Can you write some Carl x reader w/adhd (platonic ofc) hdcns pls? 🫶

i love Carl so fucking much . i don’t talk about him a lot on here besides in my stories but i fucking love that dude to death. Carl has such a special place in my heart like that is my boy !!!! he just means sm to me :((

warnings: none!

A/N: hope you all enjoy! requests are open! if you’d like to request, just read pinned for rules!

okay

Carl is your bestest friend of all time. the bestest of all best friends

you met at the quarry and had instantly become bffs

he noticed the little things, like you losing focus really fast or fidgeting with your fingers constantly

when he questioned you abt it, you outright told him you had adhd

he wasn’t quite sure what that meant at first but you explained it to him

and this boy was the most understanding person ever

through the course of living at the farm, to the prison, road to terminus etc etc you get the point

he started to take mental notes of the things you struggled with

motivation, focus, mostly those two

especially when you finally got to Alexandria

when you started to get assigned chores and shifts, you struggled to keep up with them

you were frustrated with yourself

but Carl noticed immediately and didn’t waste a second in offering to help you

everyday when you were assigned your chores, Carl look over them with you and help you make a plan

it always included a few breaks to avoid you getting burnt out quickly

he’s by your side the entire time you’re on a run

one time, he found a little squishy toy in an abandoned store and gave it to you

“i found this! you could use it as a fidget toy when you’re trying to focus! :)”

i love carl so much i’m so

OKAY hear me out on this one

you love the fabric of his sheriff hat

like there’s something abt the fabric that you love

so if you don’t have your fidgets with you

he takes off the hat for you and lets you use it as a fidget

carl is the biggest y/n defender

if someone gets frustrated at you for messing up on a run oooo boy

he will yell at anyone more than half your age if they get mad at you

you are his best friend and he will protect u no matter what like

if you have any hyperfixations BEST BELIEVE he will listen to you rant for hours about it and can never get tired of it

seeing u so happy over it makes HIM happy

he’ll do anything to try and find anything of your hpfx

“carl where are you going?”

“this store might have the thing y/n really likes i want to find it for them”

i love Carl so much guys

🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

Review: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

I am still trying to log my reading more diligently! And this one is the latest. Now there’s a title that makes it tough to recommend to people without a lot of disclaimers. :D

My psychiatrist is a specialist in medication management, and while he does see patients therapeutically, I’m not one of them; he sees me to prescribe ADHD medication and make sure I’m not having side-effects or misusing it. But of course part of the meeting is just chatting so he can gauge my behavior for himself, and in our last meeting we got onto the topic how I haven’t told my parents about my diagnosis because I don’t think any good can come of it. After explaining my somewhat complex relationship to my mother and stepfather, who I love but who also can be difficult, he recommended Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents (subtitle: “How to heal from distant, rejecting, or self-involved parents”) by Lindsay Gibson. 

It’s kind of a shame the book title is so direct, because I think my mother could actually really use to read it, but if you recommend a book like that to your parents it means you also read it and that...does not send a super great message about how you feel about them. 

I did a lot of highlighting.

Although, in the end, not for the reasons one would think. In part, while I recognized parental behaviors described in the book, I also recognized behaviors in myself. About halfway through, especially when Gibson was writing about how emotionally immature parents generally come from emotionally immature parenting themselves, I had to stop and think, “Oh. Maybe this is also me.” Fortunately I’m not a parent nor likely to become one, but it’s still a bit of a hard truth to see yourself in that kind of thing. I’m not much one to cause drama, at least not intentionally, and I try to be a generally good and emotionally supportive friend, but some of the stuff -- shallow emotional affect, difficulty with empathy and intimacy, anxiety surrounding strong emotion and personal relationships -- landed kind of close to home. 

The problem with self-help books and books like this which are on the edge of the self-help genre is that they tend to be written very structurally. They have a specific way of being, which if you’re already part of the way to the conclusions they’re presenting (or familiar with the scammier ones) can be less helpful. For one, because they are aimed at people who tend to be wounded and confused, they lay out whatever they’re discussing in a very systematized way, and human behavior often defies systems. I was seeing aspects of behavior in my parents and myself here and there, but none of us fit into the categories the book lays out. Most people won’t fit precisely, but being an outlier doesn’t really help. 

And, honestly, the case studies that are meant to resonate tended not to, simply because I looked at them and went “Oh, that person was abused. Those behaviors happened to me, but not at that level, and not in those ways.” I struggled too with the “workbook” aspects, where you’re asked to answer specific questions or make a list of things. One of the questions was “I wish people would just ______” where you fill in the blank, and like...I don’t have wishes like that. I’m still trying to figure out what I would even put there. Not stand in front of bus doorways so often? Stop voting Republican? I suspect that’s not what they’re reaching for.   

And when you get a little distance on stuff like the categories and case studies, what you start to see is a book that, like many books in this vein, could be half the length it is. So much of this book is designed to cause a resonance with the reader and then reinforce and reinforce and reinforce that resonance -- there’s a lot of repetition of theme in order to pull someone emotionally further and further into the book, meanwhile not really presenting new information, just the same information framed within a different anecdote. I don’t condemn that; it’s what you have to do to sell the book, and to sell the ideas within it to some people. Otherwise it’s not super publishable, and I get that. But once you see the manipulation going on it’s hard not to react poorly to it. 

A shorter, more informative book wouldn’t necessarily appeal to people who are pulled into the book via those reinforcements, but I started to do a lot of skimming because I knew I could. In that sense it’s a fast read, but I’m sure I missed some information here and there. 

And the real problem is that the solutions presented for how to deal with emotionally immature parents as an adult are all things I was already doing, which after all the emotional build of earlier was quite disappointing. The reason I’m capable of having a pretty positive relationship with my parents is that I know how to handle them without taking too much psychic damage, enough that it’s worth maintaining a relationship, and apparently that’s as good as it’s going to get. There’s a lot healing from the harm inflicted just in those behaviors, but also for anyone wanting to DIY the rest, there’s not much good advice -- it circles back around to “Go to therapy and heal your childhood wounds” which is fine, I guess, but not a super executable solution for me. It reminded me powerfully of reading a book about autism when I was younger; there was a chapter about resources for family members of people with autism, and within that chapter there was one paragraph about siblings. I can give it to you in a sentence: “Asking your neurotypical child to help their autistic sibling is very character-building and will teach them responsibility.” Sure, but could we not dig for something a little deeper?

So, insightful book, potentially very useful if you do have a fraught relationship with your parents, but unfortunately not terribly helpful to me personally. Still, worth getting out of the library. 

Autistic Anime Girls Group 2 Round 3 Match 6

SUBMISSION PROPAGANDA:

Maria -

"She's a nerd, she's a top student, she doesn't know how to express her emotions so she lashes out and acts annoyed, she's awful at emotional regulation, she's nervous interacting with babies but once she gets used to it there's nothing she loves more. she's adorable. she has an adhd gf (inomaru truthers rise)."

Yuri -

"Headcanon, but still. I couldn't word it myself so taking from Reddit user Trobius:

"- Yuri's alternating from extreme timidity and intense enthusiasm for her interests (especially literature) may carry the hallmark of an autistic special interest.

- Yuri did not fully understand that just because others had started a literature club, they did not have necessarily have her level of obsession.

- Yuri fears large groups. For us autistics, large groups = more people you have to struggle to comprehend all at once.

- Compared to male counterparts, girls with high functioning Autism / Aspergers often develop intricate but imperfect masking systems to try and not stand out as much.

- Contrary to pop culture depictions, those on the spectrum often second-guess themselves. A lot. None of these points by themselves would be enough to suggest being on the spectrum. But taken together, parallels emerge."

