Coworker poems

seeing you happy makes me happy; when your face lights
up and your dimples show, paints a picture that my heart
has never reacted to in such a way before.
hearing you happy makes me happy, but hearing you
happy because of her, paints an ache that grows deeper
with every mention of her name, and my heart breaks like
it has never broken before.
waking up in agony from a dream i had where the reality
of my unrequited love for you appeared no different, my
only solace from that pain was being in the presence of
someone who matters to you.
he isn’t you, but seeing him reminds me of you.
little does he know that his presence a mere five feet
away from me makes me enjoy loving you without the
pain of seeing you.

I receive message during the most inconvenient times of my day. Since I've been more acquainted with my true self. I've met many others that are exactly as I am.... They were too afraid of themselves, to tell someone, energetic things they notice about others. Most people now will share with me, that I am easy to open up too and they feel vulnerable enough to share private matters. Most of the time, it is about spirituality, death and relationship problems.
Why me?!
I'm not an expert at all. I know the real reasons why, but I still like to entertain myself and ask why did I choose to be placed in that person's path to relate to them. I am there to show empathy because not many have felt that level of pain and it's difficult to find someone that will listen and engage that deeply and inventively.... I'm the one that cares, because when I needed someone to be there for me when I was watching my father die a slow painful death from cancer....
No one cared about me, no one reached out to show me support.
I made it my mission as I've grown older. I'm not going to let anyone, I don't care your age, feel that defeated and abandoned. If there is a mass email of someone at work that has lost a family member or they themselves are dying. I was there to meet with them and offer a hug. I didn't know how else to allow their family member to share energy with them. They told me if I can leave them a message (their message). So I gave them either a gift I placed their energy onto it and I try to bring up God/church/prayespirit/guides/angels..... I like to write long emails.... As you can see! lol
Some have lashed out at me for not being sensitive to their religious beliefs, but I followed my path by listening to my intuition and not ignore it.
So when I am working as a cashier, preschool teacher, chef, server, mortuary assistant, behavioral health technician, music teacher.... I have met many people and helped them in some way at every one of my jobs.
Doesn't matter my profession, it mattered my location, place and time. God doesn't care what I have to do, I had to learn how to allow him to work through me, to follow my purpose and help someone else. He has always made sure the path is cleared and doors of opportunity open for me. Even when I refuse out of resentment and unfaithfulness towards his wishes. I feel a heaviness on my heart and my discernment will place racing thoughts of me completing that task. Until I obey God's plans for me, I no longer have that urge to work towards that first intent to do something about a situation. That is when I know I have followed correctly. I get a feeling of completion and satisfaction. Very positive and uplifting energy that I can thrive off of for a few days in good spirits.
God really made me talk to people. Literally made me do it. I go up and talk about God with my coworkers and the other side.
I have proof of my weirdness!
So, if you ask upperclassman this rumor about me In high school, when I started to notice my gift after my class mates passed away..... I went up to guy in band. He played trumpet, we had to share a kiss at a musical we danced together called "Oliver". I wrote him a 7 page novel about life..... I made him a nice poem and all.... I have no freaking clue why I did it, but I was forced emotionally, I had to do it and I didn't care that he let half the school read my embarrassing letter to him. I didn't have a crush or anything. I just had to tell him, he had a GIFT! It was a spiritual gift of gab. He was a class clown and I felt his depression when we danced a summer together and we never actually kissed, but I secretly fantasied we did. I never had a first kiss back then..... I was 14. The spirit's name, I never told the guy. I never really told him in my letter that I was talking to a spirit..... Well, the name is, Nancy. I don't know him that well, so I never told him. I just wrote a long letter and poem..... Lol...... Just doing God's work..... XD
Now, I notice more often, a loved one's name pop in my head before I hear the person in the room tell me their name. I really had to hold back my urge to want to pray and do my empath superpower.... When God wants me to help someone, I get that weird happy feeling, like someone is lightly touching your head and moving your hair. It feels very calming and push that feeling to them in a ball.
Suz showed me how to do this when I helped at her ghost tours. It was the last thing we offered before she ended her tour. We stand holding hands and exchange energy as she prayed us into a vortex that allowed any trapped spirits to cross over.
I'm learning now that this is actually a thing people pay for..... It's energy work.
I do it for free....
I've been doing this as a kid hanging out in cemeteries. The spirits led me to them, to help them move on. Took me a long time to understand all of these emotions and when I didn't want to believe I am a psychic medium. I was so terrified that I had to have a mental illness or suffered something bad..... I had no idea and every doctor I went to found nothing concerning.I continue to be this way and I've accepted my calling. I've stopped pushing away the messages when I am placed to help another person communicate with someone or feel heard for their pain and convictions.
I didn't ask for this, but again, Suz reminds me that,
"YES YOU DID!"
Ugh..... So, thinking about how to help people...... It gets very tricky.
That saying is true,
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink."
You can have all the answers given to you, but without proper guidance, you can't just learn something overnight as easy as others. Especially the significance of the situation/lesson. Not everything is going to be handed to you on an "easy" play level. Some will be challenging, and others can be enjoyable and engaging. But the only thing is.... You must put in the energy and do the work in order to experience those emotions. You work on yourself, by paying attention to your emotions as you are doing something. Starting off, it's difficult to know what you are feeling for.....
Emotions for me were very numb and shut off. I had to work very hard on this step. Where did I get this step to begin with?! Divine guidance, spirit guide, guardian angel.... I really think it's my Dad mostly.Dad knew how much I started to hate church, so he brought it up most of the time with scriptures and adding his two cents about psychology. Why do I care again?Well, I did the work and this is how I did it...... They helped me during this process. They did most of the work getting my attention and I studied really random stuff, but it all glued together over the years.My random jobs that God leads me too are another thing....
I had to give up my dream to be something I "wanted" out of ego. Because every time I got into a position I considered in the direction towards my dream job, something went wrong and I had to start over from the drawing board. I went towards career paths that involve working with a lot of people, hospitality, customer service. It wasn't school like I thought it was going to be
When I don't want to do something and I mock it.....
That was when God made sure I went into the jobs I talked the most smack about.
He humbled me very quickly.
He told me it wasn't even about the job, it was the opportunity to meet more people. So, I went along with it. Especially during the pandemic. I had to be very creative with my time because of the lock down. I didn't want stimulus checks, I went back to work as soon as I found a job doing anything. Before I went into work, I took the time to sit in silence and give myself a pep-talk. (I started this habit in high school)
Sometimes I prayed, but it was casual, I talk towards a person or bow my head. Other times, I used vibrational music and zoned out for a few minutes and head inside.I think of the things I want to accomplish. I wasn't a people person and mornings are still a struggle to be bubbly and fake. I tell myself to work on how to be more positive. Not engage in oversharing, giving negative opinions, gossip, and work on being a better person.
I thought of being a person I wished everyone would be, if we were without hate/fealoneliness/guilt/shame/envy/etc.... Negative emotions creates a mask of a persona we think will allow us to fit in with that social crowd. With enough time, the effort to try becomes second nature and you adapted yourself into being something you're not. When you notice how you don't feel certain about yourself and how comfortable you are being "yourself". You judge others and become critical. Masking flaws in fear of rejection.
It gets confusing, but you see where I'm going with this?!
You try so hard to be so many things, you confuse yourself into not knowing who you are anymore. After so many years of adapting and learning from being around other people....You must make a conscious decision to walk away from toxic relationships and create boundaries. Shouldn't matter the person and your connection. You need to know your self worth and by doing that, you are already treating yourself better and showing self love.
Start doing things for yourself you wished that others would do for you. Why wait?Do it for yourself.I wrote a list of hobbies, places to visit, stores to explore, towns to travel too, trails to walk, movie to see, books to read, etc.... Then I would work on 1 of those items when I had the energy to mentally allow myself to try something out of my normal routine.I made those things, goals, rewards and positive reinforcement.I worked hard on my character at work, controlling my temper, calming down my behavior, learning about my body and getting checked medically. I made sure I worked on my outer appearance, as well as my center.I had to find ways to cleanse my mind from negativity, bad habits. I had to treat my body as I would a temple and be kind to it.
Not falling into my popular habits of,
Over eating, binge drinking, being hyper sexual, dwelling on past faults, self-sabotaging all opportunities....What do lonely people do in a crappy relationship they feel stuck in, but don't find a way out?!
I became everything I said I was never going to end up. I became that prediction, I made for myself and I allowed my poor habits to take me to that destination.On my sad days, laying in my dark room, curled in my bed sheets with my fur babies and lots of alcohol and junk food..... I worked on myself very slowly and it starts off gentle with what content I stopped looking at, such as snuff videos, killings, murders, crime scene investigation, horror and I just got tired of it after 2 decades. I wanted something better for myself and realized I should watch something the opposite of my past bad habits.
I started watching martial arts movies again. I would look further into the videography and watch the behind the scenes and interviews. I listen to their outlook on philosophy and the world itself. It started to reignite my perspective about life and how to fight battles from within. By using your body and understanding different forces of energy.
So, small steps towards your goals brings you out of patterns of destruction and defeat. Each step you take is one step away from the past and where you came from.
Don't allow it to dictate where you are going.
You can change that path and re-create yourself into a brighter version of who you really are and live in that state of being. Where you are content and happy with where you are in your life with no regrets or looking back into the past for any unresolved conflicts. When you can release those strong holds, that is a step in the right direction.
They have stopped talking now. I'm getting tired and I lost contact. It felt like I was getting somewhere good, but lol.... I worked way to late today. I promise more later....
I notice many people around me that are struggling and not happy for this weekend and I understand why. Many of us are missing our favorite person/people now and it's difficult to enjoy life without them. Some near me may lose their mother as we speak. And we have kept talking as this is happening. Maybe why it's sparking me to bring it up as a topic of interest tonight.
I Don't want you to forget this truth and that "they" are always there with you.
I'll be here to reassure you and help you understand the other side a little more through my stories and lessons they share with me.
I just get tired..... I wish I could write all day sometimes.
Goodnight,
Tina,

Hi, I've been with my partner for 8 years, from 16-24. I'm trying to break up now after I found out on my own last month.
I had to contact the other girl. I was hoping she'd ask me what I'm talking about, and I'd apologize to him for always being so paranoid and for not trusting him. But I was right. I'd suspected it for years, but he always convinced me I was being controlling and paranoid, and I believed it.
When we first got together, I was still in an abusive household, and I didn't talk to anyone. He and my friend that soon became my adopted sister are the only ones that continued trying to talk to me. I thought he really wanted to know and understand me.
After finding out about him cheating, I got his old phone, and I found messages from when we first got together telling his ex-girlfriend that I'm annoying, he just wants her, etc. Meanwhile telling me he loves me. I found messages to his friends calling me ugly. I found creepshots of my sister, his coworkers, etc. I found thousands of pictures and videos of porn. I found another girl he flirted with. And I found about 5 years worth of flirting with his "friend" from college. He talked to her the same way he did me, except kinder than he ever was with me. Always calling her beautiful and offering hugs and comfort and advice. Going on dates. He'd tell me how fun she is to talk to and how she's a 10/10 looks, and then get mad at me when that upset me and call me controlling when I didn't want him hanging out in her car for hours at night and going on these "hangouts" that they called dates.
He never fucked her, only because she rejected him. But he wanted to. He was planning to make her his second woman. She saw him as a good friend the entire time, even told her how she's afraid of being used by male friends. And towards the end he just kept asking to meet up and fuck, and when she said it's making her uncomfortable, he apologized to her, and she stopped answering him. He kept sending memes for months, then eventually gave up.
This ended not even a year ago. He even was hitting on her on Valentine's Day while I was trying to do everything I could to please him. I remember around this time laying on his chest and crying, begging him to please tell me if anything has happened, because I can't handle anyone else betraying me (there has been a lot of being used and abandoned in my life) and he comforted me and said nothing has happened.
After he stopped with her, he never told me anything about it. He was never going to tell me. I even gave him another chance to tell me before showing her screenshots, and he still said nothing happened. When I showed him, he said he forgot.
I don't believe he forgot. He still says it. I've since learned so many other lies, he's lied about his emotions towards me and how much he cares, etc. Now I remember when I was suicidal and he'd say I'm just attention seeking. I remember when he'd call me a 3 or a 4. I remember when I'd write him poems and he'd call them useless. I think about how we never went on dates, he never really complimented me besides the occasional "cute" or "smart" he insulted me all the time, he was constantly trying to push an open relationship and the idea that he can't control himself, etc.
I feel so, so lost, because I thought of him like a savior. He helped me get away from my abusive family, he was there for me through so much, and now I can't trust anything he says. He even lied to me again since I've found out, promising to stop looking at AI Loli porn, and then trying to hide it from me when he continued to do so, and then pretending he forgot he did it, and then that he forgot what he said, etc.
He says he wants to work this out. He's been looking at therapists. He's gotten Youper and used that every day, and kept a journal every day. He let me use AirDroid and Truple to monitor him, but then he circumvented AirDroid anyway, and now I think he circumvented Truple too by just using a different device (I saw Pixiv and Literotica show up in his site settings after I removed them, even though Truple shows no screenshots of them and AirDroid shows normal times on Chrome). He blocked every girl I asked him to on everything, and I was holding onto his second phone to keep checking his search history and emails, etc. but I just think he's going to circumvent it again.
I feel like everything he's been doing isn't to actually do better. It's just to get me to calm down and trust him again. This isn't the first time he's done something, and last time we said it'd be the last time. But we're young, so I want to believe he's grown up like he says and really wants to work on himself.
I don't know what to do. I want to break up for my own mental health. I tried to end my life over this. I was wasting all my time watching him and getting so behind at work to the point of fearing losing my job. I've lost interest in everything. My adopted dad died while I was in the psych ward over this, and now I don't even know who to go to, because I always went to my partner with everything, and I can't even process the dead dad because I've been so obsessed with this.
Any advice is appreciated. Sorry this is so long.

