#realized my adhd is in fact not being better managed i am just severely stupid and have become a workaholic on accident!!

[ironmanstan]

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[the-insomniac-emporium]

Wounded Love Pt. 2 (Lady Dimitrescu/F!Reader)

Fandom: Resident Evil: Village Rating: T? Maybe? Almost the exact opposite of the first one. Language, minor violence Genre: Fluff, mainly, with admittedly a little bit of humor? I blame my lack of sleep. And my adhd. Warnings: Implied cannibalism adjacent activities because guess what honey, this is a fucked up family, what do you expect of me??? Sure, they have breakfast in this, there's cute stuff, but c'mon, they don't eat flowers and oatmeal! Notes: Doubt it needs to be said, but this is a sequel to the good ending of part one. Also Cass has one line in this that might be OOC, or seem oddly placed, but admittedly this chapter is also loosely based on a dream I had, and I couldn't not include the few direct quotations I remembered, and she seemed the most likely to say the line. And yes, there will be a part 3, because I am weak and also kind of maybe made this one less plot-moving than intended.

{Wounded Love: The re-woundening}

Every step ached more than the last, even with Alcina supporting you. She had wanted to carry you down the stairs, of course, but you had insisted that you would be fine. Now you were just determined not to complain out loud. One yelp or cry and you’d be scooped up in her arms, surely to be carried for the rest of the day. As much as you appreciated your girlfriend’s assistance, you hated feeling useless, and hated putting a burden on others. So here you were, one arm wrapped around Alcina’s waist, limping ever-so-slowly towards the dining room.

Further ahead (unburdened by your injury) the three Dimitrescu daughters talk among themselves, voices hushed as they too headed for breakfast. It was odd to see them all awake, and socializing, as there was usually at least one who came to meals late. You couldn’t help but wonder if it had something to do with your condition… or the circumstances that had caused it.

Less than eighteen hours had passed since your fight with a stray lycan, and tension had been high since. While you hadn’t yet spoken to the sisters, you had spoken to Alcina, who had briefly mentioned their concern for you. Whether they actually cared about you as a person or just cared because you are dating their mother is unclear. Based on how they had acted while treating your wounds, though, you were inclined to think that they were fond of you. And seeing as Alcina had already vowed to get revenge on your behalf… well, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that her daughters intended to assist.

“Careful on the last step, dear,” Alcina says, positioned as to catch you if you fell. It takes a little willpower to resist the urge to hop down the rest of the way. As long as you landed on your uninjured leg, it wouldn’t even be that bad. Still, irritating your girlfriend first thing in the morning felt like a pretty stupid thing to do. Instead you just nodded, slowing down even more, and took visible care not to trip. “Good girl.”

Well, you certainly couldn’t say that being careful didn’t have its rewards.

“I have my moments,” you replied, blush rising to your cheeks. Suddenly your pain didn’t feel so bad (at least until you took another step and winced). “Damn, who woulda thought that cutting a chunk out of my leg would make it hurt more?” The leg in question throbbed in pain, as if to prove your point, protesting the weight you put on it. Changing the angle at which you stood helped some, allowing the lower half of the limb to bear more of the burden.

“Dearest…” Alcina starts to say, looking like she was going to readdress her desire to carry you. For a moment you try to avoid her gaze, but she moves in front of you, making sure that you could still hold onto her for support. “I know how you feel, how you want, desperately, to be independent. When I was first… granted this gift, it took a long time to adjust. There was so much I had to relearn how to do, so much that I suddenly needed done for me.” A pause, a deep breath. At last you look up at your girlfriend, warmth in your heart, reaching out to hold her hand. “You have time, my dear, and plenty of it. More than that… this will not last forever. The more you push yourself, the longer your recovery will take. Now, please, allow me to assist. You have already proven how strong you are.”

“Oh, you drive a hard bargain… but if you insist, who am I to decline? Or, well, who am I to decline twice in a row?” You answer, somewhat begrudgingly. It wasn’t much farther to the dining room, you figured, so it wouldn’t be much of a loss to accept help. Or at least that was what you told yourself. Even with Alcina’s encouragement it was so hard for you to accept her help. After all, you were the one that worked for her. Never mind the fact that she was somewhat responsible for your injury- really, you were actively avoiding thinking about that.

It’s much easier to forget once Alcina carefully picks you up. One arm goes under your legs, the other under your chest, lifting you without any effort. You might as well have been a kitten or a child’s toy. The movement does, however, shift your injured leg in such a way that it aches. At this point you can hardly move the limb at all without it hurting, and even the slightest friction against the bandage makes your eyes water.

Apparently someone would be delivering some painkillers later in the day. You assumed it would be The Duke (whose name is apparently not Doug, as you had thought), seeing as he knew some special way to get to and fro without risking the same fate that had befallen you. Which, of course, made you feel a lot better. Getting someone else hurt would weigh on your mind forever.

Regardless, you were safe now, as was your strange, bloody little family. Before long you would even be enjoying a pleasant meal together. Certainly that would help get your mind off of your wound? For now, though, you were met with an unexpected impasse. The sort of impasse that really, really should have been expected.

“Why… is the doorway… so small?” You asked, jokingly, as you stare into the mildly embarrassed face of your girlfriend. It’s already hard enough for her to crouch through the gap normally. When she’s carrying you? Impossible. “Can we ask Mother Miranda for bigger doors? She gave you eternal life and also three kids, she’s gotta be capable of making bigger doors. Put me down, I’ll go call her and-”

“That won’t be necessary, dear,” Alcina cuts you off, not fully appreciating this part of your humor. Or maybe she had already asked for bigger doors, only to be told no?... Okay, yeah, it was probably the first option. With a sigh she sets you down, as gently as she can manage. Ready and raring to go, you start to hobble forward, only to find all three of the daughters waiting for you, just beyond the door. They’re grinning as they watch you, and Bela extended her arm to offer her help. “What appears to be the matter?” Alcina asks from behind you. Accepting your fate and Bela’s arm, you let the sisters guide you to the table, Cassandra holding your other side, and Daniela pulls your chair out for you. Honestly it’s pretty adorable. Evidently your girlfriend agrees, from the way she smiles as she follows.

