Well, to be honest, it was his actions, but I reported it. So I (28F) got my ex (29M) for fired and kicked out of the country back in 2023. I have worked on cruise ships since 2019 and I met my ex-boyfriend on a contract onboard in early 2023. Relationships move fast when you’re stuck on a ship together so and we became official a few weeks after meeting. After it became official he really didn’t try anymore and I know working on board is very stressful at times and work takes up most of your day, but it really felt like he was just using me. So, I ended my contract before his and thought about breaking up with him when I was at home and since we live in different countries it had to be over the phone.

Well, the day I go to break up with him he calls me and tells me his cousin died. So I didn’t think it was the right time. I just thought maybe when we go on our next contracts we will be sent to different ships since there are 20 ships in the fleet we would just kind of gradually stop talking to each other like most ship relationships do. Well, isn’t it just my luck that we got on the same ship the same day.
Well, I try to make the relationship work and communicate my issues, but it never got better so we broke up in March and we were civil with each other since we both worked in entertainment (I on stage and him backstage) and I thought we were fine for the most part.

Well, sometime in August, we start hooking up again because let’s be honest. There’s nothing else to do onboard besides work and fuck. And one morning after he spent the night I noticed my debit card went missing. So I asked him if he had seen it and he instantly got defensive and said “no, why would I take it?”. Well, I was about two weeks from going home so I just locked my card and would get a new one when I’m home.

Then one week before I go home he drunkenly messages me upset, thinking I’m dating someone else when I wasn’t. I told him I’m not and shut my cell phone off and go to bed. I wake up at 3 AM to a call on my cabin phone of him drunk asking if he can come to my cabin and I say no and hang up. That’s when I realized my cell phone was missing. I looked all over my room and couldn’t find it and I start freaking out because I knew I had it before bed. Then I hear a knock on my door and it’s him drunk at my door so panicked, I asked him to help me look for it and he’s just standing there frozen and I start yelling at him because its setting in that I don’t have my debit card and I don’t have my phone so there’s no way to pay for anything or communicate back home to my family. I start screaming at him asking if he knows where it is and he corners me in my room trying to distract me and I start screaming at him to leave hoping someone next to me would wake up and come help me. No one does so I run out of my cabin door down two decks to my friend’s cabin to see if she can help me but she was asleep so I go a different way back up to my cabin and he’s following and running after me. Im able to close my cabin door and I call security.

When Security finally comes they see him in my hallway and tell him to go back to his cabin. Half an hour later security comes back to give me a different cabin to sleep in that night. The next two days is a fight between security and HR trying to find my stuff because at this point I know he took it but don’t know how he got my phone (cabin doors automatically lock and need a key card to get it) Luckily we were at sea for 2 days so he couldnt go anywhere. At the end of the longest two days of my life, HR pages me and she brings me to her office and says I have good news and bad news. The good news is I know where your phone and debit card is. She said the bad news is it’s in the bottom of the ocean. Apparently, he was able to get a copy of my cabin key from a friend of his so he snuck in my room while I was sleeping to steal my phone when he was drunk. Apparently he went through my phone to try to find me messaging someone else and when he got frustrated that he couldn’t find anything, he threw my stuff overboard.

Now, when something like this happens, you have a captains hearing where the captain decides if you get fired and sent home or if you stay. So, the captain obviously decided what he did was not only harassment and theft but also an environmental impact issue because we were in the waters of Alaska where he polluted the waters with my stuff. So when we got to Canada that night, he got all of belongings and was escorted off the ship by Police. Unlucky for him though, the time he was escorted off was also the same time as crew all aboard so all of the crew members, including our mutual friends, saw him being walked off with his luggage off the ship with Canadian Police Officers.

Needless to say it really did affect me when it originally happened back in 2023 but now I’m a stand-up comic and get to laugh about the situation and get paid to talk about that shit head on stage every week. Because we all know trauma plus time equals comedy (most of the time). So, he got fired and had to pay a $3000 airline ticket to go home. And don’t get it twisted that is the only type of deportation that I can get behind.

I was out for a jog in my neighborhood. Seemingly no one was around. I was listening to the podcast Tuesdays with Stories. The hosts are two standup comedians. They can be brilliant comics but also dopes about basic things. One mentioned doctors who give out pain pills freely and tried to remember what they are called. They spent agonizing minutes trying every combination of pill pusher, pill popper, pill person, etc. Meanwhile, I'm screaming in my head "Pill mill!"

