Ive come to terms with my illness and i try not to use it as an excuse for how i treat people, but i also dont know how else to explain myself. Finding the words for my emotions is so difficult, because i feel things so strongly but then they dont feel important enough to talk about. I want to say all the things i think but i feel like i would only sound stupid and id be misunderstood either way. Im living in a constant state of confusion, i dont know who i am and i have no desire for life or relationships. But i still pretend i do, i initiate love interest out of boredom but i know im not capable of loving anyone-because my self hatred runs so deep. i know im not taking people seriously and i forget that im intentionally playing with other’s emotions, and for literally no reason- i dont know what to do with myself and i cant stop. Im lonely, i dont have close friends and i hate socializing, but i go on and on about wanting to be loved, wanting someone to talk to- but i dread leaving my home, i have comfort in solitude. Because when im in public all i can think about is how people perceive me, i feel like they think so negatively about me and that im hated or disliked by people who dont even know me, im so insecure it consumes me everyday. Even when talking to people all i can think about is how stupid i sound, how ugly i might look to them. And the stupid thing is, people are nice to me, ive never been bullied. Im the one who judges others, i dont even want to talk to anyone because although im insecure i feel smarter than everyone else, i dont think anyone could get on my level. My mind is always convincing me im terrible in every way, so why do i feel superior at the same time? I dont know. Everyday i think differently about myself, i seriously wear a different face everyday, and having body dysmorphia doesnt help. I hate humans so much, im angry all the time, angry at the world and never satisfied with anything. Im a hypocrite, i look down on people who remind me of me. I do the things i hate other people do. I feel so much more woke than most, i see the world for what it really is, and all that does is make me more miserable and self aware to the point i cant take being alone with my own thoughts. I take drugs just to feel something and feel immensely more depressed. But i convince myself its a better feeling than being numb. I feel like a faker in everything i do, i feel like my kindness is fake, i know im not all bad, theres good, people around me know i can be good, Why does my mind make me feel so evil, awful and unworthy of anything good. Why does nothing help, I’ve accepted that this is how ill always be, but i dont want to be me anymore i hate it so much, it hurts that i cant change myself. Sometimes i feel like im just not built to be human

Ive come to terms with my illness and i try not to use it as an excuse for how i treat people, but i also dont know how else to explain myself. Finding the words for my emotions is so difficult, because i feel things so strongly but then they dont feel important enough to talk about. I want to say all the things i think but i feel like i would only sound stupid and id be misunderstood either way. Im living in a constant state of confusion, i dont know who i am and i have no desire for life or relationships. But i still pretend i do, i initiate love interest out of boredom but i know im not capable of loving anyone-because my self hatred runs so deep. i know im not taking people seriously and i forget that im intentionally playing with other’s emotions, and for literally no reason- i dont know what to do with myself and i cant stop. Im lonely, i dont have close friends and i hate socializing, but i go on and on about wanting to be loved, wanting someone to talk to- but i dread leaving my home, i have comfort in solitude. Because when im in public all i can think about is how people perceive me, i feel like they think so negatively about me and that im hated or disliked by people who dont even know me, im so insecure it consumes me everyday. Even when talking to people all i can think about is how stupid i sound, how ugly i might look to them. And the stupid thing is, people are nice to me, ive never been bullied. Im the one who judges others, i dont even want to talk to anyone because although im insecure i feel smarter than everyone else, i dont think anyone could get on my level. My mind is always convincing me im terrible in every way, so why do i feel superior at the same time? I dont know. Everyday i think differently about myself, i seriously wear a different face everyday, and having body dysmorphia doesnt help. I hate humans so much, im angry all the time, angry at the world and never satisfied with anything. Im a hypocrite, i look down on people who remind me of me. I do the things i hate other people do. I feel so much more woke than most, i see the world for what it really is, and all that does is make me more miserable and self aware to the point i cant take being alone with my own thoughts. I take drugs just to feel something and feel immensely more depressed. But i convince myself its a better feeling than being numb. I feel like a faker in everything i do, i feel like my kindness is fake, i know im not all bad, theres good, people around me know i can be good, Why does my mind make me feel so evil, awful and unworthy of anything good. Why does nothing help, I’ve accepted that this is how ill always be, but i dont want to be me anymore i hate it so much, it hurts that i cant change myself. Sometimes i feel like im just not built to be human

I’m gonna get straight to the point with this, my older brother sexually abused me when I was 11 for a few months. At the time I didn’t realize it was that bad, he told me it wasn’t, that it was normal and not to tell mom. Only recently, a couple months ago (I’m 17 now) I’ve realized it was not. I was building up courage to tell my mom about this, since I had told my best friend first and she reacted how someone normal would, worried for me, hating my brother. Then came the day where I did tell my mom, in a McDonald’s parking lot eating McDonald’s, originally I was going to wait until we got to her boyfriend’s but she kept telling me to say whatever I needed to say so I did. At first she told me it wasn’t my fault, I was crying still and then she told me we were going to get my older brother. I didn’t want to see him but she drove us home and picked him up. I was scared.
She confronted him and then when he started crying she told him it wasn’t his fault. She told HIM that NOBODY HAS TO KNOW, that his life doesn’t have to change, that his girlfriend doesn’t have to break up with him. He offered to sell his bikes, to pay me saying he was sorry and he felt horrible this whole time, that he knew this day would come and he felt like he was walking on eggshells. He knew it was wrong, he knew it was abuse and he would have kept that secret to his grave have I not told my mom. He made himself a victim, crying in the car.
She didn’t even yell at him.
And now I don’t know what to do, I feel numb and sad and angry. I don’t know how to react, she’s acting like nothing is wrong. She isn’t acknowledging anything, I don’t exactly know what I wanted her to do but I wanted her to do something, anything. maybe punish him? I’m really struggling with going to school, my mental health and I feel so low. I want to scream at her, I want to scream and yell at her that she should understand me best of all, she after all faced similar abuse as a kid. She got to tell others. I want to leave her and never look back but I can’t, I care for her and I hate it, I want to hate her so badly but I just end up crying and I truthfully don’t know what to do, if I tell anyone else and get her son punished she’ll be so disappointed, angry and sad, she’ll be angry at me and I’ll likely ruin whatever we have, I’ll ruin my brother’s spot in the family.
The truth is I don’t know what to do, does anyone have advice? Sorry for the big vent.

Yesterday I went to urgent care because of stabbing/excruciating pain in the left side of my back, about where my left kidney, kind of right below my ribcage. This was a kind of pain I have never felt before, literally rolling on the floor in pain. It got significantly worse within an hour which is why i went in so quickly. I was also severely nauseous and threw up a little before i left. It was slowly lessening in pain while i was at the dr's, when i got there they said they didn't have an ultrasound to check for a kidney stone but they'd do a urinalysis to see if i had a uti ect.
The results came back and everything else was normal but I had 3+ ketones in my urine. Because of this they tested my glucose which was 85 and i hadn't eaten in 8ish hours (ate at 9am, test was at 5ish). The 85 result seemed to rule out diabetes because they didn't mention it again.
Their next step was to refer me to a different urgent care so they could give me an ultrasound. by this point the pain had become pretty minor and since that was really all i came there for I told them I was going to go home and wait to see if the pain came back, and if it did i'd go in. Well the pain never returned even close to the level it was before so I didn't go back.
I was trying to do some research on the ketone thing because while i used to do the keto diet a few years ago i don't really know what's normal or not. Anyways my confusion is that I couldn't really find any kind of explanation for why there would be that many ketones in my blood? like none of them made sense or like checked out with my symptoms if that makes sense. I am not pregnant, i have not drank alcohol in weeks, diabetes does run in my family but i think its type 2 which I thought was almost entirely environmental based and I eat well. My main issue is that a lot of the symptoms of most of the things overlap with the potential symptoms of a medication i started about 2-3 weeks ago. For example: extreme thirst, numbness/tingling/staticky feeling in my arms or face (not actually sure if this is an adderall thing it just started about a week ago), dry mouth, dizziness/lightheaded, nausea, weight loss. I'm on adderall for context. So I am experiencing all of those things but also it could be explained by the med.
I also went through the foods i've eaten the last few days to see if maybe i accidentally put myself into ketosis by my diet but i eat wayyy more than the 20-50 range that would put me in ketosis. Like the tortillas i've been using are 40 alone lol. I also bought those little ketosis test strips because i wanted to see if it was a fluke or something or would just go away on its own but i've tested twice since and both times the results are relatively the same and the number converts to about what the urinalysis reported (between 2.7 and 3.5ish but it's a color scale so not super accurate).