before i get into my post, just so everyone is aware, this will be a detailed post- so the length may be very long. *tw: suicidal thoughts\*
as many fellow transguys experience, i have close to never felt important in my body. im afab, and i remember being 2 years old and having a breakdown every single time i was put into a dress; matter a fact, ive always had a deep disliking of wearing dresses. to be quite frank, they have always made me uncomfortable. stemming from this, ive always, also, have had a weird approach through femininity as a whole- i remember being 5 years old and at the YMCA kidzone, and how we went around sharing our favorite color- and as i pointed out my favorite color as being red, i was met with distasteful responses, and many individuals pointed out how red is a "boys color". from then on, i reflected on how nothing i had done was considered to be feminine to me- i can singlehandedly admit that i've never played with dolls, played dressup (not that doing such is meant for specific individuals), and doing such has always made me an outcast among my peers.
fast forward to middle school, and as you may expect, i was bullied. my mom does hair, and with being a first generation African, this meant that my hair always had to be done. i went almost 4 years showing up to school, with braids, crochets, sew ins- you name it i most likely have had it. i absolutely resented this. it was so embarrassing switching up a style and getting compliments from my close friends knowing that i adored short, masculine haircuts. in 7th grade, i finally came out to my parents as a lesbian, which is a moment i remember up to this day since it changed the entire course of my parent's outlook on me. i remember my dad being so excited for me and naming all of the female celebrities he knew that were lesbian, and claiming how i could be just as, or even more successful than they were. my mom- not so much, and i could tell that she was more worried about explaining my sexuality to her friends who would ask (even though it is absolutely none of their business). in 8th grade, i decided to do something different- this was the year i had my first girlfriend, and also the year i was valedictorian- and i knew that for graduation i wanted to make a statement. so, i wore a creme colored suit and got my first masculine haircut. funny enough, i remember so many girls complimenting me- one even being flirtatious, which made my girlfriend jealous lol. but during graduation, this was the first time my mom's friend pointed out my sexuality, and in turn, she was happier about me being valdictorian than being a part of the LGBTQ+ community.
fast forward to high school, freshman year was amazing. i had finally attended a school where everyone was so caught up in their own drama (and just being straight up racist) that no one really cared about how i looked. in fact, throughout high school i had gained much popularity due to both my intelligence and fashion taste. i identified as being non-binary and knowing that i had my first job at 14, people would interchangeably use both she/her pronouns and, he/his. i was so embarrassed, and my coworkers would laugh about this making me feel worse and confusing me even more about my gender identity. i have always been a huge fan of Chella Man, and remember watching double incision top surgery videos, along with transmasculine Youtubers 24/7.
moving onto sophmore year, this was when COVID-19 quarantine shut down school. i was in a few friendships, most were toxic and of course didn't last, but some were meaningful and shaped me in the individual i am today.
sophmore year allowed me to grow, but i began to receive toxic and harassing messages from people who i thought were my friends, which drew me away from being my authentic self. to top it off, i was extremely suicidal and just conflicted. no matter how high my gpa was, or how many college credits i earned, i couldn't get past not truly loving myself. this resulted in countless- there was so many i assume the number is between 9 and 14, attempts of suicide. and at the end of the day, it was because i felt like i couldn't live my truth or tell my biggest secret- that i am trans.
after an attempt which led to me being hospitalized, i stopped talking to everyone. i didn't talk to anyone from my school, and completely stopped texting my friends for around 9 whole months. shortly after the hospitalization, i was gifted a journal, and decided to make my first book, which was filled with poems and experiences of being myself and what i would say to my "past self".
since i was in a dual credit program and had to take summer classes at a local university, i couldn't get myself to speak up and answer questions in that class either. i remember that so vividly, since it was a Sociology class- i always asked myself "why can't i be social? oh yeah, no one in this program is like me". it was a program full of cliques, and i did not fit into a single one.
eventually, it was my junior year- my actual worse year of school, ever. junior year was so bad, i decided to graduate an entire year early due to the bullying and disrespect from both individuals and teachers in the dual credit program i was in. i left my friend group due to the toxicity and bad energy altogether. theres so much i could say, but id rather not.
this was also the year i came out to my parents as trans, and i doubt they took me seriously. my dad surprisingly, at first, showed no support and had assumed i was in psychosis, which broke my heart. my mom, on the other hand, admitted that there was nothing wrong with me and promised that she would do everything in her power to allow my dad to understand what i was saying, and the feelings ive felt.
ive definitely had many ups and downs with my parents, yet they have always supported both my major choice (Social Work) and, the choices i desire to make within my body. the first year after high school, i went to a catholic university (which was, no offense, but the worst decision i could've made. too expensive, little to no diversity etc.) i decided to transfer to a much cheaper community college- which is honestly a much better school! i went from the most expensive university in my state, to a much affordable community college in hopes of transferring to a cheaper university after i graduated community college- i wanted to do this after highschooler, but my parents refused to allow me to go down that route. look who's saving money now :3!
today, ive come so far from the negative past ive encountered. i just turned 19 last friday, and i graduate next week friday with my degree in Social Work/Sociology (an entire year early)! i plan on assisting individuals which face disadvantages both economically and systematically on the basis of their race, ethnicity, and sexuality.
today, is also the day of my first testosterone shot! im super excited and have administered the shot about an hour and a half ago! ive never been happier than how i feel right now.
i wrote this essay (lol) for two reasons- one, i want individual's which can relate to my story and situation to know that although you may have experienced a similar, identical, or familiar experience as i have being within the school system to know- you have so much hope and time ahead of you. do not perform a permanent action with temporary emotions- there is always a light at the end of a tunnel, and with the right support- whether this may be a non-profit therapy office, friends you may have, or the Trevor Project (i highly recommend!), you have hope! the second reason is to simply document how excited i am to start testosterone! it is fully covered by my insurance (im on disability) in a state that is pretty chill about trans people (if you are in a state which puts you at some sort of risk that may challenge you being trans, i apologize but hang in there!). nothing though, can top my work enviornment- i make pretty good money and work at a job WHICH HAS OTHER TRANS PEOPLE! There is a trans woman who is literally my work mom, and a fellow transguy!!
nevertheless, i finally feel alive- i feel as if i can live without fearing what i would do to myself in moments that i feel bad or down. everything seems as if it's fallen into place. i don't want to go on about how proud i am, but yeah!
thank you for reading such a long post, and i truly hope that whoever is reading this has a sense of euphoria and can relate to being proud to be on t!
(tl/dr: i started testosterone after hating everything about myself and being bullied.)

My backstory is here: https://www.reddit.com/AsOneAfterInfidelity/comments/1aeqepf/hello_introduction_3_months_post_dday_me_59f/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Last night I got an email from my WH's AP#1 (they were coworkers from 2004-2007). He'd written her a NC email back in December. This is a brief summary, please tell me if I should respond or your thoughts -
"WH was very kind & helpful when I joined the company. There was flirtation & I was a feisty gal then, "dating the field". I saw how shy he was, crushing on me, I tried to egg him on, be sexy. He was a good listener. I pushed the envelope. We had our birthday as common ground. He wrote beautiful romantic poems & I encouraged him bc it boosted my confidence. I can see he'd feel guilty about the things he said. I don't believe we had any actual physical interactions.
He was a very good friend at the time & built my confidence, but that's as far as it went. Maybe the cliché fits, "You want what you can't have" ? We didn't email every year, but we'd reach out on our birthday but beyond sharing feelings, it was just email.
I'm so very sorry beyond words if I caused any pain in either or both of your lives. I hope you work through this. He was a very decent man. I was probably the instigator & he fell under my spell for a period of time. Sorry for that. I wasn't a decent respectful young lady back in the day. I assure you I was quite feisty and wild with an elastic heart & very selfish.
Should you want to ask any questions or details, please do not hesitate to do so or remind me of what an ass I was. I do hope your husband heals from this too. Sincerely, "AP"
Sooooooo AOAI, thoughts please??? This was WH's big limerence love that he grieved a day over after sending the NC email. Also, what if anything do I tell my WH about AP's email to me?

Now if I reach out for help, I’ll just look “crazy”
Cute how abusers pride themselves in abusing you so they can control you because you are a problem
It wasn’t their actions that caused you to be hurt, just you, you’re the problem it’s you
Not every woman that came before you and said they were abused by the same person
… or your ex friends or coworkers that just want you to shut up so they can have peace
Or shove some pills down your throat
My little poem for my abusers.

I want to talk about this dark subject because I recently lost a friend that was in an abusive relationship, and he wasn’t the first. I want to give the advice to leave at the first sign of abuse, but having been in not one, but three of those relationships in my life, one of them landing me in the hospital and almost killing me, I know it falls flat. The problem is I know what it’s like to be in those shoes and know there was nothing anyone could have said or done to make me change my mind about staying, I had to figure it out on my own. I hate that! I’ve had so many friends/family members that have been in these types of relationships since I last got out of one and I try so hard to help them come to that understanding that they need to get out, knowing that it does no good and I just hate it so much. Why do stinky people have to exist? How does one who has escaped DV help others to do the same before it’s too late? I’m tired of losing my friends to stinky people.
Today I found out how my friend/former coworker recently passed from our former boss (FB): FB- Found out friend committed suicide. he hung himself Me-wow, how'd you find out? FB- My son knows his girlfriend and she came to the his work Me- Dang, I bet she's not doing well FB- Probably so. But from what I here it's her second boyfriend to commit suicide Me- Hmm… wonder if it's the same girl he was with when he worked with us, she was abusive.
I tried telling him to leave her, and I’m betting he never did..I’m so sad and mad and just know in my heart that he was too full of life to willingly end it so soon. I mean, you never know what someone could be going through but I just have a feeling she did it. And I had another friend/coworker that I lost in 2019 that was in an abusive relationship that allegedly committed suicide and tried to kill her boyfriend, but he walked away scratch free from a car accident that killed her and all evidence showed that she had to have been on the passenger side, he was driving, but it was still ruled a suicide. I wish there weren’t abusive people…
I wish it wasn’t so hard to leave abusive relationships or to listen to people that have gotten out of them…it hurts so bad because I’ve been in 3 that I got out of, one that landed me in the hospital, nearly killing me, and I know there’s nothing anyone could have said or done to make me change my mind, I had to find it within myself, and so many wait until it’s too late, and I almost did. I hate it.
To add more context, here’s my story that goes along with the picture: (Written in 2015) “To me, this picture is probably worth more than a thousand words. It is a picture of me in the spring of 2010, just after I finally got out of a three year long abusive relationship. The picture makes me think about why I let it get that bad, how much worse it could have been, and about how far I've come since then. This was at the lowest point in my life, and my climb out of the pit has been a slippery slope, but I'll never allow myself to get back down that far.
So, why did I allow this to happen to me? The abuse didn't start with physical violence, it started with verbal, mental and emotional attacks. I didn't see this as abuse, he had me believing that I was doing things wrong and he was just trying to help me be a better person. By the time the abuse turned physical, I believed I deserved it and I stayed with him because he never actually "hit" me. He pushed me around, threw things at me, and spit in my face, but I believed I was just a horrible girlfriend, deserved all of it, and just needed to try harder to be better. Also I believed at this point that even if I did leave him, no one else would want me because I was just a horrible person, so I continued trying to be better and make him happy again. But things only got worse.
The day that this happened was the most traumatic day of my life. It started when he found out I was texting a friend that was a guy, and he had a rule that I wasn't allowed to talk to any other guys unless they were family. When I tried telling him what we were texting about, he didn't care, he was just pissed off that I didn't obey his rules. Then the yelling began. I got down on my knees at his feet and started begging for forgiveness, then he punched me in the eye. That was the sudden realization that this had gone too far, and I yelled, "do you feel like a man?" Then he punched me two more times, with me asking the same question after each blow. Then he dragged me into the kitchen where my three year old and 5 month old daughters were and threw me into the door frame. My three year old was crying and screaming, "stop hurting my mommy!' That's when my heart absolutely broke. I got up and tried to get the keys so I could take my kids and leave, but he had the keys and wouldn't give them to me. I finally got him to drive me and the girls to the hospital, without him knowing that I'd never come back.
When I got to the hospital, the police were called as well as my parents. A police report was filed against him, but he had dropped me off and left, so no arrest was made. Pictures were taken and then x-rays. The x-rays showed that no bones were broken, but had he hit me an inch away from where he did, I probably would have died from a bone fracturing and puncturing my brain. I was literally an inch away from death that day, all because I didn't get out before the abuse turned to actual hitting. My Mom took me to my Mamaw's house, where we lived until I could find a place of our own. I learned that day that trying to make someone else happy was not worth risking my own life. The red flags in the relationship became clear to me and I began to climb out of the pit I was in.
It was a slippery slope and I fell back down a couple times, but never that far again. I found a place of my own within a month, with the help of a best friend from high school, who I began to date a few months later. He also encouraged me to start college again in the fall, which I ended up failing all of my classes I took due to unreliable access to the internet. Then we got married, and within a year, I began seeing red flags. We were married though, so we went to marriage counseling to try to fix our problems. After we had been married for two years, he ended up pushing me down on the bed with his hand around my throat in the middle of an argument, so I called it quits then and there. I wasn't going to let myself get back to the point of an inch of death. Unfortunately, I was very depressed at this point. Before the inch of death relationship, I had dropped out of college and was married to someone that ended it by slapping me across the face. So, I had two failed attempts at college and at marriage, and just felt like a complete failure.
The true turn around point was the summer of 2013 when I went to the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod National Youth Gathering as a Young Adult Volunteer. The theme of the Gathering was "Live Loved" and that became my mantra. I learned there that no matter how bad life is or has been, God loves me more than I could imagine. He wants us to share his love with others, and live with the knowledge of His love. I began to focus my life on doing what I love and sharing God's love with others. I discovered that music was my passion and I could use that to share love with others. I eventually paid off my student loan debt and started college again in the Fall of 2014, this time with the plans to get a Music Education degree.
Since then, life has continued to get better for me, slipping only a little on my climb. I currently have a great boyfriend who I've not seen any red flags from. I have great friends, family, and teachers that love and encourage me to continue on my journey. I've decided to change my major to Music Therapy because I want to use music to help others. I want to keep others from falling as far as I did, and help those that have. I've come a long way since this picture, and I have God, His gift of music, and the people He has placed in my life to thank for that!
In conclusion after knowing the story behind it, this picture worth a thousand words can be summed up in just two: "Thank God!"”
(Written in 2024) “The update “Since then, life has continued to get better for me, slipping only a little on my climb. I currently have a great boyfriend who I've not seen any red flags from. I have great friends, family, and teachers that love and encourage me to continue on my journey. I've decided to change my major to Music Therapy because I want to use music to help others. I want to keep others from falling as far as I did, and help those that have. I've come a long way since this picture, and I have God, His gift of music, and the people He has placed in my life to thank for that!”
That was from my story I posted in 2015. Since then, the first sentence still applies. Shortly after, the boyfriend and I broke up for reasons of long distance and different life paths. Nothing traumatic there. In the fall of 2016, I moved an hour and a half away from friends and family to continue on my Music Therapy Education. Being a single mom at that point, my kids stayed at my Mamaw and Papaw’s house and I visited almost every weekend and on school breaks. I met my now husband shortly after I moved here at a Karaoke bar, and he instantly was head over heels for me. I, on the other hand, was dealing with the break up of the long distance boyfriend and the major changes in my life. He wasn’t really my type of guy. He is 9 years older than me and that was also a red flag at the time because of my experience with older men in ex husband number 2. So I friendzoned him hard. He asked me out 3 times over the next 3 months, but over that time we really became best friends and he listened to me work through all my past and current issues. I finally realized that he was nothing like any guy I’d dated before and maybe that’d be a good thing. So I finally gave him a chance and it has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. By the time I got through my first school year away from family, I couldn’t do it anymore. I missed my girls, I couldn’t afford my housing with the job I had, I couldn’t put in the time I needed to in practicing music for school with any job, I was struggling. I decided to put my education on hold and get my life back together before it got worse. My now husband suggested we find a house to buy together, so we did and moved the girls here in the fall of 2017. During the home buying process, we had a miscarriage, which became the new most traumatic day of my life… Here’s a poem I wrote shortly after:
Not even a picture, not even a name, But for six short weeks we expected our family to gain. We were excited to tell the world; not everyone knew. But the first time we saw you, it was too late. There was nothing we could do. "There is no heartbeat," were the words that caused so much pain. God had other plans and our lives will never be the same...
In 2019, I married my husband. Shortly after, I got a job at a country club and found my passion for cooking. At the end of 2020, my executive chef brought me on at an event venue he was at part time as his sous chef in training. In April of 2021 I became his sous chef and it’s been a wild ride, but I think I’ve finally found my career. Life has been a wild journey so far, so many stories I have, but wanted to give the big details for now.”
TLDR: Abusive relationships are bad, mmkay? If your friends and family are telling you there’s red flags, listen to them please! I’m tired of losing people because of other people.

