Link to my art sideblog if you’re interested :)
before i was a faggot or a tranny or an autist i was weird and surprisingly just being weird is enough to make people treat you like all of the above
Spicy-brained friends, I would like to propose an update to the very useful ‘if you hate everyone, eat, if everyone hates you, sleep, and if you hate yourself, shower’ mantra to live by
Have you suddenly become a petty, hateful little gremlin who thinks people should face the firing squad for (checks notes) leaving teabags on the counter, breathing loudly, or daring to exist in the same space as you? Perhaps mundane and reasonable requests like ‘hey, we agreed to hang out now, let’s hang out’ make you want to scream and move to a yurt in the woods.
You. Are. Overstimulated.
People talk a lot about being overstimulated, and the physical/mental effects of it. What I haven’t seen is people talking about what it does emotionally, and it took me an embarassingly long time to link up those nitpicky, resentful emotions with the state of overstimulation/meltdown/shutdown.
These feelings do not mean that you’re a bad person! They probably aren’t how you actually feel about the people around you. They probably do mean that your nervous system is at its absolute limit and any request/demand/stimulus is Too Much and taking you into fight or flight territory.
Go lie down in a dark room for an hour, or find somewhere safe and familiar to stim for a bit. If it’s happening a lot, schedule yourself regular low-stimulation shutdown time
Signed: someone who moved in with their nearest and dearest only to have a massive crisis of faith about Suddenly Hating All of Them. I don’t hate them, it’s just overstimulating living with people. If I can spare anyone else a similar 9 months of suspecting that they may actually be a bit of a shit person, then this post is worth it!
A fun theory
In this brilliant post, op shows how Jane Prentiss encounters and mentions all 14 Fears, describing them as though she deeply understands them all from within her corrupted lens. Op calls it an early hint in the narrative to the Fears and their role in the world but I want to posit an in-world theory.
I think that part of the reason the Web sent a spider to cause Jon to break the wall and lead Jane to act earlier than she wanted was because Jane's rudimentary ritual to bring the Corruption to the world (through the circle of worms which Tim later found) would have actually worked in bringing all the Fears because Jane was already marked by all of them and was now in a place of power (the tunnels under the institute) and ready to incubate and create a corruption-based apocalypse.
This is something that the Web did not plan for and would not be able to control, because, as Jon said in episode 152, "what did Elias call it? – Filth. I don’t think it really plans much. It just starts to grow wherever it can get a foothold, and, if no one stamps it out in time… game over." The Web has no control over a thing that does plan and had to "stamp it out" before it caused a "game over" by derailing all its schemes of a controlled eyepocalypse, ruled by its puppets (Jon and Jonah).
Add the approximate number in the tags!! If you're wondering if something counts, drop a comment!
What that thang do?
God knows, I shudder to say.
i do not know the origin of this image but i am fucking obsessed with it
Speaking of therapy, I say, as though we're old friends, and you're not a stranger trapped in this metaphorical elevator with me and you can hear the suspension wires starting to fray.
I've been doing a lot of work recently that's focused on imposter syndrome and the feeling that no matter how well or how much I do, I'm not good enough. That I'm somehow tricking everyone into thinking my work is actually good.
Some days it's a minor niggle in my head that I can gentle and soothe with logic and affirmations. Or smother, depending on the mood. Other times it's loud and all-consuming and the mental anguish it causes me is so real I can feel it twitching in my muscles. This desperate fight-or-flight instinct with nowhere to go and nothing to fight but myself.
Anyway, because I'm several types of Mentally Unwell™, I was switching between workshop sheets ahead of next week. Filling in different forms. (Trying to get a good grade in therapy) And I got my "recognize your harmful ADHD coping mechanisms" worksheet mixed in with the "you're not actually lying to people, you just feel like you are because your brain is full of weasels" worksheet, and seeing them side by side made something go topsy turvy in my head, and I just had to sit and breathe for a couple of minutes until the urge to scream passed. Because it clicked, it all suddenly clicked.
The reason the imposter syndrome workshops and therapy sessions aren't sticking was because I do routinely trick people into thinking I'm someone I'm not.
Because I'm masking my ADHD for their convenience.
I've always known there was something wrong with me. My neurotypical peers made it abundantly clear I didn't fit in or was failing in some way I couldn't see nor remedy, no matter how hard I tried.
So I compressed myself into a workaholic box of hyper-competence in the hopes they'd stop noticing the flaws and exploit like me instead. And then subsequently lived with the daily fear that if they looked too close, they'd realize I'm a monumental fuck up with enough personal baggage to block the Suez Canal.
If you ever need someone to burn themselves to ashes for your comfort and convenience, I'm your gal.
Or I used to. Until I had a bit of a breakdown, and the rubber band holding my brain together snapped and pinged off into the stratosphere, never to be seen again.
Unfortunately, the trauma of living like that didn't also fuck off and instead left a gaping maw where my personality ought to be, so now I get to deal with that aftermath.
And it's that aftermath that's affecting the imposter syndrome shit. Because yes, I am hyper-competent and good at what I do-- but it doesn't feel real because that is how I mask.
And the truly frustrating thing is I am good at what I do. I am not pretending. I worked hard to be good at this. It just feels like I'm dicking around because 90% of my personality turns out to be trauma masquerading as humor in a trenchcoat, and having people genuinely like something weird I'm doing is so foreign my brain has decided it's just another form of masking.
I'm pretending to be a good author so people will think I'm a good author, and my brain thinks we are in Danger of being found out. We are in Danger, and writing is Dangerous because then people will know I'm Weird and not whatever palatable version I've presented myself as for their NT sensibilities.
Like the neurotic vampire with a raging praise kink wasn't an obvious giveaway.
Anyway. I got nothing else. Thanks for listening.
I'm going to go be very normal in another room and not stare into the abyss of my own soul for a bit.
I brought this post up with my ADHD therapist today (who also has ADHD), and she got so still that I thought our Zoom call had frozen.
Turns out she just needed to stare into her soul for a bit and it looked like this:
everything about this image so clearly dates it perfectly i feel like i’m examining the rings on a great and majestic oak tree
love to collect fake comments from social media based horror films
doodling on my paperback copy to make it a cool illustrated edition 🏃♀️
i've experienced popping and cracking in all of the above so i wanna know how normal this is
parents are so crazy because they can say the most fucked up shit to you when your brain is forming and it sets the tone for your whole adult mind set and then they forget about it the next day