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/DDLC/comments/ocprjf/comment/h3vuiw9/ Also this line from the Side Stories: "I think... that I've gotten so used to people being weirded out by me... that it feels like anyone who's nice to me is just doing it out of pity." I love her!!"

I wanna ask, from a parents perspective is having kids young worth it?? I turn 25 soon and have been thinking about having kids before 30, it started recently as all my friends have kids already and it feels like I'm missing out on something. I have a great partner and a few cats but we both still feel that....void i guess?? Do you wish you had your daughter at an older age??

okay baby listen everyone is different and parenthood might work for you and it might not but I'm gonna talk to you right now about all of the reasons why I regret not waiting. this will be kinda long.

I was 23 when I got pregnant, 24 when my daughter was born. it was not planned and I barely knew the guy. like he was literally just a sneaky link and we both have a breeding kink so 1+1 = 3 in this case. I was already knocked up by our 3rd date (yes it's that bad but hey I fucked around and found out)

I was in a bad place when I met him (sad girl with daddy issues whose daddy just died that's a whole different side story tbh it never ends) and I deserved better but I was honestly just happy that someone was giving me attention. plus his dick was huge and he knew how to use it so it was like "maybe I can change him. maybe he'll realize I'm worth loving." again daddy issues.

now you're probably wondering why I'm oversharing all of this but it's gonna make sense by the time we come back full circle. I promise.

things went south after i got pregnant and in order to protect myself and my wee lil dew drop, I ghosted his ass.

so now pregnancy alone is its own little monster. my body changed a lot. I gained so much fkn weight that I didn't realize that I wasn't as big as i thought I was. my face shape is different (lowkey to the point where I don't even look at old photos because it will ruin my entire day and I will cry) my bladder is fucked. I went from a c cup to a triple d cup so bra shopping is hell, my back hurts most days from the sheer weight of having big tiddies and I truly hate them

now as far everything else, your time will never be yours again. any parent worth their salt is gonna catch some hell. I have anxiety so a lot of my time is spent wondering if I'm going to outlive her. my dad used to say that even when your kids grow up, you'll be wondering if something bad might happen to them that you could've prevented.

now I have a daughter and men are scary enough so like... yeah.

now I had my daughter in the middle of the pandemic. that paired with my anxiety, trauma from what her father put us both through, and my poor decision to use her as comfort instead of going to therapy made her clingy.

your mental health matters so much and of course none of us are perfect and mental health shouldn't completely dictate whether or not you become a parent but you need to be self aware and honest with yourself or you'll fuck that kid up and fuck yourself over. my daughter is clingy as fuck and even now, if I can get a half hour alone, I'm lucky.

I have adhd and I'm bad with time and organization so keeping on top of the house and getting to places on time is hard as hell. I also lost my social skills during the pandemic so if you struggle around people, remember you're gonna have to socialize your kid and for me, that's hard. don't like doctors appointments? You're gonna have to deal with it. don't like going out? get used to it. even down to small talk with random fkn people who think your kid is cute- get ready. I literally had a whole ass chat with some random lady on the train the other day because she thought my daughter was cute so we chatted about her grandkids. random chats with random people are inevitable and will happen sometimes multiple times a fkn day.

now as far as having a second parent, I can't tell you about that. I absolutely do wish I had her father around but I also wish I could trust him enough to share this beautiful chaos. since I can't, I have to do it alone. I have my village but a village can only do so much and the village can't ever truly fill that void.

now I think communication is important for you and your partner. you both need to do it for you. if you have family pressuring you, ignore them. don't let them pressure you into making such a big and final decision. you're bringing a life into the world, not putting up a Christmas tree.

out of my friend group, only one of my friends has a child and she felt like she was missing out because picture of my daughter gave her baby fever. she also has some regrets.

you and your partner need to really talk about that void you feel because a baby will not fill it. figure out where that emptiness is coming from and work on fixing it because a baby is going to feel great and make you proud and all of that but at the end of the day, that baby is a shitting, burping, farting, helpless little human that has their own destiny. their job isn't to fill that void. their job is to grow and thrive while you pour into them. you'll never fill a void when you're pouring into that child's life.

parenthood is beautiful. hearing my daughter tell me she loves me, cuddling her, hearing her pronounce words wrong, watching her eyes light up over things she likes- the list is infinite. the love is infinite but before you both take that leap, you need make sure you're happy with yourselves, happy with the changes that will come, and ultimately happy with the chaos because even with this long ass tangent I'm going on, there's still so much more beauty and madness and hard times. some days I love being a mom and I couldn't imagine being anything else. some days, I wish I wasn't a mom and I envy parents who just walk out and never look back.

I think I'm learning to just be in each moment but if you need any more help or someone to talk to, I'm here for you. I'm a huge believer that not everyone deserves children and a lot of the time I think I'm one of those people because I'll never be able to look my daughter in her face and honestly tell her that she was planned and that those were happy tears when I found out my pregnancy test was positive. I think I've redeemed myself? who knows maybe not but I feel like Gru and she's my little Agnes.

I do not like my life and I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’ve exhausted all my efforts. I’ve tried to do the healthy eating, and waking up early, and get enough sleep, and don’t abuse substances, and go for a walk, journal, yoga. I tried accessing mental health resources on my campus when I was a college student and it actually was so traumatizing. I had a male psychologist ask me why I was on birth control & if it made my boobs bigger. another male counselor I was paired with got angry at me once for getting off topic during our session. a female counselor once immediately suggested I be put in a psych ward because I said I was experiencing symptoms that made me wonder if I had bpd. I went through probably at least 10 different counselors while I was in school and had access to them and in the end I realized none of them were equipped to help with the kind of problems I was experiencing and still experience to this day. I ended up failing so many classes and just dropping out of school because I was so depressed and overwhelmed. I feel as though the education system failed me. I believe I have some sort of learning disability like possibly adhd or autism that inhibits me from functioning in my daily life like a typical adult. this has caused me to carry such a weight of feeling broken, not good enough, “crazy”, incompetent and other horrible feelings about myself because it’s truly so difficult at times just to take care of myself and complete all the normal tasks that seem to come so easily to others. I moved states away from everyone I know. developed a drinking problem. have jumped around from unfulfilling minimum wage job to unfulfilling minimum wage job. have burned so many bridges and caused an embarrassing amount of public outbursts because of my impulsive nature. I’ve tried seeking medical help under my insurance that I just got this last year but I was only ever met with a robot on the other side of the calls and then when I finally did reach actual humans after multiple hours of struggling I was told the soonest available appointment is over a year from now. I recently found Open Path which is supposed to help connect you with affordable therapists in your area so I’m waiting for a response email and keeping my fingers crossed. but I can’t help but feel so hopeless. I have not had a good year. I feel so unstable and like things only get progressively worse. if I began to list everything that has happened to me this post would become extremely long no one would want to read it and just scroll past. I’d just like some support but I don’t know where to find it. I feel like I’ve ostracized myself from many of my friends when my symptoms begin to come out. and it hurts because I know there’s so much more to me than all the useless suffering I’ve endured.

Wanted to do a full write up of Petra Naverrian. There is a lot of things stories can’t always explain fully that I really wanna talk about with her and the only way I can is through a full breakdown. So I hope you enjoy. She is my pride and joy. @ebevkisk

PETRA NAVERRIAN

Basic Info(Aasimar Form):

Height: 5’7”

Weight: 150 lbs.

Hair: Bright Red

Eyes: Heterochromic Lavender and Red

Skin Color: Pale White with dapples of freckles across her body

Gender: Transfeminine Non-binary Girl

Pronouns: She/They

Sexual Orientation: Prefers not to label herself, but leans towards bisexual and polyamorous

Basic Info(Nephalem form):

Height: 5’7”

Weight: 160 lbs.

