
Stryxnine Amity Pulsatrix
(30/🇨🇦/Saskatchewan)
NACRS Organizer
esports broadcast producer
plural, autistic, adhd
disability & queer activist
hobbyist archival researcher
bylines in Traxion.gg
loves @kadybat and @traumagotchi and @kaceydotme
i teared up a little reading this because wow... yeah i relate to all of this so strongly. i even think my executive dysfunction problems also started in grade 5 too. just suddenly stopped being able to do homework.
since July of this year in particular, i have just completely stopped being able to do most things. this happens to me a lot, i get into "funks". i get into a Funk and everything becomes extremely hard to do. and it's like... idk. comforting to know that i'm not alone. i've also never been able to hold down a "real job" for very long because at some point, my brain just falls apart and stops being able to do it. i either get so stressed out by the workload i quit and have a breakdown or i'm fired. especially full time jobs, i never last in those long. i brought all this up with my current doctor, who i get the sense he just straight up doesnt like me. but yea i told him all this and he said "well, there's no cure for low motivation". it made me feel completely alone
but reading your post i feel like i really do have ADHD on top of the Other Stuff and that it's Bad and that i'm not the only one like this. i wish i had more in the way of answers but i can at least give you some solidarity <3
god, it like. i hope this doesn't sound like im talking about schadenfreude because holy shit i know all of that experience and it hurts, but it feels good to know im not some unique form of "broken brain." that like, this is a thing that can happen. but, i feel it's important to note that like. after a conversation with kata, my girlfriend who is autistic and is also incredibly smart about Bad Brain Shit, smart enough to be the chairperson of discord's disabilities employee resource group, and she's like. pretty damn confident i also have autism. like she 'clocked' me as an autistic when she met me. and like, that conversation got sparked out of a realization that i talk to myself a lot, like whenever i get the chance, and that i like conversations and meeting new people only in very specific situations, and the reason i felt i might not be autistic was because i was interpreting the talking to myself and the meeting new people and being in social situations as... not how i actually felt. because i kept ignoring how easy it was for me to feel overwhelmed in a conversation, ignored how im so terrified of not knowing anything about the people i might meet that i just dont go to social functions at the public library or whatever, and ignored how i wasn't talking to myself "because it helps me think better" but because i genuinely liked talking to myself.
and i live with my parents, who aren't outwardly abusive but are ignorant at best and frustrating to live with, and im like 90% confident my dad has undiagnosed autism while my mom probably has ADHD, and there's some scientific basis to the idea that autism and ADHD may be linked to genetics, like, hereditary shit. so. you know, like. we might be too damn hard on ourselves. i know im too hard on myself because i keep thinking "no ADHD can't get this bad right" and like, it can. but it can also be exacerbated by autism, and ADHD & autism are both found to be present in anywhere from like 30 to 80 percent of people. so, shit. im 100% certain i have both, so. maybe you have both.
really relatable, though it sounds like I've managed to claw my way out of holes you haven't. Shorthand notes when they existed, yup, extreme difficulty with homework (lots of crying and meltdowns on my part, to eventually refusing to do more than a certain amount of homework out of self-preservation). My problems started a little earlier than yours, during a lot of turmoil because of my parent's divorce, being passed around between states year to year, and when that finally settled down, my father and both grandfathers all died in the same summer. That one was a slow burn, I was staying with my mom primarily already, and I'd never been that close to any of them, but knowing they were around somewhere was an identity anchor that I never realized I needed. Knowing I'd never hear the rest of their stories, or even hear the ones I already knew again, knowing they're all circling the drain of my leaky memory, and I could never get them back...it was rough during a time in my life that I really valued stability.
I complained hard enough that I switched schools after 7th grade, mostly due to a dispute with my art teacher, of all things, lol, visual arts have a special way of triggering my executive dysfunction to this day. I'm terrible at the initial spark of creation, I need a seed crystal that naturally grows into a framework if I'm going to get anything out of my head. Visual arts don't work anything like that for me. It doesn't help that my imagination doesn't exactly have visuals more than vague impressions of color.
I managed to pull myself together and pull off a fairly solid 10th and 11th grade. 12th I was chafing again...the schoolwork wasn't the main reason (tho it didn't help), it was just an incompatible environment (conservative Catholicism when I was quickly becoming a socialist atheist), one I'd grown out of tolerating. If the school year was a month or two longer I would have gotten in serious enough trouble that they'd consider expelling me instead of graduating me.
and I flunked out of college. I still don't know what to say. I tested well, got into a college just short of ivy league, and it was never under control from the moment I got there. Everything was just slipping out of my grasp until the whole thing did. Oddly, I miss it. Even if it felt like everything was on an incline, rolling away from me the second I looked away, in some ways I've never felt more comfortable or fulfilled. And I don't think it's likely I ever will feel like that again.
My career path was shot. It was always obvious what I'd be doing...until it wasn't an option anymore. I moved back in with my mom shooting resumes out everywhere hoping, so much, that I could claw my way back in...but no dice. My uncle suggested I needed a push. I resented that suggestion and pushed myself, moved in with a high school buddy in a different state, got the shittiest version of a job that if you kinda squinted almost looked like something I once dreamed of...but I held onto it until the business was failing bad enough to need to fire me. I was lost for a few months, bleeding money, until a family friend of my high school buddy was looking for an assistant and my name came up, and I've held onto that job for just about 4 years now, even though that person has since passed away.
What's my life like in full time jobs? If I don't write anything down, I forget it. I take two hour long lunches, show up an hour late...if I hadn't proven myself essential when things get tough no traditional business person would tolerate me haha. I have very little motivation, half ass everything, and it's just due to how bright I can be that my half ass (honestly slipping towards quarter ass at this point) is better than anyone else around here's full ass lol.
that gives me so much hope. and thats the thing too, is that when i whole ass something nobody holds a candle to me. its just not something to be expected, its just something i am capable of sometimes. like, gotta half ass for a while to build meter then unleash the finisher combo button combination thing. idk i dont play fighting games lmao
I relate to this muchly. Not terribly certain what to say though. I'm not too knowledgeable about ADHD so who knows if I have that, I'd assume not, but I self-diagnose with autism too. I am extremely stuck in life, wasting away. It's not even that things necessarily get worse, it's that being subjected to it for so long without improvement combined with a mounting pressure to change things - something which I cannot manage else I already would have - makes it somehow even more intolerable with every passing day.
Had a super easy job opportunity through nepotism once and it was fairly exciting, I have immense trouble with doing any 'societal work' and have no resource with which to get decent help so this was my first and only opportunity. Showed up for the first day and it was unbearable, did a second and didn't change my mind at all. One of the worst experiences of my life, which is saying a lot. So who knows what I'm supposed to do. I don't think I'm void of value or talent at all, quite the opposite, I just don't have the emotional reserves to put myself into that kind of environment consistently for long hours without completely breaking down.
It's so thoroughly dreadful. I have very few good things, it's just art (consumption and creation) and friends. I'm emotionally volatile because I'm either experiencing abject misery, dissociation, or sincere joy - the latter is always bittersweet because the moment I stop feeling happy, the misery instantly returns and stings even more because I'd been put into an emotional state.
I've no answers and no hope. Maybe things will improve someday, I don't know. Hopefully things eventually work out for you, if nothing else.
im tryin to make things work. just gonna take time. but things'll be better for both of us, somehow. shit cant be futile, i refuse to believe that life is just an endless stream of garbage. thanks for sharing, it helps knowing im not Uniquely Fucked Five Ways To Sunday ♡