people who dont experience it cannot comprehend how awful executive dysfunction is. I WANT to do the task, i have the resources TO do the task, i will feel better having DONE the task
but i cant fucking do the task
I think something a lot of other people can relate to is the way that you get so conditioned to discomfort that you stop registering it.
I remember sitting at the table with my family, eating dinner as a child. I’d try to eat, because of course I was hungry. But sometimes the flavor or texture was so repugnant that it moved into a category of Not Food.
“Two more bites before you can leave the table.”
“I can’t,” I’d say, trying to explain the impossibility.
But because I was a child they heard, “I won’t,” and made me sit at the table. I’d sit in dull agonized silence, bored and hungry for hours until bedtime when they’d give up. I’d hate myself for not eating and my parents for forcing me to sit there. The few forcefeeding moments ended in vomit.
They’d say, “If you don’t eat this you can’t eat a snack later,” and I moved past trying to communicate my discomfort into accepting that I’d just be hungry.
That state of affairs didn’t last, because my parents realized nothing could force me to eat so they catered to my palate, worrying they’d starve me. But the message stuck. If you can’t do anything about a situation, just accept the suffering.
A few years later my mother called me off the playground to ask, “Are you limping?”
I shrugged. My feet had hurt for a long time, but that was just the way things were now. My mom pulled my socks and shoes off and gasped. The soles of my feet were covered in huge painful planters warts.
“Why didn’t you say anything?!” She demanded but I could only shrug at her. I’d learned a long time ago that saying things about my discomfort didn’t matter, so now I had no words. Sometimes things hurt and sometimes they don’t. I simply accepted and did my best.
Now as an adult trying to learn to improve my own conditions can be hard. If I make food that I can’t eat I’ll force myself to sit at the counter still, full of guilt and self loathing, trying to will myself to eat it.
At first I needed my betrothed to gently take it away to present me with something I could eat. Now on my own I can usually admit that it’s not happening before too long and get something else, but I still feel guilty.
Laying in bed at night waiting for my betrothed to finish getting ready I let out a huge sigh of relief when they turned the lights off.
“Why didn’t you turn them off if they bothered you?” they asked the first time it happened.
“I didn’t even know it was bothering me until it was gone.”
Assessing my physical state now to see if I can improve it is something I’m still relearning but I’m relieved to finally have the space and support to do it.
people always try to play the "but you're a lesbian" card whenever i say odd shit about men and i think that's because people are too cowardly to accept the truth: these are pure, objective observations. i don't have a leg in this race. when i say Gene Wilder has a kind of evil warlock's raw sexual charisma in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory you can't write me off as being too horny. because i'm literally not. i'm making a statement of fact here. and you'll just have to cope with it.
Please reblog to make sure everyone is equipped!
my headcanon for those 14 months time skip is that they all invested in a dyson and a 10 step haircare routine