Hair: Bright Red

Eyes: None

Skin Color: Onyx rock with Pink, glowing etchings in the stone and wings of blood and shadow

Gender: Your worst fucking nightmare

Pronouns: You/Will/Suffer (She/They still)

Sexual Orientation: If you see this form, the last thing you should be worrying about is who she’s dating.

Abilities:

Weapon Choice: Song of the Myriad-A weapon built for a true Jack of all trades that can shift into any weapon. The possibilities are endless, but Petra prefers a few different forms. Her main favorite is a Rapier with a dagger embedded in the hilt (think Rakuyo from Bloodborne) that she is an expert with. She also tends to use a chained kunai, katana, twinblade, bo staff, and warhammer quite often.

Magical Capabilities: She is a fully realized blood wizard and blood cleric, so any feasible spell that exists in the world is at her disposal. She is very control oriented and a lot of her spells are used to put opponents at a disadvantage or help her teammates, but she can exercise deadly force if she needs to.

Nephalem Domain and Abilities: Blood and Shadow. Can also access some of these abilities as an aasimar. Her Nephalem form emits a wave of Divine Terror, that only other gods (and allies) are immune to. She also has absolute control of blood , visible or other wise, and can shift through and between dark shadows like a wraith. Can exsanguinate mortal beings with a flick of her hand.

Interests:

Personality: She has two sides to her personality. One is the everyday Petra that most people see. She’s an introvert and an ADHD wreck, but she’s kind and loving and gets really clingy when she wants attention. Her other side is the one enemies see. Cold, merciless, demonic. Very no nonsense when she is in business and her focus cannot break

Hobbies: Book collector, singer, works part time at a XXX club in Icoriin as a performer, magical innovator, and a truly fierce plushie collector, mostly of dangerous creatures.

Pet Peeves: Ego. Would NEVER miss an opportunity to cut someone down a peg or several. She also has a profound distaste for necromancy, but she’s working on that.

Secrets: She has a big one. Even @ebevkisk doesn’t know this one ;)

Food and Drink: She loves cherry wine and anything with meat or sugar in it. The way to her heart is chicken pasta with white sauce.

Her Strengths (According to her): She knows her butt as well as her “equipment” are extremely gifted (yes, she kept it). She also know herself to be a very adaptable and perceptive fighter while still being ferocious. She also knows how good of a listener she can be and is well aware that she has a calming effect on the people around her.

Her Weaknesses (according to me): She’s reckless more often than she thinks she is and her emotions drive more of her actions than logic does. Also, she is incredibly stubborn to a fault. She also struggles with the weight of the world, which isn’t her fault, but she takes losses incredibly hard and feels like she’s failed those closest to her if she isn’t perfect. Also, the necromancy thing.

Kinks (I’m not apologizing): Massive praise kink as well as an exhibitionist kink. She’s also VERY much a brat. She says she’s a top (she’s lying), but she likes commanding positive attention and, despite her fantastic sexual stamina, she will crumble under the effects of a sweet talker SO easily. She also likes spankings, but will never tell anyone that.

Insecurities: She often worries about her freckles in public spaces and affectionate company. She has a LOT of them and often feels like they make her unattractive (they don’t). She also gets nervous that she’s too much for most people and that her special interests ramblings go on for way too long. She worries a lot about whether she’s doing enough and her success rate.

i have no plans to talk about the Emotional side of this, but the many weeks i have spent with a neuropsych trying to pin down the specifics of my cognitive issues has certainly been interesting, and im gonna detail that below. its made me really realize that alongside my issues, that there is so little understanding in society about the extent of "learning disabilities". even everyone here, every person who sits with the ADHD and autism labels and knows its probably part of their learning issues- the fact that there is probably so much more to it than you can even realize. and most people wont ever have the knowledge of depth to see that, or the proof of tests to see that.

i deeply wish getting this kind of testing but its insanely expensive. like, way WAY expensive. and its super important to get a good doctor for this (any Californians, i would gladly name the guy i am seeing!) but its not accessible at all (this series of tests take like, 6+ weeks but more for me bc i am more than just Learning tests. i am on week 10), which is obviously the main problem. hardly anyone i know will be able to get with kind of depth on Why they struggle. i am in a very privileged position to get to do this. its not bad to sit with labels like ADHD, or just know about your diagnosis of Autism (your Autism wont go away with this. you still have it. you'll just see the specifics, the stems to your problems) is what makes you struggle. this isnt a means to shame people or to say you have to do this in order to get better or get help.

but for me and i assume others, i havent been able to get the right accommodations for anything. society will never try to understand anyone cognitive abilities further and they NEED to make this shit more availble. I tried many things but none of them worked for me, but i also dont know WHY they dont work for me. putting aside the emotional struggles i am also doing in these tests (there is Cognitive testing and Emotional testing- which also makes things more pricey), i have been really really wanting to learn. just Things. it is all i want but I cannot, and the future feels impossible due to that. I try so hard to learn but nothing happens. i want to code, i want to 3D model, i was to up my drawing game, etc etc- even if i went for my assumed "easy" choice (simply production in entertainment) i still struggle to keep it in my head. it always feel like laziness, to sit down at try and then it doesnt stick, and that just makes you feel worse. Still i'd go and learn 3D modelling consistently for a week, but quite literally the moment i looked away from the donut tutorial, i couldnt do it. genuinely everything was lost from my brain. id redo it, i would do the donut tutorial again, but then thats all i could do.

learning with coding is no different, but i try to try very hard because i feel like i know it all "in theory", i look at stuff and i kinda can see what it all means. but right now as i try to learn Narrat, i am very actively seeing how the results of these tests are spelling out the problem. i sit down and look at documents but i cannot take in the reading material, but i see images and i get it kind of so i try- i look at someone else's game for some help but i dont totally know it. but i ask for help in the discord a LOT because i cannot process the documents they hand me, i cannot peice together what the documents say in order to solve the error i got, and only kind of get it when i connect an image of the code to what im doing, but there arent many pictures of what i need step by step and i get stuck again.

so many little things-- things that i cant really add up to just being ADHD- at the very least no one knows how to accommodate to my specifics anyways so i never get it solved. the autism may explain some things but it doesnt explain it all. I can't count change even on my fingers, i cant add things up on paper and i forgot how to multiply and divide. i forget things when theyre not in front of me, nothing i read stays in my head, nor does anything i listen to. i may work fast, i may process movement and things presented surprisingly well, but those four things (math, memory, listening comp, reading comp) are key things to learning that are SO awful it explains every reason i have been this way. i take it in quick, but it goes away in the blink of an eye.

i dont have ADHD by the way- it was one of those labels slapped on for years because "well your memory is bad, and so is your attention, and you have a hard time learning". and i dont disagree exactly, if i hadnt done this i would have been going along w my life with that label and it would have been fine- aside from the fact none of the ADHD meds i have taken over the years have never work, of course. or the fact i still wouldnt really know how to learn things because i dont have accommodations that actually help me make progress. i think i would still be sitting around stuck, thinking i am just stupid and there is no way around it.

point is- there is a lot under the surface. there are a collection of things that explain parts of your cognitive function and they all work on their own. and because i know this now, i can get very specific help. i can properly understand why certain accommodations in the past didnt work, what will work, and what i can do to actually try and Learn Shit. going through years of utterly sucking at everything in school is awful, it really knocks you down. Especially when you want to learn, you feel like you are trying so hard.

for more recent years i have sat here just thinking i couldnt do anything. watching family make progress as they age and feeling unable to do that too feels like shit and i hate the idea of never being able to put anything out there. i am in a place where i can live just fine without any job really, but i dont want to do that? i dont want to do nothing- even if it weren't a job, why would i want to sit around doing the one think i know- draw- and never be able to do anything else? id like it as a job but even outside of that i just want to know things like anyone else.

the fact that i feel far more hopeful than ever before is really a nice feeling. for a while it was a kind of motivation that was more like fighting a brick wall to proceed because even though i wanted something to change, i had no idea how it could. this isnt a clear "ok go do A and B and youll learn!". this will still be a long time of build. it will be a process as it would be for anything with learning and i still get overwhelmed by the prospect too, its still terrifying because i still wonder if it will really work out. but goddamn i do not feel like these many weeks of testing have been a waste- i really do understand far more than ever. its kind of sad to see, to have gone for so long without help, but id rather know it now than to never know and to always feel helpless and stupid.