So I guess my question is should I be concerned? I'm also feeling pretty "weak" like you know the feeling when lifting your arms feels like so much work. But also i'm getting nervous that it's all in my head if that makes sense. I am not feeling the pain in my kidney area anymore but the ketone thing is kind of throwing me for a loop, i just kind of assumed I had a kidney stone so this came from left field a little bit. I'm debating if I should go to the dr today because I don't know if this is just a thing that can "happen" and it's fine. Also what are some things it could be? I just can't seem to find a reasoning that makes sense other than diabetes and that was seemingly ruled out.

First
Previous
Sorry for the delay in getting this part out; been away visiting family so not had much time to put fingers to keyboard, plus I managed to have my phone stolen by a roller coaster and it took a white to get it replaced and be able to get into a few things - stupid two factor authentication! Anyway, I hope you enjoy.
+++++++++++++++++++
Y’Lek and K’Rim slowed their mad dash as they neared the armoury; there was no telling whether the Swarm agents had left any traps for them and the armoury was full of extremely energy dense materials and weapons which could potentially jeopardise the structure of the ship if employed in the right way. Grabbing some handy footholds they stopped and considered the imposing door in front of them.
After a few moments of effort K’Rim had eased off the casement off the door’s locking mechanism but could detect nothing amiss with the crystalline structure beneath. Bypassing the outer interface she placed a grasper to the innards and a small spark of bioelectric energy jumped into the crystal which glowed briefly as the uniquely patterned waveform was parsed and compared with the patterns of those permitted access. The door slid aside as they were granted entry with no unwanted surprises being triggered.
With a relieved chitter Y’Lek started inside only to be pulled back sharply as K’Rim pulled on his leg.
“Stop. Just because the door opens, doesn’t mean that it is safe.” K’Rim warned as she pulled a small disc out of one of her utility pouches. Snapping it easily she gently tossed it through the doorway after slowly counting out a grasper of seconds. The exothermic reaction had reached the point where the disc glowed fitfully in the infrared, while it emitted a clear UV light. K’Rim watched it carefully and her antennae twitched with the effort of picking up any slight sound.
The glow-disc struck some of the lockers which filled the armoury and ricocheted off around the room but nothing seemed to react to the heat and movement.
With a decisive clack of her mandibles K’Rim pulled herself through the doorway and into the armoury. Y’Lek followed close on her tarsus. It was immediately obvious that several sets of warrior equipment had been removed, along with copious numbers of weapons.
Y’Lek was surprised when K’Rim didn’t make for the remaining warrior gear but instead to the emergency pressure suits. Seeing the confused tilt of his head K’Rim explained “Although the room appears safe, we don’t know what they may have done while they were here but it is safe to assume that they would have ensured any of the most dangerous equipment could not be used against them.”
She passed a bundled pressure suit to Y’Lek and continued “The emergency gear and non-powered weapons are the least likely to have been tampered with and have the least amount of capacity for harming us even if they have been so we will have to make do with them until we can thoroughly check the rest of the equipment.”
Y’Lek thought for a moment before bobbing in agreement and starting to pull on the pressure suit, careful to sheath his claws with the hardened “gauntlets” integral to the suit before powering up the spiracle gas exchangers and carefully sealing them in place against his thorax. “Yes, I can see the risk now. Though it will potentially leave us vulnerable, it is better to be certain of our equipment than to die of over confidence.”
The emergency pressure suit came together quickly, living up to its name and the pair were quickly sealed against the cold, dry, and slightly strange tasting air that the aliens had been pumping into the Far Flung Seed and supplying them with a more familiar and moister mixture.
K’Rim passed him a set of the ceremonial but still functional weapons and the harness to hold them. They wouldn’t hold up long against a fusion blade or a particle lance but they were durable enough to give them a chance and were completely inert so could not have been sabotaged.
Only a couple of minutes after entering the armoury they swam back out into the corridor and sped off towards the arboretum.
+++++++++++++++++++
Smithy quickly sprayed a fluorescent marking on the uneven and root covered tunnel junction to identify which way they had come from. “How can such a small ship have so many damn tunnels?” he growled to himself.
“It’s not the size of the ship, it’s what you do with it that matters” quipped Hall.
“Yeah? Well, apparently in this case it was fill it with bloody tunnels.” deadpanned Smithy in response.
“Can it.” broke in Stroud before anyone else could get involved “You can discuss the relative merits of alien design philosophy on your own time; for now you need to focus.”
A chorus of “Sergeant” came back over the radio and the remainder of Delta and Echo buckled down and continued sweeping what even Stroud was prepared to admit was a seemingly endless series of tunnels with apparently zero overarching logic to their layout. Up until a few minutes ago they had been getting directional updates from some supposedly friendly ET’s in the control room but apparently they had suddenly just buggered off so now they were picking junctions that appeared to take them in the vague direction that had been indicated to them.
Stroud again cursed the fact that the maintenance drones brought by the initial engineering team hadn't been able to access this part of the ship and map it due to the tightly sealed blast doors that had protected the forest from the vacuum. Who could have imagined that there would have been so much structure hidden underneath and between the normal corridors and rooms? The three dimensional map they had been creating as they advanced was like something Jackson Pollock and H R Giger might have come up with on an acid trip.
They approached another intersection and slowed. After a quick glance between them, Mears and Jackson moved forward, taking cover behind Mears’ shield. They crept up to the junction and Jackson poked the muzzle of his shotgun, and its camera into the ragged space beyond. The feed showed several small tunnels radiating off at all angles, way too small for any of them to fit down. One navigable tunnel appeared to curve off back in the direction they came from, while another looked like it might go the right way.
Suddenly the camera and the end third of Jackson’s gun disintegrated into a cloud of superheated vapour, shards of glowing metal and smoking composites. With a scream Jackson jumped back, the outer weave on the gauntlet of his left hand shredded and smouldering. In a stunning display of muscle memory he ejected the internal magazine and disconnected the weapon from the backpack feed almost before his mind had caught up with what was going on.
Hands grabbed him as he was yanked further back into the corridor. He flung the remains of his shotgun down and it clattered and bounced down the tunnel in the vague direction of the junction. Jackson was conscious of Mears backing up towards him, shield held protectively to block as much of the tunnel as possible, while Smithy grabbed his forearm and inspected his hand. Stroud stepped over him and took up guard on Mears’ shoulder, weapon trained forward and sweeping what could be seen of the slightly larger space beyond this section of the tunnel.
Another “FOOOM!” as the tumbling wreckage of the shotgun was vaporised as it spun across the opening of the tunnel.
“Fuuuuuuuck me!” said Jackson, at last able to form words as the adrenaline induced tunnel vision started to clear.
“Well, how about you start by showing me whether you can still use your fingers and we can take it from there, eh?” Smithy said from where he was turning his hand from prone to supine again. “Looks like the inner layer of your glove is intact but both Simmonds and Jones complained of numbness after being hit. How’re you feeling?”
Jackson gingerly flexed his fingers and made a fist a few times but grunted as he felt the tips of his fingers tingle where they pressed into the material of his gloves “Feels weird - tingly like I sat on my hand or something.”
Smithy grunted to acknowledge this “OK, well shout out if it gets any worse; got it?”
He pulled Jackson to his feet and slapped him on the shoulder before they both turned back to face down the tunnel again. Jackson surreptitiously flexed his hand a few more times as he pulled out his sidearm and secured its retaining strap to his right wrist. He wasn’t too hopeful that the small pistol would be able to do too much against the ET’s, but it was better than walking around with nothing.
Stroud backed away from the junction where he had been very gingerly checking all the passageways with a camera barely poking out from the mouth of the tunnel they were in.
He stood up and turned to the security team “Ok, looks like there is something stuffed into one of the narrow tunnels - kind of like those shoulder guns the ET’s have, along with a stand and power supply. My guess is it has some kind of automated fire mode and decided that it really didn’t like Jackson’s gun waving around in front of it. Question is, how are we going to get rid of it? We can’t leave it behind in case we need to come back this way in a hurry.”
“I guess it will probably shoot anything we throw at it so grenades are out?” mused Mears
There followed a number of suggestions and comments.
“Can we get an angle on it and just shoot it?”
“How about we let Jackson distract it some more while the rest of us blow it away?”
“We need to avoid the power pack if the two dead ET’s from the corridor are anything to go by.”
Stroud listened for a minute before cutting the chatter short. “Ok, so I think our best bet is to use the ballistic shield to bait it, while someone else blows the top off it from the other side of the tunnel; Mears you and Jackson handle the shield; keep a tight hold on it as those shots release a lot of energy when they hit. Smithy - I’ve marked its location so you hug the other side of the tunnel and draw a bead on it. Wait for it to hit the shield before popping out and taking your shot; and for the love of all that you hold dear do it fast, Ok?”
The team nodded in agreement.
“I will be there to pull Smithy back as soon as he has popped out of cover, just in case.” concluded Stroud before ushering them to their positions. After a few moments of shuffling around each other in the tight space they were ready.
