[zitrus-indigo]

How can people not realise that the biggest issue in the 21st century is neither LGBTQ+ people nor people transitioning but Pokemon like Skitty and Wailord being able to reproduce is fine and no one baits an eye ???

[cute-catts]

kitty car 🐱

[rederiswrites]

The real thing with ADHD is not "I forgot", but that forgetting is this ongoing process. I remembered! And then I forgot.

At ten this (hypothetical) morning I remembered that I have a meeting at six. And then from 11 through 3 I worked on other stuff and had zero thoughts about that meeting. Maybe even thought about what I was gonna do with my evening at home. Got attached to the idea of taking the time to make a good dinner, maybe play some video games.

And then at three I said, "Oh! Fuck!" and remembered again, hopefully long enough to set an alarm. And then I went to the bathroom and remembered that I need to clean the counter and spent twenty minutes cleaning the bathroom and went to get a snack and then at five I said, "OH! FUCK!" and had to scramble to dress like a real adult and get out the door.

It isn't one clean forgetting. It's a constant process of forgetting and then, with an exhausting adrenaline spike, remembering. And then forgetting. Baby, I can forget the same thing more times in a day than you ever forgot your parents' anniversary.

[drumlincountry]

Why do they even make apps for ADHD. You want me to use my 24/7 handheld immediate distraction device? To manage my 'gets distracted too easily' disorder? Ooooh we developed the perfect tool for managing your anemia. Its hosted in Dracula's castle. 👍

[whyenn-reader]

Not to go "if you have ADHD just go for a run" or anything, but I am so serious if you have ADHD you should regularly go outside, no headphones no phone no nothing and just stand and observe for a while until you've had enough. Not until you get bored, until you've had enough. Drink your coffee without watching tiktok. Have a bath without music. Turn down the volume in your headphones. I cannot overstate how much learning to be bored is cruicial with ADHD. Life is not just about pleasure, no matter what your dysregulated dopamine system thinks, and when you teach your brain to be okay with being bored, then boring tasks stop feeling like torture. By letting yourself be bored you are yoinking your system out of the high/low binary and allow for the highs to feel like actual highs and not just anything that isn't low. I am so serious go literally touch grass. Listen to the sounds in your flat. Stimulate your body the way it was designed. It lowers anxiety and makes you feel like you're real and best of all it's completely free

[this-is-physi-sensory-ableism]

I will never understand the glorification of non-ambulatory wheelchair users (or situationally ambulatory wheelchair users) putting themself through physical torment just so they can have a "normal" experience.

For example, walking down the aisle or doing a dance at a wedding. Going on stage during graduation. Doing a religious ceremony (ie; baptism.) Doing a performance on stage.

For a lot of these people, the physical therapy that they do for months in advance is extraordinarily painful, exhausting, and non-beneficial. There's no actual reason to do it, aside from looking "normal" or having an awe factor.

And yet, non-wheelchair users swarm to these people, praise them for torturing themselves just to do something in a way that imitates typically-walking individuals.

I don't feel inspired by it. I don't judge the person, either - I just feel sad for them, that they felt as though it was something they had to do. That they felt like wheeling down the aisle, wheeling during a dance, wheeling on stage, etc, etc, is something shameful.

[nonbinary-wrath-month]

It is true that if you want to be a girl, you can be one; and if you don't want to be one, you can decide not to be one. And the same is true of boys. But I want to posit something else: that you don't need to buy a whole package deal. You can pick and choose the traits and words you like.

I conceptualise gender and masculinity/femininity not as boxes that one needs to conform to, or labels that one has to choose to adopt or reject, but as toyboxes full of trinkets. I can take whatever trinkets I like. I don't have to take the ones I hate. If I hate all of the toys in a box, I can just close the box. If I like only some of them but hate others, I don't have to bring the whole box with me. I can put them back in the box if I don't want them one day, and I can take them back out if I want them again later. I can play with the toys and paint the toys and mash the toys together and experiment with the toys and break the toys and cherish the toys at my leisure. And I can buy them from elsewhere, or even make my own, if I want more toys but can't find them in the toyboxes provided.