first I want to open with a poem from Destiny 2 that's helped me get through personal hell after personal hell these last 10 years, in hopes it might help someone else in their time of need.
"Those who walk through fire have burned away their fear.
Words burnt into the fearless:
Follow not those who take the road less traveled,
Nor those who stand behind one another in waiting.
Carve fresh the stone of the obstinate mountain.
Lay waste to that which is impassible.
May your footfalls leave cinder in their wake,
For you fuel your steps by the danger of their stride.
—Code of the Devastator"
-Path of the burning steps lore tab
after cracking years ago, going near-crisis two months ago, support from my friends and a few coworkers I finally took my first steps, got a therapist, talked about how I feel.
today at 26 after 10 years of feeling like I sit backseat in my body and my life, I finally took my first round of spiro and E.
I want to thank you all for the encouragement even if it was just passing by while lurking. I want to thank my friends for keeping me here when I was ready to leave. and I want to remember all of our brothers, sisters, non-binary siblings, and other gendered siblings who couldn't be here with us today.
I'm hoping others can find solace in how long we've all come from, regardless of how far along we are, we will make it to tomorrow and the next day.
may you go gently into the fight, and galant into the dawn.

• Lyra, name pending.

Do any US geotechs know where to find the Geostrata poems from Mary Nodine online? I remember enjoying these very geotech-specific poems. I work in NZ now and would love to share them with my international coworkers :)

A storefront was vacant for awhile but has been occupied for the last few weeks by some vague community center space. I've seen posters in the window about events that I'm interested in, so today when they were open and people were in there I stopped by. They were having a free store where it was like a pop up shop but everything was free. I asked if they took donations and they said yes so I went home and got a bag of stuff I've been meaning to get rid of.
I brought it back to them. Them = guy and girl couple sitting in the entryway. I asked them what the place is and they explained it's a few art studios, and they host community events different days of the week like yoga, collaging, music, and third place style co-working where the doors are open and anyone can come sit in there.
When they mentioned coworking I responded by saying I live in the neighborhood, I've been super curious about the space and I will definitely be back, and that I do work with a hyperlocal nonprofit that serves the community around affordable housing. They had said several times that they really want people to know about the space and they really want to get to know the community. The guy responded "Well...I'm glad you've found something to do that you enjoy." I took that as my cue to exit and closed out the convo. I shared more about my work and what I do because it's about the community we live in and he was talking about.....the community we are in. It felt like the tone changed after I said this.
The entire time I was talking to them, the guy was standing behind the girl massaging her shoulders and did not stop for one second throughout the five minute convo and I thought that was so weird. This happened in a very "trendy"/"hip" neighborhood for context, or not. By "community" did they mean trust fund babies who have $10k/mo art spaces (which is how much this space costs) "community" and i misread it as an actual community space, like the type of people that do community fridges and advocate for tenants rights etc?
I felt like an idiot after the conversation because I'm like, am I not cool enough to come sit here on the open work days and do my nonprofit work on my laptop? Am I supposed to be writing poems or something lol?

So, last night I made time to catch Monkey Man (fun flick BTW, you should see it). And one trailer shown ahead of it in particular really grabbed my attention... and now I can't find it anywhere.
It was a poem, red text on a black screen, inter-cut with innocuous still (or near still) scenes, shots of a car in a driveway, an empty bedroom, that sort of thing. Silent for most it, until near the end when you hear heavy breathing over a shot looking out a window. It then cuts to a little girl (or mannequin?) in front of a mirror, still with the breathing. Then, a whispered male voice says something like "ah, there she is" as a figure steps up behind the girl. It then cuts to the title, "Longlegs", and that's it
Overall it was wildly unsettling, but really effective at grabbing my attention. I can't recall most of the poem except one line that was something like "the purpose of flesh is to hide red, shiny things" and... yeah, more like that.
I've been raving about this trailer all morning to my coworkers but upon trying to bring it up to show them, it seems to not exist. I can find other trailers/teasers for the flick, but not the one I saw. Does anyone know where I could find it? Did I imagine it? Any help at all would be appreciated.

I'm getting my wedding guest list together and there's a few middle/highschool teachers I am considering inviting. They were all super important in my life while I was in school, and even though I haven't spoken to them in years, I also think it would be nice it invite them.
One elementary teacher literally changed my life and in highschool, I wrote her a thank you note which she apparently still keeps in her desk (my mom is a coworker of hers). Another teacher really got me into poetry and I enjoyed her class so much. She has some of my poems displayed in her room even though I graduated 7 years ago. So I think it would be appropriate to at least invite them?
I just don't want to send an invitation and have them think it's strange because I'm a former student. Thoughts?
Edit: thanks everyone! I think I'm definitely going to invite them. I should have added that after I graduated college, I started working at the school until COVID hit and everything went online. So even though I haven't seen them in several years, I did maintain a decent relationship with them after I graduated high school. I was thinking about attaching a little note like one commenter suggested, just saying thank you for everything you did for me, I would love it if you could attend, something along those lines.

Have you ever had a glass of milk that you noticed was a couple days past expiration? The average citizen might focus a little too hard on the details. “The rules clearly state the milk is no good anymore, so of course it should be tossed.” Like anyone else though, you open it up and take a whiff to confirm the assumption. To your surprise, it's fine. Or is it? Can you actually trust it? You decide to risk it and pour yourself a small glass. With a delicate sip you taste the milk and find you have nothing to fear. It's still as creamy and smooth as the day before. For today, and maybe even tomorrow, you're ok to keep drinking it. You struggle to find an excuse to dump the milk, it's a waste of money after all. Everyday you pour out a new glass with paranoia racking your brain as you start making connections where there shouldn't be any. “Did it always smell like this? Does it look separated or is that the light? Why does the color look off?”
You keep going. You teeter on the edge of dumping it out each day, wondering if this time you'll dump it out or squeeze it dry for what it's worth, for what you rely on. It sees you the same way. Now the question is, who's gonna act first?
I found this journal in a shelled out townhome. The nids had chewed through most of the structure and leftover furniture (side note, I think it's a teething thing? Or maybe it's like how termites build their nests), but a leather bound planner buried under a few hundred pounds of polished sheet metal was too small to pay attention to. I've been tryin to write around the preprinted calendar, though legibility has been a unique challenge (blue inked pen, blue inked calendar. Because God is a comedian.). I think I'm getting the hang of it though.
It's been ages since I've been able to write like this. Growing up I spent far too much time writing in my little journals about the adventures of the first Helldivers and how they bravely fought back the galactic threats. It was like a cartoon to me. I wrote tales of their adventures, poems about their battles, and even doodle whatever scenario I could think of (my favorite was always frogmen for some reason) over and over against the foreign menace. The MoT representatives who would come by said I was a sweet kid. Some days I feel like I still am.
My career choice wasn't a surprise to people of course. When the bugs broke free from their chains and the enlistment calIs went out, I was one of the first to sign up. It was a warm day out on the colonies when I signed my fate away. Nothing could've been better to me, this was my chance at meaning in my life. Every opportunity, every suggestion, every seminar leading up to that point I gave my all. Putting on that cape made me feel like a god damn hero, and I hardly noticed the cryo gas that was pumping into the pod I had just entered. I have flashes of faint memories during that long dark.
What I found myself waking up to was a dream. Here I was, standing on the bow of a Destroyer in my “command.” It still makes me giggle whenever the first name I gave the ship comes to mind. Warrior of the People. Looking back, all I wanted people to think of was that I could be someone to look up to. I always loved the idea that I could inspire others to put on a brave face and smile no matter the odds, and the person others could count on to help them through the long dark. It was such a cheesy name looking back on it, and I've gone through a few iterations since then, but the thought still brings a semblance of hope to me during moments of reflection.
It was only ever in name though, as the backbone and blood of the ship has always left an odd taste in the mouth. I heard a diver once say the words “disingenuous,” during a talk about their own crew. That diver met the business end of a 110 shell for “found contraband” later that day, just in case we still had doubts on if they could hear our conversations. If I'm being real, I'm almost positive my own Democracy Officer has been listening to me sleep, like he'll hear me ramble off binary in my dreams. It's hard to be disturbed anymore by the ever watching eyes to be honest.
Speaking of him, Nilsson might be one of the worst people I'm required to talk to on a daily basis. I think he was the first one to make me realize I'd been alive just a little too long. It was around the 11th dive I had made when he started getting really weird about it. I think the line he said was “For compliance reasons, a detailed recording of your next dive will be necessary to monitor efficiency.” When he's not trying to find any kind of slip up from me, he's doing his actual meaningless work. His most useful function seems to be tracking and relaying new orders and messages from the home front, but only when he's not a fountain of motivational speeches, laced with malicious intent and thinly veiled threats. I still think about this one time I was pushed past the boundary line. I could hear the excitement in his voice as he personally informed me of my mistake. When the timer hit zero I had already made my peace, but to my surprise the bombs never came. I heard later that Fritz managed to halt the brand and stopped him from pressing the button. I don't really know what was said between the two, and based on how quiet it was when I got back on board, I didn't feel like pressing for info.
Ship Master Fritzell was another oddball to get acquainted with. Less sketchy than the D.O., but being both in a leadership role and having years living on the same ship, there comes a certain sense of knowledge to what's going on behind the scenes. She's as gentle as she is allowed to be, but everyone knows she won't hesitate to rat out a dissenter if she finds one, no matter how useful they might be. And of course, the scripted responses as always. Still. I catch a crack of something more honest underneath that facade. If we ever get a mutiny going, she'll have a functional life pod waiting for her.
While I'm venting about my coworkers, I should give a nod to Stensson. Unlike Fritz and Nilsson, talking with her feels less... scripted? The MoT’s finest echo chamber, sure, but more so out of ignorance rather than any demand to maintain the status quo. It's the closest thing I can get to an honest conversation around here. And... well she's just kinda sweet. Striving for a better life for the people around her, genuinely wanting to make the galaxy a better place. Horrific in her execution of the matter, but we'll take what we can get. We used to swap stories of our favorite Helldivers at the start, and nowadays she's been asking me about my own drops more and more. It's difficult to talk about them, but when she starts looking at you like a puppy promised a walk you can't help but spice it up a little. Over a hundred dives now, and I still find new stuff to weave a tale over at least. The recruitment ads were right about one thing, you will always see some exotic things.
Oh yeah I almost forgot. I hit another milestone today. Today I survived my 200th dive. A purge on Crimsica. I've gotten so used to it that the poor things barely had time to understand why their homes were on fire. Yay me.
200 drops at mach speeds. 200 prayers that today won't be my last. 200 times I've flown back into orbit, but still feel like I'm dancing on the edge. I look over my shoulder when I'm home more than I do when surrounded by the enemy. My only relief is the makeshift room they had to make, and the bullets they stuff me into everyday. That peace and silence I get as I'm hurdling into the mouth of some vile thing reminds me of a poem I once found graffitied on a wall at Malevelon early in my career.
“It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
END OF LOG 1. HELLDIVER SIGNING OUT.