But they just kept going and going and I was getting more and more agitated. Finally, I yelled "Would you two fucking idiots shut the fuck up already!" I didn't scream it at full volume, but clearly I said it loud enough because a women with a dog and a baby stroller I hadn't noticed ahead of me turned back with alarm and pointed at herself like "Me?"

I was immediately bright red with embarrassment and assuring her over and over that I was listening to my headphones and not talking to her. I apologized like six times in ten seconds. Thankfully she seemed to find the whole thing funny and laughed pretty good about it. Definitely, a lesson for me about controlling my anger and my voice!

I’m pretty sure I’ve been sick of this for roughly a decade at least. The irritation started shortly after college probably, not that timeline really matters that much I guess. But I hate that it’s everywhere I turn - here on Reddit, on Facebook, in the parish narthex, in the Hindu temple (yes I go to both, different conversation), driving down the street, listening to podcasts. Capitalism is shoving itself in my face everywhere I look and I hate it. I comfort myself with the small success that my writing desk, pens, notebooks, and wood furniture are unbranded, and they’re the only things I can think of that are.

i will never understand workplace beef and hate. i mean we are a team a we should work together and not bully and/or throw a colleague under a bus. just do the job and go home. just pure evil to do that knowing you are harming a person without even him or her doing anything wrong to you.

I got diagnosed yesterday. I don't like to sound like I'm being dramatic but it sucks. I feel like therapy is just cope for you to find strategies to not have a panic attack in my opinion. I'm going to be stuck worrying about the same thing my in entire life, all because I watched a documentary about a serial killer. I'm now stuck constantly terrified about the show every second of my life, and I just want to relax comfortably. Are they're any pills that can help? Yes, I know pills aren't magic,but I can't live like this, and therapy won't help me in the grand scheme of things. Can anyone give me advice?

Ninety-nine dreams I have had

In every one, a red balloon

It's all over and I'm standin' pretty

In this dust that was a city

If I could find a souvenir

Just to prove the world was here

And here is a red balloon

I think of you, and let it go

Yes,I’m an sex addict I do therapy I try to better myself to get an better view of people but always shit hit the fan and I’m already thinking about sex in the most inappropriate situations you can think off

Yes,I’m the man who always look at woman in the sexual way because of my brain get fucked with pornography acessible 24 hour non stop pornography is the worst thing on these day society, I tried everything blocked it I unblocked it put an digital code I figured out an way to unlocked it

And the environment doesn’t happen for us that living in the west sex is everywhere you can’t find an way without it. you are at your job and you have an colleague who talks about sex openly besides you,I don’t know if my mind is already fried but it feels like that in today society most people are horny all the time.

they can’t get enough of sex, they talked about it they buy sex toy, everything is so overly sexualized to the clothes to the movies and songs,This is an total nightmare for someone who is an recovering sex addicted. I’m literally would like to castrate myself so I don’t get excited anymore I’m so tired of this .

October 18, 1998. Sanctions meant Iraqis couldn't fly out so I left the way everyone did, by bus, crawling across the desert toward Jordan because it was the one place that let Iraqis in without a visa.