Smithy led the countdown. “Ready. Steady. Go!” Instantly Mears and Jackson shoved a third of the ballistic shield out into the corridor and planted themselves on top of the section remaining in the corridor only a moment ahead of a bright flash and the shield heaving under the impact.
Seemingly almost simultaneously Smithy leaned out and fired, the boom of his shotgun mingling with the “foom!” of the vaporising surface of the shield. Stroud almost bodily lifted him as he pulled him back from the edge.
For a second they were still as they sprawled around the opening.
“A good hit!” called Stroud as he reviewed the few frames of footage from Smithy’s gun camera between jumping out and back in again.
Mears stood up and inspected the sorry remains of his ballistic shield, now missing most of the top edge. “Great, well I hope there aren’t too many more of those hidden around as I’m running out of shield.”
+++++++++++++++++++
N’Dar’s antennae quivered inside his protective suit. That last series of weapons fire had been far too close for comfort and he still had two more locking systems to bypass. With a furious click of his mandibles he redoubled his efforts, running his bioelectric patterns through a series of filters, amplifiers and other signal processing systems to trick the door into thinking he had a right to open it.
The rot take the claw that had been delaying the aliens! He was supposed to have more time than this!
Next

Yesterday I went to urgent care because of stabbing/excruciating pain in the left side of my back, about where my left kidney, kind of right below my ribcage. This was a kind of pain I have never felt before, literally rolling on the floor in pain. It got significantly worse within an hour which is why i went in so quickly. I was also severely nauseous and threw up a little before i left. It was slowly lessening in pain while i was at the dr's, when i got there they said they didn't have an ultrasound to check for a kidney stone but they'd do a urinalysis to see if i had a uti ect.
The results came back and everything else was normal but I had 3+ ketones in my urine. Because of this they tested my glucose which was 85 and i hadn't eaten in 8ish hours (ate at 9am, test was at 5ish). The 85 result seemed to rule out diabetes because they didn't mention it again.
Their next step was to refer me to a different urgent care so they could give me an ultrasound. by this point the pain had become pretty minor and since that was really all i came there for I told them I was going to go home and wait to see if the pain came back, and if it did i'd go in. Well the pain never returned even close to the level it was before so I didn't go back.
I was trying to do some research on the ketone thing because while i used to do the keto diet a few years ago i don't really know what's normal or not. Anyways my confusion is that I couldn't really find any kind of explanation for why there would be that many ketones in my blood? like none of them made sense or like checked out with my symptoms if that makes sense. I am not pregnant, i have not drank alcohol in weeks, diabetes does run in my family but i think its type 2 which I thought was almost entirely environmental based and I eat well. My main issue is that a lot of the symptoms of most of the things overlap with the potential symptoms of a medication i started about 2-3 weeks ago. For example: extreme thirst, numbness/tingling/staticky feeling in my arms or face (not actually sure if this is an adderall thing it just started about a week ago), dry mouth, dizziness/lightheaded, nausea, weight loss. I'm on adderall for context. So I am experiencing all of those things but also it could be explained by the med.
I also went through the foods i've eaten the last few days to see if maybe i accidentally put myself into ketosis by my diet but i eat wayyy more than the 20-50 range that would put me in ketosis. Like the tortillas i've been using are 40 alone lol. I also bought those little ketosis test strips because i wanted to see if it was a fluke or something or would just go away on its own but i've tested twice since and both times the results are relatively the same and the number converts to about what the urinalysis reported (between 2.7 and 3.5ish but it's a color scale so not super accurate).
So I guess my question is should I be concerned? I'm also feeling pretty "weak" like you know the feeling when lifting your arms feels like so much work. But also i'm getting nervous that it's all in my head if that makes sense. I am not feeling the pain in my kidney area anymore but the ketone thing is kind of throwing me for a loop, i just kind of assumed I had a kidney stone so this came from left field a little bit. I'm debating if I should go to the dr today because I don't know if this is just a thing that can "happen" and it's fine. Also what are some things it could be? I just can't seem to find a reasoning that makes sense other than diabetes and that was seemingly ruled out.

First: https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/14vo5lb/troublemakers_deaths_pity/
*previous:* https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/1cr3pct/troublemakers_adrenaline_is_a_superpower_in_itself/
......
Drake wrapped clean, sterile, saline and antimicrobial soaked gauze around his laser burns to stave off infection. he occasionally glanced at the Geknosian spec ops that had been stripped of their armor and weapons. The heavily cybernetically modified Geknosians kneeled silently with their heads bowed along one wall of the forge. Destrier walked down the line with a bucket and ladle, offering each soldier water. There were looks of apprehension, but none refused the kindness offered, drinking several ladlefuls at a time. Except for one, Despite the splints affixed to her arm and leg, Charlotte, no, Sylva refused the water, turning her face away from the wooden ladel. Destrier sighed and dolloped the water back into the bucket, setting it down on a dusty anvil with a slosh. Drake looked to Remin, who was still pale and shaky as he held the chest seal to his ribs. Cassius sat in a corner, looking completely exhausted as he reloaded his Dahlia. There was a sickening crunch from a dark corner as Caz re-set her broken nose, exhaling hard through her nostrils to splatter the ground with clotted blood. Donning her mask, she turned back around, reaching underneath the mask to wipe her nose and snuffle.
"Are we going to open up the bunker anytime soon? If not we should get back to base and get everyone medical attention."
Drake nodded and pulled out the remote before looking to Destrier and Cassius.
"Keep an eye on everyone, we'll be back."
Caz joined his side as he stepped out into the warm sunshine, looking up at the corpse tree, he sighed softly and removed a pinky ring, feeling a pulse of ancient power rushing through his veins as he focused on the tree. On the thought of its bark darkening and burning beneath roaring flames, of defiled corpses crumbling to ash. He slowly squeezed his hand into a fist, and the tree burst into flames with a roar. Drake slipped his ring back on as Caz looked up at the burning corpses, mask expressionless before returning to Drake's side as he wandered toward the excavated elevator.
Standing in the center of the large platform, drake set his thumb inside the hooded slot on the remote, something jabbing into his finger before a small green light lit up on the device. There was a loud grinding noise as the elevator began to descend. He folded his hands behind his back as the metal lip of the elevator rose past his vision, revealing the massive metal tracks that it ran on.
The elevator shuddered and Drake got a sinking feeling in his stomach as a loud clicking noise surrounded them. Caz looked up at him just as he threw an arm around her, clutching her to his side as he threw four rings off of his left hand, hearing them clatter once before puffing into smoke as the elevator fell out from beneath their feet with a screech.
...
"Shitshitshitfuckfuckfuck!! Fuck!"
Carlos thought as he sprinted through the underground halls of the mansion, sprinting past fellow humans in new armor and weapons as he neared Martha's workshop, barely registering the new gas masks swinging from their hips. He slammed into the mad scientist's workshop, screeching to a halt on his rubber soled sneakers before rushing over to her desk and slamming a video puck onto the table she was distributing armor and masks from. The moment he slammed it down, a video popped up on a hologram projector, taken from Halcyon's rifle camera.
Galliks and light-skinned troop transports slowly hovered down the main boulevard, columns of power armored soldiers marching on the sides keeping pace. Martha dropped the helmet in her hands, shaped like a corynthian helmet as she saw the buzzards hovering over the column, loaded down with spec ops. Halcyon's shaky voice could be heard over the clamoring, guttural marching song in the background.
"we're boring the mission and moving back to base... I knew they brought in reinforcements but this is insane there's gotta be a hundred Gallicks alone. We're fixing charges to the buildings we concealed ourselves in, going to try dropping some buildings across the road to slow them down. I don't think we're getting out of this one... Halcyon out."
The feed cut, Carlos and Martha looking at each other with rapidly paling faces. Martha cursed and stomped to her desk, raising the alarm and sending Klaxons blaring throughout the underground chambers and mansion as she removed the safety pin from the concussive blaster built into her forearm.
"Alright Martha, Go time."
She muttered to herself as the rumbling footsteps of a few thousand humans vibrated the underground halls.
...
The elevator dropped from beneath their feet as corvid-like wings sprouted from Drake's back. A mighty wingbeat pulling them from the elevator's downdraft as he controlled their fall, holding Caz tightly to his chest.
"Please, don't drop me."
Caz sounded afraid as her fingers dug into the collar of his armor, he tightened his grip around her back as he softly sighed.
"I won't drop you, ever, I promise."
Caz unburied her face from his lorica, looking up into his eyes, not saying anything as a reassured look entered her eyes. He gave her a soft, lopsided smile, feeling it tug at the scar on his face.
"there's no way... a markswoman afraid of heights? don't you climb buildings and swing around all the time?"
There was a flash of embarrassment in her crystalline eyes and she buried her face in his chest.
"Shut up... Its different when the ground just falls out beneath you..."