I understand this may sound really silly. I just honestly don't know if I've ever witnessed a healthy relationship. My parents were definitely not great examples.
I (22F) have been in a 4.5 year relationship with my boyfriend (22M). We met our freshman year of college and are now doing long distance together during our respective gap years for grad/professional schools.
Our relationship started off a bit rocky. There was a bit of infidelity on his part, where I found out he bought an old coworker's onlyfans and attempted to message her. This happened about almost a year into our relationship. At the time, I took some time but I ultimately forgave him after lots of yelling and interrogating. Honestly, this was not one of my finest moments. From here, our relationship was good but I of course struggled with trust after that. We broke up for a few days, but got back together after he wrote me a poem about how his own feelings and the insecurities that rationalized his past behavior.
In my opinion our relationship has done a complete 180 within the last year. One of his best friends passed away and he started going to lots of therapy. I did too. I've started to understand myself better and recognize patterns of behavior that aren't great and I've definitely worked on them (i.e. insecurities, workaholic, boundary setting). He has also done lots of self-reflection and changes.
It's been about 10 months since he moved back home for his gap year and our relationship has improved so much since this too. Our communication is very good. He's super affectionate. I see him as my best friend as well as boyfriend. Im never afraid to tell him my unfiltered thoughts or be vulnerable with him. We make it a point to see each other at least once a month, with lots of facetime & phone calls almost daily on our commutes from work or anytime. He's always been very kind and gentle, but now he's also less afraid to be more affectionate.
Is this what a healthy relationship looks like? I definitely do still have some trust issues, but he's always so understanding and asks me about my feelings and always makes sure to ask me what he can do to reassure me or be there for me.
I also know he and his friends talk about girls & he makes what he says are jokes about "looking for baddies", and just overall making jokes about finding people attractive. I know I also find people attractive and can comment on it, but i don't know if that's normal.
This may have been a jumble of words but thank you for reading! Any insight helps:)

tw: gun violence, abuse, cheating, emotional manipulation, neglect, suicide ideation/mention. please use discretion when reading.
i want to preface this by saying, i don’t hate my best friend, i still love him and want more than anything to patch up our friendship, but i just can’t keep defending the hurt he causes, and his decisions are really making it hard for me to ignore the alarm bells ringing in my head. i have to tell someone about this, because letting it stagnate in silence is slowly tearing me apart.
i (23M) met my best friend (21M) back in November of last year. for the sake of this explanation, i’m going to call him Dave. dave and i are both pansexual and met through a discord server with one of our special interests, and we really clicked. i was especially excited about this friendship because he was the first neurodivergent friend i had managed to make, and talking to him felt natural, it was easy to open up to him about anything and everything.
it only took us like maybe 3 weeks before dave and i started texting every minute of the day and talking until late at night, like 2 or 3 am at times. we’d talk about everything from our fave foods and shows to our spiritual beliefs and deep philosophical things like our place in the world. we shared about our trauma, i told him about the abuse and covert incest i grew up having to deal with and he told me about having survived a close call with a school shooter. i made it very clear how hard it was to trust people, and the ways in which the abuse impacts and hurts me the most, and how i have been working on trying to heal from the damage left behind by people who were supposed to be my family.
my mother abused me and neglected my needs as an autistic child due to the fact that i was lgbt. my stepfather molested my sister and groomed me, and when i developed an eating disorder to try and make myself unappealing to him, he restricted my access to food and made the family home into a cage, controlling when and if i was allowed outside, and where i was allowed to go, who i was allowed to contact. the trauma it left in me lingers in unexpected ways and has a deep influence on my mental health and abysmal self esteem, and due to their influence being based on their religious views, it has made it hard for me to be around religious spaces and people without it triggering my CPTSD.
dave was incredibly empathetic to all of this when he first heard of the things i had experienced. he accepted me with open arms and the amount of attention and care he showed me bordered on alarming at times, but since he and i are both autistic i chalked it up to irrational fears based on my own trauma and ignored the red flags bc i was so excited to make a neurodivergent friend that genuinely clicked with me, someone i can finally feel seen and understood by. dave has never experienced abuse before, and has a healthy and supportive relationship with his family, but he made me feel seen, and he showed love and affection in ways i’d never experienced before. not even previous partners had shown me this level of attention and affection.
at some point in between us talking and spending time together, playing games together and calling until the early mornings, dave’s affectionate displays started getting increasingly romantic and flirtatious, and he began referring to me by cute little nicknames based on our favorite ships. it made me feel really wanted and like he was romantically interested in me, so i started crushing on him and awkwardly tried (but mostly failed) to hide it from him in order to preserve the friendship we had already.
dave started noticing that i was catching feelings and started sending a ton of mixed signals, like flirting but saying that he meant it platonically and that it’s “just how he is” and he eventually introduced me to two of his friends, a trans woman and a lesbian. i’ll give the trans gal the name Jade, and the lesbian gal the name Rose. the way that dave interacted with them vs with me was like night and day, he was way less flirty with them than he’d get with me and rose was often picking fights and then going to me to vent about dave without really considering my feelings about only being relevant when she needed to vent. jade on the other hand was very kind and considerate, albeit busy due to working a 9 to 5.
rose apparently couldn’t come to terms with the fact that she identified as a lesbian but was crushing on dave, and she hinted at being jealous of me because he “gave me special attention” which really made me realize just how differently he acted around me vs around her and jade, but while jade didn’t think anything of it, rose was upset over it, and took out her frustrations on me when i asked dave about it. when i talked with dave about it i told him about what rose had told me about him, and it became a huge deal where dave wanted to confront rose and rose was accusing me of stealing him from her and sabotaging their relationship— and during the chaos i found out that dave had a boyfriend the entire time. let’s call him john.
so then rose and dave were both fighting, rose was treating me and john like garbage behind the scenes, and dave decided he’d had enough and cut ties with rose, and i blocked her to preserve my mental health, but it doesn’t end there. it gets more chaotic.
after rose left the picture, dave’s mixed signals started getting way more intense. one minute he’d talk about wanting to spend his life with me and use the most poetic and romantic ways of describing me, and then the next he’d be insisting that he loves john and that no one could ever compare to him. he’d talk about wanting to meet me in every timeline and universe and then say that all his flirting was meant to be platonic. dave would insist that i’m attractive to him sexually, that he has intimate fantasies about me and that he wanted to pop my cherry, and then he would later say that he’s like that with all his friends.
it was really confusing, because i could never tell if dave liked me back or if this was just his way of joking around as queerplatonic friends, and the more romantic things he’d hint at and the more he flirted, the deeper my feelings for him got. it became way harder to hide it from him because of how big my emotions tend to get, especially where romance and love are involved. i have a hard time with my emotions and when i bottle them up for long enough, they tend to come out in a huge burst, and i’m still learning to process my emotions in a healthier, less intense way. having him as the primary source of affection in such a large and deep capacity, i let my guard way down and found myself looking forward to and trying to extend our time spent together each time. he truly made my day a little brighter when he was around.
dave would say things like “everyone else drains me, but you’re like my battery, i always feel better when i’m around you” and it’d make me feel so special. he would even go out of his way to try and make me shy or flustered when we were on calls together, so it made me think that he was genuinely into me when he’d act that way. i loved it so much, i adored him and thought highly of him, and i went the extra mile every time to make sure he always felt accommodated and validated. it’s not a lie to say that i was very devoted to him, i strived to make him happy every day and to support him through thick and thin, because that’s how i knew how to express my love for him, through acts of service and spending lots of quality time with him so that he’d know that i cherished him deeply. i even felt a little proud of myself, for being as supportive i could be, even when it contradicted with my own needs or my life outside of him. i gave him the love i hoped to have in return, the love i never received from my family.
this is where things take a turn.
dave started getting burned out and his mental health started to decline, and as a result he announced to me and all his friends that he was no longer going to be emotionally available to anyone. he started withdrawing completely, and started venting about his current relationship with john being strained, and feeling neglected by john. being so close to him, i couldn’t help worrying about him and sympathizing with him since i knew the pain of being neglected all too well, so i did everything i could to support him.
i’d write little songs and silly poems to cheer dave up, i’d play online games with him and call and i’d talk about his special interests with him to make him feel better, and i’d always drop what i’m doing to make myself available to him when he needed someone to talk to. i was dave’s shoulder to cry on, and helping him made me feel really important to him, like i was as much his best friend as he was mine. more and more he’d vent about john not meeting his needs emotionally, and making him feel selfish for wanting affection, and so i tried to give him my affection in hopes it’d help him feel better.
dave was happy to accept all the affection i gave him, while insisting that it didn’t mean that he was breaking up with john. it felt like he was letting me crush hard on him but wasn’t ever going to consider me as anything beyond his best friend, and the rejection part of it always hurt, but i just let it be because i rationalized that being there for him mattered more than my feelings for him. instead, i put all my love into supporting him and his endeavors. i’d give him praise and feedback on his art, his writing, his doll redesigns, his singing, and his voice acting auditions. i’d pray for him to make it into his auditions and i’d listen to the recordings to give him feedback before he sends them out, and this resulted in him getting a role in a visual novel that we both loved to death and was keeping track of the development of.
im still so incredibly proud of him for making the role, and i still look for more VA opportunities for him so he can build up his portfolio, since dave is a theater major. i’m an animation major myself, and i often find myself inspired by my favorite voice actors in different shows, musicals and films so it felt natural for me to support him as upcoming talent.
but then once he started working with the dev team for the visual novel, dave started crushing on one of the other VAs, and as a result he started treating me differently. he went from talking to me every day even when he was burned out to being silent for days, and then occasionally remembering to say hi. he stopped calling me altogether, stopped flirting, stopped hanging out, stopped talking sweet and poetic like he’d been doing for months, it was jarring just how suddenly he made a 180. dave started gushing about his crush and insisting on not disclosing the identity of his crush, which was alarming for me because he’d never felt a need to hide anything from me before now, and this made me feel as though he didn’t trust me, despite me still continuing to show him support and care.
i’d try to ask dave about it and offer him support on navigating these feelings he’s having, and he’d insist that he promised his crush not to tell anyone, but then he’d drop hints about the crush to jade and other friends in our circle, like saying his crush had curly hair and was sweet and reminded him a lot of his comfort character from the visual novel, and saying he wanted to move to another state to be closer to his crush. he’d also talk about how his crush was giving him so much affection and attention, more than anything he’s ever had, which hurt to hear when i had been giving him my love and attention since the very start. it often felt like dave was comparing his crush to me and saying that his crush did everything i did but better, which really impacted my self esteem because i valued his opinion greatly.
but using dave’s hints and the timeframe of when he started mentioning having a crush, i was able to piece together that his crush was one of the VAs in the dev team, but i didn’t do anything with the info, i just kept quiet about it. the way i saw it at the time was that he was likely going to stay loyal to his john and get over the crush he has on his fellow coworker on the dev team.
around this time, i was in the middle of my second semester of college and my gallbladder failed on me in the middle of class. i was in so much pain that the dean himself drove me to the ER, and i stayed overnight. i was so scared, i had no friends at my college and dave was in another college further away in our state, so i was in the hospital all alone, in a ton of pain, and i wanted nothing more than to have friends there to support me. i regarded dave as not just a friend, not just a crush, but my best friend above all, so i hoped he’d be there for me.
and for a small portion of it he was, but my time with him was limited when i was hospitalized. he was always around long enough to vent about arguments with john and to gush about how he wants his crush to romance him, but not long enough to reassure me or be my shoulder to cry on when i needed his support more than ever, and i felt immense guilt for needing to lean on him during such a scary time, but while he had a support network that included me, jade could only offer sympathy and dave couldn’t offer even a few minutes of hearing what i’m going through. it really hurt, and still i tried to see things from his perspective. he was burned out still after all, and the stress of his relationship having issues must have been draining him of all his energy, that was what i used to rationalize his lack of support and care.
i had my first surgery the following morning, just in time to avoid me going into critical condition according to my doctor, and i was completely alone going into it, not knowing if i’d make it out the other side of the surgery, and when i was in recovery dave expressed some relief that i was recovering, but his attention was mostly focused on his relationship issues and his crush. i couldn’t understand why he wasn’t as concerned with the fact that i had a medical emergency, and i was still hurt, but i reasoned that it was better to not say anything about it because he’s having a hard time too, and when its all resolved we’d go back to our friendship again.
but then things got even worse. i was bedridden for 3 weeks during my recovery, completely incapable of moving to feed myself, bathe, or use the bathroom, and that time was counted as unexcused absences at my college. i was dropped as a student, my on campus ob fired me as a result, and i lost housing because i was living in the dorms and had no family to support me or car to sleep in, so i ended up losing my job, my school and my housing all at once. i became homeless.
i was absolutely devastated, my whole life was falling apart because of a surgery that saved my life, and more than ever i needed dave to be there for me, but he withdrew completely. his relationship with john was blowing up because he’d been caught cheating on john with his crush, had seen all the texts on his phone and discord messages and broke up with him, and so dave was too caught up in the emotions of that breakup to be there for me.
even still, i tried to be there for him and support him. i still reassured him every time he cried to me, but when i’d cry i was always alone, and he’d just apologize and say he doesn’t have the energy to handle me and my big emotions, that it was overwhelming being around me. where he used to insist on wanting me to cling to him, he now wanted space from me and told me i was being too clingy.
even more confusing was that he felt guilty about the cheating for all of a week before he started gushing about his crush again and spoke of how he anticipated dating said crush, even having a countdown to when he’d ask his crush to make things official, all while still living with his newly ex boyfriend john. around this point was when i started wanting to figure out who that crush was, because if they were enough to make him tear his own 2 year relationship apart, surely they must be someone special, right? i never saw dave as the cheating type, so it was the only explanation i could think of, and so i started doing some searching based on the hints, and i paid close attention to when he’d gush about his crush to me, despite how conflicted it made me feel.
during one of his gushing sessions he’d admitted that i knew the crush and had interacted with them before, and that they were on the visual novel development server dave and i were active in, and when i asked him if it was someone on the dev team all he said was “please don’t bother them”, so my gut told me i was on the right track. when i looked at all the little hints he’d dropped, i was able to piece together that it was one of two VAs that he worked very closely with, and so far i’m not able to pinpoint which of the two is the crush in question without directly asking dave or the VAs. i’ll refer to one of them as karkat and the other as sollux.
dave’s openly mentioned having spent a ton of time with karkat in calls and playing crazy 8’s, he’s mentioned his mysterious crush being into dnd and even being a dm, and has said that he wanted to cosplay with his crush and do couples cosplays with his crush based on the characters in the visual novel.
so with all of those details in mind it really solidified that it can only be one of the two VAs he works closest with, and all i need to confirm which one is one small detail: how much do either of them know about dave’s relationship recently ending. if i can find that out without needing to bother either of the two VAs i’d basically have confirmation on which one of them is dave’s crush that he cheated on john with, but even then, would there even be a point in having that info? a few weeks after dave’s breakup his crush told him that he’s moved on and doesn’t want to be a rebound, so now dave’s prior relationship was ruined for nothing and he’s still hung up on the crush’s rejection far more than his 2 year relationship ending. i can’t wrap my head around it.
all the while dave has been ignoring me having my whole life fall apart due to an uncontrollable medical emergency, which is really what hurts the most in all of this. my life fell apart for no reason and he continues to say that his breakup is the reason he can’t show any compassion or empathy for me as his best friend, when he’s shown that he doesn’t even care about the relationship ending, he just wants his crush to take him on a date.
for awhile i was really upset with dave over it, and i tried multiple times to communicate how his neglect of our friendship is hurting me, but he’d always turn it around and insist that i was being insensitive and hurting him, and that it was unfair of me to lean on him because what he’s going through is just as bad as having to sleep in a shelter and lacking any support. he even told me during one of the times i opened up to him that i was being unbelievably offensive for having expressed that the neglect has made me feel less valued as a person and has had a huge impact on my self worth, that his actions made me feel really unloved and like i never really mattered to him.
here’s where things reach their worst.
the worst of it came when my mental health reached an all time low. i was in a really bad headspace where it was hard to push away thoughts of self harm and unaliving myself due to my life falling apart. i felt completely alone, and being neglected by my best friend on top of having lost everything else that made life stable made me feel like giving up was the only way out of the nightmare i was living. i started getting into dangerous territory with suicidal ideation, even having an exit plan, and as a last cry for help i opened up to him about how i was contemplating quitting life. i trusted him with knowing because in my mind i had thought he cared about me enough to offer me the comfort i needed most in that moment to alleviate these feelings and pull me out of that headspace, but instead he got angry and freaked out, and then sent the cops over. the police visit was all my college needed to have me kicked out of the dorms faster.
i’ve had really bad experiences with cops being called on me by my abusers when i was younger, and i’d told dave this plenty of times before, so him having brought the police to my location sent me into a panic attack, and then when i was in the middle of that panic attack dave got overwhelmed by my panic attack and left me to handle the police alone in order to preserve his energy, and i told him directly after i had dealt with the police and calmed down that what he did severely hurt my trust in him, but that i forgave him because i could understand that he was trying to help me even if it was in the ways i’d told him would hurt me.
the weeks following this incident dave grew really distant with me, even more than before, and i was put in the shelter i’m currently stuck in to this day. i wasn’t allowed to bring my emotional support animal with me, so the separation anxiety was making me lose sleep, and still dave wasn’t answering any of my texts or messages. it made me question if he really regarded me as his best friend the way i regarded him as mine, and it made me feel really worthless. maintaining a conversation with dave only got harder and harder, because he’d either leave mid conversation or take days, sometimes even weeks to answer, and then he’d get mad at me when i ask to spend time with him, or say that he doesn’t have the energy to spend time with me and then i’d find out that he immediately left to call karkat and sollux for hours on end. even jade has noticed the difference in the way dave interacts with me now.
having been effectively isolated here at this shelter, i’ve been pushing myself to work harder than i’ve ever worked to get back into a job. one of the reasons being that dave’s birthday was around the same time i lost everything, so i wasnt able to follow through on getting him a $150 doll i promised him, so every day i applied to anywhere between 25-80 jobs on a library computer so i can speedrun getting hired and send him his late birthday gift. the other reason is more obvious, to get back on my feet and have a home i can feel safe in and sleep in. but i was so dedicated to him that i’ve kept the savings for his gift completely untouched— the $50 i had initially saved up for his gift i’ve refused to use for anything else so that i can use my first paycheck to send him the doll with the remaining money needed, and at times i’ve had to borrow money from my sister just to feed myself without touching the doll money.
when i really look back at it, i can’t help but feel that i’ve been extremely loyal to dave and as supportive as i can possibly be as his friend, despite all the different ways he made me feel hurt and strung along, and i really wish he’d just go back to treating me like close friends again. i don’t care if he never dates me, i just want to be able to hang out with him again and talk to him openly like i used to be able to, i miss him and the closeness we used to have and sometimes his actions and words make me feel like he’s ready to cut me loose for his new friends and crush within the dev team.
i feel lost, because when we were close i felt like dave really knew me and loved me for who i am and i thought i knew him, but now there’s days where he takes a complete 180 and becomes someone i hardly recognize, and my autistic brain struggles to wrap my head around it. where before i could just say what was on my mind and he’d listen and understand it being straightforward, now every time i talk to him he tries to find some hidden meaning related to my old crush on him, even though now i’ve lost those romantic feelings towards him and just want our friendship back.
dave’s attempts at trying to find double meaning in my straightforward and earnest attempts to work this friendship out makes so many miscommunications happen between us that turn into arguments, and he says really hurtful things when they happen, like calling me manipulative for expressing my sadness over losing the things that made our friendship so wonderful.
dave would accuse me of guilt tripping him when i tell him about my struggles with my mental health as a result of my circumstances and how i’ve been working hard to get better on my own, and then when i try to explain myself to him to clear up the miscommunications he’d insist that his autism is the cause of the misunderstanding when he’s never had trouble understanding me before he was aware of my former crush on him. it’s only now that he’s reading into my words for hidden meanings that aren’t there.
i’m not sure if dave really understands just how much his words hurt me, or the gravity of the damage it causes when he says those things to me. i started therapy to try and unlearn all of the harmful things i’d grown up with due to the abuse, and it’s a struggle for me to unlearn all the harmful ways in which i’d blame myself for the abuse i went through when dave, whose opinion i value deeply, says that i’m being manipulative in the heat of an argument that started because of miscommunication. he always apologizes and i’m always going to love and forgive him for it, but the cracks it leaves behind in me don’t go away, they stick and my trauma latches onto it as a reason to believe i deserved that abuse i grew up with. i’m still trying to push back against that belief that i deserved to be hurt.
there’s some things that no matter how much i forgive and understand dave for doing and saying, still leave damage behind that i can’t patch up. i still love him beyond all rationality, i see him as a really important part of my life and i’ll always be grateful for the fact that he hasn’t given up on our friendship yet, but i’m left in a situation where our friendship is strained and stagnant, and no matter how much i research ways to mend it or i try to connect with him, i just can’t seem to get past this wall he’s put between us and i can’t help but feel like it’s my fault, like i shouldn’t have caught feelings or opened up to him about my mental health, and i especially regret having put him in a situation where he was traumatized by me feeling suicidal.
i don’t think i can forgive myself for it, but i still want to mend this and make it up to him. dave admitted to me that the night i was suicidal was traumatic for him, and has given him nightmares, and i can’t forgive myself for the fact that my cry for help ended up scarring him as much as it did. if i had known it’d be traumatic for him to experience that, i would’ve never told him and i don’t know who i would’ve turned to or what would’ve happened if i couldn’t find anyone i can turn to, but i would’ve made sure he never knew.
since all of this, the most we’ve gotten to really interact as friends lately has been us being players in a recently formed dnd group, i’m loose friends with the dm and both dave and jade are players, and we have sessions maybe once or twice a month. i’ve ruled out the dm being karkat or sollux, for those curious— this dm isn’t in the dev team and is female, and has been married for 5 years.
since the dnd sessions are the most dave talks to me as of late, i’ve gone as far as walking from one end of town to the other just to find free wifi to attend each session and i plan to do it again for tomorrow’s dnd session. all i really want is to go back to the way our friendship was before all this drama started, but i’m struggling to make any headway with reconnecting with dave.
is there a better way to work through this? i’ve given him space, i’ve tried several different ways to communicate with him, and i’ve been understanding and supportive of him through the hardest parts of this journey. i don’t think my efforts are enough, and i miss him dearly.

