u/shinycherrybass

I displayed pretty severe anorexic behaviors for a year or two at the tail end of high school. I wasn’t originally skinny or ever underweight, though, so I was never diagnosed as anorexic or even had people noticing the red flags. In fact, everyone praised me for losing so much weight and looking skinnier.

I recovered, eventually, all by myself. I don’t talk to anyone about it because of the stigma. I gained the weight back and watched the way people treated me decline as my tummy returned. I now hover on the edge of “normal” and “overweight” at about >!24.5!< bmi. I still hate the shape of my body, but I eat. I listen to content about body positivity from traditionally attractive women and pretend I accept myself, because that’s what recovered people are “supposed” to do.

I want to lose some weight again, healthily and safely this time. Being skinny was the best I’ve ever felt in my body. I want to like myself, and I can’t like myself like this. All I want is to safely lose maybe >!20!< pounds to feel less heavy and sluggish - not make myself a skeleton.

However, I’ve recently found out that if you have a history of ED, people will act like you can never try to lose weight ever again. If you tell people you want to lose weight, people will tell you that you’re “not recovered enough” and that you shouldn’t try to lose weight safely because it’s dangerous for “someone like you”. I ask for help navigating weight loss with an ED history and the only advice I get is “don’t” - that I need to be happy in my body as is, even if it feels impossible to love.

Y’know who does offer to help me? The GLP-1 “microdosing” industry. The unhealthy diets. The people peddling extreme calorie deficits. All these ways to lose weight I know I shouldn’t touch. They don’t care if you’re disordered, as long as you pay them.

When I go to the healthy people, the only advice I get is “don’t do that”.

Do you see the problem here?

The unhealthy ways to lose weight want you no matter what. The healthy people only want you if you’re not one of those dirty eating disorder people. Your choices for losing weight when you’ve had a past ED are relapse into something unhealthy, or try desperately to figure out how to do it safely with zero outside support.

One of those is a lot more tempting than the other.

I (20) am decently intelligent, but very autistic/ADHD. My brain does not thrive on traditional structure. I have survived at my community college and gathered a little over 40 credits with mostly As and Bs, but I struggle with the rigid structure, lack of feedback, and non-interactiveness of it all.

I’m not 100% sure what I want to do yet, but I know I want it to involve helping children. I’m considering Special Ed ECE or becoming a Child Life Specialist, but nothing’s concrete yet. For now, I’m aiming for a degree in education with a focus on ECE.

As I’ve considered applying to a 4 year school, I’m mostly looking at two popular “alternative” colleges in my state of Washington - Evergreen State College in Olympia, and Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies in Bellingham. They’re both pretty similar - they offer interdisciplinary studies and “build your own degree” programs as well as traditional majors, a 1:20-ish ratio in classes, seminar style courses that combine multiple topics at once, and a focus on social justice and related topics. They also offer professor evaluation as opposed to letter grades, which offers that feedback I’ve been searching for.

Fairhaven is attached to Western Washington University, which allows me the opportunity to pursue any major they offer (of which there are so many!) and have the benefits of a large university. My younger sibling goes to WWU, but it’s a big school, so I’m not too worried about us being siblings becoming a “thing”. Eventually, though, I would have to transfer into traditional classes at other colleges in the university to get my major. I also worry about finding community and friends - people like me - in such a large school.

Evergreen State is a smaller school, but offers something that really interests me - a structure where instead of several 4 credit courses, you take one 12-16 credit course each semester. This means only one course to handle at a time, which means no juggling courses. I’ve always struggled with juggling multiple classes at once, so this is very appealing. The student body and staff also seem to be a lot like me - weirdos and oddballs that thrive on something entirely different from the standard.

Both colleges have similar tuition rates, so that’s not really a factor in my decision.

If you’ve gone/are going to/have worked at/know anything about either of these schools, I would love to know your thoughts and opinions on them. They both have their pros and cons for me, and I’m curious what others think.

I’m 5’2, transmasculine, and annoyingly curvy and pear shaped. I’ve been on low dose T for almost a year, but I don’t even try to pass anymore, because no matter how much effort I put in I know now that I’ll always be perceived as a girl. I used to try to pass. I bound every day and wore baggy clothes and a hat, tried all the tips and tricks from the internet. It never worked even once. I was putting in effort for an illusion everyone could see right through.

It drove me to anorexic behavior. Maybe, I thought, if I lost enough, my thighs might get a little thinner, my hips might have a little less padding. Unfortunately I eventually discovered that weight loss couldn’t change the width of my hip bones or the ratio of my thighs to my torso, and while I felt better in my body, it didn’t change how people saw my gender. I started the long road to recovery.