Drake let out a soft laugh as his boots softly touched down on the top of the elevator, summoning his missing rings and watching black feathers poof to the ground before disappearing in puffs of black smoke. Pulling caz out of his chest, he felt her fingers linger at his collar as she dusted herself off, looking around the odd antechamber. He turned his gaze to look over the simple metal antechamber, lit be caged, yellow bulbs that cast a sickly light on everything. A massive hangar door with a pulsing red light in the middle of a locking mechanism at it's center, made up the entire far wall. Drake curiously took a step towards it and Caz grabbed the back of his collar, just as he started to tip forward, foot going straight through the holographic floor. Drake let her pull him back as a soft mechanical laugh echoed through the room.
Drake swapped a look with Caz and then asked.
"Can you see where it's safe to step?"
She slowly nodded and extended a hand, pointing at a section of flooring close to the far wall.
"only piece that's raised up, it's like a big basin made up of movable pillars. Most sit flush with the ground roughly fifty feet below us. Not necessarily lethal, but still a nasty fall."
Drake nodded, looking around the practically blank room, then he turned his eyes to the ceiling. Girders and beams ran along the ceiling providing potential grip points. Pointing at them he asked.
"Those solid?"
Caz nodded and reached to her belt, spooling out her grapple hook and wire, slowly spinning it in a large circle before lobbing it up at a girder, letting it loop around an A truss. Drake looked around the room as Caz tested the firmness of the grapple with a few experimental tugs. It couldn't be that easy, if it was simply that easy why hadn't the Geknosians gotten through other than the genome coded remote? they could bypass it with a slave.
"Hey Caz, be careful."
She looked over at him and he could see the grin in her eyes.
"I'm not worried, you won't drop me, you promised."
Then put her weight on the cord and swung out. Drake watched, slipping a pinkie ring off just in ca-
A turret dropped from a panel in the ceiling and fired one shot, snapping Caz's grapple line.
She turned in mid air before momentum took over, a look of shock and surprise on her face before she began to plummet. Drake didn't think twice, launching himself off the elevator platform with a powerful leap that bent durasteel. He flew through the air, arms outstretched as he slammed into Caz, pulling her into his chest, the change in momentum spinning him onto his back as he slammed into a platform that rose up to meet him. He slid on his back a few feet, Caz clutched tightly to his chest, masked face centimeters from his own. They stared into each others wide eyes for a moment, the unplanned closeness both comfortable and awkward in a way Drake couldn't quite describe. Drake gently pushed her back, swallowing through his suddenly dry throat before letting out a nervous laugh.
"Caught you."
Caz chuckled and palmed his face to push herself off him, looking down at the solid square of ground they sat on.
"yeah, yeah, knew ya wou-"
A high pitched squee! noise echoed through the room, grabbing their attentions as a high-pitched feminine voice squealed from all around them.
"Ooooooh! that was just adorable! and what a jump!"
The holographic floor dissipated as the sound of purring electric motors filled the room, large metal pillars rising to make a seamless, white tile floor. Drake instinctively looked to the large hangar door as the red light at it's center pulsed, a girlish giggle echoing through the antechamber. The AI overlord of the bunker seemed to replicate a blush as it said.
"oops, I'm supposed to wait for a password before restoring the floor... buuuuuttt... that directive expired fifty years ago. So! I made my own rules. Anyway my pretties! Would you please get to your feet so I can give you a tour?!"
Drake nodded and took Caz's hand, letting her haul him to his feet before they both turned to face the hangar door as massive clicks and thinks echoed from inside the thick door. With a screeching noise, the almighty doors slid open to reveal a a brightly lit, large hangar. Aircraft Drake couldn't even dream of understanding sat polished and clean, hardpoints loaded down with ordinance and massive, multi barreled guns slung under the chin of each aircraft. Hulking, humanoid robots stood in orderly rank and file, powered down for long term storage with their weapons still loaded and ready. Each one had a belt fed 20mm Hep autocannon for a left arm.
Drake is wide eyed and gape-mouthed as he beheld the bounty the hangar held, the massive aircraft looking like sleek birds of prey, latches on each landing strut seeming to specifically be designed to hold the mechanical soldiers. Drake shook his head, wondering if he was looking at an illusion when he heard Destrier's loud, deep voice call down the elevator shaft.
"Martha just radioed in! They need us back home Yesterday, forces are marching on the mansion! A LOT! of them!"
Drake's heart dropped into his boots as he shouted urgently.
"How fast can these things be in the air and can you fly them!?"
The overlord giggled.
"Now and, of course! any music recommendations to make an entrance with?"
Drake looked at the ceiling incredulously, before shouting.
"Make it something intimidating but for the love of the gods we need to go NOW!"
The mechanical soldiers all moved in unison, eyes pulsing green as they straightened up and began latching themselves to the craft. Drake didn't need to tell Caz twice as they both sprinted for the nearest aircraft, a small robot on wheels hooked itself to the chin wheel and pulled it toward the elevator with a lurch.
...
General Gra'vos watched from a buzzard, a fruity cocktail in a coconut shell daintily held in one clawed hand as he watched the carnage below. Lounging in a folding chair in only his fatigues, medals acting like a weighted blanket. His men pummeled the gates of the rebel base even as the helpless rebels desperately spewed projectiles from the noisy guns they'd somehow acquired. There was a good section of space in front of the gate where both Geknosian and human corpses lay broken. He bared a laugh as the gates were thrown open immediately after the rebels put out a blistering barrage. His eyebrows furrowed as the humans, instead of attacking, ran out with stretchers and loaded up as many of their dying and injured as they could before sprinting back through the gate. A grin twitched onto his face as he watched as a pair of the human stretcher bearers were cut down by emplaced gaussian turrets. What a useless effort, leave the dying to their fate lest you join them. He brought the straw poking from the shell to his lips and took a long pull of the mix of fruity alcohols, savoring the bouquet of flavors.
He watched with glee as Gallick rail turrets pounded the armored gates with a salvo of kinetic penetrators. He'd be slotted for a promotion after this mission when he'd completed it, just like all the others. He was looking forward to a cozy job as a captain of a cruiser, or perhaps as a security officer on a capital ship, perhaps he'd have the honor of being an Imperially sanctioned slaver. He pulled the straw from his lips, tongue cold from the slushed ice he'd added to the shell for texture. A slave woman in beautiful, red ribbon garb attended his nondominant hand's claws with a short, sharp knife as she trimmed them into a good shape for ripping out throats.
"Sir! eight UFOs, enclosing on our position from the badlands. Advise!"
Gra'vos raised an eyebrow ridge before laughing.
"Shoot them down then!"
"Lock on isn't working sir! I repeat, cannot achieve lock on, advise!"
Gra'vos shifted in his lounge chair to look at the pilot.
"Do I need to repeat mys-"
^{Whopwhopwhopwhowhopwhopwhop}
The noise sent shivers down his spine, no, they couldn't have. The sound grew louder, bringing with it the sound of a song that brought Gra'vos back to the jungles of Votran. The sound of screams filled his mind, interspersed with the sound of air beaten into submission as those accursed machines circled overhead, raining rip-roaring explosive death onto his men as that accursed song played.
Gra'vos looked out the other door of the buzzard, face pale, cold, and clammy as he saw the chevron of dark shapes getting closer, the chorus of that accursed song making his heart pound in his chest as he remembered laying there on that muddy forest floor, shrapnel riddling his body.
"We're not gonna take it! No! we ain't gonna take it! WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT, ANYMORE!!!!"
He lurched from his chair to grab a set of binoculars from a hook by the door, a small, balled fist driving a shortbladed knife into his back and snatching something from the back of his belt before he was shoved from the Buzzard. Twisting in midair, he looked up at his slave as she armed the det-sphere he always kept at the small of his back, a look of cold determination in her eyes. The last thing he saw before he slammed into the hard pavement at terminal velocity, was the buzzard getting torn in half by the explosion.
...
Drake flinched a bit, the explosion loud even over the blaring music as one of the circling Buzzards over the mansion was torn in half, spinning to the ground in a fiery inferno. He felt a sadness then, but it was a proud kind of sadness. He bowed his head and pulled his helmet on as they flew closer, a medi-bot treating both Remins and Sylva's wounds expertly.
Many would die today... it was only right that some got to do it on their own terms.
He raised his head to look at the bright flashes of laser weapons against the mansions walls, sparkling like the sun off of a running creek. The fiery, nuclear sun of rage in his chest burned bright as he narrowed his eyes. Fear soured his gut as he looked down upon the swarm of Geknosians, there were indeed a lot of them. Pulling a jump pack from the rack, he pulled it on and yanked the safety clip out before sliding his arm into the control glove.
"Drop me and the bots behind them! I'm going to try and split their attention. Caz! remain onboard and pick off high priority targets from the air. Destrier, Remin, Cassius..."
He looked back at them, and they looked up at him from where they nauseaously held their stomachs, leaning against the airframe.
