Me lazy? No its something deeper ✨️
- amarathyst

- Jan 31
- 4 min read
A Life That Looked Like Laziness Until It Didn’t
For most of my life, I thought the problem was simple.
I was depressed.
I didn’t like homework.
I struggled to explain myself.
I got tired easily.
I didn’t fit.
Those explanations were easy to live with because they were familiar. They were also wrong.
This is a window scan — not a diagnosis, not a defense, not a performance — but a clear look at my life as it actually unfolded when all the pieces are placed together instead of isolated, minimized, or explained away.
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Early Years: The Signs That Were Already There
I was an IEP student starting in Pre-K.
That alone tells a story, even though no one ever sat me down and explained what it meant. I needed accommodations early. Structure didn’t come naturally. Processing information took more effort. Language — spoken and written — didn’t flow the way it did for other kids.
I was often late.
I struggled with transitions.
I needed external reminders and scaffolding just to keep up.
None of this was new. None of it appeared suddenly in adulthood.
But because I could sometimes perform well, the struggle was treated as optional — like effort could fix it.
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School: Honor Roll and Collapse, Side by Side
This is the part that confused everyone, including me.
Sometimes my grades suffered badly.
Other times I made honor roll.
From the outside, that looks like inconsistency or lack of motivation.
From the inside, it looked like this:
When structure was clear, stress was low, and fatigue hadn’t hit yet, I could excel.
When instructions were verbal, multi-step, rushed, or stacked on top of each other, my brain would stall.
When exhaustion set in, everything collapsed at once.
Grades measured output. They never measured the cost.
I didn’t succeed because things were easy.
I succeeded by overexerting myself — until I couldn’t.
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Communication: “You Don’t Make Sense”
I’ve always had difficulty expressing myself.
Not because my thoughts were empty, but because the translation layer between my inner world and the outside world was unreliable.
I struggle with:
producing certain sounds in speech
retaining spoken information
organizing thoughts in real time
writing in ways others easily follow
People told me I didn’t make sense — even when I used proper punctuation, even when I tried to fix it.
That repeated message did real damage. It made me feel insane, like reality itself wasn’t lining up.
What I understand now is this:
My thoughts made sense. My output didn’t always carry them intact.
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Learning to Express Myself — and Being Misunderstood Anyway
At some point, I learned how to express myself.
Not because the disability disappeared, but because I adapted. I found language that matched me.
That’s when another strange thing happened.
Even when I could communicate clearly, people still said:
> “This doesn’t make sense.”
Especially when I wrote openly. Emotionally. Without sugar coating.
My spirit blog isn’t meant to be linear or instructional. It’s symbolic. Honest. Heart-on-sleeve.
And that scares people.
Sometimes “this doesn’t make sense” doesn’t mean confusion — it means discomfort.
That distinction matters.
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Cognitive Load: Confusion, Dropouts, and Re-Reading
As demands increased, I noticed things I hadn’t had words for before.
I get confused easily.
My thoughts stop mid-thought.
Steps disappear unless I reread them — often multiple times.
Spoken information goes in one ear and gets lost.
I listen. I care.
I just can’t retain it reliably.
This isn’t occasional. It’s structural.
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The Body: Fatigue, Pain, and Unpredictability
My body adds another layer.
Mixed sleep issues: hypersomnia, insomnia, non-restorative sleep
Random crashes that force long naps
Near-syncope and collapse if I don’t rest
Unexplained arm tremors
Intermittent hand cramping
Chronic knee and ankle pain that affects how I walk
Vision impairment requiring glasses
Severe mold allergy affecting my airways
Chronic sinus infections that disrupt sleep and cognition
None of these alone define my life.
Together, they make reliability impossible.
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The Mistake I Made — and Why It Makes Sense
For a long time, I thought:
> “I’m just depressed and I don’t like homework.”
That explanation fit the information I had.
No one told me:
depression can result from disability
intelligence doesn’t cancel impairment
fluctuating ability is still disability
needing rest doesn’t mean weakness
trying harder doesn’t fix executive dysfunction
So I blamed myself.
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Adulthood: When Systems Don’t Catch What Was Always There
As an adult, I applied for disability.
I was honest. I said I got confused. I said I couldn’t regulate emotions under stress. I said I couldn’t keep a schedule. I said I couldn’t retain information.
I was denied.
Not because it wasn’t real — but because the system didn’t translate my reality into functional terms. No consultative exam. No integration. Just checkboxes.
It felt like proof I was wrong about myself.
It wasn’t.
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What the Window Scan Shows
When everything is viewed together, a pattern emerges:
Lifelong neurodevelopmental disability
Learning disability documented since early childhood
Speech, language, and processing impairments
Cognitive overload and confusion across reading and listening
Emotional regulation difficulties under stress
Severe fatigue and physical variability
Inability to sustain attendance, pace, or reliability
This isn’t a personal failure.
It’s a system mismatch.
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The Quiet Truth
I wasn’t lazy.
I wasn’t broken.
I wasn’t imagining it.
I was disabled — and adapting — in a world that kept telling me the problem was motivation.
Seeing that clearly doesn’t fix everything.
But it does something important.
It gives the story back to me.
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🫂


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