tw: gun violence, abuse, cheating, emotional manipulation, neglect, suicide ideation/mention. please use discretion when reading.
i want to preface this by saying, i don’t hate my best friend, i still love him and want more than anything to patch up our friendship, but i just can’t keep defending the hurt he causes, and his decisions are really making it hard for me to ignore the alarm bells ringing in my head. i have to tell someone about this, because letting it stagnate in silence is slowly tearing me apart.
i (23M) met my best friend (21M) back in November of last year. for the sake of this explanation, i’m going to call him Dave. dave and i are both pansexual and met through a discord server with one of our special interests, and we really clicked. i was especially excited about this friendship because he was the first neurodivergent friend i had managed to make, and talking to him felt natural, it was easy to open up to him about anything and everything.
it only took us like maybe 3 weeks before dave and i started texting every minute of the day and talking until late at night, like 2 or 3 am at times. we’d talk about everything from our fave foods and shows to our spiritual beliefs and deep philosophical things like our place in the world. we shared about our trauma, i told him about the abuse and covert incest i grew up having to deal with and he told me about having survived a close call with a school shooter. i made it very clear how hard it was to trust people, and the ways in which the abuse impacts and hurts me the most, and how i have been working on trying to heal from the damage left behind by people who were supposed to be my family.
my mother abused me and neglected my needs as an autistic child due to the fact that i was lgbt. my stepfather molested my sister and groomed me, and when i developed an eating disorder to try and make myself unappealing to him, he restricted my access to food and made the family home into a cage, controlling when and if i was allowed outside, and where i was allowed to go, who i was allowed to contact. the trauma it left in me lingers in unexpected ways and has a deep influence on my mental health and abysmal self esteem, and due to their influence being based on their religious views, it has made it hard for me to be around religious spaces and people without it triggering my CPTSD.
dave was incredibly empathetic to all of this when he first heard of the things i had experienced. he accepted me with open arms and the amount of attention and care he showed me bordered on alarming at times, but since he and i are both autistic i chalked it up to irrational fears based on my own trauma and ignored the red flags bc i was so excited to make a neurodivergent friend that genuinely clicked with me, someone i can finally feel seen and understood by. dave has never experienced abuse before, and has a healthy and supportive relationship with his family, but he made me feel seen, and he showed love and affection in ways i’d never experienced before. not even previous partners had shown me this level of attention and affection.
at some point in between us talking and spending time together, playing games together and calling until the early mornings, dave’s affectionate displays started getting increasingly romantic and flirtatious, and he began referring to me by cute little nicknames based on our favorite ships. it made me feel really wanted and like he was romantically interested in me, so i started crushing on him and awkwardly tried (but mostly failed) to hide it from him in order to preserve the friendship we had already.
dave started noticing that i was catching feelings and started sending a ton of mixed signals, like flirting but saying that he meant it platonically and that it’s “just how he is” and he eventually introduced me to two of his friends, a trans woman and a lesbian. i’ll give the trans gal the name Jade, and the lesbian gal the name Rose. the way that dave interacted with them vs with me was like night and day, he was way less flirty with them than he’d get with me and rose was often picking fights and then going to me to vent about dave without really considering my feelings about only being relevant when she needed to vent. jade on the other hand was very kind and considerate, albeit busy due to working a 9 to 5.
rose apparently couldn’t come to terms with the fact that she identified as a lesbian but was crushing on dave, and she hinted at being jealous of me because he “gave me special attention” which really made me realize just how differently he acted around me vs around her and jade, but while jade didn’t think anything of it, rose was upset over it, and took out her frustrations on me when i asked dave about it. when i talked with dave about it i told him about what rose had told me about him, and it became a huge deal where dave wanted to confront rose and rose was accusing me of stealing him from her and sabotaging their relationship— and during the chaos i found out that dave had a boyfriend the entire time. let’s call him john.
so then rose and dave were both fighting, rose was treating me and john like garbage behind the scenes, and dave decided he’d had enough and cut ties with rose, and i blocked her to preserve my mental health, but it doesn’t end there. it gets more chaotic.
after rose left the picture, dave’s mixed signals started getting way more intense. one minute he’d talk about wanting to spend his life with me and use the most poetic and romantic ways of describing me, and then the next he’d be insisting that he loves john and that no one could ever compare to him. he’d talk about wanting to meet me in every timeline and universe and then say that all his flirting was meant to be platonic. dave would insist that i’m attractive to him sexually, that he has intimate fantasies about me and that he wanted to pop my cherry, and then he would later say that he’s like that with all his friends.
it was really confusing, because i could never tell if dave liked me back or if this was just his way of joking around as queerplatonic friends, and the more romantic things he’d hint at and the more he flirted, the deeper my feelings for him got. it became way harder to hide it from him because of how big my emotions tend to get, especially where romance and love are involved. i have a hard time with my emotions and when i bottle them up for long enough, they tend to come out in a huge burst, and i’m still learning to process my emotions in a healthier, less intense way. having him as the primary source of affection in such a large and deep capacity, i let my guard way down and found myself looking forward to and trying to extend our time spent together each time. he truly made my day a little brighter when he was around.
dave would say things like “everyone else drains me, but you’re like my battery, i always feel better when i’m around you” and it’d make me feel so special. he would even go out of his way to try and make me shy or flustered when we were on calls together, so it made me think that he was genuinely into me when he’d act that way. i loved it so much, i adored him and thought highly of him, and i went the extra mile every time to make sure he always felt accommodated and validated. it’s not a lie to say that i was very devoted to him, i strived to make him happy every day and to support him through thick and thin, because that’s how i knew how to express my love for him, through acts of service and spending lots of quality time with him so that he’d know that i cherished him deeply. i even felt a little proud of myself, for being as supportive i could be, even when it contradicted with my own needs or my life outside of him. i gave him the love i hoped to have in return, the love i never received from my family.
this is where things take a turn.
dave started getting burned out and his mental health started to decline, and as a result he announced to me and all his friends that he was no longer going to be emotionally available to anyone. he started withdrawing completely, and started venting about his current relationship with john being strained, and feeling neglected by john. being so close to him, i couldn’t help worrying about him and sympathizing with him since i knew the pain of being neglected all too well, so i did everything i could to support him.
i’d write little songs and silly poems to cheer dave up, i’d play online games with him and call and i’d talk about his special interests with him to make him feel better, and i’d always drop what i’m doing to make myself available to him when he needed someone to talk to. i was dave’s shoulder to cry on, and helping him made me feel really important to him, like i was as much his best friend as he was mine. more and more he’d vent about john not meeting his needs emotionally, and making him feel selfish for wanting affection, and so i tried to give him my affection in hopes it’d help him feel better.
dave was happy to accept all the affection i gave him, while insisting that it didn’t mean that he was breaking up with john. it felt like he was letting me crush hard on him but wasn’t ever going to consider me as anything beyond his best friend, and the rejection part of it always hurt, but i just let it be because i rationalized that being there for him mattered more than my feelings for him. instead, i put all my love into supporting him and his endeavors. i’d give him praise and feedback on his art, his writing, his doll redesigns, his singing, and his voice acting auditions. i’d pray for him to make it into his auditions and i’d listen to the recordings to give him feedback before he sends them out, and this resulted in him getting a role in a visual novel that we both loved to death and was keeping track of the development of.
im still so incredibly proud of him for making the role, and i still look for more VA opportunities for him so he can build up his portfolio, since dave is a theater major. i’m an animation major myself, and i often find myself inspired by my favorite voice actors in different shows, musicals and films so it felt natural for me to support him as upcoming talent.
but then once he started working with the dev team for the visual novel, dave started crushing on one of the other VAs, and as a result he started treating me differently. he went from talking to me every day even when he was burned out to being silent for days, and then occasionally remembering to say hi. he stopped calling me altogether, stopped flirting, stopped hanging out, stopped talking sweet and poetic like he’d been doing for months, it was jarring just how suddenly he made a 180. dave started gushing about his crush and insisting on not disclosing the identity of his crush, which was alarming for me because he’d never felt a need to hide anything from me before now, and this made me feel as though he didn’t trust me, despite me still continuing to show him support and care.
i’d try to ask dave about it and offer him support on navigating these feelings he’s having, and he’d insist that he promised his crush not to tell anyone, but then he’d drop hints about the crush to jade and other friends in our circle, like saying his crush had curly hair and was sweet and reminded him a lot of his comfort character from the visual novel, and saying he wanted to move to another state to be closer to his crush. he’d also talk about how his crush was giving him so much affection and attention, more than anything he’s ever had, which hurt to hear when i had been giving him my love and attention since the very start. it often felt like dave was comparing his crush to me and saying that his crush did everything i did but better, which really impacted my self esteem because i valued his opinion greatly.
but using dave’s hints and the timeframe of when he started mentioning having a crush, i was able to piece together that his crush was one of the VAs in the dev team, but i didn’t do anything with the info, i just kept quiet about it. the way i saw it at the time was that he was likely going to stay loyal to his john and get over the crush he has on his fellow coworker on the dev team.
around this time, i was in the middle of my second semester of college and my gallbladder failed on me in the middle of class. i was in so much pain that the dean himself drove me to the ER, and i stayed overnight. i was so scared, i had no friends at my college and dave was in another college further away in our state, so i was in the hospital all alone, in a ton of pain, and i wanted nothing more than to have friends there to support me. i regarded dave as not just a friend, not just a crush, but my best friend above all, so i hoped he’d be there for me.
and for a small portion of it he was, but my time with him was limited when i was hospitalized. he was always around long enough to vent about arguments with john and to gush about how he wants his crush to romance him, but not long enough to reassure me or be my shoulder to cry on when i needed his support more than ever, and i felt immense guilt for needing to lean on him during such a scary time, but while he had a support network that included me, jade could only offer sympathy and dave couldn’t offer even a few minutes of hearing what i’m going through. it really hurt, and still i tried to see things from his perspective. he was burned out still after all, and the stress of his relationship having issues must have been draining him of all his energy, that was what i used to rationalize his lack of support and care.
i had my first surgery the following morning, just in time to avoid me going into critical condition according to my doctor, and i was completely alone going into it, not knowing if i’d make it out the other side of the surgery, and when i was in recovery dave expressed some relief that i was recovering, but his attention was mostly focused on his relationship issues and his crush. i couldn’t understand why he wasn’t as concerned with the fact that i had a medical emergency, and i was still hurt, but i reasoned that it was better to not say anything about it because he’s having a hard time too, and when its all resolved we’d go back to our friendship again.
but then things got even worse. i was bedridden for 3 weeks during my recovery, completely incapable of moving to feed myself, bathe, or use the bathroom, and that time was counted as unexcused absences at my college. i was dropped as a student, my on campus ob fired me as a result, and i lost housing because i was living in the dorms and had no family to support me or car to sleep in, so i ended up losing my job, my school and my housing all at once. i became homeless.
i was absolutely devastated, my whole life was falling apart because of a surgery that saved my life, and more than ever i needed dave to be there for me, but he withdrew completely. his relationship with john was blowing up because he’d been caught cheating on john with his crush, had seen all the texts on his phone and discord messages and broke up with him, and so dave was too caught up in the emotions of that breakup to be there for me.
even still, i tried to be there for him and support him. i still reassured him every time he cried to me, but when i’d cry i was always alone, and he’d just apologize and say he doesn’t have the energy to handle me and my big emotions, that it was overwhelming being around me. where he used to insist on wanting me to cling to him, he now wanted space from me and told me i was being too clingy.
even more confusing was that he felt guilty about the cheating for all of a week before he started gushing about his crush again and spoke of how he anticipated dating said crush, even having a countdown to when he’d ask his crush to make things official, all while still living with his newly ex boyfriend john. around this point was when i started wanting to figure out who that crush was, because if they were enough to make him tear his own 2 year relationship apart, surely they must be someone special, right? i never saw dave as the cheating type, so it was the only explanation i could think of, and so i started doing some searching based on the hints, and i paid close attention to when he’d gush about his crush to me, despite how conflicted it made me feel.
during one of his gushing sessions he’d admitted that i knew the crush and had interacted with them before, and that they were on the visual novel development server dave and i were active in, and when i asked him if it was someone on the dev team all he said was “please don’t bother them”, so my gut told me i was on the right track. when i looked at all the little hints he’d dropped, i was able to piece together that it was one of two VAs that he worked very closely with, and so far i’m not able to pinpoint which of the two is the crush in question without directly asking dave or the VAs. i’ll refer to one of them as karkat and the other as sollux.
dave’s openly mentioned having spent a ton of time with karkat in calls and playing crazy 8’s, he’s mentioned his mysterious crush being into dnd and even being a dm, and has said that he wanted to cosplay with his crush and do couples cosplays with his crush based on the characters in the visual novel.
so with all of those details in mind it really solidified that it can only be one of the two VAs he works closest with, and all i need to confirm which one is one small detail: how much do either of them know about dave’s relationship recently ending. if i can find that out without needing to bother either of the two VAs i’d basically have confirmation on which one of them is dave’s crush that he cheated on john with, but even then, would there even be a point in having that info? a few weeks after dave’s breakup his crush told him that he’s moved on and doesn’t want to be a rebound, so now dave’s prior relationship was ruined for nothing and he’s still hung up on the crush’s rejection far more than his 2 year relationship ending. i can’t wrap my head around it.
all the while dave has been ignoring me having my whole life fall apart due to an uncontrollable medical emergency, which is really what hurts the most in all of this. my life fell apart for no reason and he continues to say that his breakup is the reason he can’t show any compassion or empathy for me as his best friend, when he’s shown that he doesn’t even care about the relationship ending, he just wants his crush to take him on a date.
for awhile i was really upset with dave over it, and i tried multiple times to communicate how his neglect of our friendship is hurting me, but he’d always turn it around and insist that i was being insensitive and hurting him, and that it was unfair of me to lean on him because what he’s going through is just as bad as having to sleep in a shelter and lacking any support. he even told me during one of the times i opened up to him that i was being unbelievably offensive for having expressed that the neglect has made me feel less valued as a person and has had a huge impact on my self worth, that his actions made me feel really unloved and like i never really mattered to him.
here’s where things reach their worst.
the worst of it came when my mental health reached an all time low. i was in a really bad headspace where it was hard to push away thoughts of self harm and unaliving myself due to my life falling apart. i felt completely alone, and being neglected by my best friend on top of having lost everything else that made life stable made me feel like giving up was the only way out of the nightmare i was living. i started getting into dangerous territory with suicidal ideation, even having an exit plan, and as a last cry for help i opened up to him about how i was contemplating quitting life. i trusted him with knowing because in my mind i had thought he cared about me enough to offer me the comfort i needed most in that moment to alleviate these feelings and pull me out of that headspace, but instead he got angry and freaked out, and then sent the cops over. the police visit was all my college needed to have me kicked out of the dorms faster.
i’ve had really bad experiences with cops being called on me by my abusers when i was younger, and i’d told dave this plenty of times before, so him having brought the police to my location sent me into a panic attack, and then when i was in the middle of that panic attack dave got overwhelmed by my panic attack and left me to handle the police alone in order to preserve his energy, and i told him directly after i had dealt with the police and calmed down that what he did severely hurt my trust in him, but that i forgave him because i could understand that he was trying to help me even if it was in the ways i’d told him would hurt me.
the weeks following this incident dave grew really distant with me, even more than before, and i was put in the shelter i’m currently stuck in to this day. i wasn’t allowed to bring my emotional support animal with me, so the separation anxiety was making me lose sleep, and still dave wasn’t answering any of my texts or messages. it made me question if he really regarded me as his best friend the way i regarded him as mine, and it made me feel really worthless. maintaining a conversation with dave only got harder and harder, because he’d either leave mid conversation or take days, sometimes even weeks to answer, and then he’d get mad at me when i ask to spend time with him, or say that he doesn’t have the energy to spend time with me and then i’d find out that he immediately left to call karkat and sollux for hours on end. even jade has noticed the difference in the way dave interacts with me now.
having been effectively isolated here at this shelter, i’ve been pushing myself to work harder than i’ve ever worked to get back into a job. one of the reasons being that dave’s birthday was around the same time i lost everything, so i wasnt able to follow through on getting him a $150 doll i promised him, so every day i applied to anywhere between 25-80 jobs on a library computer so i can speedrun getting hired and send him his late birthday gift. the other reason is more obvious, to get back on my feet and have a home i can feel safe in and sleep in. but i was so dedicated to him that i’ve kept the savings for his gift completely untouched— the $50 i had initially saved up for his gift i’ve refused to use for anything else so that i can use my first paycheck to send him the doll with the remaining money needed, and at times i’ve had to borrow money from my sister just to feed myself without touching the doll money.
when i really look back at it, i can’t help but feel that i’ve been extremely loyal to dave and as supportive as i can possibly be as his friend, despite all the different ways he made me feel hurt and strung along, and i really wish he’d just go back to treating me like close friends again. i don’t care if he never dates me, i just want to be able to hang out with him again and talk to him openly like i used to be able to, i miss him and the closeness we used to have and sometimes his actions and words make me feel like he’s ready to cut me loose for his new friends and crush within the dev team.
i feel lost, because when we were close i felt like dave really knew me and loved me for who i am and i thought i knew him, but now there’s days where he takes a complete 180 and becomes someone i hardly recognize, and my autistic brain struggles to wrap my head around it. where before i could just say what was on my mind and he’d listen and understand it being straightforward, now every time i talk to him he tries to find some hidden meaning related to my old crush on him, even though now i’ve lost those romantic feelings towards him and just want our friendship back.
dave’s attempts at trying to find double meaning in my straightforward and earnest attempts to work this friendship out makes so many miscommunications happen between us that turn into arguments, and he says really hurtful things when they happen, like calling me manipulative for expressing my sadness over losing the things that made our friendship so wonderful.
dave would accuse me of guilt tripping him when i tell him about my struggles with my mental health as a result of my circumstances and how i’ve been working hard to get better on my own, and then when i try to explain myself to him to clear up the miscommunications he’d insist that his autism is the cause of the misunderstanding when he’s never had trouble understanding me before he was aware of my former crush on him. it’s only now that he’s reading into my words for hidden meanings that aren’t there.
i’m not sure if dave really understands just how much his words hurt me, or the gravity of the damage it causes when he says those things to me. i started therapy to try and unlearn all of the harmful things i’d grown up with due to the abuse, and it’s a struggle for me to unlearn all the harmful ways in which i’d blame myself for the abuse i went through when dave, whose opinion i value deeply, says that i’m being manipulative in the heat of an argument that started because of miscommunication. he always apologizes and i’m always going to love and forgive him for it, but the cracks it leaves behind in me don’t go away, they stick and my trauma latches onto it as a reason to believe i deserved that abuse i grew up with. i’m still trying to push back against that belief that i deserved to be hurt.
there’s some things that no matter how much i forgive and understand dave for doing and saying, still leave damage behind that i can’t patch up. i still love him beyond all rationality, i see him as a really important part of my life and i’ll always be grateful for the fact that he hasn’t given up on our friendship yet, but i’m left in a situation where our friendship is strained and stagnant, and no matter how much i research ways to mend it or i try to connect with him, i just can’t seem to get past this wall he’s put between us and i can’t help but feel like it’s my fault, like i shouldn’t have caught feelings or opened up to him about my mental health, and i especially regret having put him in a situation where he was traumatized by me feeling suicidal.
i don’t think i can forgive myself for it, but i still want to mend this and make it up to him. dave admitted to me that the night i was suicidal was traumatic for him, and has given him nightmares, and i can’t forgive myself for the fact that my cry for help ended up scarring him as much as it did. if i had known it’d be traumatic for him to experience that, i would’ve never told him and i don’t know who i would’ve turned to or what would’ve happened if i couldn’t find anyone i can turn to, but i would’ve made sure he never knew.
since all of this, the most we’ve gotten to really interact as friends lately has been us being players in a recently formed dnd group, i’m loose friends with the dm and both dave and jade are players, and we have sessions maybe once or twice a month. i’ve ruled out the dm being karkat or sollux, for those curious— this dm isn’t in the dev team and is female, and has been married for 5 years.
since the dnd sessions are the most dave talks to me as of late, i’ve gone as far as walking from one end of town to the other just to find free wifi to attend each session and i plan to do it again for tomorrow’s dnd session. all i really want is to go back to the way our friendship was before all this drama started, but i’m struggling to make any headway with reconnecting with dave.
is there a better way to work through this? i’ve given him space, i’ve tried several different ways to communicate with him, and i’ve been understanding and supportive of him through the hardest parts of this journey. i don’t think my efforts are enough, and i miss him dearly.