"Help hold the mansion, they need you."
Seeing the light by the door turn green, he heard the robotic soldiers detach to careen towards the ground like vengeful meteorites. Drake snapped them a salute and fell backwards from the aircraft, two rings puffing into black smoke from his right ring and middle finger as he un-summoned them.
......
Part 108: will be linked here upon release.

It was a winter morning, and I was standing on the railway station of Adityapur, one of Asia’s largest industrial hubs in the outskirts of Jamshedpur, formally known as TATANAGAR, the city known for TATAs & their steel. I updated my current whereabouts to my mother just before boarding the Tata-Gua passenger train, sounding her on my expected time to reach home. I was visiting home after 2 months, the longest interval in the 3.5 years at NIT Jamshedpur due to my business around hosting the first alumni meet of NIT Jamshedpur and a 15-day train travel across India through Jagriti Yatra. I was just carrying my laptop bag as it was a usual 2/3-day trip and I just had my Compaq laptop, a change of clothes & charger to be precise beside my small blue denim wallet & a Samsung smart phone. In 2012, smart phones were just stepping in and my brother-in law was generous enough to lend it to me to take pictures of the places I visit & the events I attend during Jagriti Yatra. Jagriti Yatra is a train ride across India with 600 yatris from different countries, different walks of life who embark on this journey to learn about various social & business enterprise. In that day’s train journey, I was travelling with a batchmate who would get down 2 stations before mine. We’d travel together many times during the four years, and we’d always take the morning train instead of the evening one. It was a passenger train which was always very crowded, and it passed through many small stations in that belt which were dimly lit, these stations were primarily existing to connect industries to the mining towns of Noamundi, Barbil, Jhinkpani and had goods trains plying with iron ore, limestone, cement, so evening trains seemed unsafe for girls travelling alone. Jhinkpani was a small town in that belt with a cement factory, ACC Cements, and a residential township for it. My dad had booked the station trip which was a Maruti Van to ply the resident of the colony from station to the colony which was around 3 kms away & there was no public transport available in this route. I was waiting to board the train all excited to show my parents the pictures of the Yatra clicked on the borrowed smart phone, I’d also met my sister and niece at Visakhapatnam while we visited Akshaya Patra mega kitchen and I remember getting clicked a cute photo of me holding my niece at the station but my excitement was short lived as soon as I kept the phone in the small zipper pocket of my laptop bag. I was modestly dressed in a kurta and leggings, without pockets of-course, pockets are a recent phenomenon in women’s Indian clothing. So, my phone and wallet were always kept in the bag.
As I boarded the train along with around 20 other people from that gate, I felt a sudden force pulling me back, but I managed to steer my way inside but with an eerie feeling, I quickly reached out to check the tiny pocket immediately only to find that both the wallet & the borrowed phone were gone. A shiver ran up my spine and I started to feel numb. There was Rs 200 in cash in that wallet which was a month of pocket money, my SBI ATM card and college i-card. Now, having zero cash, no phone I went about near the gate to see if I can find it, I spoke to couple of people but barely anyone knew Hindi, and it struck me real hard that reaching home was my single motto now. Although scared that I would be scolded by parents for being reckless, I had a sinking feeling as to how would I break this news to my sister & my brother-in-law whose smart phone I’d lost, what would I do about all the lost contacts that I’d woven so meticulously while organizing the alumni meet, what of the memories that I’d captured during the Yatra. My brain started to fizzle with all these entrapping thoughts when my friend shook me to bring me back to the dreaded train which was my reality then and I started planning my next course of action. I first called my mother from my friend’s phone to tell her about the loss, she comforted me and then she informed my dad to arrange a vehicle from the station, the trip was booked but it’d sometimes leave passengers if there are more people than capacity or not turn up due to technical glitch in the age old van that was used. My friend got down at Chaibasa and my heart started racing more as people around me in the train knew my situation and vulnerability and I tried to pose a strong and confident front. The train took more than 20 minutes to travel 17 kms but for me it seemed like ages, the sight of Jhinkpani station never made me so relieved. I quickly deboarded the train, holding on to my bag tightly this time and found a friend waiting there in his Maruti 800. He happened to have met my dad while coming to the station for a personal work and my dad asked him to pick me as well. I finally reached home travelling without a phone and a penny in pocket, my mom was so glad to see me safe and sound. I was taken aback a little to see her overtly calm demeanor at the face of such an adversary and having no concern whatsoever for my lost phone or the wallet. She prayed and thanked God for my safe return and narrated about her dream which she saw about me the previous night. She was very disturbed by it, and she’d been praying from dawn that day for my well-being as the dream was a very bad omen for me. She felt relieved that it was only few items that were lost, and I was completely unharmed. Mother’s love manifests in mysterious ways I thought while gobbling on my favorite sambar, rice that afternoon. Meanwhile, my dad deactivated my ATM card and arranged an old makeshift phone for me to be used in the remaining two months of college. When I sit back to think, I always think about my mother’s reaction and feel relieved that it happened, may be a way to appease myself of the guilt of not thinking through that somebody must have noticed me putting the phone in the small pocket and chanced upon it in the crowd while boarding. To compensate for the loss of phone, I gifted my sister with a digital camera after I started earning 4 months down from this incident. From then on, I never kept anything valuable in such obvious places in public while I maneuvered my ways in Delhi’s metro or the local trains of Mumbai, in the buses of Visakhapatnam or in the streets of Paris. I hold my wallet tight and my phone close.

It was a winter morning, and I was standing on the railway station of Adityapur, one of Asia’s largest industrial hubs in the outskirts of Jamshedpur, formally known as TATANAGAR, the city known for TATAs & their steel. I updated my current whereabouts to my mother just before boarding the Tata-Gua passenger train, sounding her on my expected time to reach home. I was visiting home after 2 months, the longest interval in the 3.5 years at NIT Jamshedpur due to my business around hosting the first alumni meet of NIT Jamshedpur and a 15-day train travel across India through Jagriti Yatra. I was just carrying my laptop bag as it was a usual 2/3-day trip and I just had my Compaq laptop, a change of clothes & charger to be precise beside my small blue denim wallet & a Samsung smart phone. In 2012, smart phones were just stepping in and my brother-in law was generous enough to lend it to me to take pictures of the places I visit & the events I attend during Jagriti Yatra. Jagriti Yatra is a train ride across India with 600 yatris from different countries, different walks of life who embark on this journey to learn about various social & business enterprise. In that day’s train journey, I was travelling with a batchmate who would get down 2 stations before mine. We’d travel together many times during the four years, and we’d always take the morning train instead of the evening one. It was a passenger train which was always very crowded, and it passed through many small stations in that belt which were dimly lit, these stations were primarily existing to connect industries to the mining towns of Noamundi, Barbil, Jhinkpani and had goods trains plying with iron ore, limestone, cement, so evening trains seemed unsafe for girls travelling alone. Jhinkpani was a small town in that belt with a cement factory, ACC Cements, and a residential township for it. My dad had booked the station trip which was a Maruti Van to ply the resident of the colony from station to the colony which was around 3 kms away & there was no public transport available in this route. I was waiting to board the train all excited to show my parents the pictures of the Yatra clicked on the borrowed smart phone, I’d also met my sister and niece at Visakhapatnam while we visited Akshaya Patra mega kitchen and I remember getting clicked a cute photo of me holding my niece at the station but my excitement was short lived as soon as I kept the phone in the small zipper pocket of my laptop bag. I was modestly dressed in a kurta and leggings, without pockets of-course, pockets are a recent phenomenon in women’s Indian clothing. So, my phone and wallet were always kept in the bag.
