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Me: I don't get it. I thought I was doing a lot better than I was a few years ago. I'm like 10 times more on top of things than I used to be. How does everything feel terrible now?

The Tiny Me in OSHA-approved Hi-Vis Gear Who lives in my brain and pulls all the levers: Boss, it's the fascism. You're completely gunked up with cortisol due to the fact that your entire daily life is now underscored with a haunting awareness of the rapid erosion of your rights, dignity, and any and all social safety nets, and you're also bearing witness to the most vulnerable people immediately being persecuted. This creates a natural stress response that basically means you're going to continue having memory and organizational problems, as well as emotional imbalances.

Me: BUT I HAVE A BULLET JOURNAL AND I MEDITATE NOW.

Tiny OSHA Me: BOSS, THE FASCISM.

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“Fatherless behavior” stop giving my DAD credit for all the work my MOM put into making me a terrible person!! Stop erasing women in history!!

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TEEN HORSE GIRL MOVIE WHERE THE HORSE DIES AN HOUR IN AND THE SECOND HALF IS THE GIRL LEARNING OCCULT SCIENCE TO REANIMATE IT SO SHE CAN WIN THE BIG DERBY

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so today i learned that in the late 1800s-early 1900s, the navy became concerned about possible homosexual activity among their sailors

so they sent in decoys, whose job was to pretend to want to engage in homosexual activity in order to find gay sailors

except then the job of the decoy got popular

like, really popular

like… worryingly popular?

reports said that the decoys were performing their jobs with “much enthusiasm and zeal”

eventually the navy decided. to. just stop.

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talking to my dad is a freaking minefield. Today at dinner I asked him if he’d ever been to New York City in the 90′s and he was like, “nope. Only in the 70′s to donate blood for my mom in the hospital while she was dying from leukemia.” I swear I didn’t even know my grandmother had leukemia (may she rest in peace). This is worse than the time I asked him if he’d ever had riding lessons and he said, “not since my childhood lesson pony burned to death in a barn fire in Kentucky.”

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As someone recently diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, one thing that’s been helping me grapple with the intense shame I have over all my “wasted potential” is accepting that potential doesn’t exist and never did.

This sounds so harsh, but please bare with me.

I procrastinated a lot growing up. I still procrastinate today, but less so. And yet, I got good grades. I could write an A+ paper that “knocked [my professor]’s socks off” in the hour before class and print it with sweat running down my face.

I was so used to hearing from teachers and family that if I just didn’t procrastinate and worked all the time, I could do anything! I had all this potential I wasn’t living up to!

And that’s true, as far as it goes, but that’s like saying if Usain Bolt just kept going he could be the fastest marathon runner in the world. Why does he stop at the end of the race??

If ANYONE could make their top speed/most productive setting the one they used all the time, anyone could do anything. But you can’t. Your top speed is not a speed you’re able to sustain.

Now, I’ve found that I do need to work on not procrastinating. Not because the product is better, even, but because it’s better for my mental health and physical health to not have a full, sweating, panicked breakdown over every task even if the task itself turns out excellently. It’s a shitty way to live! You feel bad ALL the time! And I don’t deserve to live like that anymore.

So all of this to say, I’m not wasting a ton of potential. I don’t have an ocean of productivity and accomplishments inside of me that I could easily, effortlessly access if I just sat down 8 hours a day and worked. There’s no fucking way. That’s not real. It’s an illusion. It’s fine not to live up to an illusion.

And if you have ADHD, I mean this from the bottom of my heart: you do not have limitless potential confounded by your laziness. You have the good potential of a good person, and you can access it with practice and work, but do not accept the story that you are choosing not to be all that you are or can be. You are just a human person.

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imagine a video game where you create a hero whose destiny is to save everyone, but throughout the game you start making harder and more questionable decisions, and the game gets darker and darker. and in the end you’re just standing there, clutching the controller and finally realizing you were playing the villain all along

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obituaries in the south are so funny, they’ll be talking about a man who spent his 72 years on this earth torturing his family and terrorizing the small town he was born into and saying shit like “he ascended to his eternal reward” “he rose to glory” like no baby he did not. “was called home” is my favorite euphemism because it fails to mention if it was God or Satan who wanted him back

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If a ghost can open cupboards and break things, why not just take a pencil, find paper, write exactly why it’s unhappy, and tape the message on the fridge.

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Pictures like this were everywhere back in my day but now theyre all gone

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