You are under no obligation to follow the rules of gender. You are under no obligation to pick an entire set of traits and stick with it forever. You are under no obligation to avoid things that sound contradictory to others who don't understand what you're doing. You can be a girl who uses he/him pronouns and takes T. You can be a boy all the time except on Tuesday at 5pm when you become a girl for a little while. You can wear a dress with your waistcoat and a big pink bow with your big curly mustache and give yourself it/its pronouns and be a lesbian and a gay man at the same time. You can decide you hate all of this shit and throw it all out the window, and you can be any of these things sometimes and something else later. The list goes on. There is absolutely nothing stopping you. There are no rules. You can be a gender scavenger. Try it out and see how you feel.

[zitrus-indigo]

🤯

[vruba]

“I don’t like this expression “First World problems.” It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn’t disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.”

— Teju Cole  (via feminizt)

[qvarr]

This piece has been rotting in my art folder for months now and I finally figured out how I Wanted to color/render Dinraal.

I want to make a piece for each of the dragons, so consider this part 1 of the set.

[autiebiographical]

Whenever I see people talking about how autism is the next step in evolution, it's almost always said by aspie supremacists. They don't just see allistics as lesser, they see other autistics as lesser as well. If they deem you not "high functioning" enough, you're worthless. I don't think it's a coincidence that they hold onto the label of Asperger's.

[autiebiographical]

Listing Elon Musk as a good example of successful autistics is an immediate red flag for me. The man's a massive piece of crap, and the only reason he hasn't completely failed in life is because his safety net is infinite. Let's not praise someone who's objectively worked towards making the world a worse place.

[digitaldogpark]

Brightheart has a reminder for you

[thepromiscuousfinger]

[that-1-url]

how do I bring up to my professor that her rubric for our final presentations is ableist as fuck?

"Maintains eye contact"

"Stands still"

"Avoids fidgeting"

"Makes expressive facial expressions"

"Avoids rocking or swaying"

like??? I'm autistic. I have ADHD. I have blunted affect and literally cannot Stand Still. eye contact hurts. I can understand where you're coming from but what you are asking of me is physically impossible and completely unfair to take points off for

[wanderingmind867]

The Unfairness of College being so Different from High School:

College stresses me out whenever I think about it. More specifically, whenever I think about the changes and differences between College and High School, my stress levels get even worse than they normally are. Have you ever felt nauseous and sick, your stomach turning into a veritable pretzel knot because of stress and anxiety? I've felt that, and I hate it. Nobody ever seems to talk about how stressful and unfair it all is, though, so i have taken it upon myself to write this. I just want to spread awareness of these systemic problems, because someone needs to say something. I will explain why i find college so unfair and hard to transition to. Why this whole system feels discriminatory towards people like me, who live for routine and consistency. And hopefully by the time i'm done writing all this, people will understand where i'm coming from whenever I say I dread leaving High School for College. I really do dread it, to the point where thinking about leaving high school makes me super emotional and volatile. This place has become a safe space for me. Asking me to give that up is unfair. So already we can see a pattern of unfairness. And trust me: it only gets worse from here. Much, much worse.

First off, let's talk about how College only ever focuses in on one subject. This isn't my biggest complaint, but that's why we're starting here. We're going to work our way up. But this is still a pretty big change, and it's one that I find absolutely ridiculous. In elementary school you learn about multiple subjects. In high school you learn about multiple subjects. But in college you have to pick a topic of specialization!? That's idiotic, especially since they never prepare elementary or high schoolers for this decision. They just throw them to the wolves and expect them to know what to do. But what if i don't know how to specialize and tie myself to one thing? For that matter, what if I simply don't want to tie myself down like that? I don't like being tied down and boxed in like that. I have tons of interests. Why can't I learn history, photography and so much more all during one semester or whatever? I can do that here in high school. Why can't I do it in College!? It's unfair. It's all probably because they want to train you to work for the job market, which is saying it all. I'll explain more later, but a jaded and bitter part of me feels like college isn't designed to provide learning. It's just designed to shovel more and more people into the stifling and cruel world of work. It's something we desperately need to change, because it shows some sick priorities on behalf of the founders of these institutions.