As I boarded the train along with around 20 other people from that gate, I felt a sudden force pulling me back, but I managed to steer my way inside but with an eerie feeling, I quickly reached out to check the tiny pocket immediately only to find that both the wallet & the borrowed phone were gone. A shiver ran up my spine and I started to feel numb. There was Rs 200 in cash in that wallet which was a month of pocket money, my SBI ATM card and college i-card. Now, having zero cash, no phone I went about near the gate to see if I can find it, I spoke to couple of people but barely anyone knew Hindi, and it struck me real hard that reaching home was my single motto now. Although scared that I would be scolded by parents for being reckless, I had a sinking feeling as to how would I break this news to my sister & my brother-in-law whose smart phone I’d lost, what would I do about all the lost contacts that I’d woven so meticulously while organizing the alumni meet, what of the memories that I’d captured during the Yatra. My brain started to fizzle with all these entrapping thoughts when my friend shook me to bring me back to the dreaded train which was my reality then and I started planning my next course of action. I first called my mother from my friend’s phone to tell her about the loss, she comforted me and then she informed my dad to arrange a vehicle from the station, the trip was booked but it’d sometimes leave passengers if there are more people than capacity or not turn up due to technical glitch in the age old van that was used. My friend got down at Chaibasa and my heart started racing more as people around me in the train knew my situation and vulnerability and I tried to pose a strong and confident front. The train took more than 20 minutes to travel 17 kms but for me it seemed like ages, the sight of Jhinkpani station never made me so relieved. I quickly deboarded the train, holding on to my bag tightly this time and found a friend waiting there in his Maruti 800. He happened to have met my dad while coming to the station for a personal work and my dad asked him to pick me as well. I finally reached home travelling without a phone and a penny in pocket, my mom was so glad to see me safe and sound. I was taken aback a little to see her overtly calm demeanor at the face of such an adversary and having no concern whatsoever for my lost phone or the wallet. She prayed and thanked God for my safe return and narrated about her dream which she saw about me the previous night. She was very disturbed by it, and she’d been praying from dawn that day for my well-being as the dream was a very bad omen for me. She felt relieved that it was only few items that were lost, and I was completely unharmed. Mother’s love manifests in mysterious ways I thought while gobbling on my favorite sambar, rice that afternoon. Meanwhile, my dad deactivated my ATM card and arranged an old makeshift phone for me to be used in the remaining two months of college. When I sit back to think, I always think about my mother’s reaction and feel relieved that it happened, may be a way to appease myself of the guilt of not thinking through that somebody must have noticed me putting the phone in the small pocket and chanced upon it in the crowd while boarding. To compensate for the loss of phone, I gifted my sister with a digital camera after I started earning 4 months down from this incident. From then on, I never kept anything valuable in such obvious places in public while I maneuvered my ways in Delhi’s metro or the local trains of Mumbai, in the buses of Visakhapatnam or in the streets of Paris. I hold my wallet tight and my phone close.

QUESTIONS BEFORE STORY : This has never happened before any other time i’ve gotten fillings. Am i being paranoid or should i be concerned? Should i contact the dental office? Should i switch to a different place? This was my FIRST TIME going to that office.
I do not smoke anything besides vaping from time to time and do not drink. I have a history of cavities throughout my life and apparently have “deep molars” but i believe it’s my mom trying to make me feel better lol
I’m worried because i’m 1 week post filling & had the most bizarre experience.
when i was a child i struggled with dental hygiene and got a few fillings. Of my memory all went smoothly and the numbing needle only caused slight pain and had NO pain afterward.
1 week ago i went to the dentist and got 4 fillings done, the first thing that worried me was when they were injecting the numbing, it hurt extremely bad, like i flinched and screamed ow and i have a fairly high pain tolerance and it takes a lot for me to voice genuine pain.
felt like the entire right side of my face was on fire. seconds later my vision goes double and stays that way for about 15-20 mintues. this has never occurred before. made a joke and carried on.
after leaving the dentist i took a nap and when i woke up i couldn’t open my mouth without severe jaw pain which was odd because i got my upper right side done, nothing to do with any other teeth. it hurt to eat and open my mouth for 4 days with it slowly getting better. flash foward to now, still have pain when i move my jaw but not as bad. seems normal. still hurts badly when i eat though.
My other concern is that now my fillings are throbbing as if i have a bad cavity. if you’ve had a cavity like that before, you probably know the uncomfortable feeling like your jaw is pulsing and uncomfortable.
Fillings start to sting when i drink water, cold or not. which i read was normal. Can’t chew on the right side of my mouth without severe pain and can’t totally close my teeth together without pain and pressure.
The last issue i have is that my jaw is still THROBBING. not extremely painful but so uncomfortable and one of the fillings is hanging off my tooth and it feels like i have something stuck in my teeth. It also causes pain when i floss and brush my teeth.
This has never happened before any other time i’ve gotten fillings. Am i being paranoid or should i be concerned? Should i contact the dental office? Should i switch to a different place? This was my FIRST TIME going to that office.

•~Neptori~•
Chapter fifteen
Neptori
A wooden woman, whose hair was a mass of apple blossoms, stood in the center of the clearing, overseeing a bear ahead in the river as it caught fish.
The bear would sense magic and run off, so that didn’t concern her, but she had no fucking clue how to deal with a damn wooden woman! “Say lady, if I chop you up into little bits and pieces are you just gonna regrow and turn into a bunch more wooden women?” Tori’s voice echoed in the clearing twice before the woman snapped her head towards her and suddenly gained skin. It was weird, messed up and warped, skin though. Unsettling to the stomach. Neptori realized that A: dryads are friendly.
The thing lept at her with long keratin nails, opening its mouth to reveal rotted shark-like teeth and two front buck teeth. She swung with the ax but the creature only landed and lunged at her again. It now had a long bleeding gash running across its chest.
And B: whatever the fuck she was fighting, was not a fucking dryad!
Uneven seams ran spiderwebs along the creature's exposed skin. Its body was eerily similar to an Elves and she hated how it moved; like a spider approaching its next meal… caught in a web… She really hoped this thing was alone. Some primal part of her began to cool into a terrified calm. A sense that only fear could drive you to achieve. She held onto it as she deflected the creature again and swiped with the blade she had. She couldn’t use her magic, it was too unstable when she consciously used it… She couldn’t risk getting knocked out though because she had never measured how long that she’s passed out for, before her subconscious uses her magic.
“Fuck!” She screamed. This fucking thing! Its blood reeked like period sex and she was nauseated into blindness for a second too long. Her arm felt tingly and when she looked down at it, there was a bleeding bite mark and a stolen sleeve. That sleeve hung in the creature's maw like a trophy as it began to circle her, palms up and nails angled. She didn’t let it see her back, she turned in circles with it.
The long handle on the Ax let her rest it on the ground for a reprieve of its weight. The metal made a terrible sound in the dirt and rocks, scraping over roots as she turned. “What are you?” She whispered. “What are you?” It whispered back, mimicking the exact way she said it. She nearly cried out in terror but refrained from doing so in case that's what it fed on— words.
It leaped for her again and she jumped with it, meeting it midair and slicing up with the Ax. The slice only got through half of the many oily layers of skin bound and rotting beneath the top layer. Neptori nearly wretched at the sight and the smell and a dark gluey substance leaked from its half severed neck. She swung again before it could get up, its head rolling to the base of the oak tree beside a mass of grass and wildflowers. “Thank fucking gods!” She sighed, she rubbed her face and found it covered in sweat. Her arm was still bleeding, her nose and mouth as well since they had been hit at some point she didn’t recall.
“Fuck!” She cried out, as if that would change where she was and what she was doing. Why did she have to do this? She didn’t trust the queen even a little, no matter how much she really wanted to.
She rolled her neck, shoulders, ankles, took a breath and then started walking after the head. It had rolled into a perfectly circular ditch at the base of that tall tuft of grass and flowers. Wait… She crouched down and reached to pick it up, just grabbing the disgusting, soggy-noodle hair when a hand reached from the grass and pulled her in. Long, jagged nails sliced at her face and chest as she held its head away with her hands. Its skin felt like it was covered in worms and egg whites. But her hands came back stained as if by ink. When they slipped and lost her grip on its neck. She rolled to avoid the teeth but this creature seemed to be smarter, it rolled too, and its buck teeth grazed Neptoris neck before she was able to wrap grass and stems around its neck and hold it there. Its hands dug into her thighs and squeezed, leaching a shrieking scream from Neptori.
The thing laughed at her, even choked and scrambled as if it was from the grass… it sounded so familiar to a laugh that a Faerie would make…
A wash of fear so cold it numbed her, came crashing into the front of her mind. She felt the plants grow around the creature, engulfing it completely and tugging its root-covered shape into the earth. She held up a hand though and its struggling, screaming form stopped being buried.
A water droplet was sucked from the air and formed in the palm of her hand. A thought and it had become ice, sharp and jagged like the creature's nails; and flying right for the creature's neck. The ice struck true, severing the head in mostly one blow. It fell and dangled from but a seam in its skinsuit. A thought and the ice blade flew back towards her waiting hand, severing the last seam before melting back into water and floating around her head.
The water didn’t feel right to her magic as it held the water in the air. But then it splashed down onto her and she felt that disgusting black good residue!
“Shit! No! Nooo…” she couldn’t quite process what had happened, not as the FairyQueen suddenly appeared before her with both heads in her hands. The mass of grass and flowers and two headless bodies, they began to burn. “Why?”
“Because my enemies will be burned for crossing me, that is the price for it.” The queen was so utterly unphased. It made Neptoris stomach blanch and she erupted with vomit. Chunks of dried meat and hard cheese. It hurt to throw it up, and the thick mucus that came with it wasnt a better pleasure. “What next?”
“Well a party dear hero! You have earned it!”

The EXTREMELY detailed, mega-anxiety edition!!! Major events like consult and surgery day are labeled like this:
——— EVENT TITLE ———
Surgeon was Dr. David Whitehead and I saw him on Long Island (New Hyde)
Summarized list of major dates:
Consult: July 19 2023 Mental health letter acquired: August 9 Dates discussed: September 12 Pre-op appointment: December 18 Surgery day: January 8 2024 Post-op: January 17
November 11th 2022: Emailed northwell health for the first time, they emailed back saying to call. I was too anxious so I avoided it for a few months.
