wlwsuperheroine · 11 months ago
Text
You guys I’m literally kamala khan. This is no joke. I’m literally her in a different dimension where superpowers aren’t real and I’m 100% serious. You guys you gotta believe me.
11 notes · View notes
acespoliticalwaffles · 2 years ago
Text
Finally got a call back from the autism assessment people. And what do you know? They said that insurance wouldn’t cover it so if we want to actually get me in to get tested it’ll be 4,000 US$ out of pocket. My parents said we can’t afford that right now.
This is what we mean when we say diagnosis is a privilege. Because in the US, it literally costs thousands of dollars for them to even look at you. And even if you can afford that, or your insurance will pay for it (most probably won’t), you still have to deal with doctors who have a very narrow view of what autism looks like, both in how it presents itself symptom-wise, and in how the people who have it look physically. If you do not fit the stereotype of Smart, but Socially Awkward White Boy, there is a chance they will reject you outright.
“Diagnosis is a privilege” doesn’t mean that only privileged people get diagnosed, or that your life must have been easy and perfect if you yourself were able to get one. It means that not everyone with certain conditions/disorders/neurodivergencies is able to get diagnosed with them for a variety of reasons that don’t include “they’re faking it”. And that is literally just a fact.
Like, seriously, what do people who think diagnosis isn’t a privilege think getting diagnosed is like? Like, with some disorders it’s much easier. I was diagnosed with depression the first day I saw my first psychiatrist. But most of the disorders they always claim people are faking (autism, adhd, did) are actually very difficult to get diagnosed with just because it takes so long and can often be very expensive. Like, I’ve literally been waiting to get diagnosed for almost half a year. And now they say they won’t even try unless we fork over $4,000. People who are against self-diagnosis are so fucking dense. Like, what do you want me to do? Say I don’t have autism because I couldn’t pay them to check??? Cause only rich people can have autism I guess./s
Knowing that I’m autistic has helped me understand a lot about myself that I didn’t before. It has helped me realize that some of my weak points (not being able to work with vague instructions, being very sensitive to criticism, etc.) have a reason behind them and other people experience them in similar ways. I am autistic. I do not have any doubts about being autistic. And I do not have to prove to strangers on the internet that I am autistic before I get to talk about my experiences with it without being relentlessly scrutinized.
Edit: Been seeing some ppl talk about this phrase in a way I hadn’t before and I want to clarify: getting diagnosed is not always actually good, especially when you’re very young and you don’t get to decide whether you want it or not. What I meant in this post is that access to diagnosis is a privilege. Hope that clears things up if you had questions. This was mainly meant to demonstrate that ppl who are against self-dx need to get their facts straight. I’m not actually here to talk about the privilege aspect very much either (I didn’t realize there was discourse there), but in short: it’s complicated, but it is often a result of some privilege that ppl are able to get diagnosed, especially later in life. I also want to make it clear that it’s very valid to not want a dx. I actually went back and forth on it myself bc of all the fucked up laws and discrimination and stuff. (Which is yet another reason self-dx is valid and sometimes the best option) So yeah. Idk, just wanted to make it clear what I’m trying to say.
116 notes · View notes
dex-starr · 2 years ago
Text
god am I feeling miserable hahaha
fucking hilarious.
I got the guitar I’ve been drooling about, but I can’t find absolute joy in playing it. I’m probably getting a decent job. Maybe a car eventually? 2 of these 3 things I can hardly give a fuck for. I’m getting my mental health together -- slowly because it’s only so much in my hands right now and I can only control what I can control -- brain chemistry I kinda need the tools for that. 
Yet I don’t have you in my life and I haven’t had you in my life and I’ve definitely let people know of the void of that and how I feel about it -- but they don’t quite get it. I don’t have you, don’t have your heart anymore, don’t even have your presence as a friend either. I didn’t not want these things, I didn’t not want it all nor you. I wish I could’ve explained it all and not did the things I did, I wish I could’ve actually sought treatment and a diagnosis instead of being scared. I wish I took care of my health bc these are all things I needed to do in order to actually end up with you. And not for you, for my sake because I didn’t want those things to affect or hurt you.
I don’t even know if having you back in my life in some form would fix this state I’m in. What do I do? What do I say? Haven’t I said everything? Isn’t there no part of me that isn’t left to bare? I said all of my feelings even the not so great ones, fuck I even let myself get actually angry at things but my mind didn’t change on what I think about you. On what I feel about you though? Jury’s out to town on that bc I very much know it could be that I’m just trying to go back to something safe despite everything that happened. Every little unhealthy thing that we both unfortunately did. I did love you, with all my heart. I think I do love you but I can’t tell you if it’s the same way that I once did unless I actually talk to you and we get somewhere with our conversation finally. And if I don’t -- I don’t and that would suck but y’know at least we tried and I just want you happy.
I just like... the reason I need to talk to you is partially because I need to know why even though I know the why. But I need to hear it from you, why you chose to go the route that you did and say what you said did what you did. Try to impress someone who I could tell you wouldn’t reciprocate. Like did you do it just because they were there and you needed to move on from me? Or did you do it just to hurt me and get even with the sleight you felt against you? Like I just think about it and never in a thousand years, what I didn’t tell you was an issue I had with myself and my past actions that I told myself I would move forward from because I was mistaken and knew better now. I just... why? Why did you do all that? I would’ve really done anything, I was just a mess of a person at that time because of everything going on and that went on.
But god I really would’ve done anything just to make you happy
and that’s the part that I can recognize is maybe the correct option or extremely unhealthy.
It’s not like I didn’t think about these things. I do. All the time. I have fucking severe depression and ADHD that’s unmedicated as fuck. I ruminate even when I don’t want to. I ruminate about the stupidest things, the slightest change in behavior bc I think I’ll have done something wrong. These things have made me feel like I can only do wrong, which is why I just have a hard time when I actually do wrong bc I attributed way more than you thought to it. Side-tracking aside... like I thought in every way shape or form what I could do. But the only conclusion I came to was that it depended on what you wanted to do. If you didn’t want me around and if that made you happier then so-be-it, that’s what I want you to have a part of/place in the world that actually makes you happy. If I can’t do that then I am a problem, as tough as it is to say it. I always accept that responsibility, as much as I hate being told that I’m doing bad. (Thanks Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria).
The thing is with all this ruminating I think I did move on in some ways but in other ways I cannot, I don’t really understand why because I’ve come to the logical conclusions on it. I’m not having some kind of false hope -- some kind of delusion that a storybook romance will happen, even though I am a stupid ass dumbass hopeless romantic at heart. I know very well what reality is, I know very well what my part was in things failing -- as much as I want to shoulder all the blame... I can’t. Believe me, I do want to shoulder it all. I told myself I would carry the burden of everything if it fell apart. But realistically I don’t think I can. It’s eating away at me.
It all leads back to why did you do all that and was there really no way we could’ve actually made it work?
Maybe so, I don’t know why I’m asking that question like... I’m not going to claim to know the answer but like fuck I don’t know dude. I’m just confused, I don’t know what to even say. If I was able to talk to you I don’t know if I would be able to speak without like gathering my thoughts beforehand because this emotion stuff just overwhelms my stupid adhd brain.
It would all be so simple if it was all procedural but life isn’t like that and I get that. But fuck man I really am trying here when does it get better????
0 notes
jjtheresidentbaby · 2 years ago
Note
Hey could I please request a newly diagnosed autistic little reader x daddy Eddie pls? Because I’m feeling very insecure about it and I don’t know what to do now that I have a diagnosis and it’s really overwhelming
Overwhelmed | Eddie Munson x Reader
A/n: okay hi anon I’m really hoping I did this correctly as I am not a diagnosed autistic and I don’t want to do any injustice to anyones diagnosis/condition. I do have suspected adhd or autism so I implemented my own sensory issues/stims , please please let me know if I’ve done something wrong though, my intention is never to offend anyone!!
A/n .2 : this is for you specifically anon, your diagnosis does not change who you are as a person in any bad way, you are amazing in every single way you always have been! My messages are always open if you ever wanted to talk, it can be about anything, tell me all about your special interest if you’d like, anything and everything <3
Warnings: mentions of dnd monsters, diagnosis insecurity, sensory issues, stims, anxiety/feeling overwhelmed
Tumblr media
~
“Are you okay baby?” You whine at Eddie’s caring words, you’re not okay but he’s having fun and you don’t want to wreck that. It’s just too loud and your sweaters scratchy and you need to move but can’t as this Hellfire meeting is very important.
“Little one, what’s wrong?” Eddie turns to you in an instant, letting the Hellfire members ramble to each other and ignore the slight interruption you’re causing.
“It- it’s kinda loud Ed’s and I’m just uncomfortable.” Within seconds Eddie’s getting the attention of everyone standing at the other side of the table.
“Guys we’re gonna have to cut this meeting short, we will pick up later this week with Wills decision on the monsters he’s fighting or not.” The clubs faces all have the same confused expression but Eddie’s tipping his head over to you and they’re quick at packing up their respected stuff while Dustin calls up Steve to give the kids rides home.
“Ed’s you didn’t have to do that, I’m okay.” You say quietly, you always get insecure about having to leave fun experiences early because of sensory issues or some other problem others don’t seem to have.
“Nonsense, I told you I’d always be there for you and I intend to stick to that.” He’s referring to the day you had come home with that little envelope that confirmed all the suspicions you had, it gave an answer to everything and that terrified you. But Eddie was right there to reassure you that you are still you and he doesn’t care what that envelope says since he loves you and will do his best to support you in any way.
“You’re too good to me.” You’re lifted up onto Eddie’s hip as he closes his book up and watches the kids file out to the parking lot.
There’s a few minutes he waits, holding you close while making sure each kid is picked up by someone, then he walks you both over to his van. Eddie gets you situated in the back so you’re able to with-go wearing a seatbelt, it might be a tad unsafe but the feeling of the strap against your chest always felt suffocating. Your boyfriends been more than understanding with the issue.
“How you doing back there sweetheart?” He can probably see how you keep pulling at your shirt collar, it’s a tell tale sign that you’re getting more overwhelmed.
“Mm- I don’t like this Ed’s.” You’re close to tears at the feeling of your skin almost vibrating under your clothes, it’s an awful sensation in your opinion.
“I know love, we’re almost home.” You try to nod at the reassurance in Munsons tone yet you can’t find it in yourself to.
~
As soon as you two enter Eddie’s trailer you’re stripping the sweater you had off and all but ripping the jeans from your legs. Your breathings getting worse the more overwhelmed you get, you’re about to just slide to the wall and start rocking the same way you did as a child when this would happen but Eddie’s appearing in no time.
“Arms up.” You listen, letting him slip a ‘Metallica’ oversized shirt over your head then a pair of his old basketball shorts onto your legs. It’s much much better than the outfit you had on before.
“What else can I do to help?” Eddie stands beside you as you start to pace and flap your hands up and down rapidly.
“Um- Um- can you jump with me?” Eddie has a grin across his face as he gently takes your hands and you two begin to bounce up and down. Hums start to come from you, a vocal stim Eddie mirrors at time, now is one of those times, the trailer quickly fills up with both of your hums and the sound of the floorboards squeaking under you.
“Helping?” You nod happily, the anxiety leaving your system as you jump a little higher.
“Mm! Thank you, thank you!”
“Always baby, always.”
913 notes · View notes
copperbadge · 2 years ago
Text
There’s a lot to think about when it comes to actually having a diagnosis of ADHD, because I didn’t honestly think I’d really get one. 
It wasn’t so much denial as just...I don’t know, it’s like assuming you’ll never be in a car crash. Nobody actually expects to be in one themselves so that first one’s a real shock. I thought about just processing it quietly, but it helps to get my thoughts in order to write it out, and anyway the last post seemed to have an impact on some people. 
I think about how my mother was roughly the age I am now when she got a diagnosis of a learning disability. I don’t know what the specifics were; I was a teen and  she just told me the basics and not the terminology. She really struggled with rage and grief over her diagnosis in a way I am not and don’t think I will, though it’s still early days. We had very different upbringings; she had a lot of teachers (and a father) who berated her for “being stupid”. I had a much more supportive educational experience. Nobody ever called me stupid, though I did have one teacher who would condescendingly tell me “Can’t is a word of defeat, you know” when I failed my multiplication test for the eighth or ninth time. 
