u/Glad-Scallion4111

I wasn’t able to attend D23 because it unfortunately wasn’t in my budget, but I just found out they released an official Kingdom Hearts Spirit Jersey—and I genuinely never thought we’d get one! 😭

If anyone attending would be willing to pick one up for me, I will, of course, cover the full cost, shipping, and a little extra for your time and kindness. The resale listings are already reaching $500, which I simply can’t afford, so I’m hoping a very generous fellow Kingdom Hearts fan might help me get one for a reasonable price.
I would be unbelievably grateful. Honestly, I’ll even bake you cookies and send them as an additional thank-you! 🍪🩵

Ps, I do live close to Anaheim ✨🙂‍↕️

As a pastry chef, I know this is what you need to do in order to get better, keep working with the dough until you make a perfect bao but like don’t you think it’s so extremely wasteful to throw away pounds of pounds of dough to train your employee?

Like the Earth is slowly dying, we can’t keep up with the demand to feed human, should we like not be throwing away hundreds of pounds of dough just to make sure we get the perfect bao?

Like why not let the trainees take it home? Or start a program or give it away to a homeless shelter. Like this is a multi billion dollar company, but yet they still waste a ton of food.

Do people have similar thoughts to this or am I just being stupidly woke (which more people should be, but I digress).

I love In-N-Out! It is my hyper fixation food, I’m autistic hehe ✨And especially right now with autistic burnout. BUT one of my favorite components is the crunch from the lettuce combined with the meat the onions, the sauce. SOOO THAT’S WHERE THE PREDICAMENT IS. Hehe

Are people still not getting lettuce? Because iceberg is still like a no-no right?

I don’t really know what subreddit this belongs in. Maybe abusive parents. Maybe autism. Maybe CPTSD. Maybe all of them.
I’m exhausted. Not the kind where a nap fixes it. I mean exhausted in my bones. My knees hurt. My hips hurt. My back hurts. My shoulders hurt. My neck hurts. My head hurts. My entire body hurts.
For context, I’m autistic, have CPTSD, anxiety, depression, and a long history of trauma. Over the past year I’ve finally started understanding what autism actually looks like in adults, what masking is, and how much of my life has been shaped by growing up in an abusive family. It’s like my entire understanding of myself has been ripped apart.
I spent my whole life thinking I was dramatic, lazy, too emotional, too sensitive, and that every problem was somehow my fault. Now that I understand what actually happened to me, I can’t unknow it. I understand my childhood differently. I understand my mother’s emotional abuse differently. I understand the bullying from my parents, sisters, and cousins differently. I understand the sexual abuse from my cousins differently. It feels like I’ve spent my whole life surviving instead of actually living.
The weirdest part is that I can’t seem to mask anymore. I used to be able to push through anything. Work. School. Social situations. I’d come home exhausted, but I’d do it. Now that I actually know what masking is, my body won’t let me do it anymore without consequences. Every time I force myself to mask, I end up physically sick and in pain. It’s like my body finally learned it doesn’t have to ignore itself anymore.
Last week I volunteered at Anime Expo. On paper this whole post probably sounds depressing, but the convention was honestly incredible. I met amazing people. My department was wonderful. I made a genuine connection with someone. I got to see my favorite anime. I laughed so much. I screamed when they showed new footage. I bought way too much merchandise. I genuinely loved being there.
But I also completely destroyed myself doing it.
I stayed in shared dorm rooms with strangers, which wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t home. Everything felt unfamiliar. I didn’t have my emotional support dog. I was surrounded by people constantly. I was masking every single day. In five days I slept about eleven hours total. By the end I was throwing up, couldn’t eat, had panic attacks, was shivering, couldn’t regulate my body temperature, and everything hurt.
When the convention ended, I was literally falling asleep while driving my friend home. I called my mom and asked if I could nap at her house before driving back to my apartment because I genuinely didn’t feel safe driving.
I told her I’d slept about eleven hours in five days.
She hesitated.
Not because she was worried. Because she was watching a baseball game. She later admitted she wasn’t really listening because she was focused on the game.
I ended up slamming my head against my car seat just to stay awake while driving.
What hurts isn’t even that one moment. It’s realizing that’s been my entire life.
A month before my birthday, my parents told me they were going to Greece to see Bad Bunny instead of being here. My graduation dinner was rushed because they wanted to leave early to catch their flight. It’s not even about Greece or Bad Bunny. It’s the fact that they planned that trip months in advance, remembered all of those details, but only told me a month before my birthday that they’d be gone. It made me realize how often I’ve come second.
The hardest realization I’ve had this year is that I don’t think I was ever treated like someone’s child. I think I was treated like an inconvenience. I was the difficult kid before anyone knew I was autistic. I learned to shrink myself so other people wouldn’t be uncomfortable.
Now I’m financially dependent on my parents because they help pay for my apartment. I’m trying so hard to become independent so I can leave, but I can’t seem to hold a job anymore because I’m so exhausted all the time. I don’t know how to explain it. Before, I could push through everything. Now my body just… won’t.
I know this is autistic burnout. I know trauma is part of it. But I don’t know how people recover from this. I feel like understanding myself has somehow made me function less instead of more.
The part that scares me the most is that people hear “suicidal thoughts” and assume I don’t want to live.
That’s not it.
I want to live.
I think I could have an amazing future. I think I’d be an amazing artist. I have dreams. I have things I still want to create.
I’m just so unbelievably tired of hurting.
I don’t want my life to end.
I want the pain to end.
Has anyone else experienced autistic burnout after finally understanding your autism and childhood trauma? Did your body suddenly stop letting you mask? How did you start recovering?

A man I graduated with has been sliding into my DMs, asking me to come over and get high with him. Yesterday, he responded to my story, “You look so smoochable when you’re high/tired”

… I told him off and now “I’m assuming that he wants me sexually.”

So, whatcha think? Cuz I think that’s creepy, especially because we barely had any conversation.

Edit: I sent him this thread, then blocked him. He then went on my art account to send a paragraph-long message defending himself. I did not read a single bit of it. The only thing I read was “leave me alone.” Like, he wasn’t the one who originally sent a very creepy and almost grape-adjacent comment. I also saw the word 'miscommunication'; idk what’s been miscommunicated. But I find it funny when a woman is right about a man, he HAS to double it down.

Thanks to everyone for their help!