It's really difficult for me to admit that my neurodivergence is a disability. I'm still stuck in the "if I tried harder" mindset.
I've been trying hard and it's not enough.
I'm also transgender and there is so much I should do to insure my safety, but I can't. I have a passport and that was a herculean effort a couple of years ago.
I'm invisible, thankfully. I've worked from home for 15 years. Since the pandemic, we have everything delivered. The only people I see with any regularity are my doctor's and my wife's doctors.
My wife is physically disabled with chronic pain and a short list of other conditions that will only get worse with age. She's also highly ADHD and a tiny, tiny bit autistic. Her disabilities leave her exhausted most of the time.
My primary duty is to take care of her. My job supports this, not just through insurance, but through a boss who understands that self and family are more important that work. I have no trouble taking the time off I need to be there for my wife.
But that leaves little mental bandwidth left for other things. If we had kids, they would be taken away from us due to the state of our house. That's not an exaggeration.
I try so hard but it isn't enough. It will never be enough. I have no close family or nearby friends. I'm embarrassed for anyone to see how bad things have gotten.
My mom and step-dad are coming up for my wife's neurosurgery in two weeks. They aren't staying here but the will see the house. I have no idea if they will react with compassion, disappointment, shock, or something else entirely.
I don't even know where to start.
Right now, I'm just crying a lot and I don't know what else to do.
I feel helpless and a bit worthless.
I want to do the things that need to be done.
I want to and I try, but it doesn't happen.
[#]AuDHD #ADHD #ActuallyAustic
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Are there any other "safe to dehumanize" minorities out there with points for transgender folks on how to live under that kind of pressure without being constantly angry and paranoid?
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I know my US transgender siblings could probably use a little #TransJoy today.
I don't have much to offer, just a little something.
I started my transition at 35 years old. I'd gotten fat in my 20s due to an undiagnosed binge eating disorder. Hormones did not redistribute my body fat so I was fat and flat in the wrong places.
Last year, I was put on Wegovy for prediabetes. It also cured my eating disorder I didn't know I had. Turns out constant intrusive thoughts about food and fantasizing about food are not normal. I lost weight because I finally ate like a normal person.
It was a nice 9 months before my insurance stopped covering it. Now, I actually have to get full diabetes before they'll cover any of those GLP-1 Agonists.
So I'm back to be horngry and eating too much (but not as much as before).
I'm gaining weight back.
But.
The "joy" is that, after over a decade of disappointment, my breasts are filling out a tiny bit. Still can't hold up a pair of pants or even underwear with my non-existent hips and butt. But I've got a little bit more on my chest and it's nice.
[#]LGBT #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #LGBTQIA2S #Transgender #Transfemme #TransJoy
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The Brutalist Laszló Tóth got some help from AI
How is it so easy for people so use these tools knowing there outsized impact on our already failing environment? How can any "creative" look at these tools, knowing they only "work" because they were fed the unattributed work of thousands, tens of thousands, and still think it's no big deal?
I honestly do not understand it.
Giant companies pushing it I understand. They care only only escalating profits.
But people, people like you and me, regular people, we should know better.
Progressives who believe in saving us from global warming should know better. The water used for cooling these GPU farms isn't magic or free. It comes from the same sources that the people, actual human families, use to drink and bathe and cook and wash. It takes that from real people.
People whose job is to create should know better. All of our masters will tally every time one of us admits using genAI and will use that as justification to replace us. "Good enough" will be way of the future. Art will be dead.
No sci fi author could imagine a dystopia as bleak as this. Perhaps 1984. We always focused on the surveillance, forgetting that control of language and history was used to make the people incapable of creative thought. LLMs and genAI can do the same while convincing us that "writing a good prompt" is the same as writing a poem or painting a portrait, convincing us that the chat bot is a "partner" and not a cudgel.
In the end, the government won't even need jackbooted stormtroopers. We'll keep ourselves down and think we are on top.
[#]AISlop
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I bought the Metallica Black album on cassette when it came out. It was the only Metallica release I owned. I bought it largely based on the accompanying music videos on MTV.
"Enter Sandman" and "Nothing Else Matters" for instance.
Also, my girlfriend made me a mixtape and included Metallica from this release.
So I bought it.
It was fine.
I liked "Don't Tread on Me" because I had been working at a pizza place for a long time. And that song mentioned getting pizza before going to battle which I related to. "Yes, that makes sense," I would think when I listened to it. "I would secure pizza to prepare for war, too."