I think it helps that I’m “twice-exceptional,” intellectually capable of making up most of the shortfall, so I did (by and large) cope with things to the point where I don’t think an earlier diagnosis would have changed my life materially. Might have made it more pleasant, or somewhat less exhausting, but not to the point where I’m angry about it. I’m...a little bitter that I was cast as the Normal One in the family, since both my siblings got diagnosed young, but I understand why: if my parents had this one ordinary kid, maybe slightly on the gifted side, then they had a strong defense against the very common assumption in the 80s and 90s that cognitive struggles on the part of the child were due to poor parenting. I was proof my mother wasn’t a Fridge Mommy. I still am, for her, even though she never truly accepted the idea in the first place. It’s a significant contributing factor in why I don’t plan to tell her about the diagnosis. 
I also think about college and grad school. I was in the arts so I was in a lot of classes that came down to “let’s read something and then argue about it for an hour”. I used to have to tune out about once a week when the talking started to turn into a buzz that would make my eardrums hurt, but I assumed I was just tired. Looking back it’s almost definitely some kind of sensory overload...thing, I don’t even know what to call it; I still get it at parties sometimes. I don’t know how medication would impact that, since it’s not like there are a lot of parties going on these days. Tangentially, it does seem to be helping with rejection-sensitive dysphoria mainly because I no longer remember every single awkward conversation in vivid technicolor and surround-sound. Maybe I am saying fewer awkward things? Difficult to tell.  
And I think about the fact that I have A Disability. I think about how to fit the identity into who I am. Even with the relatively radical change the medication is having, it doesn’t feel like a real disability, which is yet more programming to unpick; it’s not like I’d ever say that to someone else, but it feels less real when it’s your own experience, somehow. I’ve had temporary physical disabilities before -- broken limbs, concussion -- and I think about those too because clumsiness is a trait of ADHD. I never got called stupid but I sure did get called attention-seeking when I was still coming home with skinned knees in high school. But also even the more serious injuries were passing, transitory, with a fixed endpoint in sight. With luck, I’ll be on Adderall the rest of my life, which is a lot more permanent. 
I don’t know how much will change or how much I’ll change; probably not all that much. But there’s a lot to think over. Which is admittedly a lot easier these days, so there’s that. 
262 notes · View notes
thebibliosphere · 3 years ago
Note
I had a question.
So, just an hour or two ago, I was going through some sort of “manic high”, sorta like how somebody with bipolar disorder would have (I don’t have BPD). It felt like a bullet train at max speed and completely derailing, and it was incredibly draining. It also got me wondering.
Do people with severe enough ADHD deal with ADHD episodes like this? My search attempts are often futile because all of it is just talking about how to differentiate between BPD and ADHD and BPD manic episodes, but nobody ever mentions ADHD episodes; the only time I’ve seen it mentioned ever was when somebody made a clip of crankgameplays to show what an ADHD episode looked like.
Do they even exist? I’ve got no idea, so I was just wondering if you knew.
Hey! Sorry, I saw your other ask a while ago, but I wanted to talk to my ADHD specialist before I answered because I’d never heard of the term “episode” being used to describe ADHD. I’m also going to splice both questions together here and answer them in segments in the hope it helps :)
So like I said, I’d never heard of the term “episode” with ADHD, and neither has my specialist. Part of ADHD is having a natural ebb and flow between inattention and hyperactivity, sometimes skewed toward one or the other, depending on your ADHD type. (What are the different types of ADHD?)
Your type of ADHD may also fluctuate because of other factors, such as stress, changes in medication, hormonal fluctuations, lack of sleep, overstimulation, or even under-stimulation, to name a few. Another overlooked part of ADHD is emotional dysregulation, which may cause rapid cycling emotions that may look like an “episode” to someone unfamiliar with what that actually qualifies. The way my therapist explained it and using your example of bipolar disorder, “episode” is used in diagnostic criteria to categorize manic or depressive episodes that last X amount of time, are usually severe, potentially requiring hospitalization, and are accompanied by other symptoms not found in ADHD.
Our “bursts” of energy or lack thereof typically don’t last long enough to be considered episodes. This isn’t to say they are not severe or debilitating, especially if you suffer from things like anxiety or depression that ADHD can feed into. Merely that “episode” is not used as part of the language used to discuss ADHD, which is likely why you’re not finding anything.
So, do ADHDers experience intense bursts of energy that are draining afterward? Yeah, we can do, especially if we lean more toward hyperactive than inattentive. (And again, it's normal to fluctuate and also for things to be affected or worsened by secondary factors.)
And I'm going to put the rest under the cut because this is hella long.
I’ve seen some people think that all hyperactivity has to come with fixation, but that’s not how ADHD works. It’s true if something gets us excited or gives us a dopamine boost, we might be more prone to becoming hyperfixated and burn all our energy up on that. But you don’t need something to fixate on to experience hyperactivity. Some of us are just wired to the moon sometimes, and yes, it can be very draining when it ends. Some people find medication helpful in regulating their hyperactivity/preventing it from coming in such big swings and dips.
Speaking personally, when I'm hyper and nothing is grabbing my attention, the world and people around me can feel painfully slow. It's like I'm going a mile a minute doing everything but achieving nothing. The crash that comes after can also be particularly bad, as I also have dysthymia, which can tip over into a major depressive episode depending on other factors in my life at that time. For years I was misdiagnosed as having "probably Bipolar Type II" by a doctor who didn't believe teenage girls could "get" ADHD* and convinced my parents I needed psychoactive drugs. The drugs I was on didn't help, in fact, they made me worse so I was taken off them.
It wasn't until I found an ADHD specialist as an adult a few years ago that I made any real progress. And I'll be honest, I was shocked when she diagnosed me with ADHD, I really didn't think I had it. Right up until we started doing the work and slowly but surely my mental health began to improve and my understanding of myself with it.
Sometimes there are days when I will be wired to the moon and it will derail my entire day because I can't focus on a single thing/I'll focus too much on a single thing. Other times, like when I am closer to my menstrual cycle, I'll crash into inattentiveness and depression because of how my hormones affect my various different conditions, including my ADHD. Medication would likely help with this, but due to medical reasons, that's currently not an option for me so I do the best I can.
That said, if you’re experiencing something more than hyperactivity but it's not mania, you may be experiencing a form of hypomania and you should talk to a doctor about your concerns.
Hypomania typically occurs in Bipolar Type II disorder, which is less severe than the manic episodes in Bipolar I. I’ve experienced both manic and hypomanic episodes in my life due to medication interactions, and they felt very different from ADHD hyperactivity. It's not just derailing mile-a-minute thoughts, it's something usually completely mood-altering and out of control feeling followed by devastating crashes.
If you're on any medications and are worried you are experiencing something like this, you need to talk to your doctor. You might just need a dosage tweak, or you might be better off on a different medication altogether. Also, make a thorough check of any and all medications you are taking to check for any interactions.
I'm on a cocktail of meds for my MCAS, which if I were to combine them with the SSRI one of my doctors wants me to try, would result in serotonin syndrome. The doctor didn't notice this, but the pharmacist sure as shit did!
Some people (ask me how I know) even develop mild hypomania from overusing the sunlamps used to treat SAD (link), which is why brands like Verilux now include warnings in their leaflets about not using the lamps for more than X amount of time a day. Thankfully it goes away once you stop overusing the lamps.
Which actually brings me to something you asked last time about being unable to sleep at night. Insomnia and delayed sleep phase cycles are not uncommon in ADHD. This is likely because our circadian rhythm is thought to be out of whack (link).
You also mentioned having racing thoughts at night too, which is not uncommon either with hyperactivity. I find if I get overstimulated before trying to sleep, I’ll end up lying there awake with what I like to call “radio ADHD” playing in my head. It can range from snippets of songs stuck on repeat, conversations, things I’ve watched on TV, arguments, or if something is happening the next day, fixating on not being late for it. Hence, I end up getting no sleep because you can’t accidentally sleep in if you don’t sleep. *jazz hands of despair.*
Sometimes I find Radio ADHD soothing if it’s fixating on something chill, but it can get annoying fast and even distressing if I’m tired and can’t “change the station.” (I’d say “shut it off,” but as of yet, I’ve never been able to do that. Medication helps some people with this, as can looking into “sleep hygiene” if you haven’t already.) Conversely, if I’m bored or something is too stressful, I will 100% fall asleep because my brain would literally rather just turn off than do something I don’t want to do or is a low dopamine reward task.
Brains are fun.
Anyway, I uh, I am not sure if any of this is useful to you, but I hope it helps. Mostly I'm just repeating back what my specialist said when I asked her about it lol. Good luck, and I hope you figure things out.
----
*NB: It's important to note that ADHD and Bipolar Disorder can be comorbid. It's not a one or the other situation. I’m just throwing it out there in case hearing that helps someone else pursue the proper diagnosis!
911 notes · View notes
palmett-hoes · 4 years ago
Note
per your post "every single one of the monsters is autistic and/or adhd" will you elaborate on that?, if you do i will love you forever (not that i wont if you dont do it)
oh boy i would love to!!! unironically nothing brings me more joy than writing long, convoluted character analysis posts
---
okay so i’ve written several posts before about why andrew is autistic. his moral code, the roundabout way he communicates, his body language, his stimulation-seeking behavior, his strict adherence to transactional deals, the emphasis on honesty, and a dozen other details. at this point i just take andrew being autistic as fact, not just an interpretation
h o w e v e r  i also hc that andrew is dyslexic, which is also a neurodiverse condition
- - -
similarly, i’ve seen more than one person interpret kevin as autistic, and i absolutely agree that it fits. not just the hyperfocus on exy but mostly the way he communicates. he’s very indirect, especially in his affection but very direct with his opinions. he tries to be helpful in a material way to the people he cares about, even if he comes off as negative. he wants the people he cares about to be safe and successful so he pushes them to work hard and reminds them in measurable ways how to stay healthy. he doesn’t factor in a lot of room for emotions, so instead he focuses on quantifiable things that he can improve. i personally act very similarly. approaching someone emotionally is hard for me, so when the people i care about have problems all i can think to do is try offering solutions, check up on their well-being, etc. practicality instead of conventional sentiment is extremely common with asd
- - -
so now let’s talk about neil. i had to think on this one for a WHILE but ultimately came to the conclusion that neil is adhd, probably hyperactive type. 
like obviously neil is high energy. i would say he probably does the most exercise of anyone on the team. morning run, morning practice, afternoon practice, night practice with kevin and andrew, plus he doesn’t have a car so he runs to class (on a BIG ass campus), and goes for an extra run when he feels stressed. that’s... insane, honestly.
neil reminds me SO MUCH of this post that goes:
“Was just informed by my mom that I do in fact have ADHD and the reason I thought I didn’t was because ever since I was seven whenever I got super energetic my mom would have me go chop wood so now when I’m feeling The ADHD I go chop wood”
(phenomenal post) and that’s neil to a t. tell me this isn’t exactly how neil handles his problems and also exactly what mary would have had to do to keep her unmedicated and very energetic son focused on the task of staying alive
neil also definitely has that ADHD on/off switch with his interest. the obvious being exy which is like the definition of a hyperfixation, but you can see it in other things: the way he runs totally hot or totally cold with people, his complete disinterest in his schoolwork, the way he can’t seem to sit still long enough to follow movies. but then there’s also the hyperfocus. doing the same drill for hours on end. watching exy game after exy game. staring at andrew until time falls away
what’s more, neil on many occasions shows racing thoughts, both in an anxiety way (and anxiety often goes hand-and-hand with adhd) but also as a way to quickly and accurately take in details about people to build a character profile of them. this is what allows him to connect with the foxes, how he manages to get through andrew’s puzzles, and even how he knows what to say in order to knock riko down a peg. his brain just works so fast and it takes in a lot of very specific details and disparate information to make connections.
but also like,, neil has a HUGE problem with time blindness. like the instant he didn’t have his mother around to manage and direct him anymore he lost all sense of time. he stayed in Millport for a YEAR. and what did he keep telling himself during that time? basically “i really need to move on, but not just yet.” for a YEAR! then he gets to palmetto and he’s like “i’ll cut and run in a month or two” then he doesn’t “i’ll be gone by halloween” wrong again “i’ll leave by the raven’s game” nope. like,, the boy just has NO sense of time and he can’t seem to make himself DO anything outside of an externally enforced schedule. and even then,,, HE HAD 48 FUCKING DAYS TO FIGURE OUT SOMETHING TO DO TO NOT GET MURDERED! 48 WHOLE DAYS. he didn’t make a plan, he didn’t write down any letters with goodbyes, he didn’t GO TO THE FBI LIKE HE’D INTENDED TO THE WHOLE TIME! nah he just made out with andrew and when he finally got to zero he was just like “ah shit, that was fast. oh well guess i’ll die” and that’s time blindness, babey!