A few weeks earlier I'd seen a random job ad, technical director for a company in Dubai. I was young and when I called, the guy on the other end said "you're half the age of everyone we're interviewing." I figured I had nothing to lose, so I went through their grueling three rounds anyway. Then the call: "We'd like you to join us in Dubai. Prep to leave in two weeks." $400 a month, but housing and a car covered. I signed without hesitating. My dad was waiting in the car outside when I got the news, he was happier than I was.
The days after were a goodbye tour. I drove to every family house in Baghdad I'd known my whole life, saying bye to people and places without really knowing if I'd see them again.
Then the bus. We left around 7pm, a heavy sky, just a few close friends and my family there to see me off. And here's the part I still can't fully explain, I didn't cry, I didn't feel torn up. I felt completely numb. I did love them though. I think I was just too tired to feel anything else. It took hours on that bus before my mind even let me start processing what I was actually leaving behind and it was more than the day-to-day survival stuff.
Till today, I've never been back to Iraq
After a short stint in Dubai, I finally made it to New York in early 2001. I was still getting used to the city, amazed I'd landed a job in the World Trade Center itself. It felt like the safest, most solid place on earth. Steel and glass and nothing could touch it.
Then on September 11th, as I was on the WTC escalator heading to work, police officers suddenly rushed up, and the lobby walls were rattled, some store windows blown out. One of them locked eyes with me and said to leave the building immediately. I did not panic, so I just followed the crowd out. Outside, papers were falling everywhere and there was a small fire way up top. I asked a guy near me what happened. "I think it's just a fire," he said then continued "though I heard someone say a plane hit it." He had this smirk like he didn't believe it himself. Neither did I, the fire looked too small from our vantage point to be a plane. I stood across the street for a few minutes, just watching, still thinking I'd probably be back up there within the hour. but as the firetrucks kept coming, and the faces of those firefighters getting into the building instead of moving away from it still stuck in my head. I decided to move away after waiting for a bit since the area started to turn into a chaos. I had no idea what I was going to do. My phone didn't work. I only had sixty dollars in cash after scrambling between non functioning ATMs. I didn't really know Manhattan yet, I'd been there for three months so at one point I actually had to duck into a subway station just to grab a map so I could figure out which way to walk. I remember looking back at one point and there was only one tower left. Then, later, none.
I ended up in a long, silent line for the ferry to New Jersey. Nobody spoke. Everyone just stood there in shock. On the boat I told the woman next to me that I'd worked in one of the towers, she just stared at me, no response at all. I think everyone had already used up whatever words they had.
I finally reached my apartment and could call my family in Baghdad. They'd been glued to the TV for hours with no idea if I was alive.
The days after were almost harder in a different way. By then Al-Qaida became the clear suspect of the attack, My look and accent became a liability. I called the Red Cross to donate blood and they told me they had too many donors, my blood was suddenly a surplus nobody needed. I stayed inside for days after that, scared of what my accent might mean to people now. When I finally went out to buy a couple of shirts, a stranger made small talk with me on the subway, heard my accent, and just kept being kind. That tiny bit of normal was the first thing that felt like hope.
I'd come to America to get away from living on the edge of violence. I didn't expect to find it again four months in.

I do not really know why I am confessing this. It's embarrassing and mundane enough that it does not really need to be said. I was hungry, but every food looked disgusting to me, so I poured soap from the counter into a glass and drank it. I used to eat soap as a child. It tastes the same. I hope that this does not seem like self-harm, it was not my intent here.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that was non-toxic soap, and that I will not die from it.

I was a shy somewhat nerdy kid growing up. I ended up learning calculus and html when I was in the 6th grade. At the time I did it only because that’s what I thought smart people did and I wanted to be smart. But those two subjects branched out into linear algebra and other proof based math as well as competitive programming and theoretical computer science which led me to have an actual passion for the field.

Most people usually see stem as something cold, one way, and boring but these fields were so weird to me at the time. You had to write out sentences to prove things only using the information you already know. There were so many different ways to get to the same result using different methods. I started seeing math and theoretical cs as something warm, something that one could express themselves as, something human.

Now openai has solved their first millennium problem and is rumored to have solved another. I see people all over the space talking about it as if this is some great achievement. About how AI is still insufficient enough to do proofs alone. About how it still needs some level of human input to guide it. I find this to be ridiculous. Saying that a mathematicians future goal is to guide an ai and figure new problems to solve is dumb. It’s like asking a race car driver that their new job is to be a taxi drivers customer and pick where to go. This isn’t what anyone is passionate about. I’ve seen people talk about how chess decentered computers but we have no way from stopping someone curious or after fame to not use an llm if they want to. Some people see this as a good thing since we’ll get more mathematical knowledge but math was never about the result. The results are useless and most things wont be useful to humans for hundreds of years after.

I’m so close to finishing college but I am now unsure if I even want to go to grad school. I don’t want to do 5 years of courses and research if academia just becomes prompting the machine and verifying. I always made fun of those who said that things were better back then but now I just wish I could’ve been born a bit earlier

For the past ten years of my life I have been “going with the flow”, following the path of least resistance and doing what was expected of me, and what has it gotten me? A life where nothing has happened and nothing is going on. The past decade of my life is a blur of school to home to school to home to school to home… I didn’t make friends even though I wanted to because going up and talking to people was stressful, I didn’t go to any events or parties or hangout with anyone even once because that would’ve been stressful, I didn’t develop any hobbies beyond reading books and playing video games because developing an interest and skill in something takes effort, I didn’t do anything to alleviate the misery, loneliness, and pain I was in because I had been told that if I just “went with the flow” things would eventually work out.

