Unfolded By Surprise

23, Los Angeles, bisexual, Jewish atheist, intersectional feminist, fat femme, spoonie 

[noping-out-deactivated20241117]

This whole obsession with wheelchair users struggling on foot down the aisle at their wedding or across the stage for graduation is 100% powered by ableism.

[noping-out-deactivated20241117]

“The heartwarming story of how one woman worked for 8 months straight so she could escape the horror that is being in wheelchair for a few short minutes to struggle slowly and painfully down the aisle on her special day.”

[feraladoration]

“the horror that is being in a wheelchair” bitch it’s hella better than struggling slowly & painfully down the aisle ffs

[noping-out-deactivated20241117]

“Despite being permanently paralyzed, her one goal since her accident has been to walk across the stage for graduation. The whole crowd gave her a standing ovation and broke into tears when she dragged her paralyzed legs across the stage with the help of leg braces and a walker to collect her diploma, after which she immediately sat back down in her wheelchair, which she will use to move around for the rest of her life.”

How the hell is this an inspirational story? This person needs better goals. And a therapist.

[smoldragonborn]

They’re toxic in an even greater way because as a disabled person, I didn’t realise till I was reading this how much I had internalised that. I genuinely have had feelings of fear and shame about using a chair or a walker if I get married. And why? Because I’m constantly seeing “heartwarming” stories about disabled people who shed their mobility aids for that moment. Why the hell am I afraid of using them to get married? Anyone who marries me or attends the wedding will know I need them and love me regardless.

Bless this post for making me realise I’d internalised that shit.

These types of stories teach people, both abled and disabled, that using mobility aids, especially wheelchairs, is inferior.

[margomoment]

here are some beautiful brides in chairs with dresses they ROCK. I know a lot of disabled ppl with internalized ableism think they “won’t look good” if they use their chair, but here’s some literally gorgeous gals for ur consideration

(that last ones cute as fuck and i teared up at it)

[noping-out-deactivated20241117]

Who needs a bouquet when you can be a bouquet?

[smoldragonborn]

I made my addition to this post in June 2019. Its now January 2020 and I no longer feel guilty about the idea of going down the aisle one day with mobility aids.

God bless the disabled community, y'all saved me from some internalised bullshit

[thegayemu]

This post floated by a few months ago, and I remember something to effect of there’s a difference between recovery and refusal. That is, like, I have a friend that suffered an incomplete spinal cord injury. He can walk again now, and I don’t think I’ve seen him use his chair in a few years. When he walked at his graduation, it was to show off his recovery. That he wasn’t quite ready to go through a full day upright, but he could walk across a stage, unassisted, and soon he would be able to do that every day. There’s also a difference in someone like me choosing to not use a mobility aid. My mobility is intensely fluid, especially seasonally. So, I would plan a summer wedding. And while I love my cane it can also be the biggest pain in my ass, so I’d want to just go unassisted. But that’s normal for me, at least right now. I can walk without an aid during about half of the year. It’s reasonable to assume I can make it through one day without it. All of that is different than someone that is fully and permanently paralyzed, that will never walk again, dragging themselves along because they feel that’s somehow better. Overall though, my biggest takeaway is fuck the media. Because disabled people should be able to make whatever decision they want without the media turning it into this grand inspirational story.

[noping-out-deactivated20241117]

Disabled people should be able to make whatever decision they want without the media turning it into this grand inspirational story.

THIS.

[bifinmediasres]

Couldn’t pass up the opportunity to add my disabled joy to this post. Look at this love!

[aprillikesthings]

Taking the opportunity to add these photos of Jessica Kellgren-Fozard and her wife Claudia, from this twitter post. Jessica also has a youtube channel that’s primarily about disability and chronic illness and LGBT stuff (it’s amazing!) 

[haveyouhadenough]

I would also like to personally share, Annika Victoria who ALSO has a youtube channel. This photo was taken from her instagram - she made her wedding dress dress herself, BY HAND. Her youtube channel is mostly DIY fashion and sewing tutorials. I love her so much, she’s so unapologetically herself and informative

[theinfiniteofthought]

I also wanna add these pictures of Ade Adepitan fucking rocking this badass suit at his wedding! Give my fellow disabled mascs some love too

look how much fun they’re both having! yes!

and also this couple, who are both wheelchair users

this is from their beautifully coordinated wedding!

[butterbeflyin]

Did we just see two women of color make out in their underwear? And a very dark skinned black man and white woman have sex? While the all white straight couple got nothing? What a time to be alive

[wtfkane-deactivated20180422]

how iconic is it that the bold type had their interracial f/f ship and their interracial m/f ship have soft hookup scenes as well as a proper build up while also murdering their white m/f ships 

[tabula----rasa]

“This America thing. This capitalism… this stealing of sleep and selling of dreams.”- Nohmtema. 🇺🇸Happy fourth. Here’s to all the mediocre white men that have gotten the credit for what makes this country great🇺🇸

[coolkidsofhistory]

A 17-year old Frida Kahlo poses for a family photo wearing a traditional gentleman’s 3-piece suit, 1924

[justaddthings]

Listening intently to important instructions and only later realizing you were thinking about listening intently so much that you didn't actually retain a single instruction.