I am just shaped like this. I will never pass, no matter how much weight I lose. I’m back to my old weight now, and to be honest some days I still really miss being skinnier. People were nicer. I was desirable, for once. Even if I was a girl, I was at least a curvy, skinny girl who didn’t feel embarrassed to wear crop tops. I’ve gone back to hiding in my baggy clothes. People who have the body shape to pass are so ridiculously lucky.

i have inappropriate sinus tachycardia, which means my heart rate is above normal 24/7. i had to stop stimulants in high school because of this. however, i’m now on Corlanor and my heart rate is generally under control, so we’re carefully trying stimulants again, as Qelbree is really not doing much for me anymore.

out of pure curiosity, not seeking medical advice: if you have heart rate issues, what ADHD meds are you on? how are they going for you? i’m curious what everyone else has settled on.

hi friends! i have right-sided hemiplegic cerebral palsy, which is a fancy way of saying that the right side of my body doesn’t work very well. right now, my only hobby is video games, and it’s quite frankly sucking the life out of me. i don’t have many friends, and my day to day life is honestly kind of sad and boring.

i need something new to get into - something that i can primarily use my left hand for. i really would, if possible, like a hobby with community, the kind of thing people form clubs around. i’m in desperate need of friends. my lack of hobby is not for lack of trying, to be clear - i’ve tried quite a few hobbies, namely various arts, but most of them end up being two-handed, tedious, or had an extremely steep learning curve. does anyone have suggestions on what to try next?

TL;DR: looking for hobbies that can be done primarily with one hand, preferably ones that have communities/clubs around them.

I’m 20. I watch the climate change and the rise of fascism and I feel… completely hopeless. I grieve the past I never got to see, the lush green forests and abundance our ancestors spoke of. I work in childcare and I cry at the world these babies will grow up in. I grieve the world our children will never get to see. I’m angry and sad and every single day of my life feels like a clock is ticking down to some irreversible tipping point.

My mom says I can take things slow - that I don’t need to get my degree right this second, that I have time. But I don’t have time. None of us have time. I want to get my OTA degree now so that I can have a stable job as the future progresses, but the program has yet again rejected me. “Just get a bachelors in something similar,” my mom says. I don’t want to take 4 years for a degree that won’t get me a job in a wanted, stable field like occupational therapy. I don’t want to go into student debt. What happens if I get my degree in social work and then the Trump administration completely defunds social work? Then what do I do?

I’m running out of time. We’re all running out of time. The clock is constantly in my head and crushing me. I’m on two antidepressants and I’ve had so much therapy but nothing can cure this constant ache in the pit of my stomach, the little voice that tells me I only have so long to live my life before it all goes to shit. The climate clock has 3 years left on it. The heat just keeps getting worse. KOSA is going to pass and more flock cameras go up every single day to track our every move. The ruling on birthright citizenship is tomorrow. The court just ruled Trump can fire anyone he wants for whatever reason with impunity. The walls are closing in around us and I have no wanted job to get a work visa with if I need to run.

I’m hopeless and exhausted.

So, about a year ago now, I moved back in with my parents after living on my own for a year. Since then, my bedroom has been in a perpetual state of disarray. I was a stuffed animal collector and a bit of a hoarder (not clinically, but you get my point) as a child, and as a result I simply have way too much stuff. A lot of it is clothes I don’t even wear and random plastic bits from my childhood. I never even hung up most of my wall hangings. I don’t have much room in my bedroom and the visual clutter is overwhelming.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the mental energy to take on this task until now. Now that I do, though, I don’t know where to start. I’ve got a disaster under the bed and in the closet, posters that never got hung up lying around, trash, and drawers full of junk to go through that’s built up for years. I feel overwhelmed and unsure of my attack plan. What steps do I take to tackle a task this large, and in what order? I’m half-tempted to make myself an actual checklist to keep myself from being overwhelmed. Any advice (and honestly, encouragement) is appreciated.

Hi friends. I am a person with mild spastic cerebral palsy with an interest in learning ASL, mostly for professional purposes as I start to work to obtain my OTA degree. However, the issue is that I have limited fine motor skills in my right hand - all the fingers bend and move, but they move very slowly and certain positions just aren’t possible. I worry that this will affect my ability to speak ASL, but I’m honestly not sure what the extent of the problem will be. Is this something that’s going to make speaking ASL totally impossible, or just a road block I can work around? Surely this is a thing other people have dealt with? Advice and guidance is appreciated. TIA!

I applied for a certain school (not named to protect myself) the day their applications opened multiple months ago. They said they would start sending out emails starting around two weeks ago.

Last year it took 4 weeks for me to get a rejection from the same school. My job is offering me a permanent position in the fall, and wants an answer ASAP, like, within the next few business days. Obviously, I can’t give them an answer until I get a rejection or confirmation from the school.

My mom thinks I should email the school, but it feels like that could massively backfire on me and ruin my chances of getting in. I’m annoyed and frustrated that it’s taking this long to get an answer for a cohort that’s supposed to start in September. I don’t have time to wait around - I have to plan for my fall, plan my job and community college classes if I don’t get in - but I don’t know what to do. does anyone know what the proper thing to do is here? have advice or knowledge i’m missing?