It wasn't until very recently that I learned the quote they were referencing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Tread_on_Me_(Metallica_song)
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My wife's neurosurgery for her grade 2 (or 3) meningioma is scheduled for the first week of February.
Real mixed emotion situation.
Can you be terrifyingly relieved? Glad, hopeful, but also afraid and full of dread? We both want it over with but maybe we don't want to know.
Having a date makes it real.
If it's cancer, it'll be her third.
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Special counsel's final report says Trump would have been convicted of election interference if he hadn't won - CBS News
And yet, here we are.
The illusion lifted.
There is no equality or fairness.
No justice.
Only sycophants and madmen salivating at the idea of retribution against those who dared to question their god's will and the idiot god himself itching to pull the trigger as many times as it takes to destroy them all.
What will future generations say and write and think about us? About what we let happen?
Why didn't they do anything?
Didn't they see what was really happening?
Didn't they understand the stakes?
They will blame us, all of us.
And they will be right.
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I have no real desire to watch Star Trek: Discovery.
But one thing that bugged the hell out of me about what I did see was how the Klingons looked like racist caricatures. To me, they made them look like a white man's version of a savage African stereotype. Was I the only one who saw that? Like, it was just as bad (to me) as the Harry Potter movies turning goblins into Protocols of Elder Zion illustrations.
The Disco thing was weird because all they could talk about was how progressive the show was but the villains were the most regressive Star Trek representation since "Code of Honor".
[#]StarTrek #STD #StarTrekDiscovery
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Why I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back
Despite their questionable for-profit business decisions, I still prefer Firefox. This is someone else coming to the same conclusion.
For me, Firefox had two irreplaceable features:
Edge has Profiles which are similar but much more complicated and harder to keep separate within a single session.
That's a Firefox killer feature to me.
That and not crippling ad-blockers.
[#]Firefox #Chrome #Edge #MozillaFirefox #GoggleChrome #MicroSoftEdge #MSEdge
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I'm around 50 years old. I've had many pets. and I've experienced the loss of most of them in one way or another. This is a poem about what that feels like.
You Are Cold
You were vital once.
Vibrant, singing, curling around my legs.
Your reverence was reflected in your dilated pupils.
And outstretched arms.
Was I your companion? Your mother?
Your goddess?
I am the one who loves you.
Unconditionally.
Food?
Water?
Shelter?
Yours.
Given freely.
Health?
As much as I could offer.
As much as I could bear.
As much as I could afford.
Six months ago, you were bright.
Bright and eager.
To my voice.
To the rattle of the bag.
To tell me how much you adored me.
How much you trust me.
Slower than I expected.
Not hesitating.
You never hesitated.
You didn't tell me how much it hurt.
You couldn't tell me.
But I knew.
I could see it in your lidded gaze, your trembling limbs.
Hear it in your crackling voice and panting breaths.
The blood tests and urine tests and examinations were conclusive.
It was confirmed.
Options. Options. Options.
We had options.
How much is my love worth?
How much is yours?
A thousand dollars?
A million?
All the money in the world?
How much is one more year worth?
One more month?
Would I keep you forever?
Yes.
But would I love you enough to do what is best for you?
Can I love you that much?
Can I see beyond the fear of what grief might come?
Can I focus on your personal well-being?
Can I make the best decision even if it isn't the decision I want?
You were vital this morning.
You were warm just hours ago.
You were in my lap.
You were purring.
You were shaking.
You were kneading.
You were drooling.
I stayed by your side the whole time.
I didn't think I'd be able to, but I did.
I did it because I love you and I want you to know.
I want you to never not know how much I love you.
I want your last image before you close your eyes to be me.
Beaming. Smiling, Crying.
Remembering.
The first moment when you were the size of a Twinkie.
When I saw you and said, "that's the one" because you were the smallest.
You were the smallest and I wanted to take care of you.
I wanted you to always know you were special.
That you were loved.
You were quick and curious.
You climbed and ran and swiped and chased bugs and found every nook and hiding spot.
You were lean and muscular, smooth furred, brilliant eyes.
You brought me laughter and joy.
You brought me peace.
Even as you drank out of my glass of water when I wasn't looking.
Even as you knocked another plant off the mantle.
Even as you brought fleas into the house.
You accepted me as family.
You and I are family.
We were family.
We are family.
But.
Now you are cold.
