@Social Justice Atheist – I’m sorry to hear about the useless school counselor. You sound like a great person and you remind me a bit of my younger brother. He has severe dyscalculia – he couldn’t read a clock until he was 11-12 (a round clock, I mean) and he had to have exemptions for the last two grades of high school math. It took him a lot of trouble to get into the CEGEP program he wanted (CEGEP = Quebec thing you do between high school and university). But he’s a great thinker and writer, and he’s doing excellently at age 25 in his first year in university (in another province – I miss him!). There, he’s learning another language basically from scratch and working on a novel. He’s also a feminist ally – won’t call himself a feminist because of being a man, he says – and a supporter of Bernie Sanders, despite being in the wrong country! So, I guess this is all to say that you don’t have to do certain life steps and particular times, or conform to other people’s idea of success, in order to do cool things.
@Viscaria – “When something didn’t come easy, it was a big hit to my self-esteem and my self-concept as a ‘smart person.'” – Same here. Sometimes I worry about being either smarter or stupider than the people around me – and it’s either one or the other, or both at once somehow – even though I know this is a bad way of thinking.
@Paradoxical Intention, if you’re around – #notallgraphicdesigners 🙂 I got the shirt I ordered with one of your designs, and it’s awesome! It’s the one with a pink winking pixel-person, and I ordered it on a white long-sleeved shirt with red sleeves. I’ll wear it to work tomorrow and if the snooty boss asks me about it, I’ll tell him his competition designed it 🙂 …No, I won’t. I won’t. I promise. I’ll be good.
Social Justice Atheist
8 years ago
@epitome of incomprehensibility
Your brothers sounds awesome. 🙂
Also, I too have a lot of trouble with reading non-digital clocks. I get the two hands mixed up all the time.
My problem is reading maps, or more specifically, connecting maps to actual directions. Spatial awareness is just not my thing, unless I’m somewhere I’ve been often. I also have ADHD and have trouble organizing myself time-wise. (Which reminds me, it’s past midnight here, so goodnight!)
Imaginary Petal
8 years ago
Ughhhh. I just lost all my progress in Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 since it was released in September, due to my computer crashing while playing. Now I have a “corrupted save file” and it doesn’t seem like I can do anything about it. 6 months wasted. :/
kupo
8 years ago
@IP (btw, do you have a preferred short name? IP, Petal, something else?)
That’s the worst feeling. It takes me at least six months to even consider picking up a game again if my save data is lost. I love that a lot of the time you have a cloud backup now, but unfortunately that isn’t always the case.
@epitome
@Viscaria – “When something didn’t come easy, it was a big hit to my self-esteem and my self-concept as a ‘smart person.’” – Same here. Sometimes I worry about being either smarter or stupider than the people around me – and it’s either one or the other, or both at once somehow – even though I know this is a bad way of thinking.
I’m the same way. Add to that some stereotype threat and it’s often paralyzing.
Imaginary Petal
8 years ago
@kupo
“Petal” is fine. 🙂
Stories
8 years ago
I’ve been lurking in this community for a long time, which is what I generally do on the internets because I’m sensitive, possibly overly so, and when people bite I usually leave–and I don’t want to leave here!
Anyway a couple of the posts here just made me want to reach out, so others first and then I’ll infodump about me me meeeeeeee…
@SJA and winter sky, I so feel for you both. I’ve been there. For me the answer was to a) stop listening to other people who told me depression was my fault and I just needed to exercise or look on the bright side or whatever, and b) get on medication. Depression is a real thing and honestly I think they ought to change the name, because I don’t think people take it seriously these days, and also mine tends to manifest in a very physical way with pain and exhaustion, so I view it as a full-on physical illness. When I was diagnosed (in the stone age, 1993) I got a LOT of shit for taking medication, people talking about “happy pills” and that, but I’d tried literally everything non-pharm before breaking down in the doctor’s office, and that’s when I said “fuck them, this works.” I had a hard time with side effects at first, but they leveled off. It was also hard when the doctor told me I’d be on them probably for the rest of my life, but if it’s take pills or be sick, I’ll take the pills. I don’t know what will work for you, but I seriously hope you find it.