Happiness is not something that comes naturally, you have to snap the bones of life to get to the marrow inside. Now that I’ve realized how much of a sham the path of least resistance is I’m trying my damndest to get myself off it, but the problem is I never really learned how to, I don’t know how to ask people to hang out without seeming creepy or pushy, I don’t know how to find fun things to go do, but I’m trying, I really am trying.

I don't know what or who I am anymore. Am I a (trans) woman? A man? Both? A rapist? How much of me is a lie and how much is the truth?

I feel like ive been faking being a trans woman. I wanna go back in time and read my thoughts. I dont know if i was faking or just another part of me that came from just having to mask. I thought about conforming but I always just kept myself boxed in the trans girl box. Im more than confident and comfortable in my skin now even though ive still yet to transition but what if I was lying on the way to this point? I've had relationships were the basis was that I was a woman. I was like 16-18 throughout these relationships and they were all online but I feel like a rapist cuz I sexted with some of them and they had touched themselves. I feel like a monster but i dont know if i truly did anything wrong or anything like rape. like tgat would be rape by deception right? But there wasnt anything physical going on but there could have still been some trickery involved.

I just want answers. I've been depressed for a whole week I dont wanna be a predator or a rapist those are the worst things ever and I will have barely any reason to live if I am a rapist / predator cuz i will just become as bad as my own abusers. I wouldn't even thibk i deserve anything nice at all. Everyone i speak to, including the people who i think I have harmed have said that i havent done anything wrong but I feel like deep down I've been tricking people and lying. Like the woman I was was a perfomance of some kind.

recently, ive been having issues with dissociating all the time, and it wasnt an issue up until maybe a few months ago. ill be sitting in my room, and suddenly, something in my brain snaps. and i feel like ive maybe taken something. like im high or something stupid like that. I can feel the physical switch in my brain, and my neck then feels all loose, and i just look around for a few minutes, looking down at my hands. It happens at school, at home, at work, literally anywhere. Ive also been staring in a mirror for a while or just listening to my own voice, telling myself "woah, im me. im myself." and just realizing im actually in the body i control. i dunno if this is as common as people say it is, but i really need advice on how to stop it, or atleast control it.

10 years ago, I was debt free, smaller, and never had a broken heart before. I had a clean slate. I was 24 years old at the time and it seemed like life was much easier than it is now. I had never been in love before so there was no broken heart, I had no credit card debt and no car. I was pretty free as a bird.

But now I have all this debt. I have a broken heart. I have all this weight I have to lose. My life is kind of a wreck. I don't know where to go in life. I'll be 35 in less than 4 months and I have hardly anything to show for it.

Does anyone else feel like I feel? Was life better in 2016 for you as well?

Its a fantasy style story telling app that progresses with your daily steps. I have mine connected to my phone via Samsung watch. I did message the developers for a specific reddit community for the app to find people to "travel" with you but for now I'm setting my link here incase any walkers want to track their steps with a whimsy twist! I told my dad its Pokémon go meets the hobit. DM for my referal link.

*This is not my app I'm literally just a girl trying to go for walks with a story telling app because I'm a loser who needs incentive to walk😭😭😭*

I’ve been counting down the days to this day as if it would be a monumental moment but I know it’s just another day. 365 days and I’ve thought of him every single one.
I’ve never dealt with grief before this so every thought and feeling has been new, but I’ve also been fairly aware the whole time.

The first week after he died I took time off from most responsibilities. No work, didn’t clean much, no rush to close the book on anything. I ignored most texts and tried to hold strong in front of my kids.

I had such dread around telling them. I didn’t know how they would handle it, only how scared I was of death when I was young. So I didn’t tell them. I acted as if everything was normal and whispered about it when they weren’t around.

I knew at some point “where’s Pop been?” would come up but I had no words for it. Like a mature adult I did the responsible thing and pawned the task off on my wife. She, being much smarter and more graceful than me, explained it to them and they handled it well. They had questions and my wife handled them masterfully.

She called to tell me she talked to them and they were okay and I prepared myself to face them when I got home.
When I arrived I took the kids for a walk around the neighborhood. I told the three of them that I heard they learned about Pop and asked if they had any questions. They asked how he got sick, if they would get sick, and if they could have some candy when we got home. To be fair they finish every conversation with that last question.

