle, and it usually takes stamina and mental fortitude to get there. But everyone needs and deserves to have a community, a sense of understanding, and a support network, and wanting that alone is a more than valid reason to pursue a diagnosis.

So here's what I'd do. Get yourself in to see a psychiatrist (a therapist will do IF they have the training to diagnose, not all do), and do some research beforehand. Things as simple as googling "I think I might have/be (insert neurodivergent term here, for me this would be ADHD or autistic)" can give you some good starting points for what traits/symptoms are common. And as you're doing your research, take notes! If you see something jump out at you that you super relate to or that puts a feeling you've always had into words, write it down, copy the phrase, include things like how often you feel that way and what age you were when you began experiencing that. If there are ND behaviors that your immediate family share, that is very relevant, and actually gives a lot of context as to if something is a ND trait, trauma response, or shared personality quirk. Bring those notes with you to your appointment, reference them, and take notes of your own with the Dr's feedback. If you feel like you're being dismissed, tell them that, if you feel dissatisfied with their assessment, say so, and ask what your options are going forward. You probably won't walk away with a solid answer in just one day, but it's a good place to start.

It usually doesn't hurt to seek out community online, either, provided you take it all with a grain of salt—I've found that doctors tend to minimize symptoms, while peers online tend to maximize them. Ie, the way ND tiktok has become a slew of "do you breathe oxygen? Here's why that might be a sign you have adhd" type vids. Get second and third and fourth opinions before you take something to heart, you know?

And (even though this may go without saying), while I am no doctor, I have amassed more knowledge of my own disorders (as well as cptsd, ho lawdy its a fuckin doozy) than perhaps any one person should, so if you're at all in my vein or neurodivergency then please feel free to reach out to me directly, I'm always open to offering advise or a friendly ear or a sounding board for thoughts and ideas.

[evilkitten3]

ok so first this is an absolutely epic takedown of everything the first person said, but also i can draw a direct line to my mom, my brother, or myself in damn near everything she said

i'll start by saying that of the three of us, i'm probably the most notable outlier bc i lived the first 19 years of my life as a girl prior to coming out and i was diagnosed sometime around 4th-6th grade iirc, and not only that but my mom was alerted that i was having some kind of social issues as early as pre-school, so as far as (people who were born as) girls go, i would say i'm a bit of an outlier

(side note - to anyone who for whatever reason has been keeping strict track of the things i've said concerning my family who's suddenly wondering why i'm now lumping my mom in with my brother and i as autistic when i've almost certainly explicitly said otherwise, the reason is that she finally admitted it earlier this week. proud of you, mom! admittedly she didn't remember she'd denied it in the past bc we're all also adhders but that's a separate thing)

anyway! my brother is a textbook case of getting adhd diagnosed significantly prior to the autism diagnosis, and while my mom hasn't been diagnosed with either one (and probably won't be bc she doesn't see the need and doesn't need the validation and also it's not nearly as subtle as i think she might have thought it was bc mom that level of incredibly specific history knowledge and need to share it is not "a casual interest"), she's more or less in the same boat (if you replace "diagnosed" with "noticed")

i'm tired and also way more bored of typing this than i was when i started (oops) so i'll skip whatever else i was thinking about that i totally didn't just completely forget about haha nope not me and say that i also as part of my current job have been and will for a bit continue to interact with a lot of autistic and similar people, and many of the people i've met who have more support needs simply would not use almost any social media app i've seen, either due to lack of ability, lack of interest, or bc the apps are innocently inaccessible at best and incredibly hostile to diverse needs at worst

(also - and this is not something i'm qualified in any way to dive into but it is something i have heard about and believe is worth mentioning in the hopes that someone who is more qualified might choose to step in - concerning racial biases in diagnoses, black and latino children (particularly black boys and latino girls, i think? not sure about that at all) are very frequently diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder or odd instead of other more fitting diagnoses such as adhd, autism, bipolar disorder, etc. since - as this whole borderline essay has likely already made apparent through the privileges i've displayed both consciously and likely also not - i am white, this isn't something i've been directly affected by nor something i paid much attention to until relatively recently. but i do think it's worth acknowledging and keeping in mind when discussing diagnostic biases)

an eloquent take down of the "people are self diagnosing autism to be trendy and for attention" take that morons have been echoing on tiktok