---
let’s move on to nicky. 
now i think it would be really easy to say nicky is just adhd because he’s high energy and forgetful but tbh,, i don’t think that’s all of it. like if you really look at nicky’s character and especially at his problems, he has asd problems just as much as he has adhd problems.
so nicky is dual diagnosis asd and adhd. also nicky reminds me a lot of a girl i used to know who was autistic/adhd
so, adhd:
very generally speaking, ppl with adhd will struggle with sitting still, listening to and following instructions, planning/organization, following a schedule, and some social boundaries like “appropriate” times and topics of conversation
i would say you see hints of this with nicky. he’s definitely a rambunctious personality, constantly on the move, constantly stimulation seeking. he’s very tactile. he likes to dance, he likes to party, he complains about it but he’s an elite-level athlete. he’s also decidedly very chatty, and doesn’t seem to really pay attention to what he’s saying. he distracts himself and the people around him have to keep him on track. he has some trouble with boundaries. he’s a little all over the place. he’s almost a bit of an adhd stereotype
also one thing i find interesting is that when neil sees him in the library doing work neil is surprised to see he’s capable of that, especially bc when we see the upperclassmen doing work they generally do it in their dorms or on the bus and/or with other people around. that hyper-social nicky would be alone in a quiet place is weird. but this is like the most common tip for dealing with adhd. don’t do it in a familiar space. have a designated space and time to do work. limit distractions. just a lil detail
so now, asd:
in all honesty, most of nicky’s actual problems in the narrative could be viewed as stemming from asd symptoms. his number one issue being that he has a lot of trouble with nonverbal cues (and tbh, verbal ones too). the twins are mostly quiet. andrew especially (when he’s sober) communicates primarily nonverbally, and nicky seems to have a lot of trouble with this. despite knowing them for the longest on the team, nicky honestly seems to have the least insight into the way either of the twins actually thinks or processes things. he loves them, and he’s very forgiving of them, but he fundamentally doesn’t understand them. 
the twins, andrew especially, put up a LOT of nonverbal boundaries, and nicky sort of inadvertently keeps trampling all over them. he’s touchy in a way they don’t like. he talks a lot about their personal lives to other people. he treats them like they’re joking when they’re serious. etc. and like,,, you kind of get the sense that the upperclassmen feel similarly about him. beyond the homophobia, beyond the fact that he’s loyal to andrew, the upperclassmen still treat him with this sense of,, bafflement, i suppose? it’s clear that they don’t really understand him and he doesn’t really understand them. although, nicky IS curious about the upperclassmen, while the upperclassmen are pretty dismissive of him. it reminds me of when my sweet, floppy dog tries to play with my cat. their body language is different; they’re each receiving different signals than they believe they’re sending out
only,, nicky loves people!! he likes being around them, he likes talking to them. he’s interested in their lives and stories, but it’s very clear that he can’t read between the lines on people. he has an incredibly hard time with people who expect their actions to speak for them, which is most people, but is especially his cousins.
actually this is very much also an issue that i have: things need to be spelled out for me. the way i deal with it is i ask a lot of questions. ‘how do you want me to react to this potential situation?’ ‘what are specific things that make you most comfortable?’ ‘please explain to me exactly how you feel and what has prompted those feelings?’ and i’m always communicating vice versa like that with other people. a lot of specifics in both questions and answers
and the interesting thing is, when i was skimming through the books reviewing dialogue styles for another ask, i noticed that, actually, nicky DOES do this. with neil and the upperclassmen, nicky asks a LOT of quick, clarifying questions. things that ask after tone, that ask after intent. it’s kinda sad that he does this for communicating with acquaintances, but with the twins, the people he’s closest to, he makes a lot more assumptions. and i’m really proud of nicky for having this coping skill, because i can’t imagine it’s something he grew up doing. there’s no way he was raised in an environment that fostered this kind of open communication so it must have been something he learned about much later, probably in germany with the kloses, which would also explain why he’s a lil imperfect about it
---
now last but not least, aaron
this is another one i had to think through for a long time before it felt like it fit
much like how i felt that it would be easy to read nicky as simply adhd rather than also asd, i think it would be easy to say aaron is autistic simply because he is quieter, less rambunctious. however, i actually think he’s adhd, likely primarily inattentive type
in all honesty, aaron’s #1 character trait for the first two books is basically that he’s disconnected. detached. separated both from his family and his team. not in the same forcefully apathetic way that andrew is, more,, spaced out. he’s just kind,, there. not really paying attention to what’s going on, tuning in every once in a while only if something really catches his eye/ear then tuning right back out again. just sits in his corner and plays on his phone. and the thing is, from the moments when he does tune in, you can tell that he actually does care. he backs nicky when seth insults him in tfc, and we know he cares deeply about andrew even if he’s become disillusioned with their fraught relationship. he even hangs with his family, doesn’t seem to really try and slip away to other friends besides katelyn, he’s fine spending his leisure time with the monsters. so it’s not totally apathy, he’s just,,, tuned out most of the time
and, yea, that sounds like adhd. it’s not the type that most people are familiar with, and for a lot of people this causes it to slip under the radar. it can make it hard to get help or a dx because it doesn’t fit with how adhd “should” look or how someone “should” act, but difficulty focusing your thoughts and staying in tune with the current moment is absolutely part of adhd
addiction is also a huge problem for people with adhd. a lot of stimulants affect people with adhd very differently than neurotypicals, especially in small doses, and an adhd kid who’s struggled their whole lives with the disorder might try speed or god-forbid meth or fuck even coffee and suddenly find that things are a lot easier for them. they start to self-medicate, they don’t actually know what they’re doing, and then they’re addicted, and everything spirals out of control. we don’t know too many details about aaron’s addiction other than that his mother enabled him, but wouldn’t this fit? it’s also an explanation for aaron still taking drugs at eden’s, given that cracker dust seems to be a mild amphetamine. (aaron talk to betsy about the neurocog and get an actual prescription please)
(total throw away but aaron plays videogames and videogames are like,, adhd culture)
160 notes · View notes
citrineghost · 4 years ago
Text
On ADHD, Being Dramatic, and Being Lazy
Gather round everyone. It’s time for our every-few-monthsly post on ADHD by your local ADHD ghost. In this episode, we’re talking about ADHD and how it relates to “being dramatic” and “being lazy.”
On Being Dramatic
No doubt a lot of you have been told you’re being dramatic over the years. I know I have. There are a lot of reasons one might be dramatic, but they’re rarely about the drama.
If I’m to guess the origin of the word dramatic, I’d guess it probably has something to do with over exaggerating your response for the drama. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of people being dramatic - on tiktok and vine, on youtube... drama calls for dramaticism.
Do you want to know what isn’t dramatic? Genuine reactions. That’s right - genuine reactions, inherently, cannot be categorized as dramatic or hyperbolic. There is nothing about them that is being overdone with the intention of getting attention or entertaining other people. So, let’s talk a bit about how this conflation has hurt us as a community.
Growing up, everything I did was “dramatic.” Crying because I didn’t want to do more chores was dramatic. Having a panic attack because there was a spider in the room was dramatic. Freaking out because I needed people to stop touching me was dramatic. Getting angry when my mother made jokes about my sex life as a teen was dramatic (and apparently abusive, but that’s neither here nor there). Nothing I did that involved a noteworthy amount of emotion was anything, if not dramatic.
On Being Lazy
I know a lot of you have also been labeled as lazy over the years. “Lazy” is the diagnosis everyone loves to give to those who don’t do enough, in their eyes. If you “could have” done something and then “chose not to,” you’re lazy... right?
Growing up, I was lazy too. I was lazy for avoiding housework. I was lazy for not wanting to brush my teeth. I was lazy because I didn’t turn in my homework. I was lazy for staying in bed, on my computer, most of the day.
If I’d only just “applied myself,” or if I would just “put in the work,” then I would be respectable to the people around me. But, because I wasn’t “willing” to put in the time and effort, I was lazy.
Why Is Emotion Dramatic?
The short answer is: it’s not. The real question is, why do people seem to perceive emotion as being dramatic? These are real emotions, after all - real and genuine feelings that are being dismissed as playacting. There are a number of reasons.
Why Are We Lazy?
Again, the short answer is: most people aren’t. The question here is, why do people see others not doing something and assume it’s because they simply don’t want to put in the work? Why do they not seek out an explanation or consider other alternatives? There are a number of reasons for that too.
The Answer...
Editing to put a Read More here because it’s very long
(TW for each of these sections in their name)
1. Sexism
At its core, seeing emotional outbursts or responses as dramatic is inherently rooted in sexism. Whether you’re a boy or a girl, man or woman, if your emotions are being mocked, it’s almost definitely because of our world’s history of sexism and relating emotion to women, who are “illogical” and “just want attention.”
And “real men” work! They work hard! They work long hours! They put themselves into an early grave, with pride, by never sitting down to rest! For this very reason, women, housewives of decades past, were expected, after a long day of doing housework and caring for the children - things that are just as exhausting as a full time job - to dote on their husbands who had just returned from work expecting a hot meal and a beer to be ready for them. Her work is devalued. It wasn’t grueling or tiring or important. It was just “women’s work.” A wife who does all of the housework and child rearing and fails to provide a hot meal and a warm body to her husband is “lazy.”
This is further shown to affect men as well. We can see, as early as non-manual labor-based jobs existed, the men who took them were lesser. Men who work at computers are seen as nerds and geeks - weak. Men who work in universities, coming up with new solutions to our medical needs and discovering the mathematics we need for space travel and advanced technology - they’re weak too. They’re unimportant to society because they’re not willing to get their hands dirty. Those men who prefer artistry are called gay and seen as disposable. It is irrelevant to the conservative man that his artistic counterpart designs everything that fills his home and office - that without artists we would have nothing.
2. Racism and classism
You might be surprised, but racism and classism both have their hands in this as well. I’m talking full on systemic oppression. The ability for people in power to look down on those they see as beneath them for being emotional or passionate about a topic or incident is all about power. You can see a million examples of this today. POC are called dramatic or are implied to be blowing things out of proportion by conservative white people because they want equal rights and feel they’re being treated unfairly. Their emotions are dismissed as irrational and dramatic. 
The cries of the poor, whether white or of color, are mocked. They have no reason to be having the emotions they’re having because they wouldn’t be in the position they’re in if they weren’t “lazy.” After all, only lazy people don’t have money. Only lazy people can’t get work. If they had just “applied themselves,” they would have an income, a home, and ample food on the table.
3. Ableism
And, last but not least, we have ableism. The neurotypical and abled people of the world, at large, cannot understand the experiences of the disabled, both emotionally(those with mental illnesses, disorders, and so on(whether or not certain disorders can be categorized as a disability in a just society is another topic entirely, but they are regarded that way, generally)) and physically.
If you have sensory overload, you are being irrational. It doesn’t matter to a NT if this is caused by an actually chemically different response in your brain. It doesn’t matter if it’s Real To You. To them, it doesn’t make sense, and so you deserve no compassion for your experience. Your emotional response is dramatic.
If you have executive dysfunction, you are simply choosing not to do your work. It doesn’t matter that there is an actual reason, buried in you somewhere, for why you have become Stuck. It doesn’t matter if you feel crippled by this aspect of your life. They see that you have neglected to do something they deem easy. Therefore, you are “lazy.”
ADHD and Being Dramatic
For those of us with ADHD, being called dramatic is a very familiar experience. After a while, we begin to internalize it. We must be dramatic, right? After all, so many different people have told us we are - and for good reason. We do tend to get overly emotional.
So the question is, why? Why do we get overly emotional? Why are our emotions so much different than those of our NT peers?
1. Lack of Emotional Regulation
A big part of ADHD, which is not yet a diagnostic criteria, is our emotional disregulation. ADHD, inherently, comes with some amount of disregulation in our emotions. We have a hard time controlling the emotions that we feel and managing the intensity of them. They may come across as overly intense, or they may seem subdued, both for reasons we can’t possibly figure out as individuals. This disregulation is entirely out of our control, happening at a neurological level. Our brain chemicals don’t work as they should. But, no matter how unregulated our emotions are, they are still real. We do still feel them, exactly as intensely as we think we do. Disregulated does not mean made up.
2. RSD
If you knew about RSD before, or you’ve read my last post on ADHD (under my tag adhdghost), which has gained some popularity, you already know what this means. For those who don’t, RSD is short for Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. This condition plagues something like 99.9% of people with ADHD (while not being ADHD exclusive.) It comes with the lack of emotional regulation and means we have a reaction, that seems out of proportion (or “dramatic”), relative to the thing that caused it.
In short, RSD episodes can look like an entire breakdown, a very sudden loss of any self esteem or confidence, the feeling that you are certain someone now hates you or has secretly always hated you, and/or an immediate need to get rid of the thing that caused it. These episodes are caused by any kind of perceived failure or disappointment. They can be caused by someone whose opinion or relationship we value who gives us a slightly judgmental look, someone saying they don’t understand why we like the thing we’re interested in, or even not living up to our own expectations. These episodes frequently lead to emotional outburts, episodes, breakdowns, and tears. Naturally, all of this is “dramatic,” despite it being very real and painful for those experiencing it.