“Thank you,” you say, more out of reflex than genuine gratitude. Again, you weren’t thrilled about needing this assistance. If the girls notice they’re at least polite enough not to mention it. They simply move to their own seats at the large table, eager to dig in. It feels… strange, to be here, on this side of things. Stranger still to realize you’re the only one intending to eat actual food. There’s wine in your glass, but it’s a much fainter red than those you’ve previously served to your girlfriend. Thank goodness, you think, after how raw my throat was yesterday, I really don’t need to taste any more blood.

Once Lady Dimitrescu sits down, the meal formally begins, with several maidens appearing from the kitchen. Several seem relieved to see you, although surprised, and one even gave you a brief smile. The smile did not last, however. It wasn’t unexpected, considering the nature of her job, the pressures that it put upon her. No one smiled at mealtimes. Well, no maidens, that is. They simply moved around, wordlessly, faces blank, doing exactly as instructed. Only a few days ago you had been among them, fear keeping you in line. Was it wrong of you to care for Alcina, knowing what she was capable of doing to others? Knowing what she might have, in another life, done to you?

A maiden places a plate of warm food, as well as a bowl of fresh fruit, in front of you. For a moment your eyes meet, but she looks away instinctively. Your heart threatens to break.

“This looks wonderful, thank you for your hard work, all of you,” you speak up, glancing at each of the women working so hard. There’s more you want to say that dries in your throat; you are valued, you are deserving, someday I will join your ranks again.

“You don’t need to thank them, they’re just doing their jobs,” Cassandra chimes from the other side of the table. Hearing her say that damn near makes you drop your fork. It’s not an uncommon settlement, particularly among older generations and the rich, but one that irks you nonetheless.

“They’re doing my job. They are taking on extra work, for no pay, because I am injured. Why would I be so cruel as to ignore them? Have I not toiled alongside them enough to call them my kin?” You ask, struggling to keep your voice even. Next to you Alcina is slowly cutting into her meat, watching the scene unfold out of the corner of her eyes, perhaps considering when to step in. On the other end of the table, Bela looks increasingly uncomfortable, as if silently willing her sister into silence. None of the maidens have reacted to what you said, likely too afraid of Cassandra to even consider speaking.

“Ooooh, this is much more fun than our usual breakfasts,” Daniela says, stifling a giggle. “Do you have any other thoughts you’d like to share? Preferably ones that aren’t about me.” At this, Alcina sets her utensils down, clearly intending to put an end to the discussion. Unfortunately for her, you were a bit… impulsive, especially considering the previous night’s activities had left your mind struggling to cope.

“Dead lycans smell terrible. Literally the worst thing I’ve ever smelled, easily, no question about it,” you answer, shrugging a little as you do. It’s such a simple thought that you almost don’t realize how the others at the table react. Until the clatter of silverware on the table catches your attention, that is. All three sisters are eying you with different expressions (Bela is confused, Cass is impressed, and Daniela looks shocked). But it’s Alcina’s wide-eyed stare that gets you to elaborate. “Should I have said ‘a dead lycan’? I only got one, so I guess I shouldn’t say they all smell bad. C’mon, though, they have to all smell bad, right?”

Suddenly Daniela shifts from shock to pure amusement, a fit of giggles overtaking her. You’re still confused, not sure what the matter was, so you just sip your wine and hope someone asks the right questions.

“You… killed the lycan that attacked you?” Bela finally says, after a few moments of her sister laughing, expression still incredulous. When you nod she sort of shakes her head, trying to clear her thoughts. “May I ask how you managed that?”

“Oh, you know, I just meh meh-” you mime a stabbing motion with your fork- “until the stupid thing stopped moving. I had to use a tree branch as a weapon, but then it broke after a few whacks, which actually helped because then I had two stabbing implements to, you know, stab with. That’s right around when it got my leg, and it tried to bite me. Thankfully it wasn’t very smart, so when it leapt at me I just hyah-” this time an upwards strike- “right into its neck. That didn’t kill it, but it was enough to slow it down, which allowed me to stab the other half of the branch into its skull. Made this horrible, horrible sound as it died. Seeing as we are eating, I will not imitate the sound. Not that I could, now that I think about it…”

Once again there’s silence. Even Daniela has quieted now, and is watching you with rapt interest, likely hoping that you’re hiding another story up your sleeves.

“So… did you guys actually think that I managed to run away from the lycan? Or were you under the impression that it simply got bored of me and left?” You ask, casually returning to your breakfast afterwards. No one says anything, at first, taking in your words as best as they can. A few moments later both Daniela and Bela resume their meal, as nonchalant as one could be in the current situation. Alcina, however, rests a gentle hand on your shoulder, meeting your gaze with a loving look.

“You will never cease to amaze me, my dear. But let us ensure you never have to… smell, or see, one of those wretched things again, yes?” She says, softly squeezing you as she does. You can’t help but agree, and nod eagerly, mouth too full of hashbrowns to speak. Still, there’s been a shift in the atmosphere of the room. It’s not that the family didn’t respect you before, as far as you can tell, but they evidently hadn’t expected you to prove as capable as you had. It brings a sense of pride to the forefront of your mind, making you completely forget about your injury for the remainder of the meal.

Unable to stop yourself, you insist on helping the other maidens clean up, and Alcina eventually agrees to let you wash a few dishes- as long as you stay sitting the entire time. The last thing you hear before you shuffle off to the kitchen is the start of a conversation between Cassandra and her mother.

“You picked quite a feisty one, didn’t you?”

“That I did, that I did…”

[successfullyadhd]

Tip for Fighting RSD

Whew, this is a tough one. RSD (or Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) is a fun side effect most ADHD people experience. While just knowing about it and understanding it can be the first step in not letting it control your life, it’s still a hard battle.

