Pitri

one lesson life gave me was:

no matter how fundamentally and universally hated you think something is, there's always some individuals, communities and/or cultures who enjoy said thing.

the same opposition goes for things you assume everyone loves.

it's amazing how incredibly complex and diverse humans are.

If you're respectful to others, you're good.

Generally, I'm really careful about forming an opinion about people without knowing more about them. Each person deserves to be judged by their individual character and actions, not by the group they belong to.

who doesn’t want to be 100% a man or 100% a woman.

I'd go further and avoid any kind of "want to be" wording in explanations to people who can be really doubtful. Gender is who you are, not who you want to be. If you tell them "I want to be <other gender>", they might form some kind of "attack helicopter" opinion/joke. but if you tell them "I'm <gender> on the inside" or "despite my body, I'm actually <gender>", that leaves a lot less room for wrong interpretations.

"Someone who's gender identity neither aligns completely with man or woman" would be my rewording, in this case.

I tried to do my part and heavily restricted my visits to the site. I checked the state of my feed and user profiles a select few times but always left almost immediately.

I even redirected my reddit browser bookmark to a local website which acted as a warning wall, just to stop me from my subconsciously opening and browsing the site.

ASCII alone already does offer a rather wide range of emotions, no need for unicode. :D

Relationships? Which relationships?

I'm honestly half joking. The one relationship I ever entered as a teenager was because I was drowning in hetero- and amatonormativity and didn't know any better. I never hugged her, I never kissed her, and I especially never did any naughty things with her. It was an attempt from my mother to encourage me to feel love as an otherwise friend-less neurodivergent child. you know, the kind of "why don't you write a love letter to her, if you enjoy being around her?" encouragement. It was only platonic, but I didn't know better. I'm sure my mother meant well, but in hindsight it is disgusting how much it actually was amatonormative coercion.

Other than that, as an aroace, I never entered a romantic or sexual relationship.

I did find some amazing online friends for life, though. We've been meeting for a full week once a year, for the last decade, and always have a blast. Funnily enough, at least 4 people in the friend group turned out to be queer... :D

And friendships is where I excel at, I'd say. I'd consider myself a very loyal friend.

What does hurt a bit is the obvious priority shift when people start putting their long term relationship to the next level, which usually massively decreases the time and effort they put into their friend groups. The fact that they suddenly have something better to do than do stuff with friends, or only rarely show up, because their significant other(s) are more important does feel more and more isolating over time.

reminds me of my test runs with elvanse (no idea how exactly that is related to vyvanse, other than the name and symptom similarity).

it was suggested that I might have more success with it than with ritalin. so far I've taken 3 of these pills. one day on the first, two days on my second attempt.

on both attempts, I've lost my appetite completely. not only that, I've noticed a mild disgust against anything edible. I'm already an incredible picky eater per default, my reaction against food that doesn't taste good is already really strong, which basically leaves me with only a handfull of meals I can eat without strong discomfort. but on that medication, I just could not get myself (nor felt any need) to eat anything. it was actually rather scary.

yeah, I've seen the argument. people cry out because testosterone is (deservedly) considered essential for ftm trans people, while in most sports, it would be considered doping for cis people.

while I can see why people feel like it's unfair treatment, they usually have no idea about the trans experience. excluding trans people from the opportunity to have a sports carreer would in any case be a lot more unfair than some selectively allowed hormones for athletes.

depends what you mean with "taboo".

being a neo-nazi? generally heavily frowned upon. use certain nazi imagery and/or deny that the holocaust happened? both actually punishable by law.

taboo as in we don't talk about it? hell no! we get taught about the cruelties that happened here at length in school above a certain age. let me tell you, history class in germany is not fun. in certain german states there's also one mandatory(?) school trip to the remains of one of the nearest concentration camps. trust me, we know about the absolutely inhumane cruelty these monsters were capable of.

content warning for the rest of the post:

one of the images that stuck most with me was of a documentary shown in school. pictures of one of the gas chambers, where they shoved in by the hundreds. the concrete ceiling had fingernail imprints. the implications of that alone are haunting. they must have had absolutely agonizing last minutes in there.

...or some punishment cells in concentration camps. just tight gaps, enough to shove someone in sideways. and not tall enough to be able to stand upright in. the person inside could not get relief from standing up, they could not sit down. all they could do was exist in a painful position with the knees against one wall, the butt against the other wall, and gravity doing the rest to cause relentless pressure on the knees. as far as I know they got put in there for days, with eye witnesses describing constant screams of agony from inside.

...or the one time hitler decided to hang some people. but not with a regular rope, but rather on piano strings, with the victims being lowered very slowly into their final position. once hanging, there was no way for the victim to grab the string anymore. all they could do was flail around and slowly suffocate. it was just another sadistic way of maximizing pain, agony and despair in the people they hated and hunted.

and these are just a tiny fraction of the documented things. i don't even want to imagine what atrocities without witnesses happened.

(edits for grammar)

Important note: everyone's ADHD is individual, my struggles are not necessarily going to be your struggles, keep that in mind.

I had my first real job experience starting last October (it was a full-time internship for university, which was supposed to be 95 full-time work days within 6 months). The conditions were ideal: friendly and respectful coworkers, a beautiful, park-like property with a pond and walkways, I could come in whenever I liked, as long as I wouldn't miss a meeting (which didn't happen before 9:00), decent pay for an internship. And to top it all off, the company worked with my favorite programming language.

Despite all that, I noticed how this full-time job slowly ate me up. I noticed how, from day to day, my mental battery drained progressively further. It got more and more clear to me that there was no way for me to work and have enough free time and sleep in 24 hours. I came home, mentally exhausted, and often couldn't do much more than just sit down and watch some videos until bedtime. My personal projects and interests had to be completely stopped in their tracks. Going to bed on time left me incredibly unsatisfied (which, over weeks, became misery), but if I tried to give my mind enough time to be satisfied, I sacrificed important sleep hours. Either my mind was deteriorating, or my body.

In hindsight, my 2-week covid quarantine in November was an important break for my mind, despite how horrible being sick was. I also almost reached a breaking point before Christmas, where I used 6 tactically chosen holiday days to bring it up to another 2 weeks. I felt better afterwards, but not recovered.

Ultimately, I lasted 4 1/2 months, until I crashed down with a horrible burnout in February. 18 days short of what I needed for the internship. I sincerely hoped I could power through the rest to be done with it. I really tried. But at that time, my mental resources were dried up, completely. I didn't function at all, anymore. I became an empty husk of myself.

Luckily, with some explanation and a doctoral certificate, I got the university's green light to pick it up at a later time and just work the 18 days, instead of having to redo the whole internship. If that would have been denied, I would have probably quit university then and there. Because having to go through that again, would have been unthinkable for me.

The most important thing this internship taught me was not related to the work itself, nor its industry branch, it was the realization that I'm incompatible with full-time work. That's why I recently struck a deal with the company, I'm going to work the last 18 days, but only 3 days per week, instead of 5. I hope 2 extra free days per week will be enough for me to remain stable.

You might get used to your job in a few weeks. Or you might feel like I did. The only person who will know the best, is you. If you are like me, just be sure to pull the emergency break before you crash down like I did.

Imagine the shock some people are going to have once they realize they played chess on the wrong board all these years

German here.

hottest: 42°C in summer 2003. there have probably been warmer days by now, but I'm not aware of any.

coldest: -14°C in winter 2009/2010, while waiting for an absolute asshole of a bus driver to stop reading his news paper and finally open the door to let us in. I get that you want to enjoy your break in silence, but ffs. Leaving us waiting in such cold temperatures for around 10 minutes was just inhumane.