@Orion, I was tagged as Gifted and did Gifted programs and it was freaking GREAT until 6th grade. I’m not sure but I suspect this was when my depression and ADHD (formally diagnosed years later) kicked in. Around 6th grade I kind of just stopped caring. My parents made jokes about me getting interested in boys at this time but it wasn’t that, it was just that none of it seemed important anymore. Looking back it seems they should have looked into it when their super-high achiever turned underachiever almost overnight, but they had their own problems at that time, so I can’t blame them. They put me in honors classes on the basis of test scores in junior high, but then in high school I discovered I could opt out of that, so I did. I was bored out of my mind in high school and wound up doing a program where I could go at my own pace, and finished up right quick with a diploma because I am a snob and did not want a GED. I have Issues with education to this day and I’m glad my kid had no problems in that area (he’s 24 and working on his master’s in philosophy and I could not be more proud).
Warning: Death stuff and grief and powerful sadness. Also brutal honesty and stuff I haven’t really told anyone.
Me: Things are a little overwhelming for me and have been for the past while. My oldest boy, like I said, is in grad school and he’s wonderful. We have a weird relationship, I was 19 when he was born and I feel like we kind of grew up together, but we love each other and sometimes I think we are the same person (until he turns into Mister Spock) and I love him fiercely. His father, not so wonderful, but he was pretty and could play flamenco guitar like a boss and I fell hard. He wasn’t very nice to me after the reality of babies hit, we got divorced, and he tried like hell to take the kid away from me but never quite succeeded.
My second boy died of SIDS at 3 months old; it was fucking awful and I basically stayed drunk for a year. His father was a man I loved more deeply than I ever could have imagined and we were together for 15 years when he was diagnosed with leukemia, then suddenly took a fall and had a brain hemorrhage. The doctors said he wasn’t coming back, and I kept the pact we’d made, and pulled the plug. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and still haunts me. A therapist told me I had PTSD from both of those incidents, which is probably true. After he died, I was pretty lost, and really afraid of men in general without him there to protect me (born in the 70s, raised fundie, it’s complicated); fortunately I’ve got some excellent male friends who helped me get through that.
Now, after moving five zillion times, I live with a dear friend in her mother’s house; mom has Alzheimer’s and is unable to walk or take care of herself, so I do it. When my own mother was sick, she was in Cali and I couldn’t do anything for her, so I’m glad to have this opportunity. I work days (at home, so I can still step and fetch for mom), roomie works nights, and really the only complication is that the house (which is very nice) is kind of hoarded out. After eight months I’ve made very little progress in cleaning up, but it wears on me sometimes.
I was recently diagnosed with a severe vitamin D deficiency and am supplementing to get it back up, but it’s sloooooooow going and I’m exhausted and hurt all the time. Recently my insurance changed and the ADD med I’ve been on for years became prohibitively expensive, but my GP is not willing to prescribe anything else, so off I go to the psychiatrist later this month. Been unmedicated as far as ADD since January and my work is suffering — I get paid on production and I’m not making dick. Roomie is willing to support me in the meantime but I’ve always been really good at my job and it goes hard to be always under quota and having mistakes coming back.
Also, this is a very petty gripe, but with all the vitamins the GP put me on plus my regular medicine I am now taking 11 pills a day and that is too many, but I don’t see anything that can be done about it.
I write fiction (hence my name) and am just about dying to get back to it; between the scatterbrain and the fatigue, I have about a million stories stuck in my head and I would really like to get them out on paper (well, computer). I can’t help crafting them in my brain, no matter what’s going on, LOL.
I really enjoy this blog. My family’s polite term is that I march to the beat of my own drum and since I’ve been reading here they kind of think I’ve gone overboard with the feminism, but I think what they don’t realize is that I never before had language to explain the things that have been pissing me off since I was five. LOL.