(S/N): Punctuation and spelling may be terrible. Overall, just might be terrible because I am also using the speech to text on my phone.
This sounds pathetic and embarrassing, and the Insecurities are just irritating. An I know I’m just overreacting but I need to get this out and need like advice or something.
I [27 female] have a person [29 Male] who I have fallen so hard for. I really do like him. He’s very quiet and keeps to himself most of the time honestly I’d say he’s a introvert. when we sit together we’ll talk or show each other memes or TikTok videos. We’ll have small talk (Which I’m told introverted people hate) and sometimes other topics. Then there are times where we don’t talk at all. We just sit together in silence in which I don’t mind. It’s not awkward or anything, but sometimes I do wish we would talk more. Now with him being the quiet, keep to himself person I can be like that too as well, but then there are times where I’m not like that I can be a talkative person. But I’m fine with the silence between the two of us. However, when we sit in silence, I do think to myself and my insecurities, kick in. I’ll be asking myself questions like What if I annoy him? Is he uncomfortable with me around? Does he just tolerate me being next to him? An just general questions like that. That definitely sounds pathetic to me. And then I think to myself maybe I should put some distance between the two of us. I do have other friends to be around, but I honestly would prefer to be with him. I honestly feel really comfortable with him. I just don’t know if he feels any comfort around me.
Yesterday was kind of an overreaction for me and the only reason why I say that is because in my eyes it definitely was. Like I got really hurt, but I know I did it to myself because of my expectations or whatever. Normally we’ll sit together and normally I see him almost every day. But yesterday since I didn’t see him, I just assumed that he wasn’t there. So since he wasn’t there, I just sat alone on my phone as I normally do it when he’s not there. Which was perfectly fine until the bell went off and he popped up out of nowhere. Don’t exactly know where he came from, but I was going to assume that he was in his car or something, but either way since he wasn’t there sitting at the table, it made me feel like he didn’t wanna be near me or talk to me since he was there. which got me questioning a lot. I just waved Hi when I saw him and when he saw me I didn’t talk to him but he did give me a I guess you can say head nod, which is his way of saying what’s up? I just continued talking and walking with my friend. But on the inside, I was hurt and it was honestly ridiculous. Then I’m thinking to myself like “oh you got ur answer. he definitely doesn’t want to be near you.” Which honestly i got dramatic and wanted to cry (but i didn’t) I like to write certain things down and turn it into like a poem or little passage or something so some thoughts that came to mind I did write them down and I just stuffed it in my pocket and then continued on with my day. I saw him at lunch and he was sitting at the table because he gets there before I do instead of going to sit next to him. I was having that thought that I should put some distance between the two of us so I went and sat with my friend because 1.) she needed to use my phone charger and 2.) She had said that she would give me some food so we sat together and we were talking. They were literally a table away, and I couldn’t stop slightly glancing at him and he was just on his phone, which is a usual thing. But then that got me questioning a whole lot more and then kind of arguing with myself wondering if at any point, he glanced up at where I was sitting or not. It was just basically a questioning like does he even care? Kind of Thing. When lunch was close to ending me and my friend went our separate ways she gave me back my charger and I went to go take it back to where my bag was and get some ice for my water bottle when I had gone towards the ice machine, he was walking and he saw me. He didn’t say anything. I just like looked at him and then looked away because I was confused and from the previous, I was still kind of hurt I guess which is very pathetic, but I couldn’t help those emotions.
So that got me questioning, whether or not that he likes me as a person or if I annoy him or bother him too much. But I also argue with myself because I think about our previous interactions from the time on Valentine’s Day, which this was probably just over reading too much into things. He was sitting with his friends, and I didn’t want to go and bother him. He was with a group of ladies that he’s in the same area with. I don’t want to go bother him and I was coming in late from the parking lot because my best friend had dropped off a Valentines gift. She only dropped it off at my work because we’re on completely two different schedules. So I went walking into the break room with balloons a bag of candy and a ball that had a blue rose in it. I sat at the table alone because like I said, I didn’t not wanna bother him while he was with his friends, and I was talking on the phone with another friend of mine. Don’t know if he noticed that I was on the phone or not but either way I told my friend that I would talk to him later and then hung up. he came up and sat down next to me and he had asked me who got me the gifts for Valentine’s Day and my response to that was just telling him that it was a friend. I didn’t tell him that it was my female friend because I didn’t think it would. I don’t know if it did or not since I didn’t say the gender. That time I was questioning if it even mattered to tell him whether or not it was a female friend. Then he kind of shared food with me. That was some thing that I feel like I was reading into too much just sharing the food and then reading into much in the fact that he asked about who gave me my Valentine gift. A good part of me was thinking like oh he does care or if he was concerned about the Valentines gift or something, but that could’ve just been an overreaction.
Then just a few weeks ago, we had an awkward moment while I would say it was an awkward moment for me I don’t know what his thoughts were and didn’t really pay attention to his facial reactions. I was more concerned of the fact of what I did without thinking. Because I threw rubber bands at him from work that I was doing he picked him up and he was going to slingshot them at me and I had told him no don’t do that but he was going to do it anyway he did the first one and then, as he was going to do the second one I grabbed his hand without thinking so he Wouldn’t do it and he let it go and inside my hand and then I pulled away as soon as he let the rubber band and it was awkward for me because I was thinking like I can’t believe I did that without thinking about it. Then it got me questioning if it was awkward for him that I did that. And what his feelings were when that happened and I was so mad at myself for not not paying attention to his facial reaction.
But it was from that point on that caught me questioning a few other things. Like just a small things that I have noticed that he would do that he didn’t do before. Which is lingering around after the bell goes off for us to return to work normally he would leave right away and I would still sit there because we have a five minute grace period to get back to our areas. I will take advantage of that five minutes and wait for another coworker so we could walk together don’t matter which coworker but any coworker that was in the same department. But from the hand incident, I had noticed that after the bell he still sat with me, and instead of him being the first one to leave, I ended up being the first one to leave and then he would leave sometimes it was the other way around, but I ended up being the one leaving first so then I question if I was reading too much into that.
So it’s like looking back at those scenarios it has been questioning a lot and I feel like I am just re-reading into just a little things and I feel like it’s really pathetic and it’s driving my insecurities insane like it’s really hard. And I wanna tell him how I feel but at the same time I really don’t wanna get hurt in the process because I am done with being emotional hurt because he is the first guy that I’ve liked in a really really long time. So basically I need to know.
1.) 1-10 how pathetic is this? 2.) how can I handle these feelings? 3.) should I tell him how I feel and if I should, how exactly do I tell him? because since he’s a quiet person and keeps to himself, I don’t know how he would react to that. 4.) For those small moments is it possible for them to mean something? 5.) for those small moments am I just overreacting and reading too much into them? 6.) what’s the recommendation on how I can handle all of this? 7.) considering from the first portion of my overreaction for yesterday, should I put space between us? 8.) should I just leave him alone? since I don’t know if he enjoys my presence or not?