One thing that has helped me is changing my perspective on feedback. As a kid, I was always labeled as very dramatic, mostly because I would have extreme reactions to seemingly simple situations that other kids handled well. As an adult, it turned me into a people-pleaser to the point of self destruction, far more afraid of someone disliking me than concerned about my own mental and emotional well-being. Later in life, one of my proudest moments was at a reception held for me as I was leaving one job to go to a different location in the company. Several people stood up to tell stories, and a manager that I worked closely with (although wouldn’t necessarily consider a friend) started his with “Emily, I will say that you handle feedback very well.” It seems like a backhanded compliment, but it wasn’t meant that way at all and it was a moment of happiness for me. In my job, I have to work with many teams and being able to listen to their advice about what would or wouldn’t work was essential. The fact that I had gotten to a place in my life where someone recognized my ability to handle feedback gracefully was a point of pride because it hadn’t always been that way. I used to easily get my feelings hurt or worse, get very defensive, when someone told me what I was doing was wrong. It felt so personal, and I certainly took it to heart.

The thing that changed my feelings was making an effort to change my perspective. I decided to look at any feedback that was given to me, whether in my career or in relationships, as an act of love. If someone was taking the time to bring up an issue to me, it meant that they cared enough about me to want to help me succeed or to help our relationship improve. Conversations or comments that I would have once considered negative or even an attack were now taken with appreciation. Being told that something I did wasn’t working didn’t mean that they thought I was stupid or thoughtless - it meant that this person loved or respected me enough to offer guidance and wanted to see me do well. Once I was able to change my perspective, my relationships opened up in healthy ways and I improved at work. 

I’m not saying it was easy or happened over the course of a day - it took many instances of taking a deep breath, reminding myself to find the connection and push away painful feelings that were unwarranted before I was able to do it without thinking too much about it. But eventually, I was able to automatically find that perspective and now I love conversations where people say “Hey, can we discuss something?” because I know that in most cases it will end with a genuine connection and more respect between myself and that person. 

It’s important to note that obviously there are a very small percentage of people who are truly mean-spirited and it’s hard to find a place of love and respect from their words. That will happen, and it’s not a fun experience. I will say that my perspective shift helped me be able to better recognize those situations as well, and sort out the people who want to help versus those who harm. In those cases, I try to realize that it is far less about anything that I’m doing or who I am than how those people feel about the world. While that kind of thing still hurts, it stings much less to be able to recognize that it isn’t personal and those individuals just need to find their own enlightenment.

[wisteria-lodge]

snake primary (bird model) + lion secondary (bird model)

I’m feeling really lost when it comes to my secondary. I’m fairly sure I’m a Snake Primary with a strong Bird model. But My secondary is tripping me up and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve been severely depressed for about 6 years, dealing with PTSD for 12, and dealing with anxiety since middle school. I’m also getting evaluated for ADHD. I’m getting help so don’t worry. So, here we go.

You seem pretty okay. I’ll keep an eye out for possible burning though.

Bird: I do think I have a Bird model. I plan things, I research the heck out of things when I need to make a decision, I’m always asking for advice (like now…), etc. But a lot of that seems driven by anxiety and fear of messing up. I literally never asked for advice until middle school, which was when the anxiety started. 

We have us a Bird secondary model that you built as a coping mechanism.

I do love to learn languages and I like to watch videos on YouTube about historical fashion and stuff like that. I used to read constantly but I’m so burned out that lately I haven’t read much. If I have a new interest, I can never do things by halves. I also have a huge cookbook collection and a huge collection of quotes on Evernote. I love puzzles and figuring things out. But yeah sometimes I’ll just be like “let’s check every book about tea/socialism/the regency era out of the library.” Then I text my Double Badger friend who is super into tea about it and she responds, “Just enjoy drinking your tea, what are you doing??” Okay now I’ve confused myself and I’m wondering if I really am a Bird. Or maybe that’s all ADHD hyperfocusing. Probably? Ugh. Who am I??

So your Bird model is also something you use to play, that’s good. And you love being social too. People focused Bird? 

I don’t think I do the Bird Actor thing, though occasionally I’ll pretend to be a character for fun when I’m walking on the sidewalk or something. And I’m not a strategist? When I play chess or RPGs or write I just kind of try to go for it and figure it out along the way. 

You’ve got a bit of an improv-for-fun thing going on. Snake? Lion?

But that doesn’t always end up working so I do now plan out my longer pieces of writing to avoid plotholes and getting off track.

Coping mechanism Bird secondary model. 

I’m very conscious of how I frame things. Like if I sense incoming drama, I make sure to speak up first and frame things in my favor so that people will be on my side. It’s not automatic, though. Like as soon as I realize there’s going to be some sort of confrontation, I’m thinking to myself very quickly, “Okay. To get people on my side I need to talk to them before the other person does and frame things X way and make these facial expressions.” Usually this does not involve lying, just telling the truth in a way that favors me. 

This honestly sounds pretty Actor Bird. This sort of thing is a lot more… automatic, if you’re doing it though a Snake or a Badger secondary.

I was a terrible liar until high school when I made the effort to learn how to lie effectively

Here’s that Bird secondary again, picking up the slack. 

I do feel like I tend to reflect people a little, though? Like if people are talking about politics and make it clear they’re super conservative, I will just talk about the few things that I agree with. 

That could point to Courtier Badger…

I don’t like arguing with people anymore because I’m scared they won’t like me or will be offended. This goes double after the last two elections when multiple people dropped me for disagreeing with them and other people said I made them uncomfortable for…having what I see as generic normal opinions. I’m also just not good at thinking up arguments on the fly at all because everything gets all jumbled in my head and I forget details so arguing makes me feel stupid. I tried to do debate one year in school… Oh man what a disaster. If I’m arguing in writing though and I can look stuff up? They better watch out.

Wait, whoa. You like arguing for fun? And the only reason you don’t is because things got more intense after the last election + arguing in real time is annoying since sometimes your memory doesn’t cooperate? Oh that’s Lion. Lion secondary or Lion secondary model.

