#i told my friends i got diagnosed with (redacted) and we have not stopped joking about it since

[transboykirito]

also just... look at all the sao characters. look at kirito and co. that's a group of people who would be sad and compassionate about themselves or their friend losing a body part for all of 2 days before they start figuring out the dumbest jokes possible.

agil asks for a hand making some food? kazuto's passing him his prosthetic arm.

shino has to jump to reach something on a high shelf? here comes kazuto with the classic, "damn, your legs cost you that much and they couldn't even give you the height you missed out on the first time around?"

asuna and kazuto ask sugu to keep an eye on yui while they have a date night? they come home to find suguha napping on the couch with her glass eye sitting on the coffee table facing yui, who is drawing in sharpie on the wall.

kazuto's highest form of entertainment is trying to do wheelies in his wheelchair. klein's highest form of entertainment is getting videos of kazuto eating shit when he tries to do wheelies in his wheelchair. shino's highest form of entertainment is watching asuna scold kazuto for trying to do wheelies in his wheelchair.

[rebootkirk]

Hey I saw your tags and as someone who also got fucked by public education, did you graduate high school? What was it like? Where are you now in terms of education and career? Obviously you don't owe a random on the internet shit, but I'm younger than you by a little and I'd like to know your story

okay so this got… real long. so there will be a tl;dr at the end if this is way more info than you wanted

i had a really shit high school experience. i’ve had severe GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) my entire life and was diagnosed with depression in 7th grade and ADHD in 8th grade, but as a Gifted Kid i couldn’t accept that i needed help and refused a 504 plan when my therapist at the time suggested it. my local high school was a Good School which is code for “we’re gonna work these kids as hard as possible until they have a breakdown and then we’re gonna pretend that’s not happening”. so things got really awful for me mental health-wise during my freshman year of high school because i was so over-stressed by everything going on with school. i remember telling multiple people that i didn’t know how/if i was going to survive high school. when i told my parents that high school was hell i absolutely wasn’t exaggerating.

i switched to homebound education 3 weeks into my sophomore year because my anxiety and depression got so bad i literally couldn’t set foot on school grounds without starting to have a panic attack. i stayed in homebound until the end of the semester (in january), but i wasn’t getting better (this was the absolute worst period of time for my mental health and i never imagined i would have any kind of future) and homebound isn’t meant to be a long term solution, so we decided i would switch to homeschooling.

i was enrolled in online classes but my (and my mom’s) adhd made it pretty much impossible for me to actually complete those classes, and once i realized there was no penalty for turning my work in late i kinda just stopped doing it. i essentially did nothing for the entirety of what should have been my junior year, but because i was getting good yearly test scores (which you have to provide to the school system to show you’re actually progressing in your education but the tests were honestly a joke) nobody made a fuss. but it’s easier and more accurate for me to just say i dropped out of high school so i go with that instead of “technically homeschooled but not actually doing anything”

in the fall of what would have been my senior year i took one class at the local community college. in the spring i took two. i got my GED the same month my twin sister graduated from high school (may 2016). i kept taking classes at community college, but never more than 3 per semester. 

i joined a club at the local public university in fall 2017 and made friends. in december of 2017 i was diagnosed with an extremely disabling sleep disorder (idiopathic hypersomnia) and started taking meds that made me sleep a little bit better at night and took me from my body NEEDING a 4-5hr nap EVERY DAY to just needing a 1-2hr nap every other day or so. and since the university makes it really easy for the community college students to apply and get accepted (or denied) on the spot, i applied as a psych major as a sort-of whim. and i got in.

in fall of 2018 i started at [university name redacted] and moved into a dorm with other transfer students. and i got accommodations for my ADHD and all of my teachers were really understanding of the fact that 1. i had a debilitating sleep disorder, and 2. that it was my first time taking classes full time in 5 years and i might struggle a bit. and i started actually getting treated for my chronic pain that i hadn’t let myself admit was chronic pain and going to a dietitian on campus and seeing a psychiatrist and in november i finally got my weight up enough for my doctor to let me go back on adderall which has made a huge difference in my ability to actually focus and do school shit. i ended up having to get an extension on one of my final papers and take an incomplete for another class and finish my final paper for that class over break but i did finish them both! what was also really important to me was that i was taking classes i actually wanted to be in (except for biological statistics but that’s a requirement for my major). 

this past semester i officially decided i wanted to double major in neurosci and psych and so i’m doing it! and i didn’t have to get extensions on any of my finals! i’m working as an undergrad research assistant in one of the psych labs on campus and i can see a future for myself, which i couldn’t have ever imagined at 16. i’ve still got 2-3 more years of undergrad, which means i’ll graduate after my twin sister does, but i feel like i can actually do it. and i want to go to grad school. which is fucking wild but seems possible most days.

tl;dr: i dropped out of high school at 15/16 for mental health reasons, got my GED 2 ½ years later, did community college part time for a while, got into university, started actually going to doctors and shit about my mental and physical health issues, decided to double major in psych and neurosci, and now i actually want to go to grad school after college when i never even thought i would survive until the end of high school

i’m not going to say “keep going, it gets better” because that was the absolute worst possible thing someone could say to me when i was in so much pain and felt so empty that a life didn’t seem possible for me. getting to this point was really fucking hard and took a really long time and there’s a lot of not-so-great shit that i’m glossing over, and i’m still struggling. but i’m so fucking proud of myself for surviving. and i know that sounds preachy and dumb but i am