Right here is a link to a Wikipedia article with links and numbers to resources for help! If you or anyone around you needs help of any kind, do NOT be afraid to get it! You can do this!

The story below has the following trigger warnings! ⚠️Suicide, self harm, mental health⚠️

Hi! My name's Parker, and I've tried to commit suicide multiple times.

I know you're thinking that's a morbid and socially awkward way to introduce myself, but hey, it's a big part of my story and who I am. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot more to a person than just their mental health, but a lot of the time, these things tend not to get discussed, period. Let alone when we are trying to get to know somebody, so for today, I hope we can put that stigma aside, and I can tell you a little about my journey.

I have ADHD, and depression is something I have lived with as far back as I can remember.

By the time I was twenty, I had tried to kill myself three times, I had a family that didn't talk to me, I'd cut my arms up so much my forearms were more scar than skin, my heart was crushed by someone I thought was the love of my life, and I was hooked on anything I could get my grubby little hands on.

I think about that shit a lot, the things I did, and the decisions I made.

I think about the person I was and the person I am today.

They're wildly different people, but now that I'm able to see it from another side, I realize one can't exist without the other.

I would've never learned the things I did, and I couldn't have grown from it.

It was hell, and I had to claw those life lessons from my struggle like a damn wolverine, but hey, I survived! Despite my best efforts...

Yeah, I know that's not funny, but if you don't laugh sometimes, you'll cry, and I'm sick of crying about it.

I hated who I was, and I had a hard time coping with everything I did, not just the suicide attempts but everything.

Though I finally realized I couldn't change the past, but I could change the future.

I could get help, and I could make sure none of that ever happened again.

I can't change the past, and it aches to know that somewhere in space and time, that kid is still struggling, and I wish I could talk to him...

I don't know what I'd say to him because I know he wouldn't listen and probably just lift my wallet.

But I still want to hug him, tell him that really it's all going to be okay, that he needs to let go of a lot of shit and learn to love himself, then I'd tell him to get rid of that asshole's shitty T-shirt.

The pain you feel, it's not for nothing, but it's also not forever. You'll learn from this, and in a way you least expect it, it will come full circle.

Ease up on the drugs, stop cutting, and get yourself some help.

I know you don't think you deserve it, but you do! And believe it or not, one day you're going to have a lot of people that want and need you around.

This shit doesn't get any easier, but it does get better. You just need to let it.

So tell that jackass his band ain't shit, tell your parents they're full of shit, and tell your siblings you love them even though they all suck, hang onto your friends, don't be so scared, let yourself feel, and listen to yourself once in a while! You know yourself better than you think, and you know what you need, and guess what! The answer isn't always coke!

I can't help that kid anymore, but I can help the one's reading this, and if in this moment you feel hopeless, do me, a stranger on the internet, a favor.

Take a deep breath, know that it gets better, and reach out to somebody! You deserve help, you deserve love, and you deserve to be alive!

With love,

- Parker W.

Disabilities I

Since I have some time, I'll tell you all a bit about what the deal is with my disability, and why I am writing about disability in my dissertation.

Back in 2012, I got into a car accident. My girlfriend (now wife) was in the car with me, but I bore the brunt of the impact, and as a result, got some moderate spinal damage. That resulted in me going to physical therapy for a few months, but the lasting damage resulted in fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia isn't so much as a single disease, as it is a cluster of related symptoms that don't neatly fit into one classification or particular syndrome. It's more like, "you don't have x, y, or z, but you have all the same symptoms, so we're going to put you in the big bin that's labeled TO BE SORTED LATER." This is gross simplification, of course, but it's close enough for jazz.

Fibromyalgia is mostly related to a conjunction of hyperactive and inflamed nerves, chronic fatigue, and chronic pain. My body thinks I have an infection or an injury, but there is none there, so I get all the lovely side effects of my body fighting off or healing itself without the benefit of actually healing or fighting off an illness. It's not great! It's often comorbid with depression and anxiety, which I also have.

Really, the only reason I was able to get the fibro diagnosis was because my partner ALSO has fibro, and the only reason she knows she has it is because her sister has it! No one thing causes it, but it is often related to genetics or physical trauma. She saw all the signs of it in me, got me to see a rheumatologist, and sure enough, I have all the signs of fibro.

What I struggle most with is with the nerves and the exhaustion. I have chronic fatigue, and the rest I get from sleep isn't all that restorative. Whereas most people tend to wake up rested, I wake up more or less the same amount of tired a regular person feels before going to sleep.

I'm relatively lucky, to be honest. I'm able to manage my pain and such with medication. I'm even able to go to the gym a few times a week, energy permitting. But that takes a lot of effort, and I probably don't see all the benefits a regular person would get from exercise because of a cluster of reasons, related to my thyroid, fibro, and other things.

Oh, and just this past year, I've gotten serious about addressing my latent ADHD. I've had it all my life, but the difference now is that I'm trying to write a goddamn book, and that takes a lot more mental energy and organization than I usually have. This may be needed to addressed in another post, but the fact of the matter is, I'm taking a lot longer to write this thing than most people, partly because I'm working full time, and partly because my brain simply does not work like most neurotypical brains and requires a lot more effort to simply write one page whereas others might be able to knock out much more in a night than I would with the same amount of effort.

So there's my disabilities as they stand. I'll probably try to talk a bit more about them in future posts. It's an ongoing conversation, but having been diagnosed with disabilities like this has given me a much greater focus on the issues disabled folks face in society, and in my case, the church.

Writing about disability is both freeing but also complicated. Nobody experiences the same disability the same way, and can be affected by comorbidities that result in different experiences. I'll try to be as honest about my struggles with disability as possible, because it's good to get these stories out into the world and out of my brain. But also? We shouldn't be afraid to talk about our disabilities. In all statistical likelihood, you will be affected by a disability, either in your life or in a loved one's life. So it's good to be honest about struggles and joys related to disability, because if we can normalize it, we can understand each other better and work together to form a better community. One that treats each other as co-equal humans, worthy of love and respect.

So. I was working on one of the many fic ideas I have when ANOTHER one popped into my head and I started working on that one too (adhd is both a blessing and a curse and I'm tragically uneducated at the moment so I have no other choice but to literally write all my ideas down and work on them as I go) and if you don't mind. I'd like to tempt/tease you with it.

What if Ingo, in an attempt to fight his feelings for Emmet, basically becomes a serial dater? Just constantly dating people left and right, men and women, trying to get over his feelings for his twin to the point that he sorta develops the image/rumor of being a playboy? But Ingo being Ingo, the overly polite sincere and passionate train master that he is, always agrees to date people but makes sure to tell them that he's already in love with someone but that he morally can't love or pursue a relationship with so he's agreeing not exactly because he likes them back but because he's hoping that maybe he'll fall in love with them back and be able to move on and forget or overwrite his love for the other person. It never works of course. His, MANY, exes and anyone who's walked away from dating him after confessing all end up thinking he's in love with someone who's already married and he's too good a person to break them apart. No one even considers he'd be in love with his own twin. And all his failed relationships make Ingo feel worse about loving Emmet. And Emmet is just over here pining over Ingo but staying away because he KNOWS Ingo loves someone already not even thinking for a second his love might be reciprocated. It kills Emmet on the inside see Ingo so heartbroken after each failed relationship.