At the core of it though, I don’t really lie unless it has a purpose (getting something I can’t get otherwise, trolling friends for a laugh, avoiding punishment) and isn’t a big deal.

“trolling friends for a laugh” sounds pretty darn Lion secondary. As does the implied getting-into-trouble that “avoiding punishment” would require.

Will I answer on a form that I’m x religion that I was raised as to get into a Facebook group I really want to be in? Yes. If someone straight up asked me what religion I am currently practicing? I would NEVER lie about that. The thought makes me feel physically ill. I also lost those family members because the thought of pretending I liked the loser of our recent election was disgusting. And if I truly hate someone because they deeply hurt me or a loved one, nothing can make me pretend to like them. The most I can do is be coldly polite in that situation and usually I can’t even manage that.

That’s Lion. I could see that go back to either a Lion primary or secondary, but if you’re happy with your Snake primary, I’m going to put down another point for Lion.

But like…would I lie about my address to get a library card for the much better county library system next to my tiny independent city? (My state is weirdly structured). No guilt at the thought of that and I’ve seriously considered it but they require proof of address.

You’re a little bit of a rule-breaker, aren’t you? And that’s a side of yourself you really like. That’s Lion. 

Basically if it will help me get something I need, I’ll feel better about lying, but otherwise I feel uncomfortable and usually I try to be at least “technically” truthful. Which sounds sort of Lion? Oh wow I thought I was going to be asking about Snake vs Badger but instead it’s Bird vs Lion. 

…ADHD Lion with fun and helpful Bird model? IDK. 

I think so :) 

[ourimpavidheroine]

An Anniversary

Five years ago today, the 13th of February, 2015, I published, all in one shot, a piece of fanfiction called Please Excuse My Penmanship.

I hadn’t, at that point, written - never mind published - any fanfiction for over fifteen years. I had written some X-Files fanfic back in the day but I’d lost it; my backup floppies disappeared when I moved to Finland and, like just about everyone else back then, the places I had posted it to online disappeared without warning. (Toss a coin to your Archive, oh valley of plenty.) I’d been pretty torn up about losing my fic that way, which put me off writing. Time went on; I had twins in 2002 and they both turned out to have non-verbal autism and different flavors of ADD/ADHD and my life got very complicated and very difficult for a lot of years there. Writing for pleasure wasn’t even on the table.

By 2015 my life had settled a bit. My wife was disabled and suffering from severe and untreated depression and the kids were in special ed and a lot of therapies but we were managing. I had watched Avatar: The Last Airbender with my kids (on DVD - they were too young for it when it first aired) and had gone on to watch The Legend of Korra with them as well. 

I really liked Mako as a character; he was too internal and complex for most of the kids watching, however, and wasn’t well liked. Most fans saw an inflexible jerk who caused and fucked up a love triangle; what I saw was an autistic man who was suffering from pretty severe PTSD. He grabbed my interest. I related.

I really liked his dynamic with Prince Wu, despite the fact that he was a really annoying character. Queer-coded as fuck, although the showrunners were plainly ignoring it. And I started to headcanon who they would be as a couple. How to make Wu less annoying while still making him canon Wu? How to humanize Mako while still acknowledging his autism and PTSD? Headcanon was all it was, though, a way for me keep myself occupied. I’ve been writing stories inside my head as long as I can remember. It’s what I’ve always done.

I read a post on here on Tumblr where the OP stated that there was no such thing as a good Letter Fic; I thought to myself, Bet I could do it. And so in the end of January 2015 I sat down at my PC and started to type up all of my headcanon.

I went back and forth with Wu. What I first started to write was too clumsy, by half; I tried to stick to his endless slang and it was as annoying as it had ever been on the show. I knew if I stuck to that shallow, silly, stupid, canon Wu he wouldn’t be interesting to read. I struggled with it for a time until I remembered something.

My maternal grandmother told me a story once about a girl from Mexico. Claudia was her name; she was a year older than my mother. Her own mother had died when she was born; her father, who was one of my grandfather’s business partners in Mexico, had left her in the care of her grandparents, who were extraordinarily wealthy denizens of Mexico City. At some point the adults involved thought that it would be a great idea to send this girl to stay with my mother’s family to learn English; in return, my mother would then go and stay a summer in Mexico City to learn Spanish. (Which she did; she’s fluent to this day.) Claudia had no English at all but my grandmother had working Spanish and I guess they all figured it would be enough for this poor girl? 

The first day Claudia arrived in San Francisco my grandmother kindly showed her into the bathroom and told her to take a shower. My Grams realized about ten minutes or so later that the water hadn’t turned on; she went to check on her and there she was, sitting obediently on the toilet seat, fully dressed, waiting for the maid to come and undress her and turn the water on for her shower. 

She had no idea how to do either of those things for herself. She had never, at the age of thirteen, undressed herself or operated a shower. And there it was, the opening of my story. Wu remembers arriving in Republic City on the run from the Red Lotus, checking into the hotel, and having no idea whatsoever what to do next. And I thought to myself...What if he isn’t actually stupid? 

And there he was. My Wu. Just like that.

I wrote feverishly for a week, drawn into the story that was sitting in my head, waiting to be told. I didn’t have a Betareader; my wife liked my writing but rather tersely told me that TLOK wasn’t her fandom and she wasn’t interested in reading it, something that hurt me pretty deeply, especially since my X-Files fanfic was how we’d actually connected in the first place. 

(She was, at that time, in the process of slowly dying of heart failure, but I didn’t know that then.)

I wasn’t going to publish it. I just wanted to write it, to see if I still had it together after a seventeen year hiatus. Wuko wasn’t at all a popular ship; after the show finale a couple of months prior all the fanfiction being feverishly written and published was Korrasami. (In fact, I checked AO3 at the time and found exactly two Wuko fanfics, both of which were one-shots and not to my particular taste.) I went back and forth with it and then thought, Fuck it. I’ll just do it. And maybe no one will read it but at least I’ll have done it. I read it through one more time and then, on the thirteenth of February, took a deep breath, told myself to stop being a coward, and posted the entire fic at once. 