3. Combination with Other Things
Emotional disregulation can interact with other parts of our lives as well. For instance, I have a lot of phobias. My reactions to seeing or being around the things that terrify me can be even more intense than how most people react to their phobias. They can cause anxiety attacks, emotional breakdowns, and lasting fear for hours or days after. My recovery from these instances is hindered by my inability to regulate the feelings they caused.
Emotional disregulation can also interact with triggers, trauma, sensory problems, etc.
ADHD and Being Lazy
And of course, if you struggle with ADHD, you want to know, “Why am I so lazy?” The answer is: you’re not! Laziness is a made up word. Laziness was created to pass blame onto people who struggle to do things that more typical people can accomplish with ease.
So, what is the reason we struggle to do these seemingly simple tasks?
1. Executive Dysfunction
This is The Big One. Of all the things that can cause an inability to do things, executive dysfunction is the Achilles heel of ADHD. Because ADHD causes a difficulty with prioritizing, rewarding actions with no immediate reward, and creating a list of steps for us to take (something that comes naturally to NT people), we sometimes get “Stuck.”
This feeling of being stuck may look like us just having fun and avoiding our responsibilities. You may be Stuck right now, scrolling through tumblr mechanically even though you’ve been needing to pee for three hours. Naturally, you’ve been wanting to go to the bathroom... you just don’t know how.
To a NT, this sounds ridiculous. “Just get up and go?!” I’m sure you can imagine your parents saying, when they simply don’t understand. The truth is, tumblr can be a nightmare for executive function. It endlessly scrolls, giving you post after post. There’s no natural stopping point. You keep an eye out for a natural end to this activity, but it’s hard to find the right post to stop on. If you find those, “This is your sign to go to bed,” posts helpful - otherwise locked into the activity of scrolling regardless of whether you want to - you might be struggling with executive dysfunction.
This inability to “queue” our actions or prioritize what we need to do, and in what order, can wreak all kinds of havoc in our lives. You remember you didn’t really understand that equation the math teacher explained earlier. You know today’s homework is related to its use. Therefore, you cannot start your homework. There are a number of possible solutions floating around your head. Maybe the book will explain it better. Maybe your parents know how to do this and you could ask them. Maybe you could Google it. It’s possible the homework is about something else. But, if it is, what if you don’t understand that? Maybe you should ask your teacher before class?
Even though you have all of these solutions in your head, because you don’t know which solution is the best solution, you find yourself unable to do any of them. You show up to class with no homework and your teacher gives you a disappointed look. “I don’t understand why you don’t just apply yourself more. You’re a very smart student.” The remark brings you to holding back tears, because you want, with every fiber of your being, to apply yourself and make your teacher proud, but you simply don’t know how.
This is the destructive nature of executive dysfunction, and it is not something to be taken lightly.
2. Distraction
For those with ADHD, the inability to regulate external stimuli makes focusing incredibly hard. You wake up one morning and plan to start that English paper after breakfast. You go to get yourself some cereal. You’re out of milk. You decide to make toast instead. You burn your toast because you lost track of time for just 30 seconds. You go to throw it away, feeling an overwhelming amount of guilt over the two pieces of bread you wasted. The trash is overflowing. You decide to take it outside. It’s a really nice day out. Maybe you should take your dog for a walk. You haven’t taken her on a walk in a while and you’re just now feeling motivated to, so you should take advantage of that. You go to retrieve your dog and take her for a walk. When you bring her back in, you go to get her treats from the shelf in the laundry room. Oh yeah, you’d been meaning to do laundry. You go to get your laundry hamper from your room and notice there’s a bunch of laundry on the floor. You begin picking up the laundry from the floor. You may as well tidy up the other things on the floor as well. You finally get around to taking your laundry to the washer. You’re out of soap. Maybe you ought to make a run to the grocery store. You take ten minutes to find your keys and wallet and then head out to the grocery store. When you get there, you’ve forgotten what it was you needed. “Oh, right! I’m out of milk!” You go and retrieve milk. When you get to the checkout and the cashier rings you up, you suddenly remember you need laundry soap. Well, it’s too late now. You’ll have to do laundry tomorrow. You can’t risk the cashier giving you a tired look by asking them to wait. You go home and make some cereal. You can’t really write while you eat, so you open tumblr. you scroll through tumblr for a while. Your cereal gets soggy, you notice, disappointed. You see a tumblr post reminding you that you forgot to order something important online that you need to get here as soon as possible. The day continues in this way until you finally realize at 5pm that you never started your paper. “It’s so late now... I’ll just start it tomorrow morning,” you tell yourself. Rinse and repeat.
If you relate to this, you might want to consider researching ADHD a bit, because this is a very typical ADHD experience.
3. Hyperfixation and Hyperfocus
The last prominent reason why people with ADHD are seen as lazy has to do with a cycle in hyperfixation and hyperfocus.
If you don’t already know, hyperfixations are those interests you have that fill you with an overwhelming love and which take up an incredible amount of your time, energy, and brain space. These could be fandoms, hobbies, characters, games, or otherwise.
Hyperfocus, on the other hand, can be related to hyperfixations or things that aren’t hyperfixations. Hyperfocus is when you get “locked in” on a task and can’t seem to put it down. If you started this post not knowing how long it was and find yourself still raptly reading, completely ignoring the world around you, you may have hyperfocused on it. If you ever start cleaning and just can’t stop until the whole house is clean, despite your lack of regularly cleaning for over a month, you are hyperfocusing on cleaning. If you write a 20k word fic in one night, you are hyperfocusing.
Hyperfocusing can leave you completely unaware of the world around you, causing you to neglect your own basic needs, such as food, bathroom breaks, water, and social interaction. 
Because people with ADHD are able to occasionally apply themselves to such an extreme degree, NT people don’t understand why ADHD people are unable to apply themselves to other things as well. The reason we can’t is because we do not regulate our hyperfocus. Hyperfocus comes from tasks that are giving us serotonin, to make up for our brains inability to give serotonin in the way it should - in the way NT brains do. Emptying the dishwasher just felt really good. The next thing you know, you’re filling it with more dishes and wiping off counters and sweeping the floor and, “oh god, it looks so nice what if I just-” and then you move on to the laundry and the living room and the bedroom and then somehow 6 hours have passed. You don’t know how it happened, but now your house is clean and you feel amazing... but also tired and hungry. So you go make some food and then pass out on the couch.
So, when NT people see this kind of laser focus, they demand to know why you couldn’t do that simple math assignment, or why you haven’t been returning their texts, or why you couldn’t apply the same level of energy and enthusiasm on that really boring geography project. They demand to know why you’re so “lazy” the rest of the time.
There’s also the element of hyperfixation. It is the ultimate distraction. Your parents tell you to do the dishes and you say you will. Suddenly, you’ve found a fanfiction about your hyperfixation and you can’t stop reading it. It’s 60k words long and it will take you all day, but you’ll find a break to do your chores somewhere in there, right?
Your mom is suddenly knocking on your door what feels like 5 minutes later, but it’s been an hour. She wants to know why you didn’t do the dishes yet. You’re upset at yourself, but you lash out at her, because you’re unable to regulate your emotions. “I’ll do it in a minute!” you say loudly from behind your door. She walks off, irritated. You ask yourself why you can’t just do it now. Why does it feel impossible to tear yourself away? Your hyperfixation is the ultimate creator of hyperfocus. It rules you.
Before you know it, it’s midnight. You’ve finished the fic. It was amazing. You realize with dread that you still haven’t done the dishes, so you sneak out to the kitchen, hoping your parents have gone to bed. They have, but you find the dishes have already been done by someone else. Suddenly, you’re holding back tears from the RSD episode this has triggered. You ruined everything. You disappointed your parents. You’re a lazy and terrible child and they deserve better.
The truth is, you’re none of those things. In fact, you’re struggling with one of the most difficult mental blocks someone can have. But to others, you’re just making excuses. To others, you should have been able to just do the dishes and then go back to reading. But you know it’s not that easy. But why?
It’s ADHD, Babey!
If this post is hitting hard in a way that feels like your life is being splayed out before you, you might just have ADHD.
The fact is you are not dramatic and you are not lazy. You are struggling with a lot of ADHD symptoms that are making functioning in a neurotypical world incredibly difficult. This world was designed by and for NT people. Your worth is not based in how you live up to their expectations.
If you think you might have ADHD, it might be time to ask your doctor about getting an ADHD evaluation. Please check out my last post (the one i mentioned is under my tag adhdghost) to get more information on RSD and on getting evaluated.
An Important Note
Many experiences and struggles caused by ADHD are also present in other disorders. For example, RSD can be seen frequently in autism as well as in anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Sensory overload, emotional disregulation, executive dysfunction, and so on, can all be present in things other than ADHD. If you want to know if you fit the criteria for ADHD, go check out the criteria on the ADDitude website, which is a great source for ADHD related information.
87 notes · View notes
arizona-trash-bag · 3 years ago
Note
I can totally explain a bit of my thinking behind seeing lwj as autistic and wwx as autistic/adhd!! Before I get into specifics though, let me preface with where I’m coming from. I first saw CQL and then read the EXR translation of the novel. I prefer MDZS to CQL, but also want to acknowledge that because I do not read/speak Mandarin I am inherently experiencing this story second-hand and therefore am probably missing out on a lot of nuances. I am trying to learn Mandarin, but it will be a long time before I am even a little close to fluent lol.
Another preface- obviously not all autistic people present in the same way, and many of the things that I will mention are not solely specific to autistic people either. It’s one of those things where all of it added up together points towards asd, but each one individually would not on its own indicate asd, you know? Also, I will say that many of the things I picked up on for both characters are autistic traits that many autistic people have vs the clinical characteristics (much like most of the case I could make for wwx’s adhd would be adhd traits he has rather than symptoms that would lead to a real-world diagnosis.) Edit: OH! I almost forgot to say, that also all of these traits I’m listing are from a western perspective, and I would LOVE to read more about how autism presents in different cultures and to see conversations between autistc Chinese people specifically, so as to see if these traits are specific to western autistic people or not, but again, I do not speak Mandarin or Cantonese or any other Chinese dialect, so that’s a little inaccessible for me atm.
Ok, SO, for both characters I would list: strong sense of justice, lack of care for society’s opinion (I feel like it could be argued that lwj does to a certain point, but imo he operates more from what he morally considers to be correct and from a place of familial duty vs catering to the opinion of society at large), and then more vaguely, they both seem to be “nerdy” (this doesnt feel like the most accurate term, especially because it's not like being scholarly is specific to their characters, especially in ancient fantasy China- it’s more that their particular hmmm, flavor?? of love of knowledge feels very neurodivergent to me, vs like, being scholarly because it’s the thing that is expected of a Young Master, if that makes any sense at all- like the difference btwn someone getting an engineering degree because it is expected of them vs because they genuinely love engineering), and lastly for both- I would say that they are canonically kinky, and while I can’t cite any statistics, there’s a pretty high correlation between being autistic and being into kink. Obviously, not every person who is not vanilla is autistic, and not every autistic person is into kink…….but there is a high correlation.
For lwj specifically, the things that made me think he might be autistic are his lack of outward emoting combined with his depth and breadth of emotions, how he seems to thrive in and quite enjoy the very structured environment he grew up in, and then the last one off the top of my head (side note, I feel like a week from now I’m going to randomly think of other examples lol) I’m not actually sure IS an example, because I know (thanks to the awesome post from hunxi that you linked to that I had read previously) that his succintness does not equal autism, but I do kind of feel like it is very autistic to Always be so formal and to Always talk in textbook perfect language.