Thanks to David and all the commenters here. I may not post again, but I’ll definitely be here reading and appreciating.
ETA: I have read the welcome packet and comments policy and I really hope I haven’t said anything offensive; if so, it was unintentional and I’m very sorry.
We Hunted The Mammoth
Me again.
@Social Justice Atheist – I’m sorry to hear about the useless school counselor. You sound like a great person and you remind me a bit of my younger brother. He has severe dyscalculia – he couldn’t read a clock until he was 11-12 (a round clock, I mean) and he had to have exemptions for the last two grades of high school math. It took him a lot of trouble to get into the CEGEP program he wanted (CEGEP = Quebec thing you do between high school and university). But he’s a great thinker and writer, and he’s doing excellently at age 25 in his first year in university (in another province – I miss him!). There, he’s learning another language basically from scratch and working on a novel. He’s also a feminist ally – won’t call himself a feminist because of being a man, he says – and a supporter of Bernie Sanders, despite being in the wrong country! So, I guess this is all to say that you don’t have to do certain life steps and particular times, or conform to other people’s idea of success, in order to do cool things.
@Viscaria – “When something didn’t come easy, it was a big hit to my self-esteem and my self-concept as a ‘smart person.'” – Same here. Sometimes I worry about being either smarter or stupider than the people around me – and it’s either one or the other, or both at once somehow – even though I know this is a bad way of thinking.
@Paradoxical Intention, if you’re around – #notallgraphicdesigners 🙂 I got the shirt I ordered with one of your designs, and it’s awesome! It’s the one with a pink winking pixel-person, and I ordered it on a white long-sleeved shirt with red sleeves. I’ll wear it to work tomorrow and if the snooty boss asks me about it, I’ll tell him his competition designed it 🙂 …No, I won’t. I won’t. I promise. I’ll be good.
@epitome of incomprehensibility
Your brothers sounds awesome. 🙂
Also, I too have a lot of trouble with reading non-digital clocks. I get the two hands mixed up all the time.
Oh, thanks! 🙂
My problem is reading maps, or more specifically, connecting maps to actual directions. Spatial awareness is just not my thing, unless I’m somewhere I’ve been often. I also have ADHD and have trouble organizing myself time-wise. (Which reminds me, it’s past midnight here, so goodnight!)
Ughhhh. I just lost all my progress in Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 since it was released in September, due to my computer crashing while playing. Now I have a “corrupted save file” and it doesn’t seem like I can do anything about it. 6 months wasted. :/
@IP (btw, do you have a preferred short name? IP, Petal, something else?)
That’s the worst feeling. It takes me at least six months to even consider picking up a game again if my save data is lost. I love that a lot of the time you have a cloud backup now, but unfortunately that isn’t always the case.
@epitome
I’m the same way. Add to that some stereotype threat and it’s often paralyzing.
@kupo
“Petal” is fine. 🙂
I’ve been lurking in this community for a long time, which is what I generally do on the internets because I’m sensitive, possibly overly so, and when people bite I usually leave–and I don’t want to leave here!
Anyway a couple of the posts here just made me want to reach out, so others first and then I’ll infodump about me me meeeeeeee…
@SJA and winter sky, I so feel for you both. I’ve been there. For me the answer was to a) stop listening to other people who told me depression was my fault and I just needed to exercise or look on the bright side or whatever, and b) get on medication. Depression is a real thing and honestly I think they ought to change the name, because I don’t think people take it seriously these days, and also mine tends to manifest in a very physical way with pain and exhaustion, so I view it as a full-on physical illness. When I was diagnosed (in the stone age, 1993) I got a LOT of shit for taking medication, people talking about “happy pills” and that, but I’d tried literally everything non-pharm before breaking down in the doctor’s office, and that’s when I said “fuck them, this works.” I had a hard time with side effects at first, but they leveled off. It was also hard when the doctor told me I’d be on them probably for the rest of my life, but if it’s take pills or be sick, I’ll take the pills. I don’t know what will work for you, but I seriously hope you find it.