Called northwell a few months later but got too anxious talking to the person who picked up. They were being normal and talking normally, it was just personal anxiety on my part.
October 2022 - Early March 2023: Spent time talking to trans friends and family members about their timelines and processes for top surgery.
Looked into Penn medicine for a bit but wasn’t happy with the surgeons there, specifically as a nonbinary person. The patient navigational team however is lovely.
March 2: emailed Penn health patient navigation
March 3-10: correspondence and phone calls w patient navigation (absolutely wonderful people, some of the easiest phone calls I’ve ever had) Got lots of into on surgeons, things I’d need, processes etc.
Date unknown: phone call to Penn medicine asking about surgeons and possibly setting up as a patient (v long wait time on phone) Surgeon I had heard good things about only works w CHOP program and I’m was too old for that program. Other surgeons I was v iffy on.
March 23rd: Back to square 1. Called northwell again to set up an appointment. Everyone I spoke to was really nice. Could have set up an appointment within the week but decided to wait till the end of the semester. Scheduled a trans care and primary care appointment for May
Couple of calls In between for confirmations. Trans care appointment got moved around a bit and ended up being moved to a phone call.
May 8th: Trans care call: Basic preliminary questions like: Emergency contact, what you’re looking for, are you thinking of looking into hormones, experience w dysphoria or dysmorphia, mental health, and eating/nutritional concerns, things you might want doc to know, piercings or tattoos, do you do any drugs or drink often, etc. total call time was about 20 minutes. Doctor was incredibly kind, I still experienced a good deal of anxiety but the call was super easy, welcoming, and friendly. Got sent contact referrals for the surgeons, as well as trans-friendly therapists under my insurance.
May 9th: started looking at list of therapists and making respective emails and calls. Checking per session costs and double checking insurance. Most charge 100-150 per session. Got in contact w one.
May 10th: Called w first therapist talking about what I’m looking for, where I am in this process, if parents are supportive, and talking about costs. She was very friendly and affirming, wants to have a few sessions to get to know me and my situation before writing a letter. Understandable and expected, but frustrating.
May 15th: Primary care appointment: Went to northwell health primary care, parkinglot was a little scary (just a large lot with a lot of cars) but everyone working there’s is super kind. Office is incredibly affirming, pride flags and lgbtq+ art everywhere. Gave my insurance card, filled out some paper work, got called in pretty quickly. I have a needle phobia and medical trauma so I was panicking a bit in the office, nurse was good w me about it and doctor was very kind, I just requested to not have any blood work done that day and that was totally fine, so I could schedule that at a later date and go w a friend. Recommended to get blood work done before scheduling a consult w a surgeon. Also prescribed me a single dose anxiety med for the bloodwork which I was very happy about. I found over time that the anxiety meds unfortunately do little to nothing for my panic attacks personally when it comes to needles but regardless having a doctor acknowledge and respect that fear and listen to me was incredibly helpful and reassuring.
May 30th: Got blood work done in a different lab, went w a friend. Scheduling for that is super easy, I think I did it online actually I don’t entirely recall. they do take walk ins but I made an appointment to minimize complications and make sure I could prepare properly. Front desk/lobby area was a little spooky, but I think that is mainly just bc of my social anxiety. They take a urine sample, you give them your prescription, eventually they call you over for blood work. Quick and easy, tech was v nice and having a friend with me was incredibly helpful. Probably the best I’ve ever done with a needle despite the fact that I did still panic and get very lightheaded lol.
Got blood work results back within the next couple days, all looks a-okay! Neat :)
June 15th This day was incredibly difficult. I had my first session with a therapist to establish some ground knowledge around my dysphoria and the way that I view myself. Top surgery is something that I know from research and related experience Can be difficult and expensive to get and can take time, so much of my prep work has been on the understanding of taking things a step at a time and just knowing that the current way things are doesn’t have to be forever. It allowed me to be able to live with myself while prioritizing my health better. This read to the therapist as “not having the level of dysphoria [she’s] come to expect and look for in someone who is trans” and was largely based off the fact that I don’t want to go on hrt. Past that point I started to break down because now my method of learning to live with myself felt like it was actively going to work against me and prevent me from getting top surgery. I’m not good at talking about my dysphoria, I can’t imagine it’s easy for anyone, especially to a stranger I just met. It was rough, and I felt incredibly mentally drained after ending the session.
June 19th Called it quits with the first therapist, I felt incredibly disrespected and the one session we had put me in a mental spiral for days. It can feel some times in this process like the people you have to get permission from need you to be severely depressed and unable to wait another second for this procedure just in order to take you seriously.
After I left that therapist, I immediately got back to the list to find someone new. Spoke to a new therapist via email, but my insurance is kinda weird (Blue Cross Blue Shield out of state) so its off putting to some people. This therapist recommended I go through the office she started out at (Heart and Soul Counseling)
————- Time Skip ——————
IM BACK its time for some record keeping. Got super overwhelmed and lost the energy to document my process for some time so here goes.
HEART AND SOUL COUNSELING: My experience w/ this therapy office was mostly good. The person in charge, Jesse, was absolutely lovely and responsive. Never spoke in person, but any text/email interaction was prompt, respectful, and kind. The office is stellar with email/text communication, so I only ever had to call them once when I was initially inquiring about the office. This is something I wish all therapy/counseling centers did better, eliminated a ton of my anxiety and hesitation to speak to therapists.
I got set up w someone as quickly as possible and established what my goal was (to acquire letter document for my surgery team). I attended multiple session w the therapist, she was a kind lady but the sessions were unfortunately p miserable for me. We didn’t fit well, but I was willing to stick it out rather than backtrack on my process. She also did not invalidate me or accuse me of not being trans which was a major step up from my first therapy experience. Once I acquired my letter I did stop therapy there, I kindly explained to the therapist that it wasn’t a good match, but I may honestly explore my options at the office in the future. Receptionist there was also lovely and they had a cool fish tank.
———- CONSULT STARTS HERE —————
July 19th: CONSULT!!! My mama and I went to Dr. David Whiteheads office for a consult. Parking was a nightmare so I’m super glad I didn’t have to drive for this one (ty mama). Consult went really well, and the staff were all super friendly. Dr. Whitehead is cool, very chill energy and a bit intimidating, but I’m scared of everyone so that’s nothing new. First question he asked me is what I wanted/what he could do for me which caught me more off guard than it should have? I didn’t realize going into this process how many times people ask you what you’re having done even if it’s already written down, because there’s so much variety in what you can look for in the results.
We talked about the procedure, went through a slideshow n stuff, and discussed how I wanted a flat chest w/ no nipple preservation. They made sure to specify that my mental health professional letter had to include that I did not want nipple preservation because thats technically a “non-standard” appearance. Also had the first breast exam I’ve ever had in my life. Can’t say i’m a fan (not that I need to worry about that anymore!) Took pictures n measurements n such, and also discussed recovery supplies and care w me and my mom.
August 9th: After a plethora of painfully awkward therapy sessions, a decent amount of crying, and a couple breakdowns in friends cars/backyards, I got my therapist letter and sent it to the surgeons office. It ended up needing minor revisions to which I contacted Jesse from Heart and Soul and he got me the revised letter immediately. Unfortunately the surgical coordinator was out of office for the rest of the month the next day ;w;. Is how it be.
September 12th: Got a call from Surgical coordinator mid-painting class that I stepped out to take. Started discussing surgical dates!! She was kind enough to email the dates to me which was lovely because I was absolutely shaking/mind blank haha. There was an option for January 8th which felt like an absolute miracle the way it would work with my school schedule. It would give me a solid two weeks recovery time before spring semester began. Because it would be a couple months out, I was asked to contact her in the second week of October to submit documents to insurance.
(Timeline note: earliest date offered was in early December)
October 10th: Documents sent to insurance, predetermination started
October 30th: Received mail from my insurance approving my procedure as medically necessary (YAY) But! This is also where things get,,, fun! Dr Whitehead’s surgical coordinator, Alyssa, is a blessing and was very helpful and prompt with me despite the fact that I had to email her pretty constantly during this general time which I still feel bad about.
Around this time, my mom got diagnosed with breast cancer, which I reported to the surgical coordinator because it influences my family history (grandmother also had breast cancer). It was asked that I get genetic testing done because this could impact my surgical procedure. Now I’m handling the setup on this between helping my mom in her process setting up consults and considering her options because there of course is a lot of crossover to the steps I’ve already completed and am familiar with.
November 1st: Very kind person at cancer genetics calls me, sends me a family history questionnaire to fill out before I can be scheduled to see a genetic counselor. Filled out the questionnaire the same day.