[kodemunkey]

ADHD and Me

I’m a British guy,  37 years old and I found out in April that I have innatentive adhd. I also have dyslexia, dyspraxia and suspected high functioning autism. I’ve seen a lot of things over the years about how people with adhd are always hyperactive and can never sit still. I’m neither of those things, I was always the “quiet, smart kid with his head in a book” It was only in October last year that it dawned on me that after years of struggling with my grades (always “acceptably bad” just enough to scrape by in school, college and later university, where they thought “Oh maybe he has dyslexia, let’s get him tested” I was seen and tested by one of the leading experts in the country to get my statement organised, and I utterly baffled them, as one of my test results came back as the highest test score she had ever seen, and this was a woman who had been doing this for close to fourty years solid at this point. So, I had my dyslexia statement and everything was figured out and I was pigeon holed quite nicely, next person please. I had gone to university, primarily to spite my school teachers (aside from one, who passed away a few years after i finished primary school and had always tried to find ways to help me, I miss her even now) My attempt at a foundation degree was, to be frank quite bad, as the college it was run through was labled as an  “Arts College” But was anything but that, they would give you 6 weeks to do a project, where everything was to be done in a set way, you were expected to spend two and a half weeks researching and exhaustively analysing your research before going out to shoot and comng back and doing the same to your work and going out again to do more. I would go out and shoot for four weeks and come back with two weeks to spare to work on my analysis and just about made the cut for submissions. It wasn’t until four years on various courses with the same tutor that he thought I was “different” They spoke to the other tutors and staff, who knew me quite well at this point and decided I was an “intuative photographer” which I guess helped a little, but i still struggled. I somehow managed to scrape enough brainpower and grades together to go to the University For The Creative Arts (UCA) at Rochester in Kent. The difference in education styles was, to be frank, shocking and alarming. I didn’t have to produce a lick of written analysis or a single contact sheet and I had up to three months to produce a project! The quality of my work improved immensely, as did my grades when it came to my written work, I was a C average student, which is far more than I ever thought possible. I graduated with a third class honours degree in 2014. It’s now 2020 and I still can’t read or write for pleasure like I used to pre university. As for the employment situation, it’s been pretty bad for me, the Job Centre don’t know what to do with me, I’ve been on every single scheme they can get money to send me to, and i’m still no better off. I even tried to go self employed through a scheme they put me on, I chose to be a pet photographer after a lot of market research. The scheme provider and HMRC give you two years to turn a profit before they make you shut down if you’ve not earned anything. The Job Centre demanded I pull the plug after six months. I’m still continuing my photography, at present it’s a “profesional hobby” and i’m  starting to alright with it. Fast forward to this year when I was diagnosed in April via a Zoom call (god how I loathe and hate video conferencing) by a wonderful consultant named Marco Cattani, who I believe is one of the leading ADHD experts. He told me after a conference between me and my older brother who had arranged everything that he suspects i have innatentive ADHD and possibly high functioning autism. I was in a daze for about two weeks after that, though i do remember at a followup conversation we spoke about medication, he told me all the options available to me and I asked to be prescribed medication from the weak side of the scale, my older brother also has ADHD and is on amphetamine based medication and it has benefited him immensely. He runs a web design agency in brighton with a sizeable staff and has a small art gallery too. Even before his diagnosis, he was, in any conventional sense successful, his agency has won numerous awards, he (pre covid) went on holiday a couple of times a year, owns his own house and has a flat he rents out in Brighton, he’s also married to his long term girlfriend and has a chubby ginger cat who adopted him out of the blue one day. Marco (the adhd consultant) prescribed me Concerta XL at 18 mg dose to start with, I now take 36mg once a day) What follows next is what taking Concerta XL was like (and still is) for me. Day 1, i take the tablet early in the day as I was told to, so that it would have time to kick in, which takes about 30 minutes to absorb it. 30 minutes later, my heart starts to race (which is something I was told would happen) I had to leave the house right there and then and I went for an extremely long walk (this was also during the opening stages of the Covid-19 pandemic here) Three hours later, I come back home and was still pretty wired from the tablet, so I spent the rest of the day alone in my room, not wanting to inflict myself on anyone. The next day, I felt utterly sick to my stomach and had a headache, I tried to actually be sick in the bathroom, but where i hadn’t eaten the previous day, there was nothing to get rid of. I sat dazed and under three huge blankets in the middle of an early summer, feeling like crap. My brother checked in on my later that day, having been told by my parents (who I live with) what had happened. He told me: “Oh, I should have warned you about that, I forgot”. That’s great, thanks for that. Over the next month, the palpitations gradualy subside as the tablets start to work. An “added bonus” is appetite control, pre meds, i was almost 22 stone as I would be eating and snacking all day long to try and control my anxieties (food and social mainly) These days, I don’t actually want to eat unless i’m going out on a (socially distanced) photoshoot. My weight has dropped off slowly since then and is almost stable, which has pretty much never happened before in my life. The most difficult thing I’m dealing with is that the meds are making me re-examine large parts of my life, to the point where I tell people that I feel like i’m owed the past 20 years of my life back. To me i’m somewhere between serious and it being a bit of a dark joke, to anyone on the outside they either don’t respond or say “well, we all wish that” It has also lead to me questioning my gender identity, which until this hit me in the face like a ton of bricks I didn’t know was even possible. I can’t talk to my family about this as they’re somewhat “traditional” and won’t understand, with the exception of my sister, who I belive identifies as asexual. I have a long way to go before I figure out the “normal” for me, which I guess is true for a lot of people during the current pandemic. I myself used to believe the adhd stereotypes before I found out i have it and am now on medication, now though I see things very differently. While the tablets do help me to focus on things (such as this) It’s taken me about 4 hours to type out and I feel like this is the most useful thing I can do today, even though I have photoshoots to organise for the next month. Medication is extremely useful, but it’s also life changing, It’s basically like having your brain removed, spun around, put back in and then rewired on the fly. I’ll have to stay on these things for the rest of my life, which is fine. Thank you for reading.