Next, we have to talk about how they seem to expect people to just accept the change without any fuss. They don't seem to take into account people like me. People who've been going to school since they were four. People who've become enamoured with the consistency and the routine. Personally, I like routine. I like that school gives me routine. It gives me something to base my weekdays around. A place where I can read and learn and feel some sense of contentment with my lot in life. But college does not feel like a comforting place where I can spend my hours reading and learning. The hours are inconsistent and routine is a dead concept. It feels like a trap designed only to lead people into the workforce. It doesn't feel as comforting and positive. It feels purely professional, and I really do despise that. It feels like yet more deprivation of that which I love, the comfortable stability of school. They strip me of things I love, and they don't care. "They" is a generic term to denote society at large, not any one person. What I mean is that the collective of society has no need for people like me, who resist change and don't want to work or leave behind the familiar. I'm an outlier, and this system society has built over centuries simply seems to have no place for me.

There's more than just these two problems, though. I have two more major problems to discuss, each one is good for it's own seperate paragraph. But before I get to them, I think i'll use this paragraph as a sort of lightning round. I'll discuss all the changes and stressors and unfair things that I hate, but that I don't have time to discuss in full detail (because we'd be here all day and all night if i discussed every stressful and unfair thing i'm dealing with). Some of these unfair things include: the lack of warning about the upcoming changes (they never discuss them until the very last year of high school, if then), the lack of processing time afforded to people, the fact that college seems to rely way more on independence and self reliance, the fact that school years are shorter, less well rounded and sometimes much bigger in terms of class sizes, the fact that there's no consistent routine and schedule like there is in high school, the fact that there's night courses (some of which go till ten at night), and so, so many others. Those were just five to six problems in this lightning round paragraph, but there's still so much to discuss. For example, we now have to discuss my two biggest stressors. I'll start in on them in my next paragraph.

One of my biggest stressors is the fear that I'll never be able to read again after leaving high school. This is a bit of a more personal problem of mine, but it's one that really makes me miserable to think about sometimes. I only ever seem capable of reading in a school setting. I started reading in school way back in grade one or grade two. I brought a novel to school, and I read it cover to cover. Since then, school has been my safe space for reading. I read online at home, true, but it's not the same. Only in school do I read physical books. I read in elementary school, now I read in high school. When I was doing online schooling, I never read my physical books. And now that high school is ending permanently for me, I'm terrified I'll never read my physical books ever again. Because the college library didn't seem like a super comfortable place. Half the books seemed to be digital in nature. I really didn't like seeing that when my dad and I went for a tour of the college. All it did was help convince me that I'll probably never read again should I leave high school. And I really, really hate that feeling of fear and dread it brings out in me. I'm trying to go every single day for the rest of this school year, because I want to get the most out of my reading. In case I never read a physical book again, I want to get everything I can out of it.

Finally, my biggest example of unfairness in regards to transferring from high school to college (or university, for that matter), is the cruel social and societal obsession with going to college or university. They mark it as some sort of sign of skill and intelligence. If you don't go into some form of post secondary education, you can't amount to anything. They build it up like it's the most important thing in the world, and you're a failure if you can't make it. It's unfair, especially since college/university seems designed to be failed by people like me. People who get overwhelmed by large crowds of people, people who need guidance and occasional check-ins to stay on task. People who want to learn about more than one subject. People who like routine above all. People who have disabilities of any kind. These big buildings that feel social and independent and massive and stressful and just…impossible to handle. If I can't handle college and I then can't handle the workforce, society will abandon me like i'm a derelict. They have no use for those who can't or won't work. They have no desire to help "freeloaders (which is no doubt what they consider me)." They would leave me alone in my own suffering if I don't manage to fit in. I know that. And that alone makes my blood boil and my panic intensify and my stress become ever more strong each new day. I oscillate between depression, fear, rage and bitterness. Maybe apathy on a good day. But usually the core four are the ones I mentioned above.