That's all the teasing I'll give for now. It's obviously gonna be a hurt/comfort with a healthy serving of pining.

I'll go ahead and somewhat introduce myself. I'll be going primairly by "Guilty" since this ship is sort of my guilty pleasure and I'll most likely be posting some other stories and ideas of some more guilty pleassures of mine though for now it'll primairly be Blankshipping stuff. I'm still not sure if I'll make a side blog to interact with the community but I'll probably start at least signing my anon messages. BTW sorry for the borderline spam I've sent with all my ideas and stuff and thanks for responding to them so kindly! The chronic hanahaki, coma Ingo, speech impediment Emmet, and big argument right before Ingo gets YEETED to Hisui annon messages have all been me. I'm also the one who sent the Mr Forgetable song and that OTHER list of songs(which I've been listening to while writing notes and working on the fics) among some other messages I've sent but can't fully remember. I know its a lot of messages you're just really fun to talk to and I genuinely really like to read your ideas! Nice to officially meet you! I hope to actually start posting stuff on Ao3 soon! My name on there is Guilty_StandPoint

-Guilty

Ingo just putting as much of his everything as he can for each of these random people. There is no discernable type that he "falls for" because they are all approaching him. I imagine he struggles to try and cater to what these people might like, even though his initial thought is always "Oh, Emmet would like if I--" Then, he chastises himself because this is not Emmet, this is someone else who wants him, even though he is in love with his twin.

And then! If he can't make any of these people happy, how could he have ever imagined making Emmet happy was possible? Even after all the dating, he still loves his twin, so it didn't even work... And then Emmet, to the side, wondering what he has to offer that none of those people could.

_(:з)∠)_ oof.

And no worries about all the messages! Knowing that it's one anon makes me feel a little better, honestly! There are some that I haven't gotten to with everything else going on, and I was worrying that many people were waiting for my input!

Nice to meet you officially as well, Guilty! You have a ton of amazing ideas and prompts! I can't wait to read all of your stuff!

ADHD

My experience and thoughts.

I've always had it. Frankly, given the level of dysphoria I experienced around my AGAB (Assigned Gender at Birth), it was always on the back burner. The pain I experienced constantly being told to remember things, to do things, to stop being a space cadet, airhead, whatever, to pay attention, none of it compared to the pain of having the wrong body. [To be clear, having this pain, or dysphoria is not a requirement to be transgender, I read somewhere that someone thought a better definition of being trans was feeling a like a gender other than AGAB, and having euphoria when you got to finally be your gender, and I think that is more accurate, though again, hard to get the euphoria until you do get to be yourself so really the first half is all that applies. End tangent]. So the pain of being called those things, just didn't feel as severe. I knew I was a space cadet, I knew I forgot things all the time, I knew I had a hard time with doing things that didn't interest me, and I knew after some time of trying that no matter how hard I tried "to be better," I couldn't manage it.

I admit I think I attributed some of it to my medications for my Asthma, regardless of how true that actually was, and therefore had a slightly easier time accepting it, as I much appreciated the ability to breathe over not being able to (for the most part, in fact one of my greatest fears is dying by suffocation, because I almost have, way too many times growing up, and I knew it was all too possible as my Uncle had died at age 3 from Asthma.). So if that meant I was spacey so be it. But D!@n it was hard sometimes.

I was constantly told to stop talking in early elementary school, to stop distracting everyone, to stop (now that I can recognize it) being myself. In second grade, I'd been my talkative self one too many times and as punishment the teacher had my desk moved to the other side of the room facing the wall. It was embarrassing at first... but then I realized I was actually able to get more work done that way, and when it was time for me to move back, I refused. Somewhere between then and fifth grade the bullying started getting extreme as kids started to see I wasn't a boy. And while I learned to hide being a girl because of it, I also learned to stop talking so much. Looking back I think I was depressed, I withdrew from everyone. I stopped participating so much with my peers at school. Even so... the bullying continued.

Somehow, despite being so distractible, I managed to make it through grade school... I knew I was smart, I was part of the gifted program from 4th grade on, so I think that had a lot to do with it. I remember seeing a bunch of the gifted kids getting to do some amazing things and pestering my mom to let me join them. Apparently my mother and teachers at the time knew how smart I was, but were afraid to let me do that because of my distractibility and "nervous" disposition, that somehow I wouldn't be able to handle the stress of attending a whole separate class.... And for some reason my mom thought it was fine to tell me this... which just added to my feeling so different from everyone else. Unfortunately, even in the gifted class... the bullying didn't stop. But atleast the things to do in there were much more interesting then regular classes, so I really did enjoy it. And it didn't matter if I got tired of one thing and switched to something else in the middle, it was very self directed learning, which suited me.

I don't really remember much of anything of middle school in terms of ADHD or really in terms of anything other than what I think I've already related in other posts. Nor do I remember much of highschool either. But I do remember struggling a lot to get myself to do things I wasn't interested in, and that it took me so so so much longer to get my homework done than my sister. And I remember believing I could get a 4.0 if I just tried harder, and decided to prove it to myself by working at it my senior year. I managed to do it, but I wasn't healthy that year at all, and I think it was mostly because I could use school work to distract myself from the dysphoria and emotional verbal abuse from my parents that I managed to get the 4.0 that year.

College... well college was incredibly hard. I failed English 101 twice before finally passing it. All because at my school they wanted you to stick with the same general topic throughout the semester as you wrote three different papers about it... And I just couldn't find a topic that maintained my interest that long... I knew there was one that would... but it would mean coming out.... and I was afraid to. And by the time I took it for the 3rd time, I had come out to my parents (which as we know did not go well at all, in any way, shape or form) and so it felt a little easier? safer? needful? to do so and write about trans people, and I did come out in my personal essay... maybe someday I'll publish it on here, I managed to get it published in a community newsletter a few years later.

But even the other classes... if I didn't have an intense interest in them, I struggled with them, between my mental health and my ADHD, my grades were not good. And I kept changing majors. I graduated with my 4th major, but even that was a near thing as I was fighting that final year or two not change it something else that had grabbed my attention. Part of it is because I avoided taking gen eds that were required... they just didn't interest me, so the last year or so I was taking nothing but gen eds, and I was getting really bored.

By the way, I don't recommend saving gen eds for last and constantly switching majors... every switch meant I had to start over... and thus it took me 11 years to get my undergrad degree. Not the best route to take, but now that I participate on an ADHD redit group, apparently not to uncommon for those of us that manage to get into college and then manage to finally get our degrees without any learning disability support.

All the time I was growing up, ADHD was never mentioned to me... no idea if it was mentioned to my parents or not. Though knowing what I know now, if it had, I'm sure they'd have completely dismissed it given there views of psychiatry (which apparently they only believed in when they wanted to erase me). Based on what I can remember, I had the pretty stereotypical female presentation of ADHD. So like the vast majority of girls with it... I wasn't diagnosed, nor was it ever suggested.

Then... then there was all the negative media attention around ADHD. And I absorbed all of it, I grew to believe that ADHD was bad, that it was a made up illness, that all people with ADHD were just adicts using it as an excuse to get high. [PSA: None of these are true, at all. But it was what the media pedaled to the layperson all the time, I remember in high school the big buzz words were too many kids were getting diagnosed with ADHD and getting medicated just for the convenience of the teachers. 2nd PSA: Had kids who didn't need that medication taken it, they would have been an even bigger handful and the teachers would know this, so it was just fear mongering by the anti drug propaganda machine). So even though I knew I had issues around attention... I just ignored it, because I didn't want to be one of "those" people.

