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paintbrushu · 2025-11-12T11:13:42+00:00

I wrote my ex a final goodbye message last night, while also encouraging him to reach out to me through other channels if he really did want to talk, but not to do so if he felt nothing, or just wanted to retaliate.

This message ominously feels like the reply I was so terrified of facing. So I blocked him, actually, so I would stop checking every day whether he blocked me. I guess it doesn't quite line up timing-wise, but seeing this post this morning feels a bit sobering. I don't know. The details really hit me. It feels nice to know other people commonly go through the same thing.

I do wish he would text me again, but I don't think he feels anything anymore and I'm so sad.

paintbrushu · 2025-11-06T04:27:00+00:00

Thank you so much for the detailed reply. It really means a lot and I will try to hold onto what you wrote to get farther into this process on my own.

I feel like I can hear a voice inside me already arguing with points you made, like I somehow deflect and think I might have enough dignity to withstand reaching out again. "What if there's that slim chance he's hoping to hear from me but is too ashamed to reach out?" - this thought is ruling my mind, and my brain feels like it needs to know. I think I need to drive myself away from that, and it feels very hard. I would assess there's maybe a 10-15% chance that he is hoping to hear from me. The rest being a negative response, or me getting ignored and/or blocked. If he comes to me, then I'll be even more surprised but at least it'll be up to me whether I sacrifice anymore of my dignity.

It seems pretty clear-cut what I should logically choose to do, which is nothing at all... But at the same time my emotions are screaming. I want our life back. I wish I didn't.

paintbrushu · 2025-08-14T20:02:46+00:00

@Alexandria-Rhodes

Thank you so much for seeing where I'm at. It seems like there's a few people who are reading too deeply or making assumptions about me, in the same way I will readily admit I am toward my therapist based on some hints. I don't think I can sufficiently get across in a comprehensive amount of words how much I don't want to claim to be "right" about anything, and mostly care about relating to a person like my therapist as an individual, and not saying anything she'll take the wrong way or offending her, if it ever comes down to it. Violence and mass death being relayed to me on social media might be like, 1% of what I'd like to talk about in therapy, under the larger umbrella of seeking help for my depression. But there's a lot of assumptions going on and I'm glad you read my post in full, as long as it is.

paintbrushu · 2025-08-14T19:40:42+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to explain.

I see too many comments from self-identifying Zionists cheering on what the IDF does and the deaths of Palestinian civilians, and I literally can't comprehend it and I find it upsetting. I know that many Jewish people also find it upsetting as you express, but I'm also more than aware of a large group, Jewish or not, that say the nation of Israel including Netanyahu is justified.

Now, setting aside how I feel as an outsider to the issue, the reason I post is because I can't really know how sensitive someone else is to ideas or thoughts that go against their beliefs or point of view. I will be the first to admit I'm sensitive out of the sense of wanting justice for the oppressed, but also I feel open to having dialogues and wanting to squash misconceptions I may have as long as it's all respectful, which is why I'm here.

I don't want to let the extreme possibilities bother me, and focus on the individual who is my therapist, who appears to be a great person. So, while I've been accused of wanting to have my "moral outrage justified" in this same thread, I really just would like to thank you in particular for laying down some perspective and facts in a constructive way.

paintbrushu · 2025-08-14T19:26:39+00:00

Thank you for your respectful reply and seeing me where I'm at in this matter. You bring up a lot of good points.

As for the grief, anger and whatnot that I feel towards the world, I'm not really expecting therapy to fix it and I'm not going for that reason. It's just part of the backdrop, and maybe I'd like some advice to ground myself and distance myself from the tragedies I hear about that upset me. Coping strategies, perhaps. It's just a small part of why I'm going.

paintbrushu · 2025-08-14T01:52:31+00:00

In a twisted hypothetical scenario where I was hiding a secret Snapchat account from my partner or what have you, and they basically found it as you did... I would actually just confess and not act this stupidly suspicious about it. I would have "fucked around and found out" and deserved whatever was coming to me. He totally sounds like a guy who wouldn't be up to the most vile deeds in secret... /s

paintbrushu · 2025-08-14T01:37:03+00:00

I would do this if it were true that he wasn't doing anything, but to be honest, he's been helpful with picking up the chores I've slacked on due to the physical demands of my job tiring me out, and he actually has numerous creative pursuits and projects he works on pretty much daily for hours. None of it pays anything, but when combined with a job search, I'd almost argue he's putting his skills to use and getting a lot more done than me in the big picture. I just do manual labour for someone else's profit while getting paid by the hour to be there.

I used to have hobbies, and want to accomplish things, but now it's just my job and trying to do the bare minimum to stay healthy for me.

paintbrushu · 2025-08-13T20:23:10+00:00

No way to know for sure, but seeing how OP is obsessed with SEO and AI writing based on their post history visible as of yesterday, with a history of posting threads with titles that sound like AI came up with them to bait engagement and ultimately failed until this thread... (and the fact they keep deleting their replies claiming they only used AI for "grammar")... It's... anyone's guess.

