#just the sheer number of projects and assignments and homeworks and etc that have been due like relentlessly

[fappellmoan]

i also like need to give myself some grace anyway bc famously (just love saying that rn) i do not have accommodations and have not once in these stupid ass 4 years and i dont have the adhd or anything really diagnosis except for thank god my little prozac. but again famously i did tell her that i was severely struggling mentally and her response has been the standard awwwwmmm bummer if u need help getting to the university counseling center lmk. But i lowkey dont care

[lavendertowerarchives]

I have a hard time stopping myself from laughing. It's not that I keep looking for things to laugh at, it's that I don't have to look. At all.

Over the years I spent doing school online, I became rather adept at hiding my laughter. I'd be watching shitty youtube videos at twelve years old while my mother was four feet away, thinking I was doing homework. I would have to suppress my laughter to the barest exhale (which was rather difficult since four of my five laughter patterns are raucous and distinct) or risk her peeking over my computer. I would rather risk getting caught and lectured for thirty minutes than spend another second on my schoolwork, but my decade-late ADHD diagnosis can wait for another time.

I do recognize that there are very few situations now where I actually should suppress my laughter, but near the top of the list is still "while in class." I really don't want to A. Draw attention to myself B. Draw attention away from the professor or C. Have to explain what I find so fucking funny. Something that still gets me hysterical today is changing specifications in homework. Maybe I simply change an acronym in the problem statement, or add a couple orders of magnitude to a number that isn't used in a calculation. Now I can get to the actual problem this post is trying to address.

I did these two exact things last week. I had an in-class group project with my teammates, someone shared a google doc, we filled it out, submitted it, etc. I got extraordinarily bored. I switched up some numbers and letters. I thought it'd be fine. It was not.

No one cared. That's not the problem. The problem was that I was nearly crying with laughter, trying to hold it in, unable to tone it down or ignore it, and definitely struggling to suppress the actual audible portion. I was doing shaky exhales, breath holding, bombarding my mind with objectively depressing scenes to try to get myself to shut the fuck up. It wasn't working. I, for some asinine reason, could not get over the fact that this fake tea company (formerly coffee company) had one billion (formerly one thousand) venues across the country. I don't know why it was so funny. That's part of what worried me. Yeah, it's a little funny for a chain restaurant to have a billion venues, but certainly not eye-wateringly so.

The second part that worried me was the sheer extended period of time in which I was mentally hysterical. I could barely get work done. The assignment was almost finished, yeah, but the teacher was coming around to grill us on our work and I was entirely unhelpful for most of it. It had been like thirty minutes since I made the miniscule edits.

I had to lock myself in a bathroom to calm the fuck down. I had thankfully cooled off since class ended, but I had to dip quickly and duck into the single-occupancy room to cackle my lungs dry. All it took was one mention of "hehe. One biiillion tea shops." From my brain and I was giggling uncontrollably again.

I must insist that this is not normal. I'm only ever hysterical like this (honestly most times don't even come close to this level) when I'm actively engaging with people. The only thing on my mind besides "heheHEHEE" was "am I okay?" The answer is, was, and will always be "fuck no," but in this case, I had probable cause to fear a significant loss of reason. My laughter was rampant, yes, I thought it was hilarious, yes, but normally I have a reason why. I know what I find funny, foe what reason, where to take the joke next, when to stop, and when to present it to another for peer review. None of that was present.

Ten minutes later, I'd calmed down enough to walk home.

I'm still a little frightened, I'll be honest. I dislike how much control I don't have over my own mind already. If that starts bleeding into real life, I'm screwed. I can't trust my brain to handle simple tasks so I have to supervise it, motivate it, reason with it, and wrench it into shape just to appear like I'm functioning. If I have to wrestle with my outward expression, I will have to let some more things go.

All this from just laughing a little too much. I really do hope I'm just overreacting. I wish I could see that much laughter as healthy but I know I only laugh like that if I'm breaking.