You know... reflecting back on this... the worst part was that my training in medical school and residency tended toward reinforcing those stereotypes... there was little discussion about the pathophysiology behind ADHD, or how it actually affected the brain or what the actual sxs were or how it could impact patients in so many aspects of their lives. It's really really horrible that our medical education centers do this. Not surprising (looking at you Medical Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, Racism), but definitely horrible.

So if I wasn't treated or diagnosed until a year ago, how in all the realms did I manage to make it through medschool and residency? How did I not only finish both, but (more or less) finish both on time? And looking back, I think the reason was becuase my school and residency program tried to support us and our needs around learning. They were both heavily structured... there was very little choose your own adventure in medical school or residency. And the few times there were... well they were a disaster for me. I really wanted to do a rotation up at Camp Not-A-Wheeze where i'd spent multiple summers as a child, and feeling accepted as me sort of (still couldn't be a girl, but it was perfectly ok and normal to have Asthma, and I couldn't go to a stay away camp otherwise because of my Asthma). So it provided some really good feelings and memories of some amount of normalcy, getting to be around other kids that dealt with severe asthma like I did. And I wanted to go and help those kids myself... except that to do that required a lot more organizational skills and more importantly organizational bandwidth than I had, and by the time I realized this, it was too late and I had to settle for one of the easy to sign up for rotations... And that's generally how the electives would go... unless I had sig help signing up for them... which is the only reason I was able to participate in the rural health program and got to do rotations on the Navajo and Hopi reservations. And I am so thankful I had the help I needed to sign up for those, they were amazing and wonderful rotations.

So yeah, I made it through my graduate training purely because it was heavily structured and as a learner I was heavily supported, and I knew by that time that I needed that extra support and participated in every opportunity to do so. That's why. Even so I didn't graduate from residency on time... but that was mostly because of head injury that put me out for nearly two months... and a bad OB rotation that did not support residents with ADHD whatsoever, and their primary evaluation centered around something anyone with ADHD would struggle with, and failed it, and had to redo it back at my home hospital where my usual OB teachers already knew me, and knew I was more capable than what the Away OB's thought anyway.

That away rotation was incredibly hard. Not only was I being judged for being a family medicine resident... but in retrospect, I was being heavily judged for having ADHD and not knowing how to compensate for it in that hospital setting (lots of patient turnover with lots of patients- I just could not keep track of all the constantly changing details AND report on them in a consistent and coherent manner at shift change). I felt so invalidated, and so resentful because instead of trying to help figure out way to be successful, they just told me to do better and expected me to do better without giving any salient advice that might have actually helped. There was zero learning support there combined with the disdain of not being an OB/Gyn doc. I felt really really horrible about myself by the end of that rotation. Fortunately, if I remember correctly my home hospital OB's when they were consulted by my program about my performance, thought I did an adequate job for a family medicine resident, and didn't have any grave concerns about my OB skills, so the program decided to have me repeat the rotation at my home hospital and that. That went a lot smoother and I got some of my confidence back. As scare as my home hospital OB attendings could be... I trusted them, and they genuinely tried to teach what we needed to know. And they seemed to have enough confidence in me and my skills to pass me. And that, at least, felt good. Even though it doesn't change what happened and that experience in New Hampshire solidly convinced me that I never wanted to do OB after I graduated from residency. (Yup, yay for the avoidance trauma response! though in this case, I don't regret it in the least)

Then... one day I was browsing through youtube and I stumbled onto Jessica McCabe's channel, "How to ADHD", and there were so many moments of wait! But I experience that! But wait... but wait maybe I do have ADHD... to wait then I'm not a failure... I'm not lazy or stupid. I credit her so much with teaching me what ADHD actually was and what it meant and what and how it can and does present. She researches her videos thoroughly, bases them off of the research she has read through in a concise, accurate, and fun manner. And over the years has become an expert in talking about and educating about ADHD. She finally gave me the courage to seek a diagnosis and treatment... Well she did and the day I accidently drank an energy drink and felt like I could function like a normal person because of the caffeine I had that day. (I avoided caffeine because I thought it made me sick, whenever I drank coffee I'd feel icky, but I guess it's something else in coffee that does that. Also don't ask me how I got through medical school and residency without caffeine, I have no idea).

So at age 47 I was diagnosed with ADHD and started on a stimulant. And it's been night and day. I was feeling like a real human being again. Or at least I was until my Depression flared like a magnitude 10 earthquake... though 3 months into being on stimulants the stimulant shortage caught up to me, and I couldn't get my regular medication for 3 months... and coincidentally it was in the middle of all that the depression flared. There's a catch-22 to treatment of ADHD. Once it has been treated adequately, the brain absolutely is not interested in returning to running at 150% percent just to cope with and function somewhat like what the world expects of neurotypical people... I couldn't function like I used to before treatment, I just didn't have the energy for it. Now that I knew what life could be like with treatment, a simple treatment at that, I could not get myself to function like I used to... or maybe it's just that I was aware of how much I wasn't functioning... Now that I think about it, I actually did as well as I used to, but I felt awful. I felt awful because it was so effing hard and I knew, I knew what it was like when my symptoms were treated adequately. And I admit I really really really hate the BS that the DEA and the BS pharmaceutical companies are pulling on ADHD patients. It's horrible and I know it's costing livelihoods, mental/physical health, and lives as a result. Not that the DEA, nor the Pharmaceutical industry care. And it really sucks, for me, for my patients, for everyone and their families and freinds who are affected by this artificial shortage.

It is utter BS that the media is sending out the same negative propaganda around ADHD just like it did when I grew up. That people are being over diagnosed. That people are getting diagnosed who don't need it, that people are being overmedicated, that people just want to get high. BS. The pandemic did lots of horrible things. One of them is that it took away a lot of, if not all, of the coping mechanisms people who had ADHD were unknowingly using to cope with it and function somewhat... Combine that with the increased positive visibility in social media around ADHD. And low and behold people seek medical care and treatment that can help them function and feel better when they can't cope like they used to. It's not rocket science. We've seen this over and over and over again. When society becomes more aware of a human condition in a positive supportive way, more people admit to and come out as having that condition. It's happened with left handedness, Gay people, Autism, Trans kids (don't get me started), and <gasp> ADHD.

It's not because it's trendy, it's not because it will make someone popular. It's because we have the ability to not only recognize it in patients, but that patients are allowing themselves to recognize it in themselves and come to us with the understanding that what they've experienced all their lives, just isn't typical for most human beings and are trying to get help, trying to feel better, trying to understand themselves and what they can do to help themselves. All of these patients don't have ADHD, there are other neurodiverse presentations, other mental health conditions that can mimic it, but if they don't know something is physically/neurologically not typical, then they don't know to ask about it, to talk to their doctor about it.

It is bizarre to me that we expect people who've had a condition all their lives to understand what they experience isn't what the majority of the population experience. Yes, they may get some hints from other people if the situation comes up, but without a solid frame of reference of what our experiences in the human condition typically are like, then it's very hard to know that something is wrong. And if you do know something is wrong, it's often a vague feeling wrongness that's hard to pinpoint. And often when we experience and start to have an idea that we may not experience the world the way most people do, we've already been blamed and shamed for a long time for not experiencing it that way and are anxious/afraid/ and/or terrified to talk about those experiences with anyone, there's so much guilt and shame tied into our experience of ourselves.

Is it any wonder that when suddenly information is presented to us about our experience in a positive manner we latch on to it, and try and get some help? The media specializes in fear mongering. Primarily because it's based in a capitalist profit driven system, and in such a system, fear sells. It sells because our brains have evolved to pay more attention to danger than to pleasure or good things. It's the inherent bias in the entire western capitalist media system. And while having a free media is important, having one that's driven by profit margins leads to the dangerous phenomenon of fear mongering propaganda that self perpetuates. It happens to every minority group that starts to get some positive light in our culture. It is happening right now to people with ADHD. And it sucks. It is happening to Trans kids and adults right now. And that sucks just as much.