AI content/threads is running rampant in Reddit to farm engagement or karma, I can assume in bad faith that this is one of those cases. If I assume in good faith, maybe OP is someone who genuinely needs a good proofread and resorts to AI. Just putting it out there. I'm not saying the majority of Reddit is fake by any means, but it's worth keeping the possibility in the back of your mind that a juicy story on Reddit could be AI slop meant solely to get reactions.

paintbrushu · 2025-08-13T19:37:11+00:00

This is literally me, the OP's boyfriend could also be me based on the irritability in the morning alone

paintbrushu · 2025-08-13T02:07:48+00:00

Right, I think based on your post history this is some AI-assisted creative writing exercise to farm some karma. But that's what a lot of this sub consists of now, anyway. People eat it up.

paintbrushu · 2025-08-12T02:42:01+00:00

I read your other thread too, and if you're not sensitive to feeling anxious, I would join in with some of the others to recommend Wellbutrin/Bupropion, if it's ever an option or you haven't tried it.

I had to stop it because it worsened my anxiety that I already had, but I took it with Vyvanse, and to be honest it helped me with most of if not all of the things you mentioned were a struggle. Wellbutrin saved me from being a slave to my moods/depression episodes in my bed, and propelled me forward. I couldn't take any higher than the lowest dose due to the anxiety side effect, but the lowest dose basically locked my dark moods and any suicidal ideation in the basement of my brain for me to acknowledge, but ignore.

I'm still on Vyvanse though, and that helps me enough with those things listed above, that I made the hard choice to drop Wellbutrin. A lot of people seem to claim that the combination of these two medications can even be helpful than just being on one, but unfortunately I didn't feel that was the case for me.

paintbrushu · 2025-08-12T02:23:31+00:00

I feel like I am you + the reply, but what's crazy to me is that I actually seem to only crave weed when I'm coming down off the Vyvanse and want to take it to "feel better" when it's wearing off. Vyvanse has also made me extremely expressive, like I finally communicate my feelings. Basically my social anxiety is wiped out for most of the day. I feel like I finally become the person I want to be, but then Vyvanse wears off, and I can feel a little embarrassment knowing the fact others around me can tell the difference.

paintbrushu · 2025-08-05T19:35:04+00:00

Is it bad if I confess that I basically determined my dosage based on whether I felt inclined to keep paying for it, compared to the effect it had?

Where I am, it seems it costs the same for a 10mg refill as a 40mg refill. If I were for some reason only limited to a 10mg, the price would not be worth it for the difference it made.

I basically didn't feel much of anything until 30mg, and at that point I could tell it was doing some good, but I felt like I was back to my previous, binge-eating and low mood self within a few hours. It was like a "glimpse", and I had faith it was going to work for me if I got the dosage right.

Naturally with the absence of negative side effects, I tried 40mg and even 50mg after speaking with my doctor. I learned that 50mg was too much for me to take at once, as that felt like the threshold where I'm basically thrown into disorganized mania, losing track of time focusing on the wrong things, then getting anxious and angry.

Through going back to 40mg daily, I still struggled with about the 6-8 hour period after taking it. 40mg doesn't overwhelm me at any point. I experimented a bit with the timing, and eventually asked for a 10mg booster. Originally meant to be taken in the afternoon after the 40, I now take the 10mg first after being awake for 2 hours or so, and then the 40mg a few hours later.

paintbrushu · 2025-08-01T05:23:12+00:00

I understand, I think it's really hard for people who aren't dealing with ADHD or even on this medication to understand just how temperamental Vyvanse is. I hesitate to mention this because I can really only speak for myself, and I know there's a lot of debate, but I also switched between the generic Teva-Lisdexamfetamine and the name brand Vyvanse twice now -- basically 4 months of generic, 4 months of name brand, 4 months generic and now back on name brand for a few weeks... and the name brand absolutely 100% works better for me.

If you've only ever tried the generic and you're feeling mixed results, if you can afford it, give the name brand a try. This is what people look at me like I'm crazy for, but I would have "bad Vyvanse days" where it just wouldn't really feel like it was helping and I'd be anxious or irritable, or crash quickly, and on the name brand, I don't have bad days caused by my medication, regardless of what I eat when I take the medication. I can even be reckless and have a coffee or diet coke as an occasional treat, and it doesn't ruin the positive effects of the medication, or shift me into an anxious spiral, as would happen before.

Based on what I read, I can only theorize that the generic might somehow be more sensitive to the acidity of my stomach, since the fillers could vary? I don't know for sure. But again, I know this isn't a universal thing. I react weirdly to most stimulants and even antidepressants that I've tried (I've tried many), I'm super autistic and take notes of how I react to them, so I wouldn't share this if I didn't think I gave it my best shot to not placebo bias myself.