[unfoldedbysurprise]

I DO SHIT LIKE THIS SO MUCH #actullyadhd #adhdproblems #neurodivergent

[fudemushi]

ADHD Gothic

-You go into the kitchen to get some cookies, only to find the cookies are gone. You don’t recall eating the cookies. You live alone. Disappointed and confused, you go back to your room. Ten minutes later, you go into the kitchen to get some cookies.

-Your leg is bouncing. You try to stop it, but you no longer have control. It bounces. Your leg is going numb. Still, it bounces. It never stops. You give up. It bounces.

-You see a big flower in a vase. You attempt to count the number of petals, but something is stopping you. You are sure you said 7, but was that the last number or 10 numbers ago? Still, you do not give up. You start from the beginning. You are still counting.

-You have $100 dollars. You are saving it to buy a new laptop. You see a $75 dollar cosplay. You have $25. You wonder why you bought it. You have never been to a convention. It hangs in your closet, untouched.

-All of your pencils mysteriously disappear. You are sure you put them on your desk, but they are no longer there. You get another pencil. Two days later, your original pencils are on your desk.

[unfoldedbysurprise]

it me.

[fudemushi]

ADHD Gothic

-You go into the kitchen to get some cookies, only to find the cookies are gone. You don’t recall eating the cookies. You live alone. Disappointed and confused, you go back to your room. Ten minutes later, you go into the kitchen to get some cookies.

-Your leg is bouncing. You try to stop it, but you no longer have control. It bounces. Your leg is going numb. Still, it bounces. It never stops. You give up. It bounces.

-You see a big flower in a vase. You attempt to count the number of petals, but something is stopping you. You are sure you said 7, but was that the last number or 10 numbers ago? Still, you do not give up. You start from the beginning. You are still counting.

-You have $100 dollars. You are saving it to buy a new laptop. You see a $75 dollar cosplay. You have $25. You wonder why you bought it. You have never been to a convention. It hangs in your closet, untouched.

-All of your pencils mysteriously disappear. You are sure you put them on your desk, but they are no longer there. You get another pencil. Two days later, your original pencils are on your desk.

[adhdpeep]

them: yeah, I hyperfocus sometimes, get in the zone. I think everyone does that sometimes. me, an adhder who once drew for 8 hours straight with no breaks: nO, you don’t UNDerSTAND 

[adhdpeep]

Trying to figure out the order in which you’re going to do ANYTHING

[rhoga]

Heart attacks symptoms are different for women. I recently learned this. 

[veggiebaker]

Everyone should know these things.

[131-di]

thanks to mainstream media and being unable to show breasts on TV, way too few people know about female signs of cardiac distress, and impending heart attacks. they only know about the “pain in the left arm” male symptom.

[mossflayer]

i had all these symptoms once and they sent me right to hospital

it was scary bc i didnt know these were the symptoms for female heart issues

[chevko]

Please, please, PLEASE, reblog this. i don’t know if I did save or called false alarm, with my boss’ life tonight. I felt I was being a bit paranoid, overreacting, but I told Mirage my thoughts and he, after reading over the article I showed him, immediately sprung into action and then shooed her off to the hospital. I don’t know if I did or not, but I knew she’d been super stressed. She’d off-handedly commented on her arm tingling and I asked her if she felt queasy on a hunch. I went to look at the symptoms and we went from there.

[francsforthememories]

Holy shit, I didn’t even think the symptoms would be different between men and women. This is so hugely important and I don’t understand why we aren’t taught this. 

[moonblossom]

One of the other symptoms that doesn’t get talked about , especially in women, is a “feeling of impending doom”. I am not even kidding, that is a legitimate diagnostic criteria. Please - if you are feeling any of these symptoms and a sudden onset of “Holy shit the world is ending” do not let anyone tell you it’s “just nerves” or “just heartburn” or something.

[babybluebanshee]

Keep these in mind ESPECIALLY IF YOU’VE GOT HEART DISEASE IN YOUR FAMILY!  So many more women die from heart attacks than because they don’t recognize the symptoms when they’re so different. Please stay safe and stay informed.