[bendy-and-the-beast-blog]

I’ll still be here, I just won’t be doing asks like I used to

Let me explain what’s current in my life. Please read this before telling me anything or giving any advice. Thank you.

I have VERY strict parents, and I mean VERY. I’m 15, and currently in High school at the moment. I can’t seem to understand why my parents are even so strict towards me, they place high expectations on me that I can’t even achieve, even if I go to hell and back for it. I’m so confused on why most of the other teens in my school get so much freedom. I understand my parents are trying to protect me, but they’re placing too many barriers onto me. I can’t even use my phone to go on websites so I can use it for resources, like my computer; but my computer has a time limits on it. You heard me. TIME LIMITS. Three hours on the weekdays and five on the weekends, after that the computer completely shuts off and I cannot use it until the next day. Two years ago my dad placed these time limits on my computer for no reason at all, at that moment I never made any mistakes or clumsy accidents, which my parents hate from me. Not just that, but my parents are abusive too, in a verbal and emotional way. If you guys... didn’t know, I’m actually transgender, and I go by he\him. A few years ago I started to figure out my sexuality and who I was, and eventually came across the LGBTQ+ community. After a while I figured out myself, because I never who I was. I decided it was a good idea to tell my parents about being pansexual, but I never told them about being transgender. (To this day they still don’t know, and should never know until I turn 18 or until they finally come to their senses.) I told them, which was a bad idea, because they told me these things, saying “you’re too young for this; You’re a girl, you can’t love another girl; We want grandchildren, you can’t marry the same gender like your brother did, and now our family can’t spread our family blood, but YOU can.; etc.. etc.. etc..” and through those years I wanted to show my pride, because I didn’t care what they said. I tried buying pride shirts, pins, even a little ribbon to put upon my hat, but no. My parents refused this, and actually either destroyed those items or confiscated them to never let me know what happened to them and scolded me about it. Another thing, I understand that what I should is call CPS or talk to my councilor about it, but I cannot. One reason is because I’m frightened, and I cannot speak properly or would be able provide enough information. The second is that, I actually have talked to a councilor about it back in elementary school. But when an officer came over to ask questions ( to inform you, this officer was mainly working for cps, they didn’t look like your average officer on the streets) , my dad managed to manipulate them into thinking that everything is fine and that I’m a disabled kid. I am diagnosed with ADHD and a bit of autism, but I know that I’m smarter than I’m supposed to be. The officer then left and I was in for a ball from my parents. That’s the reason why I can’t call cps if you decide to tell me that’s what I should do, my dad is a powerful business manager and knows how to manipulate with people’s minds, trust me. (But thank you, if that’s what you were going to tell me. :) ) And one final thing, my parents installed a program called “McAfee” to prevent hackers or viruses. That’s the program that’s preventing me from using tumblr like I used to, I can’t even access my full tumblr page anymore without the web page saying “your internet access was blocked, firewall or antivirus software may have blocked the connection.” And YES, I actually have done the alternative of trying to turn it off, but It won’t allow me without my dad’s permission, in which his is the main administrator that I cannot access with. And I actually have tried asking him to unlock many things for me, but he refuses and asks me to achieve straight A’s in my classes first, which is impossible for someone like me. I just wanted to let you all know, and thank you for reading if you reached this point.