@Orion, I was tagged as Gifted and did Gifted programs and it was freaking GREAT until 6th grade. I’m not sure but I suspect this was when my depression and ADHD (formally diagnosed years later) kicked in. Around 6th grade I kind of just stopped caring. My parents made jokes about me getting interested in boys at this time but it wasn’t that, it was just that none of it seemed important anymore. Looking back it seems they should have looked into it when their super-high achiever turned underachiever almost overnight, but they had their own problems at that time, so I can’t blame them. They put me in honors classes on the basis of test scores in junior high, but then in high school I discovered I could opt out of that, so I did. I was bored out of my mind in high school and wound up doing a program where I could go at my own pace, and finished up right quick with a diploma because I am a snob and did not want a GED. I have Issues with education to this day and I’m glad my kid had no problems in that area (he’s 24 and working on his master’s in philosophy and I could not be more proud).
Warning: Death stuff and grief and powerful sadness. Also brutal honesty and stuff I haven’t really told anyone.
Me: Things are a little overwhelming for me and have been for the past while. My oldest boy, like I said, is in grad school and he’s wonderful. We have a weird relationship, I was 19 when he was born and I feel like we kind of grew up together, but we love each other and sometimes I think we are the same person (until he turns into Mister Spock) and I love him fiercely. His father, not so wonderful, but he was pretty and could play flamenco guitar like a boss and I fell hard. He wasn’t very nice to me after the reality of babies hit, we got divorced, and he tried like hell to take the kid away from me but never quite succeeded.
My second boy died of SIDS at 3 months old; it was fucking awful and I basically stayed drunk for a year. His father was a man I loved more deeply than I ever could have imagined and we were together for 15 years when he was diagnosed with leukemia, then suddenly took a fall and had a brain hemorrhage. The doctors said he wasn’t coming back, and I kept the pact we’d made, and pulled the plug. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and still haunts me. A therapist told me I had PTSD from both of those incidents, which is probably true. After he died, I was pretty lost, and really afraid of men in general without him there to protect me (born in the 70s, raised fundie, it’s complicated); fortunately I’ve got some excellent male friends who helped me get through that.
Now, after moving five zillion times, I live with a dear friend in her mother’s house; mom has Alzheimer’s and is unable to walk or take care of herself, so I do it. When my own mother was sick, she was in Cali and I couldn’t do anything for her, so I’m glad to have this opportunity. I work days (at home, so I can still step and fetch for mom), roomie works nights, and really the only complication is that the house (which is very nice) is kind of hoarded out. After eight months I’ve made very little progress in cleaning up, but it wears on me sometimes.
I was recently diagnosed with a severe vitamin D deficiency and am supplementing to get it back up, but it’s sloooooooow going and I’m exhausted and hurt all the time. Recently my insurance changed and the ADD med I’ve been on for years became prohibitively expensive, but my GP is not willing to prescribe anything else, so off I go to the psychiatrist later this month. Been unmedicated as far as ADD since January and my work is suffering — I get paid on production and I’m not making dick. Roomie is willing to support me in the meantime but I’ve always been really good at my job and it goes hard to be always under quota and having mistakes coming back.
Also, this is a very petty gripe, but with all the vitamins the GP put me on plus my regular medicine I am now taking 11 pills a day and that is too many, but I don’t see anything that can be done about it.
I write fiction (hence my name) and am just about dying to get back to it; between the scatterbrain and the fatigue, I have about a million stories stuck in my head and I would really like to get them out on paper (well, computer). I can’t help crafting them in my brain, no matter what’s going on, LOL.
I really enjoy this blog. My family’s polite term is that I march to the beat of my own drum and since I’ve been reading here they kind of think I’ve gone overboard with the feminism, but I think what they don’t realize is that I never before had language to explain the things that have been pissing me off since I was five. LOL.
Thanks to David and all the commenters here. I may not post again, but I’ll definitely be here reading and appreciating.
ETA: I have read the welcome packet and comments policy and I really hope I haven’t said anything offensive; if so, it was unintentional and I’m very sorry.