[gatheringbones]

They lied, my friend. They injected their despair beneath your skin like a parasitic insect laying eggs in the body of another species. Nothing they said is true, everything about you is honorable. Every pore that opens and closes—a multitude along the expanse of your body, the follicles from which hair sprouts emerging again and again like spiders’ floss spun from a limitless source. You wait, huddled. Or carry yourself from place to place like a burden. As if you would stash yourself, if you could, in a bus station locker, or somewhere smaller. You don’t really hope, but you can’t give it up completely. Some stubborn nugget is lodged like a bullet in bone. Though each breath stings with the cold suck of it, you can know the truth. Every cell of your body vibrates with its own intelligence. Every atom is pure.”

Ellen Bass (via gatheringbones)

[silvermp]

ADHD: Living as a Liminal Space

Is this the way things have always been? The question is always nestled in the back of your mind, smile carefully in place as you nod along with someone’s conversation. You don’t know who they are - their face feels familiar, but the list of remembered names in your mind is very small. You stare at their cracked lips, trying to commit their words to memory. You wonder if they had ever used chapstick, and just as that thought bubbled to the surface, time slipped sideways. You awake from your dream to find seconds have passed, countless words lost in the haze of existing and you look up at the person speaking. “I’m sorry,” you say, with that careful smile painted delicately across your face, “Could you repeat that?” They do, but the words slide like quicksilver in and out of your ears, darting just long enough to hear, but not long enough to understand. You blink, trying to remember, but that moment is gone as if it had never happened. They are already talking about something else, addressing you by name, but their own name remains lost. Conversations flow like a river around you, snatches of meaning caught here and there, but holding onto conversations is like trying to dam a stream with a bucket. You learn to scoop down as quickly as you can, snatching just enough context to divine meaning.

Is this the way things have always been? The light bulb needs to be changed. There are two bulbs, one broken, one not. The room is dim, but not so dim that it is untreadable. You see the light bulb, and it registers as something that Needs To Be Done. You look down to the warm mug in your hands, and consider that to change the bulb, you need to have your hands free. And the thought is gone, the significance of room dimness lost as your thoughts fizz like static to wrap around the mug’s heat. You find the mug the next day, left on the corner of your desk, drained of coffee. The room’s dimness is remembered, but you should take care of that mug first, right? It could mold. By the time you place the mug in the sink, your thoughts are already occupied by dish soaps and lipid breakdowns, and the bulb lies forgotten, nestled dead against the ceiling. 

One morning, neither bulb turns on, and you navigate the kitchen by the light of your cell phone before work. That night, you use your cell phone again, because you’ve forgotten where the bulbs are, and need to get gas to get to the store. The next night and the night after that, you ate early enough in the day that light bulbs weren’t needed, so the deadness never registered as a problem. At the end of the week, your hunger draws you to the kitchen late in the evening, but it’s too late in the day to go to the store - they won’t be open. When the problem of the bulb is not in front of you - is not making an active nuisance of itself, it’s like it doesn’t even exist.   Nothing in this world exists, when it’s not in front of you. 

Is this the way things have always been? “You’re so good at traveling!” your coworker said, “Aren’t you homesick?” Belatedly, you realize that you’ve been away from home for a week and a half. Each day seems like an individual lifetime. They flow back-to-back never quite related, for all their similarities. Like picking up a new novel every morning, each set of problems is unique to that situation. Like picking up a new novel every morning, the previous book’s worries shed like water. They’re not here anymore, so they don’t matter. “Do your parents know you’re in California?” No, you think to yourself, I haven’t talked to them in months. It’s not any malice or dislike that stops you from calling, and that’s what frightens you, a little. You’d be happy talking to them, but you just…. Forgot. Like all things, when they aren’t in front of you: They just don’t seem to exist. 

Is this the way things have always been? 

“You know I was only joking!” I didn’t, you think to yourself, forcing a titter of agreeable laughter. Every word, unless emphasized deeply with emotive gestures and tonal changes, seems genuine. Flat-faced delivery of falsehoods always rings true to your ears. It takes effort to remember to parse out people’s wording - their delivery - and compare it against their previously stated opinions and choices. It takes effort to remember to analyze again and again and again and again, until every conversation is a minefield of potential missteps, drawing close a handful of responses that could be interpreted a hundred different ways. At least with those, you can play along. “How come you’re being so quiet?” It’s exhausting to dance the dance of smalltalk, when your feet just seem unable to develop that muscle memory. So every conversation becomes mechanical, automatic, words filtering through keyword searches and tonal registers to find the ‘correct’ response that is both situationally appropriate, not emotionally hurtful, and hopefully accurate enough not to elicit guilt. Like all automations, It doesn’t always work. Like all machines, it doesn’t feel real. The people of the world seem like a thousand NPCs, all demanding answers from an endless multiple-choice list of dialogue options. Humans become something like obsticals, and conversations like challenges, fights waged with memorized expressions and rote responses. You become accustomed to spitting back wisdom from books and television shows written by actual people, in the hopes that their words can make your forced empathy seem real. None of it feels real. 