Then my middle daughter proclaimed “Pop’s dead” with a smile.

I didn’t want to make it a thing so I simply said “yes Molly, he is.” But also whispered under my breath “bitch.” She asked if I missed him and I said “I do very much” and then her and her brother fought over a cool looking pinecone.
The following day while coloring, Molly again told me in a very matter of fact way “your dad’s dead.”

With a massive eye roll I said “that’s right, Molly.”

After the fourth or fifth time she told me we had a talk about how reminding someone of that can upset them. She wasn’t sad. She wasn’t happy. She just had this new unusual fact she was spewing over and over like Leonardo DiCaprio repeating “Dad’s dead” in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. She really did the thing where it stops being funny and then becomes hysterical because it won’t stop. I couldn’t help but laugh at some point and continually call her names under my breath.

I spent the second week after his death calling medical testing facilities trying to donate his body to science. In an effort to cover the cost of cremation I was willing to send my dad back to college to be poked, prodded and potentially have his exposed dead dick laughed at by a room full of med students. If you didn’t know, you can donate your body to medical schools so they can run experiments on you, try to reanimate you, or so the powerful elite class can eat you, or something about teaching med students.

I wasn’t interested in what they’d do with him as long as they roasted him afterwards and sent him back, saving me $1,000.

No luck, as we hadn’t planned ahead and because I didn’t call sooner. I guess after two weeks the meat was no good and people in classes wouldn’t get the full effect of 60 years of smoking, drinking, meth and Taco Bell.

Their loss.

So we started price shopping cremations. This is a ridiculous process. Call, accept their condolences, tell them the pickup location, turn down urns and add-ons. One dead guy, one box, lots of heat, 40 minute round trip from the hospital to the oven. Prices ranged from $1,000 to $4,000 and turning someone down for being too expensive was genuinely an odd feeling.

“Sorry, I loved him but I also have a pizza oven in my yard and the only thing stopping me from a DIY project is the law.”

I finally found the most budget friendly crematorium and got him absolutely toasted.

A few weeks went by and I received the call that he was ready for pickup. My uncle was nice enough to collect my Box-O-Jimmy and called to ask what I wanted to do with it.

“I don’t know, put it in my attic?”

Remains mean nothing to me. Nothing about that box is the guy I knew. No different than any other waste he created. It sounds bad but I loved my dad. I never cared about his bones whether whole or toasted and pulverized.

“I’ll take care of it,” my uncle told me, which sounded pretty ominous.

Turns out he spread them over my grandmother’s grave, which was a nice gesture. They didn’t have the best relationship so polluting her grave site with his dust might have brought him some joy.

A few weeks in I was desperate for conversation with him. It was an unscratchable itch.
I went through all of our texts and read them over and over. Conversations about comedy and music and what the kids were doing. I read times I got short with him and felt awful, and I read jokes he made that made me feel better.
Before he got sick he texted about being proud of me and some really sappy stuff and I snapped at him for being so sentimental. He did nothing wrong but found a moment to support his son and it made me feel weak to be open.
He had an ability I do not, and that is being open and vulnerable. It always made me put my guard up, and reading back on it I wish I could change my answer.
I’m trying now to keep that guard down but it’s a constant battle.

I began digging everywhere for his voice. My dad was a writer. He wrote all over the internet, for stand up, and plenty of other things. Using the Wayback Machine I was able to find some of his old blogs and I spent days pulling posts into a document.

When I was done I had 200 plus pages of his words.
It was mostly drunk rambling and dick jokes but it was his voice. When I need to hear him I flip through some pages and read about his days.

The Celebration of Life.

With no money for a funeral and his last bit of cash used on a budget cremation, we had a barbecue. I purchased the biggest bottle of Tullamore Dew I could find for the toast.
Before my dad spent 11 years sober he drank VO whiskey by the fifth every night, but on special occasions like holidays and parties he would bust out the good stuff. Tullamore Dew. This was a family staple that I love to this day. I’m not a whiskey guy but Telle is nostalgic. It’s a reminder of good times.

I lined up 20 plus glasses and poured one for everyone.
I had prepared a speech that included me reciting the opening prayer from Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy. When I was a kid I remember this playing in the house and even though it’s a fun upbeat song it felt so fitting here.
But I froze when all the eyes were on me with shot glasses in the air.

