My coworker spent one year in Tennessee.
He came back to Tokyo two months ago.
He is not the same man.
He says "y'all" in meetings. To our boss.
He holds the door for the entire floor. Twelve people. Every morning.
He asked the convenience store clerk how her day was going. She had to sit down.
He calls every man "bud." Including the CEO.
He refuses to describe anything under three hours away as "far."
He waves at drivers who let him cross. One driver waved back and almost hit a pole.
Last week, he told a junior employee, "I'm proud of you."
She went to the restroom and cried for ten minutes.
We thought it would wear off.
It didn't. It's spreading.
Three people in accounting now say "y'all."
The junior employee holds the door.
The convenience store clerk asks HIM how his day is going.
Tennessee, I don't know what you did to him.
Please do it to the rest of us.
to love is to suffer. that is the one of few things i have been certain of as far back as i can possibly remember. sometimes, i wish i could never feel it again. everyone i have loved loves someone else, or cannot love me in the way i want. i want to be rid of this disease.
This might sound crazy.
But one of the skills you NEED to learn is how to deal with a more and more illiterate society full of emotionally dysregulated people.
If you keep getting frustrated every day over how "ďumb" everything/everyone seems, the stress of it is going to wreck your mind.
when you're talking to someone and a very small, innocuous detail tells you they don't feel as vastly as you do and there's an involuntary spilling of the self, i hate the distance i feel between us in that moment
When ADHD people say “I didn’t do anything today” what they actually mean is:
- I answered 13 texts
- Cleaned the bathroom
- Cried
- Made 2 meals
- Reorganized one shelf
- Battled internal shame
But didn’t finish The Invisible Task™
So it all feels like failure.
Executive dysfunction is like all of your abilities are on cooldown and you’re mashing buttons to try to do anything but your brain is just like “i can’t do that yet. that’s still recharging. i can’t do that yet. that spell isn’t ready yet. that’s still recharging.”