I got my first comment, and I was elated. And then I thought to myself, Well, fuck, you may as well write some of the other stuff in your head. You might learn something about yourself as a writer on the way.

Then, a few months later, on the seventeenth of June, my world fell apart. My wife, staying at our summer cottage with our twelve year old twins, died of a heart attack while the kids were off playing and I was here at home, getting ready to travel down the next day on the train to meet them all for the summer. My daughter was the one to find her; she was long past saving at that point. Family friends brought the children, our pets, and our car the two hours back home as I collapsed on the floor of our flat and rocked myself back and forth, wordlessly keening, my hands trembling uncontrollably.

The next year was unspeakable. I was a widow at forty-six; I was living in a foreign country with two disabled children, with no family or friends nearby and an imprecise grasp of the language. My wife had told me she had life insurance; she lied. I was flat broke. My grief was deep and whole and devastating; my children were traumatized and barely functioning. I had no one to help me, and I’d cook meals at midnight so my sleeping children wouldn’t hear me sobbing in the kitchen.

And I wrote.

And I wrote.

And I wrote.

I wrote out of desperation; I had to do something to keep me tethered to this world. I wrote of love and families, of a traumatized child from the street that was my daughter’s age, full of bravado and choked fury. I wrote of an autistic boy growing into a man, bullied and shunned, aching to be free, much like my own. 

I took my children to more therapists. I took myself to a therapist that turned out to be homophobic; I found another one. I made dinners; I cleaned the house, I walked in circles around my living room, whispering over and over to myself, You’re okay you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay, before making another phone call.

And I wrote.

In August of 2018 my daughter attempted suicide and was hospitalized. I was trying to write I Do Not Ask The Night For Explanations and I had to stop. I had severe panic attacks whenever I tried to work on it. I brought her home and I cut my work hours down to four hours a week so that I could be with her at all times; she wasn’t safe to be left alone. I cared for her. I cared for her twin, who was terrified, unable to sleep, afraid that if he wasn’t watching her she’d try it again. I fought until I got them different therapists. I stopped sleeping. My health suffered.

And I wrote. When I could. It was, without any doubt at all, the only thing that was keeping me going during that time. I would tell myself that I had to keep going, that I still had so much of this story in my head, I needed to get it out. Sometimes I would write while sobbing. Sometimes I would sit here at my desk and nothing would come. I just kept going, though.

It’s better now. She missed most of last year of school and is making it up this year and doing so well. Her brother is at a new school and has, for the first time in his life, made friends. I was able, in December, to actually leave them for three days; the first time I had been away from them since we lost their mother. 

They’ll be eighteen this summer and we’re finally able to breathe. We’re moving forward, the three of us. We’re still broken, but we’re making something new out of the pieces instead of trying to put them back together.

My writing is what saved me. It wasn’t about how many hits/comments/kudos I got; I appreciate every single one I get, believe me. But the writing was making me hold myself accountable, making myself get out of bed, get dressed, brush my hair and teeth, sit down and try. Sometimes that was all I could manage; the writing just wasn’t happening. But it gave me a goal when I needed one. And boy, did I need one.

Thank you all for reading. For those of you that have been there since the beginning and those who just started reading now. For those who faded away from the fandom over time or who left because they didn’t like how the story was going; I wish you well and thanks for reading when you did. Thank you for the hits and the kudos and the comments. You may not have known you were helping to save me, but you were. So thank you.

I am not done writing yet. I am not oblivious; I know I am so far in AU territory now that you’re for all intents and purposes reading original fic. That’s okay. It’s the story that was in my head, that is still in my head. Maybe someday I’ll try to publish it and maybe I won’t, and I’m fine with that. I’m not ready at this point to do what’s necessary to take it past fanfic and that’s okay. It has served and is continuing to serve its purpose for me; if you all enjoy it then that’s just biscuits and gravy, as my Great-Aunt Margie used to say.

I wrote us all a little anniversary ficlet; this takes it full circle for me. (And then back I go to Wu and Qi’s wedding!) 

Mind the warnings at the bottom if you think you need them.

Chapter 132: 252: Wu

[sapphic-scylla]

Im sorry to all of my followers if all of my posts recently have been somewhat diary oriented or a little too real, but there is so much going on in my life and not enough people to vent this to. So here we are. Keep in mind, abusers favorite ploy and tactic is to make you 100% certain that their actions are entirely your fault. That you MADE them do the terrible things they do to you. And this isn’t just the physical things. It’s also emotional abuse.

As a point of reference, my dad and his side of the family is a group of silently terrible human beings. You look at them from an outside perspective and they look normal, but when you know them for 26 years like I have, you start to recognize that shit ain’t right here.

I had no idea how bad it was until I lived with them while I was attending college. I never finished college if that gives some insight. My grandparents are old-fashioned to the Nth degree and their kids i.e. my dad and uncle and aunts have picked up a lot of their ideals.

The reason I left college is because I am ADHD and it is hard to hold down a job and keep up with classes plus take early morning musical theatre and keep up a social life while maintaining good grades and keeping myself somewhat sane. Granted, they were paying for my college and it was a lot, so obviously that’s not something to take lightly. I’m very grateful in that respect and I made mistakes and there are things I could have done better and I could have planned ahead better. That being said, my grandparents were not poor. In fact, they were extremely well off and lived in a much richer part of the town I was living in and had TONS of nice stuff so even after all of that, the unnecessarily drastic actions lead to the shit I’m still dealing with now that I didn’t realize wasn’t normal until several years later.

My grades reached a certain low because I was struggling to keep up with everything I was doing at the time. I was paying for a car and it’s upkeep as well as auxiliary needs like school materials and books and such, so I was trying to work extra shifts to help me manage while also paying for school trips and having spending money for a social life. ADHD makes it hard to pay any kind of attention in any class that doesn’t actively get my attention, making learning extremely hard. Finally, when I said I was working myself too hard and needed to breathe, my grandparents didn’t accept it. So they said, if you aren’t going to school, you can’t live here. They kicked me out on the spot, and I lived in my car, practically homeless, for the next six months. Their justification? “If you had just kept up your grades and kept going to school, we would not have had to kick you out.”