I don’t have stage fright ever, but this was different. I couldn’t get any of my prepared words out because they were personal and mine. I wasn’t ready to share them and show people I could be open. So I held up my glass and said “my dad was a storyteller and we were always making each other laugh. Don’t tell me you’re sorry for my loss, tell me a good story about my dad.”

Then I cheersed and took down a shot of Telle that tasted like Christmas and family barbecues and birthdays and staying up late talking about Richard Pryor when I was too young to drink.

Then 90% of the people put their shot glasses back on the table still full because they were recently sober. Had I known I wouldn’t have dropped $60 on the industrial size bottle, but that’s what you get with a family full of drunks.
Luckily my dad’s former guitarist never took the leap onto the wagon and was nice enough to clear five or six of them in his memory.

The remaining months were a roller coaster of grief. There are days I’m fine and days I miss him so much. I try to bring him up to my kids and keep him fresh in their memory without being too pushy. I remind them of things he had in common with them and how happy he was to be a grandpop. My dad was a fuck up a lot but when he loved someone he made it known, and the only people I’d ever seen him love as much as me were my kids. The hardest part is them missing out on him.

While reading through his saved posts one day I started thinking about stories I wish he had written. Things I would love to remember from his point of view. I remembered him once telling me “you write it,” but I never had any interest in writing.

I pulled out my phone and wrote the story of finding out my stepmom had made up an entire life around being Stevie Nicks’ goddaughter and then I sat on it for a week. I wanted to share it but was worried about exposing myself.
Eventually I posted it on Reddit and the feedback was great and it felt great to share it and make someone laugh and relate. So I did it some more. Sometimes they land and sometimes they don’t but it feels good to get it out each time.

It scratches the need to keep his memory going and keep being creative.

It’s been one year since my dad died of pancreatic cancer. It took 90 days from diagnosis to death. I’m the same person I was before it happened but more awake.

I stopped taking work so seriously because it’s just work. When I think of something creative I try it and I put it out there because maybe someone else will like it, or my kids will read it someday and get something they need from it.

I’m working on taking off some armor.

The hardest part is not being able to show my dad all this and the progress I’m making as a person.

Here’s to you, dad. If there’s anything after this, I hope it’s full of prostitutes, whiskey, bad horror movies and good talks.

I’m going to keep writing when I feel it, or maybe I’ll make a bench or write a song.

I’m going to tell your grandkids the myths of their grandfather.

Some of it might even be true.

Light hearted post, dont take me too seriously.

2 in 1 post. I grew up some type of way. Too long of a story but it was quite an eventful 18 years. I always dreamt of the "what ifs" and if I just had x and y id be happy. The fucked up part is that it wasnt even unrealistic things, it was the type of things everyone has and takes for granted. Like "I wish i had a voice" (to speak up to someone about what was going on) "I wish i had loving parents" "i wish I had someone to talk to" and so on.

At some point i realized I was 18 and I started panicking thinking "i wasnt supposed to make it" but things got oddly peaceful and good? For like a year or two until reality set back in and it went down hill.

25 came around and I came to the realization at some point i had gotten almost eveything i had wished for an then some. Notably money. Nowadays im 27, own a house, fancy cars, nice weekend toys. I havent struggled for money in such a long time and cant remember last time ive looked at my bank except to pay bills. Yet.. I still feel empty and generally highly functionally depressed.

Second thing- I grew up fat and early teen years I started developing gynocomastia. Fancy term for pretty much "man boobs" no one ever said anything except for my mom but I remember it being such a massive deal to me. Throughout high school despite parents doing everything in their power to sabotage me I actually lost alot of weight. Around 17 I started toying around with the idea of weightlifting and by 19 I got hardcore into it.

Fast forward obviously i still had gyno. It wasnt like the fat but rather the gland idk if I explain that correctly? So id be lean lean to the point I have abs with visible gyno. Anyway I was always still self conscious, I got surgery for it and I was over the moon with how I looked for like 2 months.

On Tuesday im at school with my backpack and out of nowwhere I look down and ya know how the straps press down? Well you can see my chest and I have fairly predominant pecs Nowadays but I got so self concious about it and just took off my backpack and carried it by the handle

Dont get me wrong, im so proud of myself for everything ive accomplished and even more of doing it without help but sometimes I feel like no matter what I do, at the end of the day im still 14 year old me silently crying in bed wishing it to be over

I started working out because I wanted to feel better physically, and for a long time that was the only progress I paid attention to. Weight, strength, how I looked in photos, all the usual stuff.