Curled up peacefully.
You are cold and I cannot look at you.
I cannot look at you because you are not there.
Now?
Now you live only in my heart.
And you will keep me warm.
Forever.
[#]Love #Pets #LossOfPet #Grief
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How to delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads | TechCrunch
Meta? More like MAGA!
This article includes how to download your information and actually get your accounts properly deleted. It's not just a single sentence saying "uninstall them LOL".
It does not include WhatsApp instructions.
[#]Meta #Facebook #Instagram #Threads
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With Meta ripping off the mask to embrace full-throated anti-LGBT, what's a good platform for endless memes that doesn't hate me?
Maybe I'm just not following the right Fediverse hashtags, but I don't see very many here.
My Instagram feed is nonstop memes but I'm ready to leave it behind.
I've heard Tumblr went the same way, but I've never been active there.
[#]Memes #LGBTFriendly
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Here is a question for neurodivergent folks, especially those on the autism spectrum.
When I'm doing something the way it is supposed to be done and there are problems or errors that should be impossible, I get irrationally angry and have a "come apart".
I stamped my feet, ranted, cussed, and had a crying fit this week because an application I use at work was doing that.
I was using it the same way I have been but the results were nonsense, elements of the UI were vanishing, auto-completing new steps based on the output of previous steps was saying there was no output even when I could see it, it was giving incredibly vague error messages that I've never seen before that essentially said, "not sure why this happened, call the vendor". Then my support engineer was so busy that he didn't get my messages until too late to help me do anything.
Eventually, I killed everything running on my system and rebooted and some of the issues went away, but not all of them.
Turns out they may have been having back-end problems so it wasn't anything I was doing "wrong".
That didn't make it feel any less infuriating. I was doing is right why was it breaking and breaking in impossible ways.
I've still have some impossible errors today and I still get very upset.
I work from home so all my carrying on is audible only by my wife and she's not a fan. I have gotten up and gone down the basement before if it's really bad, but I typically spend 15 seconds or so getting worked up and then get over it.
So, how do you handle this sort of thing? How do you handle your outbursts and mini-meltdowns?
My wife has ADHD but doesn't really "get" autism and I've spent the first 25 years of our marriage trying super hard to mask all the behavior away.
My meltdowns look just like toxic masculine behavior. I was a dude for the first 15 years of our marriage before discovering I was transgender, so I have that baggage.
I don't want to look like a toxic man-baby.
How do I handle this?
How do I explain it?
How do I keep myself from over-masking again which leads to much bigger blow-ups?
What sorts of conversations should I have.
What kinds of resources could I turn to for help with coping?
I hate this part of myself, to be completely honest. I feel as if I have a well-spring of barely repressed rage.
I can tell my wife that I would never hurt her. I never have and I never will. But from her point of view, from the point of view of neurotypical people, rage is rage. If I can rage at a computer program, I could probably rage a pet, I could probably rage at a stranger, I could probably rage at someone I love.
To them, they are all the same.
But it isn't the same.
How do I explain that?
How do I explain it to myself in a way that I will believe? I still think I'm capable of hitting someone I love because I had an abusive step-dad for 13 years as a kid and teenager. I've seen it. I still think that could be even though I've never hurt another person on purpose even out of anger.
But how can I believe that?
How can "this rage" not be the same as "that rage"?
After transitioning, I thought that was it. I thought I knew myself.
But ADHD and then Autism both said, "but wait, there's more."
So, what can I do here?
How can I reconcile this rage with reality and with other people's expectations?
What can I say?
[#]AuDHD #ActuallyAutistic #Meltdown
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Have y'all played Sundered? It's a metroidvania game released in 2017 that has a reputation for being very difficult. I never beat the final boss, even on Easy Difficulty.
It does some hanky shit that artificially makes it harder like:
Anyway, this mug started the game on the hardest difficulty and hated it for being too hard.
I can get that.
What did he do?
Perhaps try Normal difficulty to learn for to play the game first?
Maybe read some forum posts about the best builds so he knows what to unlock first?
Nah.
Leave a negative review and uninstall.
And he keeps complaining in the discussion thread. Talking about other hard games he picked up easily and mastered.
Okay.
But this is not those games and you have to learn how to play this game to play this game.
A negative review.
The gaul.
Who does that?
This mf'er that's who.
What is the mindset? What is the thinking?