Don’t, for a second, think that abusers, especially people in higher end careers who have PhD’s and think they know everything, won’t try to justify their shitty actions and when they do, they will deceive and word it in such a way that the entire time, you will think you are in the wrong for forcing their hand. I lived for the next two years thinking I was to blame for losing a place to live because I couldn’t live up to their expectations. I’ve lived my life past 5th grade thinking I was stupid because I struggled where the rest of my family constantly succeeded and my entire family gave me emotional flak every step of the way constantly blaming me and making me think I was a complete and utter disappointment while ingraining terrible habits and actions into my brain and leaving me with a crippling self-esteem issue that I’m still trying to fix in therapy to this day instead of getting me the help I needed back then and maybe putting me in a better place.

Don’t let your abusers win. Know the difference between their fault and yours. Distance yourself when you get a chance.

[skruffie]

in which I’m getting to know my brain better

I can’t really pinpoint a time when I started reading about ADHD and believed that maybe it was something that I had. I think it’s kind of been in the back of my head from when ADD was still a commonly-used term but then I would go “naaaah can’t be me, I’m just a lazy person!” I remember ages ago in high school I was at a friend’s house and watching their brothers and I thought “This is what actual ADHD looks like” so I guess that kind of pins it for me thinking about it as long ago as 15 years ago but I never gave it serious consideration until more recently.

(This is very, very long so I don’t blame you if you want to just skip it entirely)

Just last night I was talking to Zack and I was giggling and going “I still can’t believe I really didn’t see this before” and they were going “Really?”

Let’s think about this. As a kid I was always pretty sensitive and had weird... I used to call them compulsions but now I wonder if it was more impulsive behavior where I would hoard things like rocks and leaves or do dangerous shit without thinking about it (one memory comes to mind immediately when I noticed there was broken glass on the playground and I started meticulously picking it up as carefully as I could, and my teacher freaked out when she saw what I was doing. It unsettled my mom too, but me explaining that I didn’t want anyone to get hurt didn’t help put them at ease). I would be deeply sucked into my imagination at times, like... 

When I was a kid I always kind of pictured myself like everything that was happening was a movie. I don’t really mean this in a dissociative derealization kind of thing, but just imagining every second was a movie or a video game. Sometimes I still do this. I can’t really pinpoint if there were a lot of hyperactive symptoms other than countless times my mom told me to stop fiddling with my hands or string or whatever was within my grasp. I would always come home from school dirty with grass stains on my jeans and holes in my knees and rocks in my pockets, earning the title “skruffy ragamuffin” from my sister, but I just kind of figured that was part of being a kid. Looking at it NOW through this viewpoint gives me second thought though.

I picked up on physical activities rather quickly from a young age like dancing and karate--probably the physical movement was what I needed to help me focus--and I do things like pick at the skin around my thumbs, bite the inside of my cheeks (Didn’t realize this was a thing until I watched Hannah Hart describe it as part of her fidgeting and went “OH.”)

As I got older and after my sister died, see... I always viewed this time period in my life as I couldn’t do school or focus because of my grief and my home life falling apart, and I think part of that is still true. However, I would continue this with “And because of that I didn’t form good study habits and that continued into highschool when I stopped giving a shit”. Which was better than thinking I was just a stupid failure, and I really don’t think I am stupid... I can think quickly on my feet, I notice things that other people don’t, I’ve been an advanced reader from a VERY early age and I can infer correct answers from context clues and analyze things in that way. 

There is one memory from high school that, in the past, I thought maybe was tied to an emotional flashback but I realize now that it might’ve been Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. There was a weird disagreement that I was having with a friend of mine over something (truly can’t remember what it was about now), and somehow this rejection of him not listening to me spiraled me into this state of Why Should I Fucking Bother and the first target for this heavy, painful feeling was “okay, well I should just stop drawing because Why Should I Fucking Bother”. My English teacher found me sitting in the hallway crying and sat down with me to ask what was happening and I tried to explain, and then he had me show him my artwork and he goes “You are an incredible artist, you shouldn’t give this up.” One of few teachers in my life who I will always respect because he was always stern in a kind way, understanding, and an overall wonderful man.

I’m kind of getting off track here but I think that’s really just self-demonstrating at this point.

When I worked at Target there wasn’t really an opportunity for the ADHD type symptoms to manifest because I was pretty much always moving. In school I could zone out very easily but at work I was able to have more bouts of focus, but traded off my inattention for anxiety instead. This was also just a few years after the big PTSD causing event, but retail in general can give pretty much anyone some anxiety issues. Nonetheless, the things that I enjoyed about working there is that I was able to master my work zone completely (to a point of annotating the training guide with new information and keeping it updated), became the go-to person for several things, and I enjoyed being able to have a bit of freedom of movement around my work space. I enjoyed being able to have physical, tangible ways to see progress being made on something and there was a surprising amount of nuance and problem-solving when it came to resolving customer complaints. 

Moving to a desk job in 2018 was a weird departure from all of that. I had started off kind of as a clerical worker and would compile the concrete goods vouchers that we send out to our clients, receive them back, prepare them for scanning, scan+upload to case files, etc. It was dreadfully boring a lot of the time but I didn’t mind the long stretches where I could sit and prepare documents for scanning because I was able to listen to music while I got them ready. After a while I was encouraged to become a fiduciary, and that is really when the Maybe I Have ADHD started to rear it’s head.