Inspired by a poem that was written and posted here a few days ago, I wanted to adapt America Ferrera's Barbie speech "It's Impossible to be a Woman".
"It is literally impossible to get a job. You are so skilled, and so clever, and it kills me that recruiters and hiring managers don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be a unicorn, but somehow we're always being judged by donkeys in party hats.
You have to be educated, but not too educated. And you can never say you want to be more educated. You have to say you want to have more experience, but also you have to be educated. You have to have money, but you can't ask for more money for the role because that's crass. You have to advocate for yourself, but you can't be assertive. You have to solve problems, but you can't squash the manager's ideas. You're supposed to have work-life balance, but don't talk about your hobbies all the damn time. You have to be a self-made career person but also always be networking with other people.
You have to answer for management's bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you're accused of complaining. You're supposed to keep your skillset fresh, but not so fresh that you tempt a competitor's recruiter or that you threaten other coworkers because you're supposed to be a part of the team.
But always say yes and always be on call. But never forget that the system is dystopian. So find a way to come to terms with that but also always be grateful for the privilege of working for someone else.
You have to never need time off, never be honest, never disagree, never be human, never get laid off, never fail, never show vulnerability, never get out of line. It's too hard! It's too contradictory and nobody gives you more than a pizza party or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only is everything broken, but also that is somehow your problem to fix.
I'm just so tired of watching myself and every single other person here tie themselves into knots so that employers will hire us."

