#this is the exact type of shit that discouraged me from playing video games for YEARS

[karmaphone]

when ur playing a game marketed to children but u can't get past insane skill-based shit

[brokenfoxproductions]

So, I couldn't sleep last night because of stress, so I decided to actually write down a list of illegal or fucked up things that I've witnessed or been subjected to by the person I live with that could probably get her arrested.

She has a 15 year old son. He's underweight and looks about 12 because he never really eats other than a bowl of cereal a day (sometimes every other). He was hospitalized at 14 for homicidal and suicidal ideation, and his mom responded by pulling him from school, enrolling him in cyber school, and doing all of the work for him while he sits in his room all day playing video games. She also bought him two guns, a shotgun and a handgun, since his hospital stay for suicidal and homicidal ideation. She lets him drive the family SUV. And she provides him with weed, Xanax, and Prozac in large amounts. He's not allowed to go outside and play with friends, and his mom made sure he has no friends. She also brags about making him sleep in her bed every night until he was in elementary school because it made him develop an extreme unhealthy attachment towards her that I can beat describe as an Oedipus complex.

Her stepson beat the shit out of his 4 year old daughter and tried to murder his wife via strangulation in front of their three kids after their youngest's first birthday party, a few weeks ago. The person I'm living with went to the scene immediately afterwards, fully knowing the situation. She refused to call police or EMS and told her daughter in law not to do so, along with discouraging witnesses from talking about it or calling police. She just said "he does this when he drinks, it happens all the time" and then invited them to Christmas a few days later, where she gave her stepson alcohol and let him drive his kids home to his wife. This was a month after the same four year old told her and I that "daddy hits me with a belt a lot" in the saddest voice I've ever heard only for the person I live with to get upset and start yelling "take that back about my son! Say you're lying!" Until the four year old agreed to never talk about her dad's abuse again.

Since moving in here, she has repeatedly screamed at me and verbally harassed me to the point of triggering seizures. She has kept me up until 3 am just screaming in my face and refusing to let me and my kids sleep, and I've been late to work from her screaming at me. She has an insane list of rules, most of which are unrealistic and dangerous, and she screams and threatens to hurt us or destroy our belongings if we don't follow them, and she has cameras up everywhere to catch us if we break these rules. Rules include:

Children are only allowed to eat 500 calories a day

Adults are only allowed 1000 calories a day

Children must be held or within 10 feet from an adult at all times

All showers must be done at the same time before 6pm.

No using electricity other than the bathroom light, "bedroom" light, fan/heater and TV.

No lights on after the kids are asleep, even in other rooms of the house. The only exception is the bathroom because people can't tell if you're in there if the light is off

Limited toilet paper usage. If we use too much, she hides it.

No sugar for our coffee. If we buy it, she hides it.

No frozen food. Freezers are locked because she told us we could eat some frozen breakfast sandwiches and then told us to not get more, but she got mad that we didn't get more and didn't remember the exact brand and type of sandwich to "replace it", despite her saying not to, so she locked the freezers.

Nothing in the fridge besides milk, cheese, and juice.

No leftovers.

No using regular dishes. Only paper plates. Even salad, chili and pasta can only be eaten on small paper plates.

No filling plates. Food must be spread out in a single layer to prove it's not filling the plate to stay within the "diet" she forced us on.

No medication, including Tylenol, for the children. No prescriptions, no supplements, no fever or pain reducer, nothing. She believes that Tylenol is an opiate and it causes autism, so my children aren't allowed to have any fever reducer or pain relief under any circumstances. Chamomile teething tablets, kids melatonin, and gripe water are also supposedly "opiates" so they aren't allowed.

No free time away from the kids and no babysitters. The person we live with is the only person allowed to watch our kids and she flips out and breaks shit if she thinks we're leaving too early or coming back too late.

No science, religion or politics. Discussion of these topics, even if you aren't talking to her, isn't allowed and will get you screamed at. The person we live with thinks they know more than doctors, scientists, and everyone else, so their opinion matters more than facts and disagreeing with them leads to threats of physical harm to us and our property.

All pots, pans and dishes used must be washed immediately after use, while it's still warm, with as little water as possible. The water pump is electric, so it's wasting electricity and money when we wash anything, and that causes us to get screamed at.

All trash and recycling must be taken out to the outside cans immediately. Failure to do this, any signs of our trash or recycling being where everyone else puts theirs, results in being screamed at with racial slurs for hours.

We aren't allowed to correct her when she uses racial slurs against us or others because "she's not a racist person" and implying she is gets us threatened.

We aren't allowed to tell her dogs "no" or "go away", even when her German Shepard with a history of food aggression and biting people tries to bite or steal food from my terrified one year old daughter. ("The dogs live here, we don't, and we can watch our stuff burn in the front yard if we cross the dogs")

We're not allowed to spend money on prescriptions or medication, clothes, or anything that isn't food or gas for work

No putting trash in the bathroom trash can. Doing so will result in the bathroom being locked for 1-2 hours and nobody out of the four of us it, even if only one of us left the stuff in the trash can.

She frequently compares us to mice because she says we're "pests that stay in the basement" and routinely calls us stupid, worthless and lazy for just living. If we sleep at all, we're lazy. If we disagree with her on something, even if we're right and she's wrong, we're stupid and r*tarded. We're worthless for not making $55 an hour doing retail, because that's what her husband makes as a foreman so she can sit around and do nothing but watch us on the camera all day while doing 10th grade English online. She hasn't worked in 20 years and her only job experience is as a veterinarian's assistant and dog groomer. Her life is just being abusive while laying on her couch and making everyone scared of her, because anything you say to her can lead to her breaking your stuff and threatening you. Her kids don't have much in their rooms anymore because it's less for her to mess with (her 15 year old's room is a twin bed, a computer on a desk, and a chair for the desk. That's it. Nothing else. His guns are just on the desk, unlocked.)