My job doesn’t have the tangible way to see that I’ve made progress. I update placements to generate foster care payments, I generate the vouchers for concrete goods, I put in ongoing foster care case management payments or daycare payments, I will sometimes resolve some payment issues but only to a certain point--I’m able to see information but being able to solve the problem is actually not my area unless I can correct it within the case management system. There is an extreme need to be detail oriented because we work with specific service dates, with some services ongoing but some needing to be renewed every six months, gobs of emails with paperwork and trying to get the right signatures on everything because we’re dealing in state money...

on top of this, in order to move into the permanent position, I’ve been taking the accounting classes online outside of work and (until the pandemic started) having a long commute-work-commute day that totaled about 12 hours out of my waking life. My diet changed radically because Zack and I didn’t see each other often and getting home at 6:30 at night didn’t leave a lot of room to cook and then eat before having downtime to sleep... only to wake up at 5:30 AM again... my insomnia started kicking in to a point now where I take a benadryl through the work week to keep my sleep schedule on track. I started having anxiety attacks at work because trying to keep up with remembering all the little details I need to at work was getting to me. 

As I was training, I would write a post-it reminder whenever I repeated a mistake and stick it to my monitor. I got up to about 14 post-its before it became distracting and I instead compiled them onto a list and tacked it to my cubicle wall.

A few months into this I had a crying jag talking to Zack because it felt like something was really wrong and I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly. Depression? Anxiety? Trauma? School trauma? I think it’s just been untreated ADHD this whole time. I keep thinking back to this post I’ve seen on Tumblr a long time ago where someone said “disability exists in the context of the environment” and I think that’s what’s happening to me. I previously have bee in environments that weren’t butting up against The ADHD as much, but this job has been extremely challenging for the past 11 months. 

Thankfully, my boss and I have one-on-one discussions regularly (used to be every other week but since the pandemic started it’s been weekly phone calls) and she has no issues with my work performance... likely because I exert a lot of mental and emotional energy to keep up with everything I need to do. I’m also in charge of the busiest field office in our region--there’s a high turnover rate, lots of child welfare cases, etc--and the social workers that I talk to on the regular enjoy having me as their fiduciary. There have been many times however, despite the fact I seem to be doing pretty good, where it feels like I am hanging on by a fucking thread. Here’s something personal that I don’t think I’ve shared yet on the blog: last year, within the first month and a half of adjusting to this new pace of work and school and the long commutes, the schedule was so stressful for me that it made my period late. Worrying I was pregnant just stressed me out more. Not being able to treat this Probably ADHD has been detrimental to my mental health.

On the 22nd, I’m going to have a telehealth meeting with a doctor to see if I can get a referral for a screening. I kind of worried that if I do get diagnosed with ADHD it would send me into this mourning state of what-could-have-been but honestly... I’m tired. I’m tired of beating myself up for exhausting myself into keeping up with other people. I think I owe it to myself to get the help that I need. Looking at my life with the lens of I Probably Have ADHD has actually given me a renewed sense of self-worth and confidence because it’s something that I can learn how to take control of. It’s worth it. I’m worth it.

[theinvisiblespoon]

So here’s the thing:

(Just personal dilemma and my thoughts; trigger warning for mental illness including ADHD, anxiety, and especially depression; gun mention, school shooting mention, suicide mention (it’s pretty brief).)

I’m beginning to choose my classes for my next year of high school. 

Context:

I have three mental illnesses: ADHD, depression, and anxiety. I have only been taking ADHD meds since late 2017 and started antidepressants at the lowest dose about five-ish weeks ago. It was just bumped up recently. 

I’ve been living with mental illness for a while. It’s alright, last year was really tough, but I’m managing and getting the help I need. I now have a therapist and a psychiatrist.

A week or so ago, I talked with my dad. We’ve started to grow closer than we ever have been; communication has always been an issue. I said something along the lines of “it’s hard when I’m not feeling well to do simple things, like getting out of bed.” My dad and I talked about that for a little, but I could tell he didn’t quite get what it is like to have this. One rarely knows about anything unless they have gone through it themselves, and even then it is debatable. He was trying to understand, though, and that meant a lot. 

I am very lucky to be in such a diverse and accepting area where race, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. is understood. If not understood, respected. If not respected, accepted. I can go by the name and pronouns I choose, not the ones I’m born with. It’s awesome. 

My parents were divorced...wow, a while ago. I was young enough to vaguely remember and old enough to understand what it meant. My parents, while still disagreeing on many things, both care for me and respect that the other cares for me. The divorce was good; I didn’t have to go to court or have to decide which parent to live with. I have split time, switching on Mondays, and my parents have begun to date others again but still work through issues with each other because they know it is the right thing for all of us. 

My mom particularly has found an awesome guy. They are stupidly in love and probably won’t get married. When they argue, it is only arguing, and usually about something stupid. Before the end of the night, they are saying that it is their fault to the other. They grow and learn from each other, and work to improve. They are both there for each other, and it’s awesome to see that stupid smile on both of their faces when talking about the other. They most likely won’t get married because they don’t feel they need to. 

Getting a psychiatrist (someone who prescribes meds for mental illness) took a long time, and I didn’t understand why until a couple days ago. My mom and I were talking, and when we talk, my mom tends to ramble and it leads to other and sometimes deeper conversations. I asked if my mother’s boyfriend had a mental illness, and she answered that he has depression. But, because of bad psychiatrists and bad doctors in general, he has lost faith in doctors. 

I was surprised to hear this; the psychiatrist I have is awesome. She doesn’t just ask if I’m okay, she asks how I’ve been feeling, how the meds are affecting me, what is common in people with these mental illnesses, how the meds work, how the mental illnesses work, and has given advice on how to deal with anxiety and depression when it gets bad. She recommended the 504 plan, which is a plan at the school that helps people with mental illness succeed in school. For example: longer test times, extended due dates, being able to walk out of class if it is too much. She even takes my blood pressure at the beginning of each meeting we have. 

My dad has ADHD, and my mom has ADHD, PTSD, and one or more things, I think. They both have experiences with many types of psychiatrists. During this conversation, she talked about how many psychiatrists will just ask if you are okay and prescribe meds. 

Now I know why getting a psychiatrist took a long time; they were looking for a good one. 

This struck me as odd. It shouldn’t be so difficult to get a good doctor to help you with mental health, but it is. 

