- I don’t even remember putting that thing down but now it’s not in my hand and I don’t know where it went
- ‘what do you mean you can just think about nothing? what’s that like? I don’t understand’
- *tuning out of a conversation halfway through somebody else’s sentence because I just thought of something interesting*
- carrying my psychiatrist’s business card with me at all times because I see her once a month and every time I go I forget what floor her office is on. I’ve been there 8 times
- ‘Between A & B, A would be the right thing to do’ *a cascading thought process that takes a few seconds tops, justifying option B* ‘actually B would be the right thing to do’
- somebody else, later: why did you think B was the right thing to do??
- me: …. it’s not important, I’ll know better next time
- (spoiler: I won’t know better next time)
- I know you already told me this thing like 12 times but can you tell me again just one more time because I forgot
- it’s not that I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to do this thing. it’s just that in that particular moment i thought it was okay to do it anyway for reasons that would take 48 minutes to explain even though it only took me 3 seconds to justify it in my thoughts, so it’s easier for me to just say ‘I forgot’
- ‘I already told you that’ ‘really? I must have forgotten, i’m sorry’ ‘it was FIVE MINUTES AGO. in this SAME CONVERSATION’
- this internal conversation:
- me: I feel motivated to do this responsible thing
- me: if I don’t do this responsible thing right now I will get distracted and forget to do it for another 5 hours
- me: so I should do this thing right this second, there is nothing stopping me
- me: after I finish this one cell phone game
- me, 5 hours later: I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN
- almost flunking a class because I straight up didn’t know any homework had been assigned despite loving the class and always attending
- trusting the memory of literally anyone else over my own memory
- intending to do something for days. sometimes months. never doing it
- *cuddling somebody* mm this is nice … *2 seconds later* bored now
- somebody is mad at me. I might as well fucking d i e
- the options in company are: overshare about the one thing I care about or not talk at all
- insensitive or inattentive? YOU decide (and when you tell me that i hurt your feelings and I didn’t notice I’ll rejection sensitive dysphoria into fantasies of disappearing forever)
- being excellent at my job for months on end, doing everything right and everything well, and then suddenly & without explanation being t h e w o r s t at it for several weeks, making dumb mistakes everywhere for no discernible reason
- when asked to explain something: well it all started when I was a baby
- ‘they don’t need that much explanation’ well YOU tell ME where to start b/c I have no fucking clue tbh
- i can’t throw away anything b/c when I look at it I remember all the sentimental reasons I keep it around and they seem just as important as actually needing it and when I close the storage box back up I forget I had it in the first place until the next time I try to get rid of my clutter and repeat this process
- i wasnt’ idle for a second all day and yet I didn’t accomplish a n y t h i n g
- am i a speed-reader or was I so impatient for what came next that I read only half a page and then skipped to the next one?
- getting excited about a project, starting it, then racing to finish it as fast as I can because when I get bored I’ll abandon it and never go back. must beat the boredom
- edit my fics? working twice on the same idea? /uproarious laughter
- well I fucked that up. too bad I can never rework it because I no longer have passionate energy for it
- me, opening a bottle of adhd meds: I don’t have adhd. I’m just a lazy bum who doesn’t try hard enough
Did I write this?
No, you don’t write fic. *solemn*
Tag: ME
Haha. That ADHD feel when you realise October is apparently ADHD month. On October 22.
Atypical Autism Traits
The [ original source ] for these is highly gendered.
Under the cut, I am retyping the original source in gender-neutral language, as atypical autism traits do not only appear in girls.
If you are Autistic and your autism matches this profile, it does not mean that you must be a girl; it just means your autism is a kind that often gets missed by traditional diagnostic profiles. These traits were commonly found by researchers in cisgender girls, but they are by no means exclusive to cisgender girls.
The traits are split into four categories.
the “female autism” thing has been making the rounds again… so here’s the less cissexist version
If you look up symptoms of ASD specific to girls one of them is frequently “masculine behavior/dress” or whatever and people love to blame that on autism being an “extreme male brain” but it’s really very easily explained when you consider what femininity is: a set of implicit social rules forced on women. Like, of course autistic girls and women aren’t going to be as successful at performing femininity “correctly.” It doesn’t have to do with the fictitious male brain. It has to do with femininity being inaccessible to people who have difficulty navigating complex and arbitrary social conventions.