For wwx, I also think he likely has CPTSD! I’m not going to list anything for adhd or cptsd since we both agree on those :) As far as being autistic goes, there is, of course, the high prevalence of adhd/asd comorbidity. For specifc traits- while autism can show up as lack of facial expressions/tone, it can also show up as being overly exuberant and overexpressive. Especially for younger autistic children this can show up as being overly friendly/no boundaries w/ strangers (just?? going home with a random man who says he knew wwx’s parents???), making unusual connections that others do not can be both asd and adhd, his disregard for social status (disregard might be a strong word, and also I feel like this might be one of those things that got lost in translation and if I had read the original text I might have a different opinon, but what I mean here is the way that often autistic people learn certain social rules and try their best to follow them, but often do not pick up on specifics related to social hierarchy that are not spelled out for them- I think jyl’s take down of jin zixun is a great example of the /oppossite/ of what I’m talking about, and is a very neurotypical interaction. An example also of what I mean by disregard for social hierarchy, but from my own life, is how I’ve reflected on past convos w/ my boss only to realize that what I thought was just an interesting conversation about our opinons on a particular subject was actually them trying to tell-me-as-my-boss something they wanted me to do. We ended up doing things the way I wanted to do them because I didn’t realize that they were telling me to do something because they didnt explicitly say so, and because I just don’t pick up on when people are saying something from a social hierarchy pov. Idk if this makes sense or not, so I’m happy to try to expand if you would like me to. I feel like wwx could be described as having alexithymia, which is very common in autistic people, but could also be due to his cptsd. And then, I don’t feel like this is a true point because it is kind of based on headcanon? but wwx feels very demisexual to me, which is much more common for autistic people than it is for allistic people. But him being demi is not canon, just my perception of him (I see him as demisexual gay w/ massive comphet, but I know lots of people see him as bi, which also totally makes sense!!)
Tbh, I’m having a harder time than I thought I would listing wwx specifics. I might go through the book sometime this weekend and see if there are specific moments that pop out at me, but tbh w/ him its more that he Feels very adhd/asd to me?? Idk, I was diagnosed w/ adhd when I was 8, and all 4 of my siblings plus my father have offical adhd diagnoses. I’m 29 now and was only diagnosed as autistic earlier this year.  All of my close friends have always been either adhd, asd, or adhd/asd. There have been multiple people I have met that I’ve suspected were neurodivergent who have later told me they started looking into it and are now seeking formal diagnoses. I mention these things, only to give full context when I say that I have spent a lot of time observing the differences between interacting with neurotypicals and neurodivergents. I mean, obviously, it’s possible that I could just be projecting, but to me, Wwx gives off late-diagnosed/heavy masker autism/adhd combo vibes. Again, maybe I am projecting, but I did try to analyze whether I was or not previously, and determined that since in the past with other favorite characters (who I probably share more similarities in personality with) I did not feel like they were neurodivergent, so I figured that probably I wasn’t? That feels like a very convoluted sentence, but what I mean is that I have not thought that about other characters who have been my fav, so I figured that while I do project in certain areas that this particular area probably wasn’t one of them. Or, to say it in yet another way, since i did not project any of my neurodivergencies on past favorite characters, I figured I probably didn’t start doing so now.
I would love to hear more of your perspective on this, particularly because I worry that I do not have the cultural touchstones to realize when something wwx or lwj is doing is not actually a sign of being neurodivergent. I try my best to research things I don��t know about and to listen to fans who actually do have that cultural understanding, but there’s only so much I can look into on my own when I only speak/read english. And also, I love mdzs and I love talking about both adhd and autism, so I’m glad to talk about these subjects with someone else who also likes all of those topics :) Sorry for sending a book of a response and also I hope you are having a great day!!
wow wow wow anon THANK YOU for doing your research and acknowledging your blind spots you seriously made my day. I wanted to get to this as soon as I made that rant while sharing cyan’s post bc this is specifically an example of a well researched proposition based on actual lived experience and critical thinking.
I almost want to ask you to come forward so we can take this convo elsewhere for a more nuanced discussion bc you’ve already hit upon an issue that’s been holding me back from making a big blathering masterpost on the matter - that the ND experience is so unique and individual, and no one person can dictate someone else’s experience. at the end of the day, if you personally relate to these characters and gain more understanding of yourself and your experiences from them, who am I to take that away from you?
in a public space though I have to make the discussion very broad in order to accurately contextualize these issues, bc in typical autistic fashion I feel morally compelled to Do My Best and Get It Right even as the masses show no inclination of returning the favor, so apologies for the boring backstories I have to get out of the way before we can approach anything resembling new ground.
first from a diagnostic standpoint, while I recognize the traits you listed (and appreciate your clearly nuanced understanding of ND expressions) and would find value in exploring them in a personal context, they are not unique to adhd and/or autism and wouldn’t constitute a basis for diagnosis in a clinical setting. I know that's probably beside the point for this anon, but there's enough edgy teens hoarding labels out there without tacit encouragement from scientists (yes I am technically a scientist, even though my ideologies these days range from conventional to... wildly esoteric, shall we say)
from a cultural standpoint, it’s important for me to emphasize that the concept of neurodivergence is a uniquely western notion. for those unfamiliar, the term 'neurodiversity' was only coined in 1998. I was born in 1991. I existed for a whole 7 years as an autistic person before the idea of being neurodivergent was even a thing. this ND acceptance thing is very, very new - people were not making tiktok confessionals about their adhd diagnosis journeys when I was growing up.
china, like most asian countries, is about 20 years or more behind on just about every social issue compared with western countries. to better illustrate, the experience of being ND in china falls much closer to the conventional experience of disability (i.e. being eugenicized out of existence) than the tentative ND acceptance movement that’s been kickstarted in the past 20 years in the anglosphere.
safe to say, there is no ND coding going on in chinese media. characters are either explicitly ND or they're not. there's no basis for a creator subtly inducing ND-like traits in a character, because there's no such thing as ND awareness in the cultural context of where mdzs was written and consumed. any resemblance is purely accidental, as they say.
as to how this resemblance could exist - I could go into the layers and layers of historical, cultural, social and religious context that make up these characters and the xianxia genre as a whole. for this anon in particular i'm happy to, because they've done the work. please please get in touch in some way where we can have a fully fleshed out chat if you're interested in taking this further, I realize i’ve basically addressed none of the finer points you’ve raised but honestly it’s another level of discussion to be had that cannot be summarized in one blog post haha.
as for those who would scream 'but special interests!!' at a character whose sect was founded by a literal monk - what would be the point?
PS. to comprise a starting point for why it's possible to see ND4ND everywhere in media if you looked hard enough - I refer you to the seminal red oni blue oni trope 💁‍♀️
12 notes · View notes
macronalds · 4 years ago
Text
For Reasons, I recently found myself rewatching “The Gang Chokes” in order to examine Mac’s behavior and reasoning therein.  I ended up writing a stupidly long, probably stupidly stupid, essay about it, and had a lot of fun in the process, so I wanted to post it here for posterity.  Below the cut, please find in adapted form my argument for Why You Can’t Call A Plan Desperate If It’s Working.
ETA: The Reasons were helping the amazing @weareintheblankbit with the fic Add It Up.  Even if you make the right choice and skip this monstrosity of a post, don’t miss her excellent story.
——
To me, Mac doesn't seem predominantly panicky or fearful in this episode.
     His actions overall, here and in the later “The Gang Texts,” look like a purposeful abandonment of ego in contrast to similarly obsequious but more objectively pathetic behavior in “The Gang Escapes” (I have feelings about the sadness of season 13 and the dividing line of Mac Finding His Pride between then and the next year, but I can't work out how to figure those ideas in and keep this even close to a cogent essay).  Here, as in the opening “The Gang Gets Romantic,” Mac has a plan that he's constructed and is following - and while he does sometimes get stuck in the execution of it, on the whole he's successfully sticking to a throughline. For instance, when Dennis rebuffs his query at the start about what he will be eating, he doesn't get flustered about it, he just keeps on doing what he's decided is the thing to do.  "Again, Dennis, what am I to be having?"  And like, that's not really floundering.  It was obviously Dennis's idea back in the day to order everyone's meals for them (”The Gang Gets a New Member”); Mac's just trying to harken back to it.
    (Talking about back in the day, I have a whole thing about how the central "problem" over the course of their friendship, through like season 11, was that they pretty much were in a nascent "gay relationship.”  As long as they didn’t call it that, it worked for them.  The snag: Mac was afraid of being Gay, and Dennis was afraid of committing to being in a Relationship.  Mac, now, has finally become comfortable with himself - Dennis isn't there yet.  The story of season 14 for me is that Mac wants to return to the unnamed state of absurd closeness they had back then, but is trying to take the lead from Dennis in making it happen.)
    The thing is, I think this plan (to make Dennis happy in their relationship again) is mostly beginning to work here.  He really seems to have hit on something close to what Dennis wants: to be taken care of.  Dennis approves of many of Mac's actions in this episode.  For instance, Dennis is IMPRESSED that Mac remembers his dairy "allergy."  He's EXCITED for Mac to be his food gatekeeper, and waits expectantly for him to continue rejecting the rest of that pizza.  Mac has correctly identified a role that Dennis wants him to take on; it's just that he's bad at it, and that (the not remembering Dennis's problems with the other ingredients) is what gets Dennis's goat.  You see, although Mac is deeply caring, I think you can make a factual statement that his ADHD qualities* make him a bad schemer, and yeah, he is also fundamentally needy, and checks in for guidance too often for Dennis's comfort.  The points at which Dennis gets frustrated in Chokes are when Mac's ability to contribute what he wants from him in the relationship is compromised by his incompetence, leading to Dennis fearing that he can't really rely on him (and therefore anyone, because he doesn't come close to trusting literally anyone else).
*I refer to this sincerely, not in a glib way; please note however that I am not a mental health professional. I just want to refer to the traits he has that are associated with this diagnosis without proclaiming that I know he has it for sure.
    And that brings me to the question of: does a plan count as desperate if it's working?  It looked to me like Dennis wanted Mac to massage his muscles and tape his ankles, wanted Mac to warn him about pollen and carry him home like a princess.  He got back in Mac's arms twice after being dropped, for god's sake.  I don't think he's merely succumbing to Mac's fussiness for Mac's benefit, although Dennis may not want to admit that to himself.  Dennis always wants to feel like he's in control.  Micromanaging all of his friends helps keep him from spiraling out.  HOWEVER: quote: "With real power comes real responsibility, and I don't want any of that shit.  I just want the money and the illusion of power" (”Sweet Dee Gets Audited”).  I see a lot of utter exhaustion from Dennis in season 14, and I think stems of it lie in accidentally having convinced [Mac, himself, IDK] that his power and therefore his responsibility are real, and in feeling like he's alone in controlling his struggle of a life.
    So he falters in playing along with the intricate rituals.  He's afraid it's the wrong choice.  Mac's solution to this: aight, guess I'ma have to poison him and make it not a choice!  Mac states his opinion at the end of the episode that Dennis will inevitably see through all ruses, and potentially be impressed by Mac's devotion nonetheless, and I think that assessment includes the pizza shakes.  What's more, I think he's right.  We see Dennis looking curiously at the tumbler of protein drink on the basketball court, smacking his lips and turning it side to side.  I think it's obvious that he can tell straight away that it's made of pizza, which he has just reminded Mac that he's intolerant of, yet he drinks it anyway and shortly goes all faint.  When they get to the final restaurant trip, Dennis tells Mac he's feeling better, no thanks to his efforts.  Then, when a shake appears, he immediately decides he needs it anyway.  Again, there is no way he doesn't know Mac's making them out of pizza.  He's just so excited to play this damn game!  Dennis wants to depend on Mac, he likes being taken care of, and if he's been "poisoned," no one can fault him for not staying in control like he purports to want.  He just needs to be carried home again, goddammit.
    For me this episode is Mac is trying to take his cues from Dennis, to read the signs from him on what Mac should be doing as a good friend to him.  He's just not great at it.  Dennis is a complicated man, but also, Mac has never done subtlety well.  He needs to refine his approach, and in taking responsibility for his actions, including the ~fussing~, back off Dennis's shoulders, I think he succeeds.  Look at Dennis's face at the end of the episode: game, recognize game.  
     In conclusion, this is why I don’t think "fear and anxiety" ring true as a read for Mac’s motivations in Chokes.  Nerves definitely happen when he finds himself incurring Dennis’s ire in the course of his plan - a strong need for approval has been seared into the bones of this man - but the gestures of care and affection themselves aren’t born of desperation.  He knows what Dennis wants.  If he can get Dennis to let himself have it, he knows they can both be happy.  His plan is born of hope, and I think that noun just hits different.
the end :)
64 notes · View notes
camphalfbloodkit · 4 years ago
Text
Back when I was 12 myself I started on my journey with Percy thanks toThe Lightning Thief being added to the Bluebonnet Book List that year. I got lucky and managed to grab the copy my teacher kept in her classroom and read it despite the high demand for any book on that list from other kids just because they wanted to go to an ice cream party later in the year. From the moment I opened the book and read Percy's iconic warning I felt like I'd found a home.
Here was this kid my own age at the time who'd been thrown into a situation he'd never wanted, who had to face down monsters not just mythological, but also mortal. I realated to him on an insane level. Maybe I didn't have dyslexia, (or at the very least I don't have it to a degree that's able to be diagnosed, I have my suspicions at times) and maybe at the time I didn't have an ADHD diagnosis, but still I connected to Percy on a level I'd never connected with another book character ever in my life. He knew the pain of a bad home life, of striving to do your best in a bad situation for the sake of someone you love. It wasn't the same but I knew he'd understand my pain. He might not have been real but I had a new best friend.