- The mod, Shay. 

[nunaya-business]

There Have Been a Few Times When My Dad Has Left Throughout My Life...

Some for normal reasons, others for mental illness reasons. All of them have left their mark on me and my brother especially.

To begin, my father has not had a good life. He was brutally physically, and I believe sexually, abused throughout his entire childhood. His mother is a munchausen bitch, his brother a psychopath, and his father an asshole. Mental illness runs in the family on both sides, though it's hard to tell which side it effects the most. My father started out with ADHD, or that's what the doctors have said. He got heavy into drugs when he and my mother first got together, and of course the mental problems plummeted from there.

Both parents quit drugs before I was born, and my father went overseas to Iraq. He was there when I was born to give me my name, and left a few months later. I didn't meet him in person again until I was nearly 2 years old. I didn't walk until then either, but that's from a birth defect.

I don't remember much of my childhood with my father, because he either stayed inside at home or he was overseas. Having a parent or both parents in the military is shit, and in my opinion, abuse. Psychologists are always saying that both parental figures in a child's life is extremely important and, when both aren't present, whether from abandonment, death, or lack of interaction, it effects a child greatly. What they refuse to consider in my opinion, is parents who go into the military. That's abandonment. Period. I don't care if that parent is doing a deed for their country, you're risking your life, and deliberately not there for your children in the way you need to be. That's the tea sis.

My father broke his back twice in Iraq. Once when I was a toddler, and once when I was around 8 years old. The things he's seen and done mixed with his childhood traumas turned this man from mentally ill, to mentally unstable, to mentally insane is the span of nearly 10 years. The last time my dad came home from Iraq, he had gone up the scale of insanity to the brink. In case y'all didn't know, the brink before complete legally recognized insanity is Paranoid Schizophrenia.

Every. Single. Year since I was 8 years old, my father had mental meltdowns. It started with yelling, to throwing things, to leaving for days (and one time a whole month and my mom had to pick him up at a bar and send me and my brother to my grandmother's house for a week), to an incident in 2016 when my father officially snapped.

In 2016 only a few days after New Years when he came home from a doctor's appointment, he went into our kitchen, downed half a bottle of straight vodka, and started screaming at my mother. She told me to take my little 2 year old brother into my room, shut the door, and put on a movie. I did. I was 12 years old, and it was about 16 days from my 13th birthday that j was really excited for. I remember because one of my friend's birthday's is only 12 days before mine, and I asked mom to go to her birthday party that Tuesday.

I put on Disney Pixar's Cars, because that was his favorite movie, and turned the volume up all the way so he couldn't hear anything. I stood by my door, and quietly opened it enough to see because I heard my dad shouting and things crashing. I don't remember what exactly he was flipping out about, but I remember him throwing a wrench at my mother's head. He missed, and it hit the wall above the kitchen window, making a hole that we had to patch up later. My dad got the vodka bottle, and some guns from our gun cabinet, and tried to get my dog Krypto, a Rottweiler, to go with him. I though he was going to kill him, and the other dog we had, which was the last thing I had inherited from my grandfather.

He kept telling Krypto to come and help him kill the neighbors, but Krypto was hiding behind mom. Dad was scaring him. Since he didn't go with my dad, he tried to beat him, but my mom was on top of Krypto trying to protect him. I don't really remember much after that moment, I think because I either changed or replayed the movie for Little Brother, but I do remember dad stomping back the hallway towards my room, and mom yelling something like, "Don't you fucking dare!" And Krypto running after him, so I got my pocket knife from my desk and stood by the door ready to kill my dad to protect my brother. He stopped though, and I remember listening to his fading, pounding footsteps as he slammed our door shut to go outside.

