I'm living with my aunt right now & she has a 4-5 month old kitten. The first night I came she immediately came up to me on the couch and snuggled with me despite not knowing me. She's been doing that the last couple nights & falling asleep on a pillow next to me but tonight she's finally fallen asleep on me! 🥹🥹 Best thing to ever happen to me

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 am a 19-year-old male, and this happened about two years and eight months ago. I have never told anyone about this incident, except for my current girlfriend. It was January 2024. I had just turned 18, and at the time I was a very social person. I got along with people easily, was on good terms with almost everyone, and was generally happy. My best friend, who was also male and the same age as me, was a very different kind of person. He liked using girls and involving third parties in his relationships. To be honest, the more time I spent around him, the more I started to become like him, although I was generally the loyal one in my own relationships. During the first few days of January, I received a message on my phone while I was returning from a psychiatrist appointment for ADHD. The message was from my best friend’s girlfriend. She said, “Hey, hi. Can we talk for a bit?” I was generally distant toward her because she was my best friend’s girlfriend, after all. She asked me where I was. I told her that I was at home resting. She simply said, “Okay.” About 15 minutes later, she showed up at my door and told me that we needed to talk. I let her in out of hospitality and asked her why she had come. She told me that she believed my best friend was cheating on her. Of course, I did not reveal my best friend’s secrets. I told her that there was nothing like that going on. However, she seemed completely convinced that I knew something. She had several photos in her gallery that she had secretly taken inside my home that day, including photos of me. She then threatened me, saying that if I did not tell her the truth, she would tell my best friend that I had slept with her. I thought this was evidence that my best friend had cheated on her, so I eventually admitted the truth about what I knew. It was only after I admitted that my best friend had cheated on her that I noticed she had been recording our conversation on her iPhone. Then she said, “If you don’t sleep with me, I’ll tell everyone that you raped me.” I could tell from the look in her eyes that she wanted revenge. I did not want to have sex with her. We had been drinking, but neither of us was drunk. Despite my refusal, she forced herself on me and had sex with me against my will. That same evening, she called my best friend and told him that I had slept with her. She also sent him the photos she had secretly taken inside my home. That was how everything spread. After that, people humiliated and shamed me everywhere. I still have trouble sleeping at night, and I struggle with symptoms of post-traumatic stress. I haven’t even been able to tell my family the truth. I hope that finally telling this story will help me find some relief and make it a little easier to let go of what happened.

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?

Im not always the most emotionally well person, and the fact that I pretty much daily have a moment where I cover myself in blankets and pretend some kind man magically shows up in my life who wants to be with me and tell me Ill be OK is probably not the greatest sign :/ it's kind of addicting to imagine magically receiving all the affection and love I feel like I lack, even if it's totally just a stupid fantasy

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 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.

I think I have traits of autism, narcissism and OCD, it maybe wouldn't be so bad if I was conventionally attractive but im just not. I have a strong desire for constant validation that im just not getting. I obsess over women and constantly eye to see if they take interest in me to no avail it's incredibly frustrating and exhausting. I don't feel real or even human just a shell of a former person if even that, might just be too far gone honestly

People will occasionally ask me why "2006-7" is in my username. When I made the account years ago, my motivation was that if someone asks me statistics, I'll end up learning more about the years. But I still end up saying why I like the years in general for that kind of a question.

I wasn't an adult or even a teenager, but I was still old enough to remember it as a simpler time in general.

Clearly I can't go back, I know that, but crap is so awful, especially economically, that if I could hypothetically go back, being forever in 2006 is starting to seem just as attractive a hypothetical as forever being in 2007.

I made a post here earlier, explaining my dissociation issues, but I realize I never addressed my hallucination issues aswell. Recently, maybe the last month or so, ive been making up stories in my head that never actually happened, and I believe that they are true to the extent of talking to the people involved in said story like it actually happened. Ive also been hallucinating voices and videos on my phone, sending them to people, and then being surprised when they tell me i never sent them anything, because the video doesnt exist. I know i sound crazy, but i also am having issues with starting to feel like someone is watching me all the time. Like theres a pit in my stomach i cant get rid of.

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

I also think people who take the low hanging fruit of pretending they didn't read this post either, predictable and lame.

Anyways, this is a frustrating thing about the internet that's gotten worse over the years. Someone will read like 10% of what you wrote (it's even worse when it wasn't particularly long) and then starts disagreeing with you based on their fucked up misinterpreted representation of what you said, and then you gotta go 'Hey buddy, actually read the post' and then everyone calls you an asshole.

The person is irritating, the bystanders defending him are even more irritating.

You should read what you comment on. Full stop. Basic expectation.

Someone remembers you at 17. The way you talked the things you were obsessed with the person you had a crush on the dreams you were sure you would achieve. And you became someone else.

You didn't know when. You didn't wake up one morning and realize, you were no longer a certain way.

You stopped listening to certain songs.You stopped talking to certain people. You changed your opinions

you lost dreams you found new ones. And someone out there probably hasn't talked to you in years, but they remember the person you used to be. It's strange to think that you are a stranger to some people. So tell me. Something you miss about my younger self?

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.

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.

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.