One Of The Biggest Issues Of Moving To England As A Person Who Is Ukrainian AND Neurodivergent Is Not

They should invent arguing with stupid people on the internet that's good for me and not bad for me at all

Followed a Wikipedia source in hopes of finding something useful for my essay about Kafka's Metamorphosis and stumbled upon something much better

One of my friends is a piano tuner. Her dream, or at least her parents' dream, was to be a concert pianist. Turns out she liked messing with the mechanisms more than she liked memorizing songs. It also turns out that "decent piano tuner" pays a lot more than "failed concert pianist," which helped convince her parents as well.

In the same way, I don't think there's any shame in being a race car driver's mechanic. Racing is a team effort. Everyone on that team has to contribute as best they can. From the crew chief who remembers things like "what weekend the race is on," to the intern who puts air in the tires of the car-hauling trailer, they can all share in a victory.

Thing is, the media likes a hero. It's hard to do a story about a whole bunch of people doing their job properly. Not much drama in it. They think we want to see a radical, a loner, a real protagonist. Even the TV news likes to ensure the happenings of the world are conveyed to you entirely by a cabal of all-knowing, handsome talking heads. More heroes, selling you the story of other heroes.

Those people don't really exist, and when they do, they're kind of unpleasant because they won't help you with your shit. Race cars need mechanics; concert pianists need tuners; everyone needs somebody.

That's why I've decided to more flagrantly violate the traffic laws. It's only by stretching these laws to their maximum that the lawmakers will truly appreciate the hard work of the dedicated civil servants who anticipated things like not letting me pull my Volare with a bunch of sled dogs. And if I do manage to find something new, they will all get a great opportunity to come together as a team and ban it. No need to thank me; just doing my part.

Yes yes I know this too shall pass but christ alive man it's passing like a gotdamn kidney stone

i'll fucking do it but christ alive

I debated posting this on here because this sounds SO MUCH like a Tumblr fake story from 2012 that I don't think anyone will believe me but I promise you, before we get into this, that it did happen and not a single person clapped.

One of my origin stories as the person I currently am is going to appeal my results for a English language competition in like 10th grade (of Ukrainian school, so ~15 yo) because most of the marks I was deducted was because of my handwriting (hi undiagnosed dysgraphia) and them being unable to decipher what I wrote. So I come, the examiner and I sit at a desk and go through all my "mistakes", and she goes:

"See? You said "we don't know of it". It should be "about"."

And I swear to you, I went:

"Actually, Shakespeare used "of" in "Hamlet". "And makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of"."

And then I pulled up the poetry foundation with To Be or Not To Be, showed it to her and she gave me the fucking point, too stunned to speak.

I had learned TBONTB by heart by reading it out loud to myself in the dark in my room at night multiple times in a row because I have always been sane and was never autistic actually.

It's such a loss that I wasn't on Tumblr as a teenager. I was grown in a lab to have a Tumblr blog that I will regret when I'm older.

Seeing a coworker/classmate sitting to the side and reading a book while on their break and then coming up to them and asking "what are you reading" should be illegal actually

I mentioned tomato juice in my last post, so here's a tomato juice story for your amusement.

Scene: London, UK.

Time: late 2024.

Dramatis personae:

Me, a Ukrainian, craving tomato juice like it's the only thing that can save my life.

My beloved flatmate, also a Ukrainian, going through a chronic illness flare that causes horrible brain fog.

Flatmate: I'm going to the Polish shop. Do you want anything?

Me: I do have a request, but I feel like you'll refuse to have THAT in our fridge.

Flatmate: ???

Me: Tomato juice. I'm craving tomato juice. I want tomato juice SO BAD.

Flatmate: ...only because I love you.

An hour later, my beloved flatmate enters the kitchen with a bag full of Polish groceries. I salivate at the thought of my tomato juice and run up to them.

Flatmate: Okay so I was picking between spicy and not spicy, and decided that you would want it not spicy. Here.

They proceed to hand me the following:

Me: I mean, I'll give you that, it's not spicy.

Flatmate considers terminating the lease on the spot.

Exeunt.

Okay so this post breached containment I think so I feel the need to clarify, because the vibes in the notes seem to suggest that people see this as an inspirational quote bestowed onto someone to help them soldier on. That's not how Ukrainians do it. Rather, imagine a person that looks like they haven't slept in three days and also hiked up a mountain. They are asked "Hey how you doing buddy", and in response they let out the deepest, most done with this shit sigh you can imagine, mutter their favourite curse word and THEN they say the phrase (which, by the way, is four words in Ukrainian - тяжко жити, шкода вмерти/tyazhko zhyty, shkoda vmerty). It's said as if they're trying to convince themselves that dying would, indeed, he a pity. The other person looks at them, their eyes full of understanding, sighs also and then says "well at least we're not russians".

And THAT is what helps a Ukrainian soldier on.

One of the biggest issues of moving to England as a person who is Ukrainian AND neurodivergent is not knowing how to answer the small talk question of "how are you", but today I was reminded that Ukrainian blessed me with the phrase that roughly translates as "living is hard but dying would be a pity" and can we please naturalise it so I can use it all day every day