When I saw Sea of Monsters as soon as we walked into the bookfair the following semester I didn't even hesitate or bother to look at any other book in the whole place. I already knew that was going to be the one I took home with me, even though I knew I only got to pick one book and that it was probably going to be the only book I got that entire year. I had to have it, I needed to finally take a piece of my new home with me. I have read and reread Sea of Monsters more times than I can count, and honestly I'm due another reread but I plan to do the whole series this time. For the next four or so years that book was my main gateway home. I checked Titan's Curse and Battle of the Labyrinth out of the school library but I wouldn't hold another piece of Camp Halfblood in my hands and know it was mine until the release of The Last Olympian, which I once again obtained from the school bookfair.
I cried when I finished it. I thought that was the end of the era, I thought I would never walk on another new adventure with my best friends again. I thought I was saying goodbye to Percy, and Annabeth, and Grover, all of whom I saw pieces of myself in. I thought I was saying goodbye to Nico who I loved as my own family because I understood the full tradgedy of his and Bianca's situation, being an older sister and caretaker to younger brothers myself. I, like my friends and family I had found within those pages, thought that the Prophecy of the Seven would fall to a new generation. And though I looked forward to the chance to make new friends I grieved the ones I had already found, along with those who died within those pages.
And then Lost Hero dropped. At that time I couldn't actually read the books, I couldn't find them because now I was in High School and they didn't stock middle grade books in the school library, and I couldn't get to the public library, and I couldn't get anyone to buy it for me. To this day Heroes of Olympus still eludes me and I haven't read it in it's entirety. But I needed to know what was happening, needed to meet the people who I was sure would be my new best friends, though they'd never replace the ones I already had. So I dug up every spoiler I could get my hands on. And I met Jason, and Piper, and Leo. And I was right, they were my new best friends, hell Jason resonated even deeper to me than Percy initially had because we both were the "gifted child", so he understood things that Percy didn't. But I discovered that my old friends were still around. Percy was missing, which scared me, but I got to walk hand in hand with my friends again. It was amazing.
But that wasn't all. Thanks to Jason, Leo, and Piper I was able to connect even deeper with a new real life friend I made at a new school that year. She had started her journey late and had to go back and properly meet Percy and Annabeth and Grover, but I was mire than happy to guide her on her journey with them, even handing her my own precious copy of Last Olympian to borrow when she couldn't find it anywhere else. In return she kept me appraised of Heroes and then together we began to craft our own stories.
Stories of family, and romance, and finding each other even across different lives. Stories of people who reincarnated not to seek the Isles, but in the hopes of finding the ones they left behind again, even if they wouldn't remember them. Stories of people who never made it to the spotlight of the main story, but who lead had amazing adventures all their own anyway, the ones who kept things going when the big names weren't there. Are they necessarily "good" stories? No, not by most people's standards. They're self-indulgent and full of deus-ex-machina and handwaving of things. Sometimes the romance moves way too fast. But we love them all the same, and we still create new ones even now. They help us get through even the worst of times, and I think that matters far more than them being "good" by anyone else's standards.
I've had Percy for 14 years of my life at this point, and thanks to his guidance I've had my irl best friend for 10. Even if I can't read it yet knowing that the main story of Camp Halfblood has drawn to an end pains me more than I can say, it hurts worse even than when I thought it was over with Last Olympian. But there will always be more stories, even if I have to make them myself, and I know that no matter what Camp Halfblood will always open it's doors to me.
4 notes · View notes
kavka--esque · 4 years ago
Text
hey everyone, updates!
you might have noticed i have been less active (at least i wanted to be) for the last two weeks while i was doing a game jam (technically the presentations are next monday but we’re done with coding now).
a lot of things actually happened in these two weeks, so i’d like to catch y’all up.
we start the jam. the theme is “pandemic” - not very creative, but we can make do. i go with my dad to ikea, when i come back we have a google doc with ideas. one of them is a text adventure, nonbinary protagonist. i am thinking, i’m going to create some coming out memes since they seem to be accepting. so i make this meme, prepared to throw it into a conversation talking about the protagonist, right?
Tumblr media
like a day after starting the jam, we didn’t even have a discord server set up yet. we had a group chat. my jammate (S from now on) sets this discord status - “break is over, they/them pronouns please”. i’m just burning on the inside, i can’t believe this is happening. after like two hours of me unable to think properly, i just dm them the meme. so they go “for real?”, i go “for real”. so now S is going through what i went through in the previous two hours. next thing you know, we’re talking for hours and now they know like everything about me, i know everything about them.
so like i’m officially out to a friend irl.
feeling confident in coming out, i decide to come out to a classmate (let’s call him M) that already knows i am not straight. i have a small list of things i want to ask of him, i go in pretending that i am going to come out to him “accidentally”. he’s accepting, but i don’t get the result i wanted. i don’t ask him to do the things on the small list.
a few days later, i talk with M about school and somehow the conversation turns into me talking about being nonbinary, him asking questions. i ask of him the following: i am still the person i was before, please use they/them pronouns for me, and if you slip up (especially in public) do - not - correct - yourself. so now i’m out to a cishet person, basically my closest friend i meet daily.
me and S get confident - we both came out to other people, so we decide to go further - coming out to the other person we’re doing the game jam with. we decide to send a meme in our discord server’s memes channel - i made this meme after we talked for hours after our mutual coming out:
Tumblr media
[left: a multiple hour conversation about queer experience right: špongia, the name of the game jam we both got the profile pictures after we came out to each other.]
the jammate does not react, he posts a meme featuring the bottom format and a similar theme - him getting distracted from the game jam by endless space 2. we decide that is a success and move on.
some time later they send me a screenshot of sending an article about nonbinary identities to a mutual friend. they suggest coming out to him - they are out to him as bi already. so we decide we’re both going to send him a message saying “did you know [the other] is nonbinary?” it goes... okay? he does not get angry or anything, but it’s not ideal.
cut to M sending me an image - a screenshot of some mental health test saying he’s probably autistic. he says the link is in our school discord. i take it, send an even higher score back. to be honest, this does not surprise me - about the both of us. i take an adhd test, also get a positive result. i suggest we both talk to a psychologist. so the next day, i decide to ask my parents to allow me something like that. my parents are surprised - they did not think i was autistic, or had add/adhd but in retrospect, they do not deny the fact that it might be true. they ask me what the point of getting a diagnosis is. i say something about not being stressed over not knowing if i have it or not. i personally hoped for a recurring therapist appointment, but a diagnosis is a good start. i have not been to the psychologist as of posting this.
i’ve had a trans flag in my status for quite a while now, along with the nonbinary flag around my profile picture. i wished more people would talk to me about that, so that i could feel safer around them.
also, i have a name now! i chose the name Paris, which was a name i had once randomly generated for my starbound character back when i was an egg. i talked with S about chosen names, how i could choose one, and this is really the only name which i have ever had a connection with. also it turns out there’s this guy called Paris of Troy and so voila, i have an easy way to decide what the spelling and pronunciation of the name is going to be in slovak.
yeah. so that’s me. ever since all of this, i’m more confident and less depressed. i hope i don’t go back.
i am planning on coming out to my parents this school year. i know that i won’t be able to live at my future college/university because i live too close. so if i want to be happy in the next couple years, i’m going to have to come out. i am stressed, but looking forward to it. ideally, i want to come out before my brother is born, as that will make the entire thing difficult. i have a few months left.
2 notes · View notes
adhdtoomanycommas · 4 years ago
Text
Emotional Disregulation, Privilege, and White Girl Tears
Hello all, it has been a few months since my last ADHD essay, and what a few months it has been. In case you’re reading this in the future (since tumblr has no date stamps), I am writing this in June 2020 when in the midst of a global pandemic, police are responding to massive protests against police violence with even more police violence, and a lot of white people are thinking more than ever about the privilege we have experienced. I have been thinking about writing about my (cis white female) experience with privilege where neurodivergence, race, and gender intersect for a while, and have hit the point where these ideas have been bouncing around in my head long enough I need to write them down.
Small disclaimer: Right now I'm not sure if I should be writing anything about anything since we all ought to be listening and amplifying black voices --I'm there are much better resources out there about race and neurodivergance especially, and I have no intention of talking over anyone, especially given my limited experience. But given that the audience for my last essay here was in the single digits, I doubt I need to worry too much about talking over people at the moment. Please know that I am writing this now primarily for myself, and if it ever gets an audience later, forgive me for writing it now when there are so many more important things going on and more important people to listen to.
I will do my best to stay in my lane here, so I'm just going to talk about how my privilege has affected the perception of one of my ADHD symptoms If you don't want to read some rambling white/cis anecdotes about how white privilege and gender norms affect the perception of ADHD, by all means skip it. If you're still here, maybe it can be the start of a conversation as I would love to hear some other perspectives and experiences here. And maybe, just maybe by the end of it I will learn to spell privilege right on the first try (I really want there to be an A in there, or maybe a D. Privaledge? Sounds about right.)
As I mentioned in my previous ramble, I’m a cryer. I cry a lot, not just when I’m sad but sometimes when I’m happy, when I feel guilty or ashamed, and especially when I’m angry, or frustrated, or overwhelmed. I learned recently, as I was seeking my diagnosis, that emotional disregulation is a hallmark of ADHD. We feel things strongly, and uncontrollably and have trouble restraining ourselves from expressing those feelings. This is experienced by almost everyone, if not everyone, with ADHD and it’s only not part of the diagnostic criteria because it’s hard to quantify—there are a lot of good general resources out there to learn more about this, I’m not an expert, I’m just here to share my own experience.
Story time. When I was in fourth grade, I punched another girl in the stomach. For what felt like the millionth time, when the teacher told everyone to find a partner for some activity, everyone partnered up and I looked around to find that I was the left-over. I was an outcast for a lot of reasons at that age. I told myself for a long time it was solely because I was the lone atheist (actually agnostic but I didn’t know the term at the time) in a deep south bible-belt school, but with the benefit of hindsight I have also realized that (partially probably due to the ADHD) I was also pretty weird, and probably very annoying. But whatever the reason for my ostracism, it was already weighing heavily on me when the teacher assigned this girl to work with me, and she gave me the biggest exasperated sigh and eyeroll like she would rather do anything else. So I punched her.
I now realize that this is probably a pretty normal response for a kid with untreated ADHD—the combination of emotional disregulation and poor impulse control means we often lash out. But with none of the adults in my life knowing that at the time, surely I was disciplined for my seemingly-random violent action, yes? No. I cried, and I got away with it.
That’s not the whole story, I did get several weeks of sessions with the school counselor, and I was made to write a very thorough apology letter (and made to rewrite it repeatedly as the teacher thought of more things I should add and repeatedly declared my handwriting not good enough, to such an extent the exercise definitely felt more punitive than reconsiliatory), but I ultimately I didn’t get expelled, I didn’t get suspended, I didn’t even get detention.
The girl I punched was black. This wouldn’t be relevant to the story at all, except that in retrospect I have to wonder if the consequences would have been the same if our roles were reversed. If a black girl (even a neurodivergent, ostracized, and frequently bullied one) had lashed out the way I did and punched a white girl, I expect there would have been a lot more consequences for that, even if she cried afterwards. And if a black boy had done the same, he wouldn’t have been perceived as troubled and in need of help, he would have been perceived as dangerous. And as we all (hopefully) know by now, that perception can have life or death consequences.
I’m sure that was neither the first nor the last time that crying, and people’s perception of me crying (as a cute little white girl with freckles and big brown eyes) has gotten me out of trouble, or gotten me what I wanted one way or another, but it is the most dramatic example I can think of. I want to emphasize that I have never cried to get what I wanted on purpose—I have spent way more time trying not to cry than trying to cry, the only time I’ve ever cried on purpose has been in theater exercises. But I’m sure a lot of white girls in the same position I was in (with or without the undiagnosed ADHD and emotional disregulation) have realized the way they could use peoples responses to their tears to their advantage. They probably grow up to be Karens who use their tears to get out of traffic tickets, get free stuff from store managers, and to sic violent police on black people who inconvenience them. (Aside, the only time I have been pulled over as an adult, I was trying so hard not to cry that the cop thought I was acting suspicious and asked a bunch of extra questions. I still got the ticket.