It needs to stop. We need to start celebrating our differences. We need to be able to access high quality medical care without shame or stigma. And it needs to happen now. Not 500 years from now, But now. Here in the present. So much of the suffering we experience as human beings isn't generated by natural violency/disasters. But by what we do and how we treat each other. By this us versus them mentality... It doesn't have to be that way. And I wish so much that everyone who had significant power to change that could see that. Hell, I wish everyone could just see that.

The world would be such a good place then, if we stopped trying to hurt each other, and instead tried to help each other. Regardless of what part of the human condition we experience. Including ADHD.

Just in case you haven’t stumbled across this fact elsewhere, you should be aware that pharmacies are often out of adderall and it has nothing to do with the pandemic. Or, at least, it USUALLY has nothing to do with the pandemic.

My understand is that there are multiple and fluctuating reasons for this, all stemming from the fact that the drug is highly regulated, and—yes—all of them at the expense of the people who actually need the meds. That said, the most consistent explanation I’ve received from more than one pharmacist over the years is that they’re limited in the number they can actually stock at a time, and demand exceeds that quota.

Yes, this is rage inducing. It’s also been a problem since the early aughts and I don’t see it going away, though it’s improved somewhat.

I recommend talking to your pharmacist and finding out whether this is a consistent problem at your pharmacy specifically. It can also help to have your psychologist reach out to your pharmacy ahead of time and confirm the meds are available—if not, there may be a generic available that they can prescribe instead. You can also see whether it’s possible to get your prescription a few days early, just in case.

Yeah there are some yikesy stories in my comments about access to Adderall and the other stimulant-side drugs for ADHD. It does seem to be a combination of "can't stock much at once" and "can't refill your prescription for you until two days before it needs it" and "But so like...are you an addict?" It's the typical bar to entry that people with disabilities face getting medication -- which I was prepared for, given I know people who struggle to get their meds each month and I've handled a lot of RFM issues surrounding them as well. I was honestly braced to spend several days getting that initial prescription filled, I was shocked when it just...went through.

In multiple ways I'm fortunate -- I don't face physical access issues, and I've spent long enough without the meds that I'm capable of wrangling the prescription without having to be ON the prescription. Like, I was actually able to fairly easily call the pharmacy about the length of delay, and that seemed to spur them into locating at least sixty of the little blue fuckers. I am also a middle class white guy in my forties, so I don’t get profiled as drug-seeking. 

I've booked out my psych appointments so that I'll generally see him on day 32 of a 30 day prescription, and my diagnosis is mild enough that there are days where I feel the meds wearing off and go "Well, I'm ok without the second dose" so even my first 30-day supply lasted me 40 days. Next session I may speak to him about the automated mailed-to-home service that his clinic is partnered with and if that would simplify matters -- a genuine question given the recent scandals about some of those services overprescribing.

The most common thing I've heard -- here and from other people outside of tumblr -- is that a lot of people have convinced their prescriber that they need a slightly higher dose than they do, so they can get a 30-day supply of 20mg doses and split them, thus turning it into a 60-day supply of their actual dose which they can stockpile. Which is ripe for a satirical novel of some kind, because while none of the people I'm talking to are addicts, they're forced to behave like addicts in order to maintain a consistent supply of a necessary disability aid. I don't think I'm the one to write it -- at any rate, not yet -- but there's content in the idea of our cultural fear of addiction being so epic and hallucinatory that we actually force people into addictive behaviors because you can't exist as a disabled person within the letter of the law.

So....I'm just putting this into words as I'm starting to process it all, no one is obligated to reply or DM (you can if you'd like to, just not required). But there's been some...crazy shit my mother admitted that I gotta get out of my brain.

~

Trigger/Content Warnings (uncensored words that can be filtered/blocked): abuse (intentional) & neglect (intentional), ableism, maltreatment of a disabled/mentally ill person, (baffling) transphobia, parental trauma, self harm, ideation/attempts, mention of razor blades

So, we've been tentatively (pending medication evaluation to make sure the meds are working) diagnosed with a few things by a psychiatrist, and prescribed meds for some of it. We now have PTSD (they can't diagnose C-PTSD yet but PTSD helps us get flashback/night terror sleep meds that help us fall back asleep when night terrors/flashbacks wake us up (Prazosin)), ADHD (reconfirmed/previously diagnosed but now approved for meds (Adderall)), D.I.D. (no meds for it but they said they'd “make note of it” because it may affect how/if meds work), and Bipolar Disorder (infrequent/slower swings - month or more long episodes at a time) on paper. We have bipolar depression meds (lamotrigine), ADHD stimulants, & PTSD meds. The bipolar meds are daily, PTSD meds & ADHD meds are both “as needed”.

We've been sleeping way better, and able to actually schedule/go to appointments and apply to jobs and generally be an adult.

The bipolar meds are working. It's like our brain had this thick wintery fog preventing us from seeing more than a day into the future where we were still alive, and now the fog is thinner and I can see days ahead, a month ahead, and actually plan accordingly. And that's only on 1/4 dose (they have to slowly bump you up (every 2 weeks up 1/4) to prevent side effects; after 2 months we'll be at full dose, so in mid February we'll be at full dose). It's amazing how much the meds are already doing given it's just 1/4 what we'll be prescribed when they can.

So,, the fact that the meds are working so well means we have bipolar. I decided to tell our parents just to see if they knew. ...They did. Our father said they already knew but “didn’t wanna force a label on” me.

Two days later I texted our mother with questions and clarifications. How long had they known? What else had they noticed and not told me? Did they know I was trans before I did?

A day after I texted, she finally replied.

They knew we were bipolar 2 years ago. She claims they talked about it in front of me/us so there was no need to tell me (if she's being honest, I don't remember it— but the fact that none of us remember that is...sketchy, especially given our father said they were never going to tell us). The only comment about our mental health that entire time was “you better be talking to your therapist about that” (/snarky) when she saw I'd been self harming. She admitted last year that she “didn't know what to say/how to help”, as if she couldn't have asked her adult child what they needed or how to help. So they apparently knew we were depressed and she did nothing to prevent multiple attempts in that time or to help prevent self harm (she even went so far as to buy us *sharper* razor blades because she claimed she thought we were “slipping [on accident] while shaving” so...she enabled it?)

She also admitted she knew as early as 4th grade that I had clinical anxiety & ADHD. She only tried to get me diagnosed for the ADHD (which didn't finally get diagnosed until 2016, when I was 16 or 17) and ignored the anxiety. That anxiety has turned into even worse diagnose-able disorder levels (which are eased a little with testosterone and bipolar meds but still plagues us nonetheless). So apparently she neglected the anxiety on purpose, and shamed us for ADHD symptoms/traits despite confidently knowing we had it.

She also admitted she knew I was struggling academically as early as middle school. Her only solution at the time was to offer homeschooling, which I of course said no to. It's one of two things she actually accepted a no for (the other was asking if I wanted to go to Christian church, & she didn't really want to go so she quickly accepted a no). When I dropped out of uni in 2020 due to the overwhelmed compounding stress (in hindsight: PTSD flashbacks, newly discovered D.I.D., ragingly unmedicated ADHD & bipolar, autism that wasn't recognized or accommodated...and then a concussion in Nov 2019 adding to all of that), apparently fully aware that I had bipolar and was neurodivergent and showed signs of PTSD, she called us an “academic failure” and a “financial failure”.

