Leilys

Hm, it feels like I'm always expecting the other shoe to drop, for the inevitable collapse to happen. I'm always scared of that, and so far, despite best efforts, it's been true.

I usually reach a point where I'm struggling to deliver even a "reasonable" workload in possibly some form of burnout, and then mistakes happen, and bosses start to side eye me. My lack of ability to notice detail at times also doesn't help, even if I do double back to check.

But I'm still early in my career, so I am learning, developing new coping skills and moving on to do better (I hope).

Thanks for the encouragement. I've been put on performance for a while at work and despite my best efforts the situation isn't improving. I've only got a few more weeks before basically guaranteed termination.

I definitely did have a moment recently where I found a mistake in something I made a point to go through with a fine tooth comb when I did it, and I was so horribly disappointed in myself I wanted to cry and resign because I tried so damned hard, but I still screwed it up.

And you are right about gaining experience and starting afresh. I hope that as I go along I'll just gain more experience and be better at my job until I can work and meet expectations, like the average neurotypical person.

Take some of the questionnaires from more legitimate ADHD resource sites. Where I scored highly likely to be ADHD, my partner did not at all.

That being said, you could also undergo psychiatric assessment with a psychiatrist, but it may be a little expensive. I would recommend it if you can, because medication and appropriate psychotherapy can greatly improve quality of life.

I think it's definitely really early to say if they have proper romantic interest in you, given you've only known each other about a week? But from your post, it seems like you two have points in common and have a lot to chat about, which is often a good foundation for relationships, friendly and romantic.

In terms of learning Linux, it's probably ideal to have a bit more of an outline of what you want to start teaching her because it's a huge jump into a new OS (not that I know much of myself). She may not know where to ask you to start and would appreciate more suggestions from you on where to begin, like telling her "Today, let me show you (practically) how to install (OS) on a system and navigate it" and going off that.

I think the tl;dr would be: Have a Linux lesson plan, expect friendship first. Take it slow.

Hope things go well.

Granted, it would be rather dumb to be going online with anything pirated on the switch, but dual booting is a pretty fair way of going about it if you already own games/ want online options. Just takes extra memory in the SD card.

Definitely recommend it.

Thanks for sharing it here!

I joined the discord but it was axed before I could save information. Lesson learned, I'll make sure to take screenshots in the future.

Again, I'm not demanding full knowledge of my friends nor have I asked for any apologies. Rationally I understand, but does it invalidate my feeling hurt?

It wasn't a lie by omission, they genuinely made me question myself deeply if I was just thinking too much, it made me question my reality and what I observed.

I haven't asked for anything from them. Didn't demand they be honest or pushed them. I just didn't expect to be actively deceived, even if intentions weren't malicious.

When you've worked hard to rebuild, keep trust and respect boundaries where you've overstepped before, to be shown in a way that it feels as if you've actually not made any progress at all hits hard.

I just don't want to regress back to removing and isolating myself because I feel like I'm nothing but bad news to people. I'm genuinely trying my best here, it's just that the people who helped me out of that shell back then were involved, and I'm struggling.

Like adults, we talked out the issue, I apologized and actively worked to address the mistake I made and respect new boundaries when it happened.

I've anonymised and changed identifiable information to seek support on dealing with the issue here to avoid discussing it with other friends, who would know the people in question. Isn't that the point of communities like these?

I've come here to express my hurt at being misled and gaslit across a long period of time by my close friends and confidants, and to find actionable suggestions to try and move on. So tell me, what else could I have done to protect their privacy and still seek support?

They were literally holding hands while we were spending time together. I know they didn't owe me a straight answer, and I'm the type to fully drop a topic if they say no, but it would be sort of dumb if I didn't ask at that point.

For the conversation to kind of turn it around on me when I asked saying, "I mean, it was sort of obvious" like they weren't verbally denying it to me when I asked feels disingenuous.

Life isn't a romcom where everyone's slyly ribbing people about being together. I've made that mistake before when I was a lot younger and it ended up hurting someone.

They messed up in how they handled the whole thing, and my feelings were hurt as a result. It's not the end of the world, but it's not unjust to need time to process and find a way forward.

We're in similar cultures. My group and I were in a more westernised schooling environment, hence the more western ideas we share.

I'm glad we were though, because unlike others who would've just let the relationship die because they refused to swallow their pride and apologise, my male friend at the moment has reached out with an olive branch of sorts and it's helped a lot in the process of us both getting over the elephant in the room.

I believe that face and pride are god awful, and I've seen what it's done to my family and friends. If open communication was more of a thing, I don't think I would've grown up in the environment I did. Some people would genuinely rather die than ever admit they're at fault, but I think now I'm glad my friends aren't one of them.

It's sort of an everyone kind of knows but me thing, since I chose to drop the topic and ignore the signs after they said nothing was up out of respect to them. I know they owe me nothing of the sort, just that in the end, here we were. I'm just coming to terms with it.

I think it's definitely come from some trauma of being heavily neglected in ways I desperately needed growing up. I credit my friends, including the ones I've mentioned here for being the support I've needed to survive at first, and now do well.

I don't know how you would feel, but I would love to have returned the favour of that level of trust and support, and I endeavour to do that, best I can. It did hurt to find out that they sat on it for so long to avoid a potential scenario, that it came true anyway due to a different kind of hurt.

I told Xavier following the initial conversation: "I'll always be your friend. That doesn't change, and I'll always support you." And based on a very recent chat I think he does believe that and is willing to try to get past this.

My feelings of hurt were never going to end in me cutting them off. But they've just extended a sort of olive branch, and we can work with that. I feel a little reassured now that my friendship is worth at least some effort, because it has always been a deep fear that I wasn't.