I tell myself that those people use their emotions on purpose to manipulate people, that I'm different, I would never do that. But I have to wonder if some of those same women tell themselves the same thing after the fact. I don't think it's enough to avoid intentional manipulation and intentional harm-- not anymore. We as white women need to do be conscious enough of how our emotions are perceived and prioritized to act proactively to avoid unintentional harm as well. For those of us with ADHD, this may be harder than for neurotypicals, but that makes it all the more important for us to think actively about this. I'm not sure yet what this means for me personally, besides removing myself from a shared space if my emotions threaten to become the focus where they shouldn't be, but I would welcome input on this.
I want to talk about gender more generally here as well. ADHD is dramatically underdiagnosed in women, and I have to wonder if some part of this is because emotional disregulation lines up so nicely with the stereotypes of women’s emotions in the first place. Oh, you cry a lot? Of course you do, you’re a woman. One can only wonder how many oldey-timey diagnoses of “hysteria” were actually ADHD. Even now women with ADHD are usually misdiagnosed several times with things like depression or bipolar disorder before we are tested and diagnosed properly. This wasn’t my experience, but after basically doing a bunch of research and self-diagnosing I was able (thanks to a great deal of economic privilege) to pay to go directly to an ADHD specialist. I also walked into that office with an extremely thorough bullet-point list I had compiled of reasons I suspected I had ADHD—it was probably the easiest diagnosis the doctor ever did. So obviously having ADHD while female isn’t the best combination, but when it comes specifically to crying easily that being treated as relatively normal definitely meant I had an easier time with it than my brother did.
My brother (who is nonbinary and uses a variety of pronouns—I’ll probably alternate between they/them and he/him here because it is important to the story that they were perceived as male at the time) cries just as easily as I do, and just as often. When we were little kids, this didn’t make too much of a difference. They’re a couple years younger than me, and little kids are expected to cry more. They haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD, but they and I both strongly suspect for a variety of reasons, this included, that they have it too—I believe they were flagged for it in school, probably for frequently talking out of turn, but I don’t think they were ever tested formally. He got in trouble in school a lot more than I did, for similar outbursts, and while he got quite a few of those same counseling sessions (white privilege at work again), he got more actual discipline as well. But the perception of our tears landed differently, especially as we got older.
For the most part, the scorn leveled at my brother’s tears didn’t come from our parents. My mom, (who, while also not officially diagnosed, I can almost guarantee is where we got the ADHD genes from) cries as easily as they and I do, so she understands it. My dad would certainly prefer to think of himself as an enlightened modern man who would say it’s ok to cry, but he has his share of ingrained toxic masculinity despite himself. I don’t think I ever saw him tell my brother directly to “suck it up” or “act like a man,” but I do think after puberty or so he started responding to my brother’s tears with a sort of exasperation that he never directed at me.
The real difference was in how we were treated by our peers. By the time we got to high school, if I would cry at school, my peers (even ones who weren’t necessarily my friends) would probably ask what was wrong and try to help or provide comfort, or at least would leave me alone and give me time to pull myself together. When my brother cried at school, he was mocked. Relentlessly. Once bullies figured out that he cried easily, he was targeted and goaded specifically for it. They would find any little thing they could to get under his skin (right down to the most childish with rhyming nicknames) and troll him for fun. I wish I could say that I stood up for him, but I never did. I can tell myself this was because I didn’t see it happen in person, being two grades ahead, but I could have made an effort. Although, since he was almost certainly targeted at least in part for perceived failure to live up to masculine gender norms, I’m not sure if having an older sister try to come to the rescue would have helped or made things worse. At this point it’s years past, so I suppose speculation on what I could have or should have done is pretty moot at this point. Suffice it to say, this particular symptom which rarely did me any harm made my brother’s life a lot harder.
I may talk more about different perceptions of my brother’s and my ADHD symptoms in a later essay/ramble/entry/whatever, in particular how it affected out academic performances, but that’s for another time.
Again, I’m not sure if there are any greater conclusions here. There are a lot of ways emotional disregulation can present, and I really only addressed this one small aspect of excessive crying, but it is a good example of how even lesser-known ADHD symptoms can affect our lives in cascading ways, and the way people perceive those symptoms (due to various more visible identity factors) affects us as well. If you read all of this, thanks, and if you have any experiences you’d like to share with how your emotional disregulation has been perceived by others, I’d love to hear them. Until next time!
7 notes · View notes
itcameuponamidnightqueer · 5 years ago
Text
2019 is over and i have feelings
it’s the end of the year and this is mostly filled with rambling half-thoughts, but that’s what you do at the end of the year—you reflect and ramble until it almost turns into something. this is under a read more only because i don’t like clogging up people’s dashes with really long posts, so you know, skip or read at your own leisure.
i don’t really ever do any kind of reflecting that doesn’t come out in the form of fanfiction. i have some feelings, i write a few thousand words about them, i throw them out into the world, and that’s it. i’ll reread my own stuff but i never really think again about what prompted me to write them because it’s over. the feelings are done but the words are memories and that’s all i need, usually.
but 2019 was a tough year in ways that i can’t express in fic, so i’ll just throw out a few thousand personal words and be done with it.
in september of 2018, my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and i don’t think i’ve really been happy since. most of it isn’t being sad about the diagnosis—maybe a lot of it is and i just need a whole heap of therapy to unpack that—but rather how much the cancer changed. it was very advanced when they caught it and she’s made almost a complete recovery in just over a year, and given how shitty everything was to start, this is the best way a bad situation could have ended. not that it’s over, but you know.
it shifted our family completely. i don’t think it brought us closer, maybe my sister or my parents feel differently, but i don’t. morgie turned inward for maybe the first time in her life and kept us at arm’s length in the beginning. she told us very clearly that she didn’t want the cancer to take over her whole life—she wanted us to act normal and talk about normal things as if this was just a temporary snag.
i’ve had epilepsy since i was fifteen months old. i know what it feels like to do that same thing, to minimize and downplay the experience of a chronic condition. because my epilepsy has, gratefully, been very manageable. i can count on one hand the number of seizures i remember having. i have an annual checkup with a neurologist, she confirms the dosage of my meds, and i say goodbye. that’s it, no problem, see you next year.
(it could be so much worse, they say. you’re very lucky, you hear for twenty nine years.
i am not lucky.)
morgan’s cancer kind of opened the flood gates, i think, and a whole heap of shit came spilling out. you know how you see those posts on here about ADHD or autism and a few captions down the line someone is always like, “wait, you mean not everyone [is like this] or [does that]?” i feel like i’m just coming to realize that about my childhood.
not everyone takes days off of school to go to the children’s hospital—for an EEG, or an MRI, or to get blood drawn, etc. “normal” seven-year-olds probably aren’t managing their own prescriptions. my condition is less severe than many others’ but that doesn’t mean it’s normal. it’s certainly not. i’ve always understood “it’s manageable” to mean “it’s not traumatic”, and only now am i realizing that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
and all of a sudden, this thing that i’ve been living with for so long, that i thought i had under control, is rearing back with a vengeance. and because i have been taught to be grateful for the “best” of a bad situation, because its mildness has turned it into something we don’t talk about, i draw inward and it festers and rots into shame. i’ve been operating like this since i was a kid and i think maybe i’ve finally hit capacity.
on top of that, i’ve been going through a bit of an identity crisis. i seem to do that every few years—five years ago as ace, four years ago as nonbinary—and i guess it’s time for another one. tbh it’s kind of been scraping at the back of my brain ever since i realized i was nonbinary, because even that didn’t feel like enough, but i didn’t know what would. 
i’ve said it in a few posts over the years (probably somewhere in both of the linked ones), but i personally really like labels. i spend so much of my time with myself (physically, sure, but i mean emotionally) and very rarely ever share things out loud, so how can i know who i am if i don’t find the right words? gay was good to start. ace fit in later, and then eventually it was just queer. and it will probably stay queer, but there are different parts of my queerness that i haven’t named yet, and the ambiguity is making me itch.
i’ve had this post sitting in my likes for about a week now—i identify with it too much to ignore, but it scares me too much to reblog it, and also i don’t want to until i can explain my feelings and fears. transness feels like something i’ve been hiding from for a while—not in a repulsive way. more like that “i’m in this photo and i don’t like it” meme. that thread encapsulates a lot of what i’ve been thinking about and struggling with for a few months: that i don’t feel trans ~enough, but i also don’t feel not-trans. 
everything i’ve been thinking about feels like i’m quibbling with myself over something really small, like how much of a difference would it really make to think of myself as trans...instead of? along with? being nonbinary; why is this a detail i’ve been obsessing over. everything i said in the nb post is still true, except my concept of gender has changed a little since i wrote it. i don’t feel like a woman and i don’t feel like a man, except i also don’t think gender means anything, even when presented as two binary options, so what do i really know? how do i know i’m not a man if i think “man” means nothing?
and i really am thinking about it in the smallest of terms—headcanon-ing characters as trans, feeling drawn to the trans flag over any others. it’s really dumb, that this is what’s triggering a bit of gay panic. what does it matter, i keep asking myself. i’ve seen posts over the years breaking down the stripes of each flag, pointing out that nb/genderqueer identities are already represented, and i wish that were enough but it’s not. it’s so dumb, i keep thinking, to see myself in the whole of the trans flag when i don’t think i belong to the whole transgender experience. and even that sounds dumb, when i hear it—of course there isn’t one whole transgender experience. i hear it, but i haven’t yet listened.
anyway. all of this and a lot of other things have been broiling and rotting inside of me for my whole life probably. i’ve literally never said any of this out loud, to friends or family or strangers. i’ve worn that like a badge since high school—isn’t it admirable, how i can talk and laugh and live without dumping my problems on anyone else. isn’t it better to be accommodating, to keep your burdens from weighing other people down? only you don’t realize until later how tiresome it is to be heavy. 
now that i have all of my fics moved over to AO3, i’ve been thinking about all that i’ve written over the years. it’s just shy of 730k. that’s more than the first five harry potter novels combined, and i’ve never told anyone in my life about it. that’s twelve years and so much of me to keep to myself. but i’ve done it because that’s kind of what i learned to do—my epilepsy was my first and most guarded secret and along the way i guess i learned to do that with everything. it doesn’t help that so many of my interests have been things that are either solitary or a source of “shame”. most of my friends i know through various social media sites. i’ve had this tumblr for nine years and the only people who know about it are other tumblr users.  there is so much more of me than a few hundred thousand words hanging around this garbage dump. 
i don’t know if there are any conclusions here. 2019 was rough, for even more reasons than i’ve barfed into this post. i’m not sure if i’ve learned anything from it; i don’t feel wiser or anything. i feel tired and mostly sad. i wish i could snap my fingers and resolve everything, but if i could do that, i’d already have done it. on top of everything, these are probably my last few months in chicago for a while, but that’s a whole other mountain of feelings to unpack.
anyway, i’m going into 2020 determined to get over myself, maybe find a therapist and a good masseuse.  
happy new year.
11 notes · View notes
amyscascadingtabs · 6 years ago
Note
13 or 34 (or both!) for peraltiago prompts!!!! 💕
congrats siân, your prompt was the first one to make it to a longer piece (or like, 1.3k) instead of staying the short little piece these were supposed to be but it got very sweet so i’m not too mad about it.
13. “Sorry I’m late.”
A quick glance at her watch confirms it - Jake should have been here seventeen minutes ago.
There is no trace of him.
Amy sighs, channeling all her self-discipline to resist the urge to send another follow-up text, asking about his current location and why he’s finding it amusing to let his girlfriend of three months sit and wait on the steps outside of his apartment, when really, he should have been there to meet her long ago.
It’s not even him she’s most disappointed in. She’s worked with him for five years, knows clear as day he could probably find a way to be late for his own funeral, but he’s made a point of arriving on perfect time for each of their scheduled dates so far and somehow, she got used to it. So used to it she went ahead and assumed the trend would continue, would allow for her to decide a time with him over text and be able to go straight to his apartment after spending a weekend at her parents house. She was acting like a straight-up optimist, which feels strange and unnatural and clearly doesn’t serve her well.
Nineteen minutes late.
Amy supposes it could have been worse. If she has to be stuck waiting outside a boyfriend’s apartment, she’d much rather it’d be a pleasantly warm evening towards the end of summer, the kind of weather where even she’s given up on wearing an extra coat, than a freezing January afternoon with her exhales creating clouds of white vapor. Outside of the fact that the chill of the stone steps seeps through the fabric of her floral summer dress, she’s not too uncomfortable. She’s still annoyed, though.
Her phone vibrates in her hand, but it’s just a Facebook notification, reminding her she’s invited to Floorgasm’s dance show at a birthday party tomorrow. Still nothing from Jake.
She wants to put down the phone in her purse to keep from looking at the time, but holds onto it for some inexplicable reason anyway.
Twenty-two minutes.