At the time, my room was at the back right of the house, straight back through the hallway. I only had one window against the wall opposite from my door, facing the back of the house and the woods, but I still saw the brightness of the fire my dad had set on the neighbor's weekend cottage at the front of the house, across the driveway. I remember my mom going into what was the spare room (now my parent's room) with Krypto, crying, and talking to the police. When she knew for sure they were coming and my dad was outside emptying the guns into the surrounding trees and the cabin, mom came back, told me to open the door and gave me a hug. We were both crying, and my brother was asking what was wrong with us. She told me to stay in my room with Little Brother, and that she would come get us when it was ok to come out, then went back into the spare room.

My dad came back inside drunk and crashed onto the couch. It was quiet, and my mom had snuck outside to meet with the police to describe that she wanted him taken in as a mental patient, not a criminal. I had to pee really bad, so I knocked on the door five times because I didn't know where mom was. Dad thought someone was at our door, and told whoever he thought it was to go the fuck away. I snuck put of my room as fast as I could, went to the bathroom, and when I came back, the movie was halfway over for about the 3rd time, and I sat on my bed to finish it with my brother.

I don't remember what time it was, and I don't remember how close the movie was to being over, but I do remember men yelling to "get down", and, "come out with your hands up" outside the window. Someone looked in the window with a flashlight, so I took my brother, and hid under the top bunk of my bunkbed. I covered his ears and hid him under my blanket so no one would find him. The entire state police department came from around the state hours away, to my home in bum-fucked Egypt (aka a small hick town). My mom came in after a couple of minutes with a shaky voice and said "Todd, get up, and go outside now."

He replied with something like, "Christ woman", or "here we fucking go", and I peeked out my door one last time, to see my dad put his hands up, go outside and yell, "HERE I AM MOTHER FUCKERS AND IM GOIN DOWN IN A BLAZE OF GLORY". They gazed him, got information from my mom, and left.

The whole ordeal that Thursday, or maybe it was Monday, night lasted 7 hours, and I think it was 2 in the morning by the time the police left, and we were allowed out of my room. My first question when I hugged mom was, "where did Dad go?" To which she replied, "the police took him."

I didn't go to school that week, dad went to prison for 2 years instead of a mental institution like he was supposed to, my mother was put on antidepressants, I was put in counseling in three places, (the pediatrician's office, a professional office, and school counseling) for severe depression and anxiety, my brother developed an antisocial disorder in addition to pre-diagnosed autism, and I was now in charge of taking care of the house along with my 2 year old brother like an adult. I didn't really have time to be rebellious, having only a short few months when I turned 13 where I "hated" my mother. But how the hell was I going to rebel? Not do the dishes?

... yes actually. I didn't do my chores around the house for a few months as a sort of rebellion. What else was there to do? There was nowhere to go, no one to run to, and Mom wasn't home long enough to fight with so... yeah, refusing to do chores was my way to rebel against my parents.

My dad's mom, the bitch in forced to call a grandmother, called child services more than 5 times while Dad was in jail for no reason. They blocked her number. She got ahold of dad's disability checks and used them for herself, and we nearly starved because of that, and from that fateful night on, I was labeled a psychopath by my peers. Good. I don't like those retards anyways.

That's the story of why I'm not very close to my father, why I believe going to the military is the appraised way of abandoning your kids, and how the military also fucked up my Dad. Because, if they would've done their job of an actual mental evaluation on their soldiers when coming home from war, my father would have gotten the help he needed, and lastly the reason why I believe in gun control. And with that, I bid you guten nacht.

[brightlotusmoon]

My Mikey. MINE. yes and yours.

Okay, yes, this is a lot about the promo elevator scene from the upcoming episode that got promoted, the one where Mikey starts knocking together his nunchaku just like in the 2014 film, but where Raph fucking punches him in the head so hard he crashes down to the floor and it’s suddenly not fucking funny…

But it is also about the season one episode where they were shoving Mikey between them because nobody wanted him on their team, the episodes where Mikey screams that they never listen to him when he is right, the season three episode where he literally runs away because he can’t handle the abuse, yes, the abuse, all the episodes where they tease his lack of thought, where they assume he isn’t good enough, where even his father thinks all he does is joke around. “Mikey doesn’t have a brain, don’t listen to him. But holy shit, Mikey is hurt, get angry and vengeful.” ??