She then admitted, unintentionally, why she's been so transphobic the past 5 years since we came out. She claims that she noticed we “suddenly” didn't want to “be perceived as female” in high school, but she attributes this to “lack of self confidence” that needed self defense/martial arts classes to be fixed, and “immature boys” flirting with us. So she basically views us, a transmasc person who is happily 8+ months on testosterone, as an insecure girl who just didn't like to be sexualized by immature boys. I have addressed this multiple times in the past 5 years, including telling her that a gay man perceived me sexually (he checked me out & definitely perceived me as a man; we were in the LGBT+ club at uni together) and it made me very happy, so it had nothing to do with being sexually perceived *if they didn't think I was a woman*.

It's been a few days. I didn't text her back because I was so hurt and angry that she didn't tell me she knew and kept bullying (abusing) me and pressuring me to detransition and refusing to get me meds (even Tylenol wasn't ”allowed” in that house, it was evil, she's a bit of a ‘crunchy mom’) and then bullying me for being difficult and uncooperative. I'm still hurt and angry.

I wanted to assume good intentions. No parent actually hurts their kid on purpose, ¿right? ...¿Right?

But apparently they did. My understanding of my upbringing and my parents is shattered and darkened with some very painful and real shadows and intentions.

I was telling our girlfriend about all this, and she said I have the backstory of a villain origin story and it's amazing that I chose to fight to be a good person despite it all. She's surprised (positively, not like I would've actually) that I didn't kill my parents. But I saw everything I didn't wanna be, and I filled in the blank spaces in the gaps hoping to create someone good. I guess I succeeded, but it hurts that I proved it's possible and my parents are choosing not to do what I did.

So...that's why I've been so quiet lately. ✌😅

~Nico

Idk just rambling about my brain

Man I don’t think I have adhd but I do think my dad does because he fits SO MANY hallmarks of the inattentive subtype. He doesn’t want to bother getting a proper confirmation of that being the case but like the CPN who visits to assist my brother more or less said he agrees that adhd is very likely in him given everything he’s come to understand about my dad over the last several years of knowing him.

But he did also sort of just generally sit and point at all of us and say he thought we were all autistic on like the second time he ever met us so lol I don’t know

it does make me wonder though if there’s SOMETHING going on with me too. My brother is definitely autistic since he received that diagnosis back in school, and though it’s not confirmed, dad matches so many check marks for adhd that it is reasonably likely for him to have it but whenever I look up one or the other to try to see if I see myself in them I don’t feel as though I fully relate enough to one or the other to think I really have it.

Like yeah there are a handful of things I do relate strongly to but idk if they can just be written off as coming from a different source. There’s a lot of trauma and depression and anxiety in general swirling around in my head so it would be easy to put some of those things down to those instead.

so I generally just assume I don’t fit into autism or adhd. But it’s fairly present in the family so I can’t help but wonder.

Autism is definitely in the family on my dad’s side for sure. His cousin and all three of her children have it as well as her brother and I know one of his children has it too.

I found out a while back that my uncle had been told he was on the spectrum too and I wouldn’t be surprised if my other uncle was as well bc they’re both very similar in the same ways, though that’s just speculation. But there’s definitely multiple confirmed instances of it so idk. It makes me curious about whether there’s a chance I’m somewhere on the spectrum too bc as I mentioned before there are some things here and there which I relate strongly to but none of it is strong enough overall to be like oh yeah that sums me up you know? Like maybe some lesser traits but not so much the bigger ones.

I do think I have some kind of dyscalculia for almost certain though, given my well-documented struggles with maths, and other shit like reading clock faces. And the cousins I mentioned earlier all have confirmed dyscalculia. So that’s there. And apparently it can be present alongside adhd from what I read a while back. But again I don’t relate strongly enough to think I really have that.

Executive dysfunction is the biggest thing that does match up. God knows I’ve spent so much of my adult life trying to get myself to do what needs done to maintain the upkeep of even just my own bedroom and even with the best intentions of keeping it up I could never do it. I’d sit for months screaming internally at myself to fucking tidy up and ultimately the best thing that worked to make it happen was knowing I had friends coming up to stay and then I’d suddenly erupt into a hurricane of productive tidying, kicked into action by an immediately approaching deadline. and to an extent I relate to people’s descriptions of what rejection sensitive dysphoria feels like. but at the same time I wouldn’t say I had a particularly hard time in school wrt studying and working, or other things people generally look for. It was the being bullied that I struggled more with then.

anyway idk. There’s something about my brain that is definitely… idk… SOMETHING. It has real observable effects on my life and relationships and everything but I just dunno what exactly it is.

Do you ever just feel nostalgic for a life you never had? Or for the life you thought you’d live and didn’t? 

Depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, adhd, autism... I’ve been struggling with these things for so long; even when I didn’t know that’s what they were. During my last therapy session, I realized that even as a child, I was having thoughts that no... *happy* kid should ever have. 

I remember as a child having the revelation that... Oh. People don’t care about me the same way I do them. I realized that the way I cared about the people in my life was to bare my whole heart to them, to easily admit them into my circle as “family” rather than friends. To look at my friends and think to myself that the best, most perfect, idealized version of my future would be living side by side next to them forever. 

And then realizing... they don’t think that way. None of them did. They would joke that they would be forced to stick close to me because otherwise I’d wind up dead from eating junk food. “We’d go to check on you and find your body under a mountain of ramen wrappers!” is how they’d put it (unbeknown to all of us at the time that chicken flavored ramen was my safe food, and therefor all I ate). 

I used to be an incredibly shy person, painfully so, I would hide behind my mother, behind my friends, behind anyone if it meant I could make someone else talk for me. One of my friends made it her mission to force me to order for myself or talk to staff or any other time that usually had me hiding behind her. (I wasn’t shy. I was autistic, though neither of us knew that.)

She would also push my buttons constantly and on purpose. Any time she knew something would set me off, she’d do it, and she’d admitted this to me once. Times that come to mind where when we were splitting up candy, I think for Halloween, there was one I really wanted, she saw me take it before we decided how we were going to split it up and had to put it back into the pile. I told everyone I called dibs on it. She took it, knowing it would piss me off (send me into a meltdown). Another time, she purposefully keep pushing and pushing  and pushing until I finally snapped and shoved her  (another meltdown, the only time I had ever lashed out physically like that. I just wanted her to stop and get away from me). She admitted she had been provoking me, but I was still the one who got in trouble with our other friend who was there. 

...They didn’t care about me. Not really. That’s not caring about someone. 

It’s not caring to make fun of someone who’s desperately trying to talk to you about their favorite show ever (I was hyperfixated on anime at the time), and then when they start to give up admit that they actually did watch it and liked it, they just liked “messing” with you more. And then the whole group starts to get into it because she started to like it... And they forget you were the one to like it first.

None of these people liked me. 

And I look back on that time and wonder, had I just been neurotypical, would they have treated me better? Would I have been better friends with them? 

And I look at where I am right now in life and wonder... If I was normal, would I be happy? Would I have a job, not have to worry about money? Not feel like crying every single day because the weight of my inabilities and insecurities when it comes to working a real job is too much for me to bear anymore? Would I be able to have the friends I have now, have the girlfriend I have now, but just be *happy*? Would I have lived a completely different life? 

I had so many expectations on me as the smart kid growing up. 

Is it weird to mourn yourself? Is it weird to mourn the loss of this neurotypical person that you never got the chance to become? To mourn the loss of a neurotypical childhood you never had? To grieve over the fact that I will never be the person I wanted to be. 

Every child growing up seems to have had an answer for “what do you want to be when youre older?” but I never did. Mom said I was good at writing, so I said writer. Made that my thing. But I never craved to be one, never strode towards that as a goal. I never had a goal. I still don’t, 27 years later. 

What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just be........

I suppose I’m not done mourning the person I wish I could have been.