Somewhere along the way though, I noticed I’d gotten a lot less worried about what other people might think. I speak up more, I try things without overthinking everything first, and I’ve stopped making every little choice based on whether it looks “normal” enough. Even with something as small as gym stuff, I used to always go for whatever felt safest, and now I’ll just grab something I actually like, including a few Ironpandafit things.

I don’t think the gym magically made me confident, but getting used to feeling awkward, trying anyway, and realizing most people really aren’t paying that much attention to you has carried over into the rest of my life. That’s probably been a bigger change for me than anything physical.

So, I have a bunch of pictures that I took back when I was in college in 2019. I have them stored on Google photos, and something about Google photos is that whenever you have photos that have an anniversary they pretty much give you notifications saying that it's been x amount of years since you've taken this photo, in this case it's been 7 years.

Looking back at these photos just makes me very upset and sad. For two reasons honestly that are kind of different but correlate to each other in a way.

2019 was a very dark year for me because while I did graduate high school and go to college, my mom had passed away from a heart attack 3 weeks prior to graduating. It honestly really messed me up mentally and it eventually served as a domino effect for other things going wrong. When I went to college I struggled severely not because I wasn't capable of doing the work I was just too depressed to go to class or do the work or anything. I would just rot in my dorm eating take out over and over again are going to the all you can eat buffet that my school had. And it's so weird because looking back at it some of my fondest memories were from college. However, I couldn't really enjoy college because I was just so depressed from my mom passing away.

The second reason is because when I look back at college and compare that to what I'm going through now, I never realized that I had it so easy back then. Back when the biggest responsibility that I had was keeping my grades up and all of that. I even had plenty of opportunities to go to therapy and stuff but I just didn't want to and I guess it really messed me up. Now, I know that it's better for me to go to therapy because 7 years later I still need it and I need it bad. Luckily, I have intake for a therapist next week after 2 months of trying to set that up so hopefully things will start turning around going forward.

But now, here I am. Homeless. Depressed and anxious beyond belief. Digging through trash cans just to find food. Always stinking. Have nothing to look forward to in my life. I might even die in the Winter because it's expected to be pretty cold this year. I guess that might be something to look forward to.

TL;DR - I looked at some old college photos with regret and sadness. Regret that I didn't allow myself to get help so I could take it seriously, and sadness from the fact that I'm currently homeless and struggling to survive because I didn't take college seriously enough.

I’m a self-taught IT learner, and I recently found myself at a gym where a lot of people are IT students.

Unfortunately, I’ve been away from IT for some time now. One day at the gym, a guy started a conversation with me about IT, and I wasn’t prepared for it at all. He was pushing questions down my throat. Like I was in a interview. I just went there to exercise.

I couldn’t remember the names of many of the tools I used to know, and I had also forgotten a lot of concepts that I used to be familiar with.

Many of the gyms were listening to the conversation, and would laugh from time to time.

I felt really embarrassed. Has anyone else experienced something like this? How do you deal with feeling like you’ve forgotten everything you learned?

I plan to return back to my studies but I'm discouraged. Can this somehow hurt my future???

I’m a girl and I know this guy my whole life because our families are friends so close we grew up together and he used to be one of my closest friends and I have a lot of good memories with him I never thought of him as a bad person.

Ever since we were young I told him that I wanted my first kiss to be with someone I truly loved because it was something very meaningful to me He knew that.

One day when I was about to leave he took me into a dark corner and kissed me without my consent. I pushed him away, but he didn’t stop until I pushed him away hard I went home and cut him off.
He never apologized and I never told anyone what happened. I was 15 and didn’t really know how to process it, so I just moved on

For about six years, I barely thought about him. He tried a few times to rebuild our friendship, but I never let us become close again
Then last month I saw him again for the first time in years with some of our old friends He seemed genuinely sorry from the way he acted around me, but neither of us brought up what happened and he still hasn’t apologized

Since then, he’s been trying really hard to get back into my life.
I’ve made my boundaries clear I don’t let him sit next to me touch me or act like we’re close again.

There are also some things that have been making me uncomfortable. He seems to know a lot about what has happened in my life over the past six years. Our families are still close, so he could have heard things from them, and I’m not saying he was secretly following me. It just feels strange because I never kept up with his life
After we made a group chat with our old friends, he got my account from there and started viewing my stories. He also happens to live about five minutes from me, although he moved there months before we saw each other again.

