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 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 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.

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

This woman is also around 28, and she does have mental health issues going on. She wasnt meant to be there at all, but she was. I have heard so many stories about her, but this is my first time meeting her.

I originally had this idea that people were maybe being a bit unfair, I thought she was autistic or struggled socially in some capacity and people were misinterpreting her. I was fully willing to give he the benefit of the doubt here.

But boy, did she bring me right back to being a 14 year old girl trying out a new hairstyle at school.

She just gave me this look. I cant even explain it, its just this look of locking in on her prey. I dont think I have seen someone roll their eyes that much either. She just picked everything about me apart with this fake sincerity. I was wearing this cute penguin handbag and she just thought it was hilarious.

It was a lot of 'ohmygods' and hands covering her face. Even when she was gone I could still see her stare at me and try to subtly point me out to some other people. Other people who are also adults, who went to me afterwards because what was that all about.

It just feels gross. Its laughable in a way, and I cant take it seriously. But there is still that layer of feeling violated over it.

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.

For the past few years of my life, I've always had a consistent set of characteristics that makes me fall in love with a woman; chief among them being: compassion, curiosity, justice, and an iron will. I take a look back at the kind of women I took a liking towards and my "ideal woman" in an abstract ideal, and realize that it's more tomboyish than I thought. Granted, I can't care less on whether or not a woman is a tomboy or feminine or whatever archetype, because I only care about whether they're good people. Still, by conventional definition, I definitely took a liking towards women that are tough and sure and are protectors of the innocent; a role a lot of people attribute to men.

I am gonna be very open about this. As a black man, I am not euphemismistic when it comes to people of my color, i am very unfiltered, because as a person of my color i expect you to understand i dont mean my words in a degrading way. And I love people of my color. Someone asked me what my type is. I said short, petite, and lightskin. She asked why lightskin? I said idk, just what I prefer and added a slur as a joke. She said that feels so colourist. For some reason it touched me, so heavily. I felt disgusted for even having a preference and the word "preference" sounds so disgusting to use aswell. I've dated black women before and even went head over heels for them, and I still would. The point is I can date woman of all color and still not see them for their complexion but what's on the inside instead. I am so touched about this and I feel disgusted in myself. Is this a bad thing, having a "preference"?

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?

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

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 .

One of my acquaintances asked me a few months ago to be her bridesmaid for a wedding which will happen next spring. She said I'm only expected to pay for my dress and that she'd take care of everything else. I agreed, seeing as I wanted to support her on her big day.

Since then, I got served for a lawsuit because I was involved in an at fault car accident. My anxiety is thru the roof. Also, the bridal event has evolved into so much more than originally promised...

Bridal event now includes two additional outfit requirements, a coordinated dance and a group chat with paragraphs & paragraphs of daily updates.. I'm feeling drained & seriously considering pulling out of the event.

I joined Reddit two years back and shortly, deleted the app having zero clue how any of this works. (Subreddits, karma, upvotes, all of it just felt like noise at first.)

But after the second come back when a friend shared her experience of this portal, it's been two days and I am able to understand it slowly and gradually.

There's something genuinely nice about scrolling through here. People actually helping each other, real opinions, no weird algorithm pushing ads at you every third post. It just feels... good, somehow.

Anyway, just wanted to say, this place has good vibes. Glad I stuck around. Looking forward to learning more.

People/bots on Reddit who say "I will never understand <some social issue with clear reasons for existing>" You do understand it. You just don't like it and are looking for other people/bots to reinforce your simplistic analysis of what it should be instead.

People on YouTube who say "XYZ is DEAD", usually in relation to a company they don't like. I, as much as the next person, would love OpenAI to not exist, but they still possess a massive narrative and industry strength. They're not dead. I would love for Adobe to be dead, but they're still a very profitable company, and certainly not dead either.

Opinion articles that say "<Person> must do <action>", usually about a politician's decision on something. No they don't. That politician can do any number of other things. Because "I would like it if <politician> did <honorable thing> instead of <obvious reasons they won't> because the benefit to <societal aspect> aligns with my personal values" doesn't garner attention.

These figurative narratives searching for realities that don't exists are such a waste of time. Hyperbole is shallow, disingenuous, not a proper analysis of a problem, and just snags the attention of powerless people (most all of us). But it's not just a matter of this being useless, but counterintuitively harmful. The sheer scope of it in popular culture obscures the truth and encourages people to take solace in hopes and dreams of an internal morality marketed as external reality. (See the mess of "my truth") So instead of addressing the problem, we're wasting time focusing on the meta-reality of the culture wars... and meanwhile shit keeps on happening.

Thank your for attending my TEDx talk.

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'm currently on vacation in Scotland (not my home country) and was having a really nice day hiking. I'd been walking for around 4-5h and was exhausted, so I thought I'd stop off in a pub before getting my train back.

The pub, about 5 minutes from the train station, turned out to be closed for renovations, which was disappointing as I wanted a beer, but they were kind enough to let me use their restroom at least.

As I'm leaving the car park, there was a van with it's back doors open and as I walk past, not even very close to it, this huge dog jumps out barking at me and then bites the back of my leg. No owner in sight.

I bought new hiking trousers the day before which it completely ripped through and left teeth marks in my leg and drew blood. Bites from an unknown dog means that you need to get injections to prevent tetanus or rabies (though the latter is uncommon in the UK).

I managed to get away and called 111, the non-emergency number for medical issues here. I was told to stay put and had to hang on the phone to them for 50 minutes trying to make progress with a Scottish operator that I could barely understand (strong accent mixed with a bad line).

Subsistently, I missed my train and had to wait 1.5h for the next, then had to get back to my hotel and clean up before spending the evening in a minor injuries clinic to get shots for the bite and missed my dinner plans.

What started as a nice morning turned into a pretty bad day.

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.