Brooke and I took full advantage of Luke’s absences, such as his Sunday morning football practices, to have candid conversations with one another. To do that, and other things. The conversation we had on the Sunday after the Ren fair was one of the more difficult ones.
After Luke left, Brooke walked up to me and gave me a big, long hug. I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that I started to weep. My ego was bruised as was my ass, and I was worried about losing my job. I was already feeling very vulnerable, but Brooke’s expression of sympathy pushed me over the edge.
She guided me onto the couch and tenderly wiped the tears from my eyes with a tissue, saying, “I know that yesterday was incredibly difficult for you. I’m sorry.”
“What am I going to do? Should I submit my resignation on Monday to Benkins?”
“Are you crazy? Of course not. I know you’re upset, but it’s important not to overreact.”
“But you saw what happened, Brooke. You were there! Three of my students saw me shining Neil’s boots on my knees, dressed in tights. I cleaned their shoes! Like a submissive fool. I’m sure they took photographs. Then they saw me in the stocks. I’m pretty sure at least one of them hit me with that damn tawse. It still hurts to sit down.”
For whatever reason, I had not yet decided whether to tell Brooke about Paul Betz’s threat of exposing me. I wasn’t sure if that was because it was too humiliating to share even with her, or because I wasn’t yet sure if the threat was real. I had no idea what he expected from me in return for his silence, and hoped he was just joking around. I sincerely doubted that, however.
“My reputation will be completely destroyed. I’ll be the laughingstock of the entire campus,” I persisted.
“Wait a minute. Think this through. First of all, we were all at a Ren faire. It’s all about fantasy, playing a part. In medieval times, there were the powerful and the powerless, just like today. You know this better than anyone. So you were playing a submissive part. Big deal. The key word here is ‘play’. The fact that you don’t have such a huge ego that you allowed yourself to play a submissive part is to your credit, if anything. And I’m sure Neil would back you up on that, if it ever did get back to other faculty members or students.”
I groaned, but, as always, Brooke made a lot of sense, and I found it difficult to argue against her coherently. Nevertheless, I was convinced that real damage, likely irreparable damage, had been done yesterday and I wasn’t ready to let it go that easily.
“But I was on my knees shining their shoes! And I’m pretty sure they saw my erection. They were laughing their asses off at me.”
“No one cares about your little erection, Walter.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Think of it like playing a part in a play, a period piece. That’s really all it was. You think actors and actresses don’t have embarrassing moments in dressing rooms and on stages every day, including people seeing erections? It’s really not that big a deal. If anybody ever brings it up, which I doubt, just make a joke out of it. Humor is a pretty potent neutralizer.”
“I think I may have lost my sense of humor. Permanently. Something else he’s taken from me.”
“Oh, come on. I know that’s not true. You’re just upset, and understandably so. Sometimes the game is more fun than other times. Yesterday wasn’t fun for you, I get it. But I had a lot of fun, for what it’s worth.”
“Laughing at my expense, you mean.”
“Well, not just that. The whole day was fun. It was fun losing myself in another era for a little while; I quite enjoyed being Lady Guinevere. I really enjoyed hanging out with Neil and Laura. Neil’s a great guy. He and Laura seem to be really into each other. And, surprisingly, he and Luke have really hit it off. I’m glad he’s going to be around more. But, yes, I have to admit that it was pretty funny watching your reactions yesterday. You should’ve seen the expression on your face when Luke agreed to loan you out to your students. And when he locked you in the pillory. And you were so cute in your costume. I meant what I said about your buns getting tighter. They’re super spankable, now.” As she said this, she reached under my sweatpants and caressed my bottom through my mesh panties. I started to throb in my cage.
I wanted to continue our discussion, to continue to make my argument that a line had been crossed with respect to my reputation at the college and in the community, but Brooke had succeeded in completely distracting me. Part of the issue was that I hadn’t been granted sexual release in over two weeks – not since the morning of the day of the dinner party, when Luke literally beat my meat with a wooden spoon. I wondered to myself how many times Neil had had sex with Laura over that same period of time. Five? Ten? And real sex. Not submitting himself to some guy punishing his cock, while Laura abused his nipples. How pathetic was I?
I answered my own question with a question. “Would you unlock me and spank my bottom, please? Or did he take your key?”
Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly dominant or was annoyed with one or both of us, Luke would remove my chastity key from Brooke’s anklet and put it on his keychain next to his own copy. I’m sure that his primary motivation, as usual with him, was simply to demonstrate who was really in control of my cock. Not Brooke. Certainly not me. If you haven’t had the experience of having another person—especially another man—control your orgasms, control your cock, let me tell you, it makes you feel owned. It brings you to your knees. Or at least it brings me to mine. Luke took (and still takes) great delight in making me beg for release. Sometimes I have to lick the lint from between his toes or give him an extended foot massage. Other times I have to compose some ridiculous poem celebrating his feet, athletic prowess, business acumen, whatever. Still other times, I have to perform some chore, like raking the leaves in his enormous lawn or detailing his enormous truck. I know he is from Ohio not Texas, but if Texas were a man, it would be Luke. Everything about him is big: his house, his truck, his pool, his lawn, his ego, the chip on his shoulder, his muscles, his feet, and…you know what else. Big Luke, indeed.
“Why don’t you get on your knees and pull my socks off, and we’ll see.”
I knelt before her and started to remove the sock from her right foot. She said, “Uh uh, not with your hands. Clasp your hands behind your back and use your mouth.”
I was happy to see the key dangling from the chain around her pretty ankle.
“You’re in luck! I think you’ve earned a release for what you endured for your lady yesterday.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
“But before you remove it, make sure you kiss every toe.”
I did as directed and then began to remove the key from the chain with my clumsy fingers.
“Wait. My other foot is feeling neglected. Remove the sock, and kiss each toe on my left foot first.”
“Yes, my lady.”
After I handed her the key, I said “But I didn’t ask him for permission. Remember how he said last month that we both have to ask him for permission before you release me to masturbate…or for you to…help me? Every time, he said.”
“You know how I love watching you beg him to let you masturbate. There’s just something so incredibly sexy about that. But he doesn’t have to know about it this time. It’ll be our little secret.”
“But what if he comes home? What if he finds out somehow?”
“How’s he going to find out? He won’t be home for another two hours at the earliest.”
After she unlocked me, she pulled my sheer panties back up. Free at last, my cock grew instantly hard. Brooke gently squeezed my balls and giggled. “It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, miss. Too long.”
“Three hours would be too long for you, wouldn’t it?” She smiled.
“Very funny. It’s been much too long. The day of the dinner party. I was starting to go a little crazy.”
“Even professors think with their cocks, I guess. Look how excited your baby carrot is to be out of its tiny prison! Wait a minute.”
She ran upstairs for a moment and then sat back down on the couch. She then pulled a pair of nipple clamps and a blindfold out of the pocket of her sweatpants. “Come closer.” First, she put the blindfold on me. Then she squeezed my nipples until they were hard, put on the clamps and tightened them until I winced.
“Too tight?”
“Ow, ah, yes. I mean, maybe.” I waited a few seconds to get used to the pain. “No, they’re okay.”
“Good. Now lay across my knees.” She pulled down my panties. I heard her doing something and the next thing I know I felt something cold and damp press against my anus. Except for rectal/prostrate examinations during annual checkups with my doctor, I hadn’t had anything inserted there since I was a kid when my mom used a rectal suppository a couple of times (heaven only knows why) to treat a high fever.
I flinched. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t sound so panicked. Just relax. Try to enjoy it.”
“Enjoy what? What are you doing? It’s cold and wet.”
“It’s a butt plug. That’s lubricant.”
She started to push it slowly inward.
“Ow, stop. It hurts.”
“Please. Don’t be such a baby. It’s a starter size. It’s smaller than your baby carrot. Try to think about what it’s like for me when Luke takes me from behind. His cock is at least five times larger than this little thing.”
“But YOU like it.”
“Yes, but it still hurts. You’ll like it too, if you just learn to relax.”
“I feel so full.”
“Exactly. I might just start you making you wear one of these around the house when you do your chores. Maybe even out in public. We can gradually work our way up to larger and larger ones. Your anus will stretch out over time, like mine has. You’ve heard the phrase tight pussy? Well, right now you have a tight anus.” She smacked my ass sharply with her hand. “You’ll learn to love it! From what I understand, men can actually have a prostate orgasm from wearing a butt plug. It can open up all kinds of new possibilities for you!”
“Don’t I get any say in this?“
“Not really, no. Now, do you still want that spanking? Your ass is still pretty bruised“
“Yes, please. But not too hard, please.”
“You really are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?”
She pulled up my panties and began striking me (not too hard) with her hand, alternating between my right and left buttocks.
“So how do you feel now, my little knight errant? Your nipples are burning, your ass is full and now I’m warming it up for you. You better not come all over my sweatpants.”
“I’ll try not to, but I can’t promise.”
“Get up for a minute.” After I did, Brooke removed her sweatpants and ordered me to lay back over her bare legs. She then resumed spanking me.
“Yup, your buns are definitely getting tighter. Those hip thrusts and squats Luke makes you do are having an effect. I might just have to buy a strap-on and really fill you up.” She hit me harder. “Would you like that, sweetie?”
“Ouch. I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Think about it. I’ll make you wear a corset with thigh high stockings and a garter belt, and I’ll take you from behind like a little slut. Maybe even Luke will want to nail you. Then you’ll really know what it’s like to be filled up”
“No, please. Not that. I’m not gay.”
She laughed. “Not gay? You’re over my knees in panties and I’m spanking you with a butt plug up your ass. What do you call that, then?”
“I call it submissive. Or sissy. But I want to be your sissy, not Luke’s.”
“We’ll have to see about that.“ She smacked me sharply again. Just then I heard a car door slam.
“Oh my god, is it him?!”, I asked, terrified.
Brooke practically pushed me off her lap and ran up to the window, peeking behind the curtains.
“It’s Kevin. Quick, get dressed!”
Kevin, as you may recall, is Luke’s teenaged half brother who works in his company. He, in fact, had done much of the work on the half bathroom – now my bathroom – in the basement. I had probably met him another four or five times over the last several months since the bathroom was finished. Most of those times were at Luke’s house and our interaction had been limited. I did not know how much Luke had shared with Kevin about the unconventional nature of his relationship with Brooke and me (quite a lot, I suspected), but clearly he was aware that I was in a subservient position. That much was apparent from the very first time I met him when Luke ordered me to serve him and his coworker sweet tea. He had since seen me dressed in yoga pants, as I was now, and generally spoke to me with few words and regarded me with barely disguised contempt.
“Thank god it’s not Luke. Can’t we just pretend we’re not home?“
“Your car and my car are both outside. Besides, he may have seen me looking out of the window. Just get dressed. Hurry!”
Kevin was already knocking on the door by the time I was pulling my yoga pants back on. I didn’t even have time to remove my nipple clamps, so just pulled my T-shirt over them, hoping he wouldn’t notice. The butt plug was still inside me as well.
“Hi, Kevin,“ said Brooke. “Luke’s not here. He’s at football practice.”
“Hey, Brooke. Walter.” He nodded at me. “I’m not here to see Luke. I think I may have left some tools down in the basement. Mind if I take a look?”
“Not at all, be our guest.”
“Thanks. Okay if I help myself to a drink first? Do you have any sweet tea in the fridge?”
“Of course. You know Luke. There’s always sweet tea in the fridge. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I’ll get some for you.”
“Thanks, Brooke. How you been, Walter?” Kevin sat down in the recliner across from me on the couch.
I noticed with alarm that my chastity cage was lying next to where I was sitting on the couch. I smiled at Kevin, trying hard to maintain eye contact as I surreptitiously tipped a nearby throw pillow over it, hoping like hell he didn’t notice.
“I’ve been well. How about you? How’s your work coming?”
“Great. I turn 18 next month and then I can sit for my plumbing license exam. I already have more than the 4000 I need as a journeyman.”
“That’s terrific.” These were the most words Kevin and I had ever exchanged, and everything about his presence that Sunday morning was making me suspicious. Meanwhile, my nipples were burning and I still had a hard-on beneath my yoga pants. I knew I had to get the clamps off.
After Brooke handed him his tea, she started to sit down next to me on the couch right where the pillow was covering the chastity cage.”
“Honey, why don’t you sit next to me here,” I said, patting the other side of the couch, “so you can be closer to Kevin.” I tried to make eye contact with her but she wasn’t paying attention.
“Okay,” she said, sitting where I directed her.
“Could you please excuse me for a moment?”, I said, as I went to the first floor bathroom, moving quickly so that Kevin hopefully wouldn’t see my erection pushing through the stretchy, synthetic fabric. One would think my nervousness would have caused my erection to subside; it seemed to have the opposite effect, unfortunately.
When I removed the clamps, my nipples were on fire. I knew the pain would subside in a couple of minutes. After I urinated, I returned to the living room. I couldn’t have been gone more than three or four minutes, but I when I entered the room, I was very distressed to see that Kevin was sitting alone there. I simply had to hope that he hadn’t noticed me tipping that pillow over earlier, or didn’t take notice of my trying to get Brooke to sit in a different place on the couch.
I sat back on the couch just as Brooke walked back into the room with Kevin’s refilled glass of sweet tea.
“Thanks. I guess I’m really thirsty today,” Kevin said, smiling. I thought I detected a trace of smugness in his smile, but possibly he simply took after his brother and smugness was his default expression.
“Well, I better go look for my tool downstairs,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t leave any tools down there,” I said.
“I think I might have left my spud wrench down by the washing machine. I don’t use it very often and the last time I remember using it was here. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it anywhere else.”
Brooke said, “I sure hope you find it. Let me know if you need a flashlight or anything.”
When he went downstairs, I whispered to Brooke, “Do you think he’s spying on us?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It does seem strange that he wouldn’t have missed a tool for all these months,” she whispered.
“Did you notice how he said plural ‘tools’ when he first got here, and just now he said singular ‘tool’? I have a bad feeling about this.”
“But he didn’t see anything.”
“Unless, he saw this.” I said moving the pillow and revealing the cage. “I covered it with the pillow. I don’t think he saw it, but I can’t be sure.” Meanwhile, I put the cage in my desk drawer.
Kevin came back upstairs, empty handed.
“No luck?”, Brooke said.
“Nope. I guess I’m just going to have to buy a new one. Well, I better go to the supply store. Thanks again for the tea.”
“Anytime,” said Brooke. “Don’t be such a stranger.”
When he left, I said, “What if he saw my cage? Or my clamps? What if he tells Luke?”
“I really doubt he saw anything. Chill out. Luke won’t be back for at least another hour. If you still want to me to get you off, we’d better hurry.”
“Kevin kind of spoiled the mood.”
“Come over here.” Brooke kissed me on the lips with some passion, and rubbed my cock through my yoga pants. I got instantly hard again. “Mood unspoiled now?”
“Yes,” I said breathlessly.
She sat on the couch. “Lie down.” She then proceeded to give me a footjob through my mesh panties, efficiently rubbing both sides of my cock, but also pressing her toes against my balls. Sensing when I was close, she placed one of her feet over my nose. Within seconds, I erupted through my panties.
Looking down at me, she said, “I really do appreciate the sacrifices you make for me. I want you to know that. You’re really my little foot page, not Luke’s. But we won’t tell him that. You know how he is about his feet.“ She laughed. Her dimpled smile is so contagious, I even laughed a little too. My sense of humor may have been in the ICU, hooked up to a respirator on the bed next to chivalry, but it wasn’t entirely dead.
Then she said, “Okay, we better clean up. Then take a shower, and I’ll lock you back up.” She removed the butt plug.
Right after she locked me back in the cage, both of our phones pinged simultaneously. We looked at each other. Brooke was the first to grab her phone.
“Shit.” She handed me the phone. There was a group text from Luke to her and me. It was a photo of my chastity cage on the couch, accompanied by the words: Disobedience = punishment.
“That little fucking little snitch,” said Brooke.
“Oh, no. I had a bad feeling. What are we going to do?”
As if in answer to my question, our phones pinged again: “By the time I get home, house better be spotless and both of you naked and on your knees to greet me at the door.”
“Clean.” said Brooke. “We’re going clean faster than we ever have in our lives. That’s what we’re going to do.”

Last week was Neurodiversity Week and I didn't even know until two of my coworkers, both women in their 40s, posted on the company social media about it. But they didn't post to spread awareness or anything, they posted to rant and complain about their autistic children (what a surprise). One of them even wrote a very long poem about her son and it was so horrible, she never said anything nice about him and it was like 10 verses long. It was full of things that were so horrible to read and my coworker who is also autistic agreed with me when we talked about it. And the worst part is how many people commented on it saying how amazing it was and how brave she is. And I understand that it can be challenging to have children who are autistic, its valid, but I don't think she was valid in sharing her poem because of how offensive it was.
Anyway, I was beyond sick and tired of my coworkers and how my workplace is full of people who just have no real awareness of autism, and I made my own big post, sharing my story, some stats etc. I was so scared to do it, I left it until late on the last day to post it , but I am so glad I did it! I feel very proud of myself and I've had a huge positive response so far 😊
Now I just need to start my shift and deal with all of the questions and 'wow you seem so normal though' comments even though I am so clearly autistic and I struggle so much and mask constantly... but I'm still going to try and keep being proud of myself 🌸
TLDR: posted my autism story on workplace social media platform because the lack of real awareness annoys me