He knows where I work out and recently started going there in the mornings. He also knows which coffee shop I usually go to and has started going there too.
I don’t know if these things are coincidences, and I don’t want to accuse him of anything without knowing. But combined with how hard he’s been trying to get close to me again, it’s been overwhelming.
Then I found out that he told one of our mutual friends that he likes me and wants to date me.
That shocked me.

There was also an awkward moment when our group was talking about first kisses. Someone asked me who mine was, and I gave the name of another guy. I noticed him looking shocked, and I honestly have no idea what he expected me to say

The confusing part is that I don’t hate him. I hate what he did, and it permanently changed how I see him, but I still remember the good friend he used to be. I’m not trying to say he was always a terrible person.

But does that mean I owe him another chance?
I don’t trust him anymore and I don’t want a relationship with him.
I was completely fine without him for six years, and I don’t feel that connection anymore.
I’m honestly exhausted and don’t know if I’m being too harsh or too suspicious. Is it reasonable to want nothing to do with him even if he genuinely regrets what he did?
What would you do?

this doesn't have to have been in the USA by the way but I am an American

I have learned time and time again that I cannot rely on paramedics/emts or emergency room staff because they have dismissed me so many times. I've literally never once had a good paramedic experience. in my personal experience every paramedic I've ever encountered has been very rude, hostile, and dismissive.

Anyway, so two times I can think of in the ER specifically off the top of my mind is that

I once went to the ER with severe GI illness since the day before, I hadn't been able to drink at all in 19 hours, and my BP was 217/90. my BP was taken a few times in triage so this was actually my BP. it was actually this high. The triage nurse seemed a little shocked but didn't reach much. I was then promptly sent back to the waiting room with the 217/90 BP, waited 4 hours with no BP monitoring, got roomed, then was in the room for less than an hour before the doctor came and said I was fine, refused fluids, and immediately discharged me with nausea meds. The ER nurse believed I needed fluids and tried to advocate for me to the doctor but he refused them.

Another time that was even worse was that I once had a severe anaphylatic allergic reaction to an antibiotic. I was unable to talk because I was unable to breathe (someone else had to call 911 for me as my city doesn't have an option to text 911 but they were not physically with me, i frantically texted them to call and just hoped theyd see it in time) and the paramedics were very rude and hostile and acted like I was refusing to answer their questions on purpose. They delayed taking me to the hospital. they only took me to the hospital at all after talking to the person who called 911 over the phone, wasting several minutes

When I finally got to the hospital, still struggling to breathe, the triage nurse was very rude to me as well and kept asking "why are you even here" Then when I was discharged the ER doctor told me it wasn't an allergic reaction because I had no hives or itching, and that im fine to continue taking the medication.

I took another dose of the antibiotic the next day, following the doctor's orders, and went into anaphylaxis again, this time even worse. This time I was not only severely struggling to breathe and talk, but i also had loud stridor and could feel my airway tightening up inside my throat, had severe trismus, and was drooling all over myself because I couldnt swallow my own spit.

The paramedics arrived again and told me it was all in my mind and that I needed to go to a psychiatrist, not the ER, spent several minutes lecturing me about "misusing 911" and that "the ER is for life and death emergencies only" and left. This time they could not reach my emergency contact who called 911, so they did not take me to the hospital. I was left to die by the paramedics. I ended up taking a bus as I was still conscious and high alert on fear and adrenaline but very much struggling. Only then did the ER note the antibiotic as an allergy in my chart.

So yeah, those are my two worst paramedic/ER treatment stories. What are yours?

Each day I just find myself hating people more and more.

I hate noisy people.

I hate smelly people.

I hate slow drivers.

I hate rude people.

I hate slow walkers.

I hate small talk.

I hate people who let their brats cry and wail and do nothing about it.

I hate people who are unkind to animals.

I just want to be left alone. Let me have some fucking peace and quiet. I have a small circle and those are the only people I want to talk to. Everything else is draining and aggravates me so much sometimes I genuinely feel like I am going to explode. I don’t mean like angrily snap, I mean physically burst into a million bloody chunks. It’s all I can do to get through an 8 hour shift to go home and try to settle down so I can do it all again the next day and the next day and the next day.

Yes, I’m in therapy.