In summation, College is an unfair thing. It's a system designed to shove people into little boxes, all ready and prepared for the working world. If you don't want to work, they don't really want you. If you struggle with routine changes, they're probably gonna expect you to just deal and get over it. They do not care about the needs of people like me. They only care about those who fit in their boxes. I'm not saying everyone at college is bad, but I am saying this archaic system is broken and decrepit and desperately in need of repair. College should be free, it should be an extension of elementary school and high school, and it should be something that you can continue going to for as long as you want. That's the college I want to see exist. That is the college that desperately needs to exist. If it did, I honestly think it would make this whole world a slightly better place.

If they'd even just let me come to High School for the rest of my life, I would accept that offer eagerly. I could be a 30 year old sitting in a high school library reading, and I would be happy. Legitimately. Why should I be forced to change my life, when the change might make my life worse? It's not like I'd ever do anything improper at High School. Why must they deprive me of something I value!? If it's because of my age, that feels discriminatory and unfair. If it's because they want me to just go into the workforce, that's also horrible. All of this is horrible, and I hate that they want me to act like it isn't. This system is unfair, it's punishing, and it's just all around cruel.

[dailylaughmania]

The Academic Paralysis Experience™

that specific brand of psychological warfare where you’re physically rotting on the couch but your brain is running a 4K simulation of your academic downfall. you’re not resting. you’re not working. you’re just existing in a high-stakes limbo where the guilt is heavy and the vibes are rancid. it’s the "i have so much to do that i’ve decided to do absolutely nothing and suffer about it" lifestyle. 10/10 do not recommend, yet here we are.

reblog if you’re currently in the trenches of executive dysfunction or just need a digital hug. follow for more relatable chaos and academic burnout memes.

[omgthatdress]

Decided to take this on as a regular post instead of just in the replies because MAN this is a big set of questions.

Looking back on the horrible, horrible, horrible misadventure that was my attempt at college, I've come to realize a few things:

No school is going to come out and straight up say "We're actually a shit school for neurodiverse students so you should consider applying elsewhere." For real I thought the school I went to was absurdly perfect, perfect, perfect until it absolutely fucking wasn't. So don't hate yourself if it all turns out to be a nightmare, you were trying to succeed in a profoundly ableist system that was meant to weed out and crush people like us.

The understanding of ADHD and the availability of support for ADHD has come A LONG WAY since I was making my attempt at college, and I really wish I knew then what I know now about ADHD. For real if I'd have simply had the phrase "executive dysfunction" to use, shit would have been SO MUCH easier for me.

I started regularly seeing a therapist a few years ago and boy howdy do I wish I had one when I was in college. Like I might have actually made it through if I had someone I could talk to once a week and figure out how to do things in ways that worked for me. Most schools will have councilors or a student support center but in my experience (this was late 2000s early 2010s) they fucking suck. All they offered was quick fix shit like "Do you need more time to take tests?" when I was really good at taking tests and regularly relied on taking tests to save my ass and what I needed was long-term, structural support to figure out how to navigate a system that was deeply ADHD-hostile. Nowadays you can schedule e-appointments with a private therapist who's actually familiar with ADHD support, and that is the one major major major thing that I think would have actually helped me survive college. Yes, it requires health insurance and money. There are no easy universal solutions, unfortunately.

Get this book, read it, use the fuck out of it. It will save your life.

The biggest piece of advice I could give you is find your thing. That is, the one enduring subject you love forever and could write papers on for fucking ever and never get bored with it. For me, it was fashion history, and I didn't find it until I was well out of the morass of college.

Museums were my source of education because they have absolutely massive and comprehensive collections of historic fashion and I was able to make a Tumblr about it. For real OMG!ThatDress! was my education. Going to school had been like learning in 2D, it went from the big stuff inward, and had a bunch of names, dates, and events and black-and-white themes and connections. Looking through fashion was learning in 3D. I could take small things outward, see the patterns and make connections and conclusions on my own, and more than that, I could approach it entirely on my own terms and make my own understanding. There were no expectations and no pressure, just raw pleasure. I was actually having fun.

But, however, it didn't give me a history degree and it wasn't until this year that an opportunity to use my fashion education to earn money without said degree actually opened up. It's not ideal, but it's not hopeless, either. Sometimes you just have to find shit on your own.