With people I know well enough, I am very open about mental illness. When I first got on antidepressants, I told my friends the news happily. The reason why I don’t tell everyone (because I totally would) is because of this whole stigma against mental illness. I honestly don’t understand it; according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression. It is a leading cause of disability. One in six U.S. adults lives with a mental illness (44.7 million in 2016), and an estimated 49.5% of adolescents [have] any mental disorder. We should be having discussions about this. It should not be one of those topics most people feel uncomfortable talking about at Thanksgiving, like politics or sex. 

However, even in the rather open community where I live, it is still very difficult to talk about. 

Trying to explain this to my dad, for instance, took a lot of effort and deep-thinking, and then the message didn’t quite get across. All the while, even I felt a little uncomfortable. 

Society in its entirety has this view of mental illness that damages a lot of people to the point where many don’t seek help.

Theo Bennet says, “If we don’t recognize mental illnesses as physical health issues, then we will never get people the treatment that they need. One of the few certainties that I have learned from living with a father with bipolar disorder is that mental health is just as important as physical health. In fact, mental health is physical health; the two are inseparable. It baffles me that many people continue to make a distinction between the two.” I have had to stay out of school some days because my mental state was so bad, but you can’t easily get a doctor’s note for that, so it was rarely excused. 

Especially with the tragedy in Florida, many people are focusing on the fact that many shooters have mental illnesses. While the Trump Administration is giving money to certain departments-- 8.6 billion to the Department of Veteran Affairs and one million to the Children’s Mental Health Services program-- the budget blueprint also slashes spending for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration by $665 million. Additionally, the National Institute of Mental Health would see a 30 percent reduction in funding — a half a billion dollar decrease — in 2019. In a statement Trump gave soon after the Florida shooting, he talked about mental illness but made no mention of guns. Earlier in his presidency, he repealed a regulation that made it so people with mental illnesses could buy guns more easily. 

This is not what we should be focusing on. Many school shooters have mental illnesses, but most people struggling with mental illness are not school shooters. 

Even in things like domestic abuse, people think first of physical abuse. But, the research indicates that [psychological abuse] is just as bad and, in some cases, may be worse. 

What I’m trying to say is; mental illness is very real. It can be a monster to the people who have one, but the people who have one are not monsters. 

It is important to talk about this. It is important to talk about everything we don’t talk about just because it is uncomfortable to do so; especially because it is uncomfortable to do so. Whether it be mental illness, sex, rape, abuse, or anything else. 

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), in my case, makes it incredibly difficult to concentrate on anything. When one multitasks with a lot of things, the brain jumps around from thing to thing, making it difficult to focus and remember; this is the best example I can give for what it is like to have ADHD. My thoughts are incredibly scattered. Doing things like homework is a nightmare. At the same time, I can get hyperfocused. The best example of this is reading. I’ll start reading a book and realize that I finished it, and when I look up it has been several hours since I’ve moved. My teachers often say that I am bright and intelligent, but I need to “apply myself.” I haven’t studied for anything for years but still get As on quizzes and tests. It’s a myth that ADHD drugs make you smarter; what they do is help compensate for the lack of certain hormones one has and brings it up to a normal level. It helps people with ADHD with concentration, not intelligence. I am on ADHD meds now; it is going pretty well. 

Anxiety (General Anxiety Disorder or GAD). That anxiousness you feel before you take a test is the type of anxiety I feel a lot of the time, for seemingly no reason. It has spiked in class a lot of times, and that panic just becomes overwhelming. Quick tip: a good breathing exercise that helps me is in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. I don’t rely solely on it, but it does tend to ground me. When it does spike, my throat feels weird and it is difficult to breathe (hence the breathing exercises) because my whole body is actually tensing up, and it is literally difficult to breathe because my throat is tighter. I play music or do something to distract myself because for now, that is all I know how to do. This disorder sometimes leads to panic attacks, and it has a lot in the past. 

Depression is one of those big ones, where the media often portrays it as someone looking out the window on a rainy day. This, particularly, is difficult to talk about for me, because last year it was really bad. The details I will keep to myself, but I will, of course, still discuss it. Depression isn’t just feeling sad, it’s more of an absence of emotion over a long period of time. I didn’t see the point in getting up in the morning, and my lates rose dramatically. In this absence of emotion, at least for me, it becomes an ache and a constant longing for something I can’t reach. Last year, I began to isolate myself. I didn’t take care of myself because I did not see the point in it. It wasn’t healthy in any capacity. (I’m a lot better than I was then, don’t worry.)

So, now that you have context: I’m beginning to choose my classes for my next year of high school. 

I’m smart enough to take AP courses, but because of the way my brain works, I know I absolutely cannot handle the workload. I understand all the material for this year, I pick up on it immediately, but the workload is always what kills me. 

While yes, I hate school, it sucks, I want to learn about math and science in higher level courses, and I want to do more with my electives in performing arts. The school district I am in has a lot of opportunities; I want to take music theory, creating music with technology, acting studio, choir, band, be in improv club and the play in the fall and the musical in the spring but I just can’t handle all of it. And it sucks that I can’t do what I love. 

I only have one elective this year, and will only have one next year. I also am required to take only two years of history and three years of math and science. If I can not take history and/or math next year and push it over to Junior/Senior year, I might be able to have two or three electives, but this is only if this is allowed. 

I want to be able to come to a compromise. Doing what I like for homework is easier than doing what I don’t like for homework, even with mental health issues. I would still fulfill all of my requirements and do what I love while accomplishing more at school if they allow me to push back a class or two a year. 

I feel like this is a fitting analogy for how society should deal with mental illness-- understanding and compromise. Helping people with their mental health to succeed at what they want to do instead of pointing at mental illness as “the problem.” If we can come to this as a society, a lot more people can succeed, the suicide rate would go down because more people would feel like they have somewhere to turn-- overall, those with mental health issues would be helped instead of being blamed for something they cannot control and have no one to help them with. 

Please, stop the stigma against mental illness. It’s not helping anything.