I'm at the point where I would rather be living in a car or on the street than having to sneak food to my kids so some Nazi bitch doesn't starve them. She threatened to set my fiance on fire in his sleep several times and now I want to set her on fire. I kinda hope her son goes off the deep end and shoots her with the guns she brought him. I just hope she goes to fucking jail when I'm done with this situation.

[rum-and-shattered-dreams]

A rant of personal experiences and trying to do something positive with them:

Okay so procrastination is a huge thing in ADHD. Same with memory issues. (Not that these are always present and maybe some people experience both without being ADHD).

So. Here’s an experience I’m just now (at almost 40) realizing was a thing:

Imagine a huge essay/report/project requiring a lot of research and several sources was due in a few weeks. The advice was always to break it down, take notes, and make an outline. It made perfect sense. And maybe it does help some or even most people.

But for some, like me, it was still impossibly overwhelming and breaking it down was worse. The project was often boring (especially if I had to ignore a hyperfixation to work on it) and even if it wasn’t, it still felt like A LOT when my brain was full of TV static and my memory was shit.

It takes a ton of repetition for me to even temporarily remember something and even then, it will likely be gone again in a few days. UNLESS I learn by actually doing something or figuring it out for myself. And my brain gaslights itself like “do I remember that right? No that can’t be right. Let me look it up for the 100th time to make sure.” And I’m WAY more likely to remember concepts or physical processes but completely forget the terms for them or names of things or important dates EVEN FOR MY HYPERFIXATIONS, damnit... Like, I can do a bunch of crafty stuff and even remember some common terms and items but not the less common fabrics or stitch types or tool names. (Yet somehow I could remember the exact location of hundreds of thousands of items of inventory at my craft store job... even if I didn’t know what they were called. But I stocked them and had physical contact with them so I could picture where they were.) The number one overwhelming thing for me about trying to be a pro at anything is trying to remember terms so it sounds like I know what I’m talking about.

Anyway...

Without acknowledging that, I ended up wasting time by trying to schedule research/work in small chunks because every time I stopped then tried to start again, I wouldn’t remember what I did or looked at last time. (Can I also add that this is why being interrupted is infuriating for me? It probably seems irrational to other people but it’s so hard to get focused on something and now my train of thought is derailed, passengers are dead and injured, and it’s going to take who knows how long to revive the survivors?) And maybe that wasn’t so bad the first time because I’d only have to reread one page of notes. But then it would happen a few more times and my focus would be blurred and I’d repeated myself multiple times in the notes and they’d become a mess and look horrible which was distracting and I’d feel overwhelmed by having to reread and now rewrite several pages and focus would be even worse because I did remember some bits and blanked out while looking at those then stay blanked out then I’d have to reread again to catch the parts I didn’t remember.

But.

If I waited until the last minute, when the consequence/reward system overrode how overwhelming or boring the project was, I could burn through it because I was in constant contact with the material and it was all currently on my mind and I could skip writing notes and an outline and go straight to a fairly decent flow-state draft then keep going through revisions and editing all without forgetting WTF I’d researched. And it would be done in so so so much less time with a lot less effort and frustration.

And...

AND

And then there’s the schedule thing and why it DOES NOT WORK for me. If I schedule doing something (or even if someone suddenly wants me to do something right now) and my brain is like, “nah sorry, just static right now,” there’s absolutely nothing I can do to make it work and I’m just going to get frustrated and tired and depressed and discouraged. But if I keep a loose list of things that need to get done and indicate which are priorities, I can look at it and say “yeah. This one seems doable right now.” No I’m not going to get up and vacuum that spot of cat litter at this exact moment but it’s a good idea to do it soon so I’ll add vacuum to the list and probably get it done later the same day. If the cat throws up, that is an immediate priority so I will get up and make sure they’re okay and clean it because my brain does actually recognize things like that as super important. If a bill arrives in the mail, I’ll stop and pay it right away because I know I don’t have to think/worry about it again if I do. But what sucks about that is that society wants and often understandably needs people to work on a schedule. And I just... can’t.

But I’m trying to take this knowledge and apply it, trying to accept that this is how I function. I function based on a system of priorities that get done in order of “absolutely must be done right this second, whether for my own reasons or outside reasons, even if I need to drop other things” to “this is what I CAN do right now.” Not something pre-scheduled. If I need to leave something to the last minute then I’m just going to accept that that’s how it’s going to be and that’s okay. Then I can free up energy and space to do other things in the meantime rather than worry and be anxious and beat myself up because I should be doing the thing and end up hating things I like doing because they’re not what I should be doing and now there’s a negative association with them. No. Screw that. If all I can do today is play a video game then fine. Gonna enjoy it. Because I now know for a fact, from years of experience, that I will do the important things. They just need to wait until I’m capable of doing them. And... if I let myself stop worrying about old WIPs... They get done eventually too. It might take a few years but as long as I don’t actually decide not to do them, they will get done.

All that said... I still want to look into meds because it would be nice to have more of an ability to focus more regularly. I just need to clear up some other medical stuff first and I’ve got appointments already set up for that.

One more thing... I f$&#ing hate the attitude teachers have about doodling in class. It was literally the only way I could focus during lectures and remember anything they were talking about. I could look at what I drew and remember what was being said while I drew it. F$&% every teacher who took away my notebooks or yelled at me for it. Without it, I’d zone out completely. And THANK YOU to the art history teacher and biology teachers I had who not only understood but encouraged it and actually helped me direct it toward the subject matter by suggesting drawing thumbnails of the art or cell structure or anatomy.