I can dead be sobbing in front of you with a broken heart and I’ll still crack a joke
embarrassment squick is a phenomena i have been feeling literally my entire life bUT I NEVER KNEW THERE WAS AN ACTUAL TERM FOR IT???
except second-hand embarrassment i guess, but it’s not quite the same
there’s being embarrassed for someone else and then there’s being unable to sit through shows like the office and parks and recreation even though you KNOW they’re good, funny shows that everyone references all the time and you want to understand buT YOU CAN’T WATCH IT WITHOUT WANTING TO RUN OUT OF THE ROOM SCREAMING OH GOD I CAN NOT AAAAHHH
ALL SITCOMS EVER. ALL OF THEM. 100%.
all i’m saying is if an all-girls school crashed on the island in lord of the flies then they would’ve been off the island in a week
lord of the flies doesnt show the base human condition, it shows the base privileged straight white male condition, incredibly when i point this out people get kind of annoyed
Might I direct you to Beauty Queens by Libba Bray, a YA novel in which a plane full of teen beauty pageant contestants crashes on a deserted island. Instead of descending into violent savagery, the girls are able to work together and become more truly themselves than they could in the patriarchal world outside. They repurpose the tools of beauty into tools of survival (and some of them work to keep up their appearances too, because that’s what makes them feel happy, while others decide they’re done with all the pressure to be a certain sort of beautiful.) They fight against evil corporations. Beauty Queens is enthusiastically feminist. (Never fear, the feminism is intersectional, exploring issues of race and sexuality as well as gender.) Also, this book is HILARIOUS, not to mention surprisingly exciting!
Oh, look at this thing I’m going to add to my reading list.
srsly read Beauty Queens, one of the girls is trans!!!
You have to cheat. Ask for as many extensions on papers as you possibly can. Pretend your computer is broken. Use your charm if you have any. If you’re going to cry, don’t wait until you’re out of the room—do it where the people in power can see you. Eat the same food every day if you can’t think of anything else to make. Put other things ahead of taking a shower, even if your mom said you have to take a shower every two days. Sometimes people won’t notice you’re cheating but even if they do and are annoyed you might still get by.
My mom goes to workshops for people with ASD and then gives me the really long printouts that go along with them. The printouts tell me to sit down and make a list of everything I have to do. When I am anxious, as I have been this year, it’s hard to think about these things so I hold on to the printouts out of guilt but don’t actually read them. Then my mom finds them and gets upset that I haven’t read them and says that I’m not ready to live on my own.
But I am ready to live on my own. Badly. Just like I can hold down a full-time job. Badly. Just like I am getting my homework done. Badly. And I forget to balance my checkbook, which none of my non-disabled friends do because you can get it online, and my mom says, “Well it’s different for you because they would be able to do it if they needed to, but you wouldn’t, so you have to do it.” Theoretically I understand this is true, but my checkbook remains unbalanced.
Which is bad. And I feel bad. I do! At this rate I’ll never be able to go to college. But I do go to college. At this rate I’ll never be able to have any friends. But I do have friends. I just don’t do everything right with them all the time.
For people whose lives are controlled by executive dysfunction, I firmly believe the difference between getting stuff done and not getting stuff done is not caring about doing things right. You cannot always make a list all the time and be early for everything. You just can’t. Hopefully you’re good-looking or funny or you remind someone of their niece. Exploit all opportunities. Do not do what people who are not disabled tell you to do (unless you want to, of course).
All too often I find myself waiting for the day when I can do shit properly, which more or less amounts to waiting until I’m not disabled anymore. Then I can feel good enough to deserve everything I want. Well my cure is slow in arriving, so I’m just going to do everything I want now, if that’s okay with you.
from I’m Somewhere Else, “Max is a Miracle” (via into-the-weeds)
me: cannot understand at least half of what people are saying, mishears everything if it’s heard at all, constructs reactions based on body language alone
me: ears finely tuned to the horrible buzz of a house fly in another room
Kimchi and Justice 