She should dig out her book, her laptop, do some work, anything but keep wasting her time staring at the customers entering and exiting the bodega across the street. Hell, she should go home to her own apartment, text her boyfriend to drag his ass over there when he next remembers to look at the time and then act extra bitter for the entire night when he shows up. That was her method for any time Teddy was late and it worked perfectly to give him a bad conscience each time, yet she lacks all temptation to do something similar now.
Jake’s not doing it on purpose. She knows that, knows he fits an abundance of criteria for an ADHD diagnosis - including poor sense of time - but keeps putting off speaking to a professional about it. He’s not intentionally making himself late, but rather is just not wired for keeping track of time. She knows. She wishes her growing impatience knew it, too.
Twenty-five.
Nearly half an hour. Half an hour is a long time, half an hour is allowed-to-be-pissed time, half an hour means she could call his phone and demand to know where he’s at. She still doesn’t. She keeps turning the phone in her hands instead, waiting for a text, a call, an explanation. In place of anger, worry is growing. Maybe something happened, maybe he managed to get himself kidnapped again or he’s going undercover and Captain Holt forgot to tell her about it, maybe he was the victim of a street shooting and is bleeding to death on the concrete.
She googles recent shootings Brooklyn, but sees nothing that could be her boyfriend and draws a tentative breath of relief. She texts him instead, a neutral Where are you?, but the reply won’t come.
Twenty-seven minutes.
At this point, she’s barely even angry. She just misses him, misses her boyfriend after spending a weekend answering too many questions from her parents and all seven of her brothers about him, misses his laugh and the way he scrunches his forehead when he’s not sure she’s right about something. She misses the smell of his aftershave when she presses kisses to his neck, misses the way he hums and draws her closer in the mornings after she’s stayed over at his place on his new and dreamy mattress, misses untimely Die Hard-references and him insisting on helping her clean up even though she’s way more efficient on her own. She’s spent four days without him and it’s not a lot, she spent six months without him when he was undercover with the FBI and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out how she felt about him and that was unquestionably worse than the four days she’s had now with texting and phone calls and a FaceTime session to keep her stable, but she still missed him. She missed him enough to have felt jittery for the entirety of today, her heart fluttering and smile inevitable whenever she’s thought about seeing him tonight.
She just wants to see him.
Twenty-nine minutes late.
Her back is hurting from her less than ideal posture on these steps, and she stands up to stretch her arms over and then behind her head, drawing her shoulder blades together and apart, tilting her head side to side.
That’s when she sees him.
He’s running towards her, face all red from exertion like he’s sprinted the entire way from the precinct, and he’s panting like he just completed a marathon when he reaches her.
“Oh my god”, he gets out between gasps for air, “Ames, shit. Sorry I’m late.”
“It’s okay”, she says robotically, then remembers her annoyance and adds, “Kind of.”
“It’s not okay, it’s a dick move and you deserved better.” Jake sits down on the steps right where she was sitting a minute ago, putting his head in his hands. “I walked to the precinct today, because it was nice out and you’re always telling me I should get more fresh air. So I forgot I didn’t have my car.”
“You could have called.”
“My phone died”, he says, holding up his phone and pressing the power button to reveal the Apple picture of an empty battery and blinking charger. “Out of nowhere. Or I guess not out of nowhere. I forgot how much battery FaceTime takes, and we were talking for a long time yesterday.”
“Oh.” She’s blushing now, starting to regret all her previous judgement.
“So I ran. From the precinct to here. Like a crazy person.”
“For me?”
He rolls his eyes. “No, because I love exercise and especially running so much, I constantly go on 5k runs in plaid, jeans and leather jacket while carrying a bag just for fun - yes, Ames, obviously for you.”
“Wow.” She sits down next to him, putting her head on his shoulder. “And here I was thinking you were just ignoring me.”
“I could literally never ignore you. It’s my most fatal flaw.” He looks straight at her, a gravity to the warm brown eyes she’s also missed so much. “If I ever ignore you, that’s definite proof I’ve been taken over by an evil identical twin or a super smart evil robot.”
“Well”, she smiles, heart much warmer now than before. “That’s good to know. And no offense, but I think you might need a shower after your run.”
“Will you share it with me?”
“Only because you’re the cheesiest, sweetest boyfriend ever.”
“Aww”, he grins. “Santiago thinks I’m swee-eet - ow, don’t punch my shoulder!”
Forty-two minutes after their originally scheduled meeting time, he’s trailing kisses along her wet skin and she can tell exactly where it’s going.
Yeah, she missed him alright.
161 notes · View notes
i-am-not-anon · 5 years ago
Text
Under the eye of an institution
part 6
Summary: Logan and Patton (both 16), the older students, are expected to look after two groups of freshmen in Watersouth boarding school for boys. Both of them despise the tradition of bullying that is subjected to the newcomers by older students. The two respectively get a student in their groups who is a little different from the ordinary crowd: Roman and Virgil (both 15).
Author’s note: Update, everybody! Now I realize how much work actually goes into writing all of this. There’s no base storyline for this kind of fic, at least I haven’t seen anybody else write a fic like this. So please be patient with the slow uploads! Message me for getting into the taglist, please.
Triggers: Bullying, abuse, violence, violent punishments, panic attacks, self-deprecation, name-calling, i n s t i t u t i o n
Other parts here
...
The next day, Logan went to his room right after classes, to analyze the results of the tests Roman had filled the last evening. After hours of work, he merged all his findings to one sheet.
Possible reasons behind Roman Pears’ behavior
adhd, combined: 74% probability
executive dysfunction: 61% probability
specific learning disabilities: 14% probability
bipolar: 19% probability
sensory processing disorders: 5% probability
autism%: 12% probability
anxiety: 43% probability
depression: 20% probability
Abstract:
Possible reasons for Roman Pears’ behavior and/or diagnosis for him would according to this study be ADHD combined type, executive dysfunction and anxiety, in the order of highest probability.
However, specific learning disabilities, bipolar, sensory processing disorders, autism and depression seem to be considered mostly irrelevant options according to this study.
Logan smiled to himself, placing the paper on his desk. He felt proud of the playful study he had conducted, and content about his findings. Though further studies were always needed, the tired older student decided he would just roll with the answers he had gotten for now. Trying to keep Roman on his desk for a couple hours when he was supposed to have free time was an experience he didn’t want to go through again very soon. Logan took a breath, deciding to go search for Patton to discuss about his findings before continuing with his actual homework.
….
Virgil walked to Patton, hiding his red eyes with both of his sweater paws. Patton shot up, hurrying closer to the sniffling boy. ”Virgil! Are you alright? What happened? Let’s go someplace quiet and talk for a bit, how does that sound?”
Virgil nodded, following Patton and trying to quiet his sobs with his hands as they walked past the other older boys. One of them yelled rudely after Virgil, but Patton’s deathly glare made the student shut up.
As the duo got outside of the building, Patton began speaking again. ”Let’s sit down right here,” he decided, pointing at a nice patch of grass. ”Can I hug you, Virgil?”
Virgil shook his head, still hiding behind his hands.
Patton felt a bit lost as he always wished to be held if he was feeling upset, but tried to think of other ways to help the panicking boy.
”Um.. We’re going to get through this,” he tried, but he didn’t believe his unconvinced tone himself either. He didn’t even know what happened yet.
”Let’s focus on breathing,” Patton figured, turning to face Virgil on the grass they were sitting on. ”Breathe with me. In…. and out.” … ”In… and out.”
Slowly but surely Virgil was able to calm down a bit. He didn’t want to stress anybody or cause any more trouble than necessary with his current problem, but he assumed Patton wouldn’t let him go before he would tell his tutor what was going on. And Patton was the only one in this crazy school he could possibly trust. Maybe. So Virgil tried his best to talk through the sniffles and stutter this stressful situation had made even worse.
”M-mm-m-isster B-b-b-br -r -ass,” Virgil was able to say, and Patton nodded seriously. ”Did he get mad at you again?”
Virgil nodded. ”Bu-b-b-but-t-t-t i-i-i-t’s-s-s wo-wo-wo-wo-wo-worse,” he grimaced, his hands moving back to hide his stressed expression and another wave of tears.
Patton frowned sadly. ”Hey, don’t worry. We can figure it out.” The older student noticed how Virgil was moving towards another panic attack. ”Let’s remember to breathe calmly. In.. and out.”
After Virgil was able to breathe again, he explained the whole situation to Patton at his own pace. Patton listened, trying not to panic himself as he heard the whole thing.
”So this group of boys convinced you to let them continue the accidental mispronunciation, and they are using it against the teacher in question,” Patton asked. Virgil nodded.
”And now Mr. Brass is accusing you of planning and creating all of this?”
Virgil nodded, breathing getting shallow again. Patton held his arms open for they boy, and Virgil sat little bit closer to lean his head on Patton’s shoulder. The younger boy muttered about not being able to tell the truth without revealing his only friends had the idea at first, and how they could get in trouble instead of him. Patton made sure to listen the whole thing patiently before interrupting. Virgil also told Mr. Brass had instructed the young student to tell his tutor, Patton, to spank him good. Patton sighed as he heard this.
”Maybe you knew already, but I will absolutely not do that to you,” the older student dismissed the instruction. ”I don’t think it would do any good in this situation. I have to admit, this is a tough puzzle to solve,” Patton had to pause as Virgil muttered a quick ’Sorry’.
”It was not your fault. We can figure this out, and if you give me permission, I can talk about it with my classmate who always seems to find a good answer to tough situations.
Virgil looked at his tutor quietly.
”Logan is the other tutor who refuses to use violent punishments,” Patton revealed and Virgil nodded in confirmation.
”Okay. I will brainstorm with him and you just try to stay safe, kiddo. Does that sound alright?”
Virgil nodded, drying his wet cheeks. A hint of smile could have been spotted on his face if looked very carefully.
….
Logan let out a relieved sigh as he found Patton walking in the library. ”I have been looking for you, Patton. I have some important news to discuss with you.”
Patton smiled at his friend. ”Me too! Where should we talk?”
The two tutors decided to sit at a quiet corner table of the library. They found themselves absorbing into the matter of trying to help their students to their best ability, and hours later, Logan glanced at the clock and realized they were almost late for dinner. Logan glanced at his notes of the conversation briefly before hurrying out of the library after Patton, seemingly satisfied with the amount of work they had gotten done.
Notes regarding the problems of Roman Pears and Virgil Glasgow
Virgil’s case:
cause: stutter and questionable acts of new friends
consequences: Mr. Brass accuses Virgil of making fun of him
possible solution 1: Virgil tells the truth to Mr. Brass
outcome 1: Virgil might lose his new friends and they would get punished
possible solution 2: Virgil tries to apologize to Mr. Brass
outcome 2: Mr. Brass might or might not accept the apology, Virgil is seen as a troublemaker
possible solution 3: Virgil tells his friends to stop the pranks
outcome 3: Friends might or might not obey, Virgil is seen as a coward
The best solution: unsure, demands further analysis
Roman’s case:
cause: possibly ADHD, executive dysfunction and anxiety
consequences: Roman’s irresponsible behavior, which causes him get in trouble frequently
Possible solution 1: Roman gets treatment to his disorders
outcome 1: Roman would have to move schools or wait for unknown amount of time, since there is no mental health professional available in Watersouth boarding school yet
possible solution 2: Roman learns to work with his disorders himself
outcome 2: Highly unlikely to work
possible solution 3: Logan and maybe also Roman’s teachers work with him to help him
outcome 3: teachers will be difficult to persuade, Logan will make mistakes since he is not qualified
The best solution: unsure, demands further analysis
Logan smiled, sliding the notebook to his backpack and following Patton to the cafeteria.
As Patton stepped to the cafeteria, a pair of students walking to the opposite direction almost stumbled onto him. ”Oh, sorry,” Patton stepped aside, now noticing that this was his classmate dragging a younger student by his collar. As Logan walked closer, the older student let out a huff, shaking Roman by his collar. ”Finally, Andrews! This brat wouldn’t keep quiet in the line and you were nowhere to be found! If you wouldn’t have just appeared, I would have slapped this jerk myself.”
Logan frowned. ”You know very well it is against the rules to punish students other than your own, Simons.”
Patrick Simons rolled his eyes. ”If anything, this idiot is against the rules.” he let go of Roman’s collar and shoved him towards Logan. ”I’m going to eat my dinner now that I finally have some peace.” he walked away, dismissively wiping his hands to his trousers as if touching Roman had made them dirty.
Roman looked at the floor, twisting his hands. ”I’m sorry, sir,” he muttered to Logan.
Logan put a reassuring hand on Roman’s shoulder. ”It’s alright. Let’s have dinner, and I’ll expect you to head to my room after we’re done with that.”
”Yes sir,” Roman nodded, walking back to the end of the line with the two older students.
14 notes · View notes