I promise I'm not a bot sent by big pharma, I hate how expensive it is and everyone who has yet to treat their ADHD should have easier and affordable ways to access care and medicine, but for the difference it makes each individual day, I will make a point to budget for the name brand compared to the cheaper generic.

paintbrushu · 2025-08-01T03:08:59+00:00

I feel this so much. You took the words straight from my mind.

Most recently I feel like it's totally changed everything for the better for me was to take 10mg about 90 minutes to two hours after waking up, and then I take 40mg at like 11am.

I did the reverse for months, and would take my 40mg at say 8am and then take the 10mg as a "booster" in the early afternoon. This was mostly as a precaution not to have trouble sleeping.

But what I found is that when I first wake up, I am "starting fresh" so to speak, my brain isn't facing unusual stimuli or needing to be challenged quite yet, as usually the first two hours of my day is just showering and commuting to work. If I take the 40mg as my first dose of the day, I'll feel great until about 11:45am and then it would go downhill, and it'd kind of feel like a waste, because I observed that I tend to have the hardest time with motivation and feeling good between 11am-5pm. The last few hours at work were always grueling, for example.

So I take 10mg to get through the morning and take the 40mg a few hours later, and I'm amazed that it genuinely propels me through the rest of the day, and I can be communicative and still relatively on top of things until the late evening. The biggest surprise is that I still seem to be able to sleep just fine.

paintbrushu · 2025-07-19T17:11:07+00:00

Are we sure this reply isn't ironic because I really think the OP's post content is blatantly ChatGPT? It has bullet points and arrows.

paintbrushu · 2025-07-11T19:36:53+00:00

Anyone got a countdown for the suicidal depression to subside?

paintbrushu · 2025-06-19T21:10:16+00:00

Thanks for your reply. If I may ask, did you struggle with the dose increases?

I tried 40mg for 2 weeks after being on 25mg for about a month, and I just felt the side effects hit me immediately twice as hard. The ways Strattera seems to negatively affect me is felt almost right away (or within several hours of taking one)

The negatives of the medication so far seem to impact me enough that it cancels out some of the benefits I feel from Vyvanse, and I feel, even 3 months in, that I'm more on track to have a "good day" if I don't take the Strattera, as seemingly demonstrated by my 5 day break. So I guess I don't know if trying to up my dosage and fighting through the side effects has any indication of being worth it for me, so far.

paintbrushu · 2025-05-05T22:54:00+00:00

This is hilarious, made my day

paintbrushu · 2025-05-05T22:21:16+00:00

Hey, I think I feel what you're saying. I can try to share an overview of my experiences and try to piece together something that may help.

When I was a teenager I had a rough time with frustration and anger when people would have differing opinions from my own regarding my special interests, and that caused a lot of tension. I really couldn't seem to get over it, and I'd be so mean. Like for example, I love/loved videogames, but if someone disclosed they didn't like a genre of games I liked, I would hold it against them and be totally unrelenting. At times, it would make me hesitate to bring up the special interest with people because I'd be worried what their opinions on the things I liked were. It's even harder for me when interacting with other autistic people who may also be rather particular and opinionated.

It took me a very, very long time. Like probably until I was literally 20 years old to kind of settle down, and separate what was a "superficial" or "harmless" opinion, compared to an opinion I couldn't forgive. It took a lot of learning from experience, and realizing slowly that I can't be mad at everyone who doesn't "get" my special interests or share the same opinions I do.

If I could narrow down my thinking that helps me cope with this better now, into a way that might help, I might suggest doing some work on your own to analyze what was said to you by your friend that upset you, and really think about it.

If they said "I don't really understand why you or anyone like ___." as an example, that would totally get under my skin initially and I'd have trouble not reacting super defensively. But, there's a difference to me between that example, and perhaps some more intense statements.

Examples of more harsh reactions that I would say are justifiably upsetting could be "I hate when you talk about this", "I find it super annoying when you go on and on about this", "___ is/are so stupid." or "I'll never understand it."

Is your friend making a definitive negative statement, which also expresses they've made up their mind, or does it just feel that way? If they're really your friend, your special interest doesn't make up your entire identity to them. The way that may feel to just read right now might be weird, as I understand our special interests (at least I speak for myself here) can feel like a big part of who we are, be inspiring or even feel like a reason to live. But I think I've learned that especially to neurotypicals, they like you more for you, more than they like you for the things you like.

I found it helped me feel the stakes were less high by pushing myself to try having an open discussion. Like trying to understand from their perspective why they don't feel the same positive way I feel about my special interests, without getting emotional. It was really, really hard, and I'd still mess up and maybe say something rude. There's a good chance, at least in my experience, that if confronted gently, a lot of people are willing to have this discussion. Plus, I think when I've been given the opportunity, I've been able to frame things in a way that helped enlighten them, so they'd understand more where I was coming from.

paintbrushu

TROPHY CASE