It’s about wondering WHY writers of this show (and the 2003 show and the 2007 film) don’t know what to do with such a versatile character beyond Eternal Kid Appeal and Butt Monkey and occasional Woobie. There is only so much comic relief Mikey can hold on his shoulders before he just falls like slapstick. And about that: ever notice how when others beat the turtles up, they are badly injured, but they beat each other up and it’s nothing. Like, Raph can literally throw a sudden punch to the head that would cause whiplash, bruising, stiff neck, even concussion, but Mikey slowly gets up and shakes it off and also Donnie is the only one thinking Holy Shit That Has To Hurt and then it’s forgotten. It was a scene that never needed to be. Raph could have smacked Mikey lightly. But nope.

Hey. Writers. Remember when Mikey got knocked unconscious by Snakeweed and Raph lost his ability to think? Remember when Tiger Claw struck Mikey so hard his shell was knocked loose and Raph cradled him in worry? Remember when Raph kept protecting Mikey and caring for Mikey and loving Mikey? Are you sure you remember? Because “Nobody hurts Mikey but me” has been pretty literal. And it is sad and it hurts.

You might think I’m being over dramatic but you should see the conversations happening over that one scene. These kids are abusing each other and shrugging it off. I get it, they only had each other, frustrations and tempers had to be let out somehow, and Mikey designated himself Family Punching Bag because his optimistic joyful self could bounce back. But now they’re out in the world. They have more than just each other. Is it literal reflex, built from a decade of Mikey taking the punches and laughing them off?

Look, I am an only child. Was born disabled. Cerebral palsy not diagnosed until age four. Epilepsy not diagnosed until age 26. ADHD not diagnosed until age 22. Autism not diagnosed until age 34. My teen years were spent isolated and afraid of people, while my parents just wanted me to have friends, while my school mates mocked and teased and verbally punched me for being the only disabled kid in a school of 400. I didn’t even know who I was because the 1980s and 1990s didn’t see the medical stuff, just “weird kid and Fuck If We Know, she’s genius in reading and shit at math, just push her up two grades and whoops, she’s being ripped apart.” Maybe if I’d had siblings it would have been less WTF. At least sibling teasing was love, right? Right?

I just….Mikey. Sweet precious ADHD Autistic inhuman child who lived in literal seclusion, isolation, sheltered from the world for his first 15 years. And then one brother falls in love with the first girl human they see, his other brother becomes best friends with a boy human version of himself, his oldest brother is too involved in being a ninja geek. Mikey just desperately wants to socialize, but every human pushes him away and his own family is too involved to pay attention and he keeps hurting and being hurt, and it seems to culminate in being fucking punched in the head by his own brother just because he is stimming and fidgeting out his tension in a small space and nobody wonders if he’s okay.

I need him to be okay. I need season 5, the final season, to give Mikey what he needs. I’ve seen clips of his voice actor flirting in the recording booth with Shinigami’s voice actress and being very excited about Mikey’s development. I keep biting my lip. Mikey needs to be okay. Throughout the 30-year franchise, Michelangelo was either in the background or made to be the only comic relief. It was the fandom that molded him. It was fandom who shaped his hinted at abilities into much more, and it was fandom that inspired the producers and writers. I will always love Ciro and Brandon for making this Mikey into a sweet adorable precious darling childlike freckled ball of sunshine. But I will shake my fists at how much they hint at his raw potential and then turn around show how little he is featured.

But this is why we write fanfiction and draw fanart. I’m gonna see the entire series through, okay. And I am still gonna love it. I’m gonna cherish every moment, even the sad parts and the bad parts and the WTF parts. And I am also gonna express frustration and aggravation and rants about the parts that feel wrong.

That elevator scene should have never happened the way it did. I get that they were playing off the Paramount film. But… No. When the episode airs in the USA in February, I’ll be happy for the OMG CHOMPY parts (seriously, they pulled a “Surprise Kitty!” scene). But I won’t be happy about the elevator scene.