Hi friends. I’ve got chronic pain and tightness from spastic cerebral palsy, and my OT recommended I try massage therapy. As such, I’m ISO a queer or queer friendly massage therapist in Vancouver who specifically works with chronic pain and/or cerebral palsy. The few people I’ve found that fit the bill are booked out a month+, so I’m coming here for recommendations.

I would’ve asked on FB, but the last time I mentioned being queer in one of the local groups it went about as well as you’d expect. So I’m coming here this time. Please be nice. TIA.

Hi gang. This post is part rant, part advice seeking. I have pretty mild right sided hemi, which means the dexterity in my right hand is not great. This has, unfortunately, blocked me from playing a lot of games, including almost every game with a required shooting mechanic as I don’t have the fine motor control in my right hand to aim without a lot of time.

As a result of this, I mostly play games with a slower pace - various life and job sims, minecraft (with remapped controls to play one handed), BG3, anything without too-complex inputs or split-second aiming. Unfortunately, so many popular action games require exactly that. I had to return cyberpunk 2077. I was watching 007 first light VODs yesterday, and I ended up so jealous of the people who could play. I yearn for exciting gameplay like that, but I’m stuck at a slower pace simply because I can’t shoot. I don’t hate it, but god I wish I could play along with everyone else.

Have any fellow hemiplegics had similar experiences? Have you found any games you’ve liked that are actually playable? I’m so tired of the same 5 games I play on repeat right now.

DISCLAIMER: i do not come from the kpop space or any fandom surrounding it, so i’m pretty clueless about photocards. please be nice to me

i keep seeing people with clear plastic photocard holders on their ita bags, but i have no idea how we are making them or where we are getting them from. i refuse to shop temu/shein/etc, but that seems to be the only place google will show me? the paper ones i see are cute, but won’t hold up to rain at all. where are we buying our acrylic/plastic photocard holders???

also, if there’s like a “beginners guide to photocards” please throw it at me. i am so lost on how this works and i have no clue how to print photos the right size/on the right paper, or how to decorate the plain clear holders or anything really.

I underwent a legal name change and need to change the name on my amtrak.com account. I called guest rewards from the number on their website, and when I finally got through to a person and explained myself, a very ai sounding voice with odd, long pauses told me to send a picture of my ID to guest.rewards@amtrak.com, then hung up without further conversation.

I know this might seem silly or paranoid, but can someone confirm this is indeed the process for changing a legal name on an amtrak account? The very robotic sounding voice and the fact that I cannot find record of this email anywhere else makes me a little hesitant to send a photo of my ID. I just want to double check this is indeed the correct process, because the phone call was really weird.

Hey gang! I've been wanting to make another ita bag for a while now, but a lot of ita bags out there look kind of flimsy and I'm scared they just won't hold up to pacific northwestern weather. Does anyone have recommendations for a decently sized (just like, vaguely purse sized, because I want this to be functional) over-the-shoulder bag that won't get my stuff all wet? Bonus points for a thick strap, but that's not a requirement. TIA 😄

until i did it, my parents were pretty sure i wasn’t going to graduate high school. i was a very bright, curious kid, but i also had horrible social skills and behavior issues. i went to dbt, my behavior issues faded as i grew older, and i graduated high school.

i got a full time job at a preschool that, due to its location, meant i had to move and live alone. once again, my parents were hesitant, but i did it for a full year before moving back in with them after my lease was up.

now i’m working part time at a preschool with disabled kids. i decided i want to get my OTA. i got all my prerequisites and applied, and decided to take A&P as well this semester for good measure. long story short, A&P is destroying me. i study almost every day, i watch videos, and virtually none of it sticks. i take an evening class and by the time i’m done with my work day there’s barely enough spoons left to learn with. studying is a massive chore that takes so much out of me. i have never had this much trouble with a class in my life. i have a D.

i don’t think i’m built for getting a degree if a level 200 class is this hard. if i can’t even get a C now how am i meant to pass this class on top of multiple other classes in the fall? i’ve never taken a full time course load, but i can’t imagine it’ll go well if this is how my first actual health career related course is going. how am i meant to get a degree when i can’t memorize the axial and auxiliary skeleton?

i don’t want to paraeducate in public schools for the rest of my life. i enjoy doing it well enough, but i have bigger dreams for myself. when i was younger, i used to be scared that i would have a developmental peak below the average person. i was scared of being dependent on my parents my whole life - still am.

i think i’ve hit that developmental peak. i think this might be as far as i’m able to go. i learned social skills, but still have zero irl friends. i know i’m smart, but not smart enough for A&P. i can live alone, but my parents will never know about the time i had to hire a cleaner after a depressive spiral that made my apartment a disaster. i feel like i’m on the edge of the life i always wanted, and just not quite developed enough to get there. just fucked up enough to be doomed to never reach my dreams, but just well enough to work and live alone, earning low wages the rest of my life. never quite fulfilled. it fucking stings.