Is this the way things have always been? “Do you have a crush on anyone?” Should I? Sexual and Romantic relationships burn brightly, all-consuming while they last. Obsessive is a word fit for the hungry hoarding of dragons, and the vicious consuming of ghosts. It is an accurate adjective for your heart. While things are here they are all that exist. While things are elsewhere they may as well have never existed at all. It applies to tasks, To objects, To people, To relationships. To your own emotions. 

Existence itself remains a fleeting experience of not-quite-real spaces. Each moment feeling the most important thing you’ve ever done, yet once that moment passed it leaves only the briefest of marks on your heart or memory. Often the memory slides away completely, leaving nothing but the memories of others, and whatever few pictures were taken. Your self exists eternally on the outskirts of other peoples lives, recollection of what you’re like always reminded by pictures and stories told by friends. That perfect, careful smile painted delicately across your face slips to neutrality when alone. You simply consume the world, experience it, and let it go again. An eternal catch-and-release, where there is no fish more important than the one caught in your gaze NOW.

 Is this the way things have always been? 

Yes. 

And will always be.  Your mind is a Liminal Space, and the world around you can only briefly visit. 

[thequotejournals]

Some people are uncomfortable with silences. Not me. I’ve never cared much for call and response. Sometimes I will think of something to say and then I ask myself: is it worth it? And it just isn’t.

Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You (via thequotejournals)

lolol this is like the polar opposite of me

[wtfadhd]

((Not my joke. Found on Facebook.))

[writingplays]

Shakespeare has ADHD

Hyperfocuses on whatever he’s writing and gets intensely invested in it.

Spends days just sitting at his desk writing and doesn’t stop until he has an entire play like two weeks later.

When he’s not able to focus on writing he finds it near impossible to sit down and write. “Writing’s demanding, it’s mentally challenging, and it’s a bore. It’s such a chore to sit in a room by yourself.”

Loses track of what he’s trying to say mid-sentence.

Uses alcohol as a suppressant bc his mind is just so go go go! all day every day.

Zones out during conversations because his mind wanders, making him look rude for not paying attention.

Interrupts conversations to talk about an idea that just popped into his head. (Again, making him seem rude.)

Forgets things frequently and has to write everything down.

Talks loud, all the time.

Interrupts himself mid sentence to talk about something he just remembered.

Loses track of time when he’s hyperfocused on writing. Goes seven hours just working only to realize he hasn’t eaten all day when his stomach starts to hurt.

Cannot work with anyone/anything in the room, because it’ll end up being a major distraction. (Which is why the leather boys lock him in his room alone.)

Has other people proofread the plays he powerwrote in a weeks time because he can’t muster up the will to read it over again.

Talks to himself when he’s alone. Has full on conversations at his desk with his quill.

Gets really excited and passionate about his latest play and delves really deep into it, only to not give two shits about it once performances are over.

[unfoldedbysurprise]

I'm about to (finally) go finish college as a 24 year old, and I was undiagnosed for all 24 of those years (my diagnosis was approx 1 month ago). this will be my first time ever being in school while knowing I have ADHD/treating it, and I enrolled in...upper level Shakespeare. I'm super anxious about it (for a variety of reasons, also the limitless joy of PTSD ha), but this just made me feel a lot better, so...thanks 🤷🏽‍♀️😂

[hippity-hoppity-brigade]

ADHD Gothic

You have instructions written down. You don’t need them, but you check them anyway. Somehow they’re different from what you remember. Have they changed since you tucked the paper in your pocket? 

You realize that you’ve lost your train of thought. You can’t remember what you were thinking before. There is only your present thought, now a loop of panic at your lost memory. 

You stop in the middle of a room. Why are you here? Which room did you come from? You leave the room and remember what you were going to do. You walk back into the room. Why are you here? 

You bring up an inside joke with a friend. They look at you blankly. They do not remember this joke. But you were there when I made it, you argue. They were not. They are not the friend you are thinking of. You realize it was your other friend, from work instead of high school, with blond hair instead of brown, tall instead of short. You do not know how these two friends are so similar in your mind. 

You refer to every experience as happening “the other day.” Was it three years ago or yesterday? You try to remember context clues. Time is not real. 

Someone asks you for an important piece of information. You have not thought about it since you saved it on your computer, labelled very clearly. You search through your files. It is not there. You find it days later by accident, labelled with a cryptic set of codes. You don’t know why you would label it this way. No one else uses this computer but you. 

You are running late. You are always running late. 

You have lost something. You check everywhere. You check everywhere again. Someone tells you to think of when you last had it. You don’t tell them that is the problem. 

You reach the end of the page. You can’t remember what you just read. 

[scary-monsters-and-super-creeps]

100% accurate

[genderhexed]

THIS IS TOO FUCKING REAL