"I immediately jumped into the hardest difficulty and it was too hard and not fun so therefore the game is terrible 5 / 10, maybe lower."
But why?
Didn't even try a lower difficulty.
[#]Gamers #Sundered #SunderedEldritchEdition
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‘Section 31’ Actor Worried Fellow Fans Will Reject Movie For Being A Different Kind Of Star Trek – TrekMovie.com
Rob Kazinsky gets it.
"I’m terrified of how it’s going to be received, because it’s not the Trek people want. The Trek that people want, the Trek that we all want, is just 1,000 more episodes of TNG. Everyone’s always furious that they’re not getting more TNG, whilst at the same time, when TNG came out, everybody hated it. So this is going to come along and it’s not going to feel like any Trek that they’ve ever seen.“
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My sense of direction is awful so my wife is my navigator when we have to drive somewhere.
I told her last night that, as a bisexual trans woman, I don't appreciate being told to "go straight". I was only half-joking.
A friend in high school always said "go gayly forward" which is a bit too much but I knew there had to be other ways to say "keep going in the direction you are going".
Not that, though. It's way too long.
She decided on "go bi" (or "go by") which makes me laugh every time so, of course, she just kept saying it.
I think she was inspired by Getting Bi which I adopted as my anthem for a while because it helped me articulate what being bisexual means.
[#]GoBi #GettingBi
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As a kid, I had to learn how to act excited when I received gifts so my extended family wouldn't get upset with me for not appreciating them.
As a teenager, I had to learn how to stop acting excited so my abusive step dad wouldn't use my reactions to decide what to take away when he punished me.
As an adult, I have no idea what "acting natural" even is.
I might smile. I might sigh. I might stare and study.
I will say, "thank you" and I will mean it.
My wife is the only person who can get me a surprise gift, one where I haven't had time to prepare a set of responses, that I will truly love.
She's one of the only people who can tell when I'm filled with joy without me needing to act. My mom is probably the only other person.
Getting gifts while being neurodivergent is stressful.
[#]AuDHD #ActuallyAutistic
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They don't tell you about one of the advantages of going full MtF transition: the ability to claim you are in your "bitch era" at work when you want to tell someone what you really think.
[#]TransJoy
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When someone calls your name, who else taps their imaginary communicator badge and says, "on my way".
(or at least, "acknowledged")
[#]StarTrek
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I'm the type of neurodivergent that feels a deep responsibility toward everything. As a kid, part of my depression was due to thinking I, personally, had to fix the entire world and I didn't know how.
That feeling never went away.
Wars, racism, poverty, I felt ashamed that I couldn't solve them.
In my autistic mind, I truly believed everyone would get along and help one another if I could just explain it to them. It's a large part of why I'm a writer and have been since I could write. If I wrote the right essay, the right story, everyone would understand that we are more alike than we are different, that we are all human and that all hierarchies are artificial. They'd realize that nobody chose where, when, or how they were born and it was only chance that made one person a millionaire and another disabled and struggling to get government aid. They'd understand that reality is chaos, out of our control, and that we only thrive when we all help each other.
Almost 50 years of that has been humiliating, disappointing, and exhausting.
The heel turn of the Democratic Party that I've lived through, watching Clinton, Obama, Biden let me down again and again was devastating. Didn't they understand what they were throwing away? Why were they being so foolish? Why didn't they use their power when they had majorities to make a real difference? If only I could talk to them, I could make them understand.
It was my fault for not being able to do that.
Bernie Sanders offered hope, offered a positive change of direction. He wasn't perfect. He wasn't really progressive, but be was a step in the right direction.
And the Democrats in power hated him, still hate him.
He was such a milquetoast comprise candidate and they treated him like garbage.
I didn't understand. He offered what their party was supposed to stand for and he had popular support.
But they buried him.
With what Pelosi did to AOC, it finally sank in; I finally understood. Everything from Kamala's campaign leading up to uniting against one of their own made it clear. This act of throwing away their power just to spite progressives cemented it.
A majority of the Democratic Party is actually very excited that they no longer have to pretend to give a shit about "the people". They can openly embrace the fact that they were always selfish fascists in the service of billionaires, the military industrial complex, and foreign powers.
It's a relief, actually.
It's not my fault.
They'd never listen to me because my voice isn't wealthy enough.
Our system has been broken since before I was born.
Actually, it's working exactly as intended.
[#]USPol #Progressives #Democrats #AuDHD #ActuallyAutistic
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