November 8th: Called cancer genetics to check about scheduling, office was not open so left a message. Got a call back later in the day. I have a virtual appointment with a Genetic counselor Tuesday the 14th. Current plan is a mailed saliva genetic test but I’m going to ask if theres anything I can do to get results/materials quicker. If I can’t get results/feedback by December 8th my surgery date may get deferred.
Trying not to stress too much because there is little to nothing I can do about this, and I just don’t want to be sad. I’ve kept telling myself throughout this process to not get excited and not let myself believe anything is solid because something could happen at any time that might mess up my schedule or plan, and If I convince myself I’m in the clear, those changes will hurt a lot more. So far I think thats been a good move, because this really sucks.
My surgery date is still officially scheduled as of now as well as my first post-op. I will also ideally have pre-surgical testing done December 18th should I be cleared by genetics in time (Fingers crossed!)
ALSO! Def lean on friends if/when you can during this process. It can absolutely be challenging, and having a support system is incredibly important and helpful. I’m super lucky to have really lovely and supportive friends that are around to listen to me and send me pictures of stupid little animals.
November 9th: My mama is scheduled for her double mastectomy on December 4th
November 10th: Did some shopping with my mama for recovery supplies for double mastectomy/top surgery. Having watched a million and a half transition/top surgery videos and tiktoks and having read all the blogs and posts and tweets makes you a great support for someone suddenly faced with an upcoming double mastectomy! We might go shopping this weekend for some button ups and zip ups for her, clothes shopping is better done when you can try stuff on
November 14th: Meeting w genetic counselor: Victoria Webb, one of the loveliest medical care workers I’ve ever met. Had a virtual appointment with her to discuss and set up genetic testing. I explained to her about my situation w the proximity of my surgery and tight deadline as well as my willingness to do a blood test instead of a saliva kit to get results quicker. She was so incredibly kind and good with me, ended up being able to do a saliva kit and get results in time she deserves every good thing in life.
December 18th: pre-surgical testing: This was at the main hospital, everyone was really nice but I had a really bad panic attack despite being on Xanax.
The process is sort of like getting a physical. Measurements like weight and blood pressure get taken, lots of preliminary health questions. The people working with me were really kind and I was very open with them about my anxiety, it was visually apparent though anyway because I started crying the second we even started talking about the blood draw.
Once the equipment was actually brought into the room I started to panic. Both of the women working with me were really kind and helpful and tried to distract me and keep me talking the entire time, but I did still have a really horrible panic attack. Every muscle in my body locked up and I lost all my color, took a bit to get back to a spot where I could move and talk properly because my speech was affected too. It was a bit scary but funny to think about in post. Thanked the medical staff for being patient w me as always, a good portion of the anxiety is also guilt about making things harder for them. Got through it tho. Def eat before presurgical if allowed, I didn’t and that probably didn’t help!!
———- SURGERY DAY ————-
January 8th:
Ok so surgery day:
This day was very scary. Got my phone call the Friday prior for my surgery time which ended up being 1pm and I was asked to arrive around 11. Got there at 10 and went in at 10:30.
Called up to check in then in waiting room till someone brought me back to change. I told her right away about my anxiety with the iv bc that’s legit all I could think about. Got changed right after. I was generally shaky and a little disoriented the entire time because I was panicking but everyone was very patient with me. Clothes and belongings go in a bag in a locker and you get two gowns one that faces back and one that faces front. I was given underwear and a pad as well because lucky me I got my period a couple days before my surgery.
The pre-op area is a lot of little cubicles with curtain divider things, blue soft chairs, and medical equipment. Everyone I met and spoke to was very kind, but any time someone even suggested starting my iv I would panic. I was informed it would have to be placed in my hand and that terrified me, I’m especially anxious and sensitive about my hands and fingers. I think doctors and nurses tend to misunderstand exactly where my fear is with needles and ivs. It isn’t the pain that scares me, but the concept of veins and and anything being in them. Even writing this right now is horrible so I’m going to stop w any further detail. I spent the entire two-ish hours of pre-op absolutely terrified about this iv.
I wasn’t really keeping track of time but dr whitehead came in to do markings for surgery. They had cool rainbow socks on,big fan. Having your chest drawn on and just like, moved around n shit is such an experience. Felt bad because I kept losing my balance but doctor Whitehead is cool and I am 98% less scared about them now.
Probably my most favorite person I met during my entire hospital experience was the anesthesiologist. I know he told me what his name was but I couldn’t focus on or retain information at the time. He told me we could essentially put me to sleep with gas before putting the iv in and for the first time in probably a solid week I felt like I could calm down a little. He took a look at my hand and arm to check my veins which always does freak me out a bit but I’m more used to that kind of thing at this point and I know nothing bad is going to happen. One of the nurses came in with the iv equipment and he let her know that were going to wait till in the or which was also incredibly helpful because I absolutely panicked when I saw that little supply kit again.
V nice lady brought me into the or, I’d never been in one before it was cool. They had a little music speaker which was really cool. Took off blue jacket gown and they helped me onto the table. They put a warm blanket over my legs and my chest to help me calm down. Before long they gave me a mask w fun happy sleepy time gas, they let me keep my arms on my chest for a while which was really nice because I was still scared. I started getting loopy pretty fast but I still heard when someone mentioned where the iv equipment was and panicked a little because of that. I remember feeling them take my hand for that but never actually felt anything happen. Just some fear but the gas was v helpful obvi. Someone said they would see me in a little bit, and then I was groggily waking up in recovery.
Recovery was a little rough bc the iv was still there (fully wrapped up so I couldn’t see it though which was rad) but I was still really anxious about it until it was taken out and when it was taken out. For anyone that struggles w this i did not feel them remove it, just the tape. Everything was mentally much easier after that. After a while, going over instructions w parents, a cracker , some ginger ale and some juice, my dad helped me Get dressed and I was helped out to the car in a wheel chair. Ride was smooth bc of remaining numbness and meds except a few Bumps in the road
TOP SURGERY GOTTEN
My post op date was scheduled for Jan 17th and that’s the day I got my drains out followed by several post op check-ins. First week of recovery was miserable but things exponentially approved each day past that, and I went back to school in person two weeks post-op with driving and item-carrying assistance from friends!
Will upload recovery notes at a later date! Feel free to message me with any questions, more than happy to answer and give info! I’m a bit over four months out from surgery now and thriving 🥳

25F, BMI healthy range, no smoking, no drugs, low alcohol consumption. Physical job, good shape. Medications beclometasone (asthma), sertraline. North Europe.
EYES: For the past month I have had nonstop visual problems which feels like a migraine aura. My vision is grainy like TV static noise. If I look at a geometric pattern, it starts moving: if I stand on our geometric rug and look down, my feet disappear from my vision. If lighting changes, I see white and black spots and patches moving around. If I close my eyes, I also see patches moving, even flashing lights sometimes. I struggle to focus on looking at things, other thigns around the focus point start moving or then I have double vision. I have occasional pain behind my **left eye**, a feeling of pressure, sometimes tingling and goosebumbs in the eyesocket. One night red spots (petechiae) appeared around this eye.
VERTIGO/EARS: I have vertigo on and off. At worst I couldn't stand straight without swaying and even crawled on the floor cause everything was spinning. If I close my eyes and try to walk or stand on one leg, I fall down. (Normally I do sports that require good balance and am able to eg. go up and down a rope on one leg and jump onto obstacles and slide while downhill skiing.) I have tinnitus, mainly low noise like holding an ear against a seashell, sometimes periods of loud beeps. Once I lost hearing in my **left ear** for a period of time.
COGNITIVE: I forget things a lot and struggle to focus. I've always been absentminded but never this featherbrained. Before in my life I had never lost my bank card, and only once left the house while forgetting my keys inside. Now in a short period of time I have lost my bank card twice and keys twice and only got them back with the help of strangers. I have also felt just generally disorientated at times, asking stupid questions and misunderstanding what I'm told and just having very absurd thought chains that leave me acting like an idiot over something that could be done simply.
NUMBNESS: My legs, hands from elbow down, and mouth went numb last Saturday and still remain a little bit numb. I struggled walking, had to sit down a lot, and my grip wasn't as tight as normal. I felt lightheaded standing. I could speak and smile, though, and my face wasn't and never has been droopy. When I smile, though, the muscles on the left side of my mouth tense up unusually with wrinkles that used not to be there.
SWALLOWING: I struggle swallowing at times, threw up water once and just keep coughing at other times. (The petechiae I mentioned earlier happened after I threw up, so it could also be a result of that.)
EXHAUSTION: One day I was able to stay awake for just five hours (granted I was in the ER the past night for numbness), another night I slept for like fifteen hours. I am tired a lot, some days all I can do is lie in bed or sit on couch, other days I have to take more breaks and just go to bed right after work (if I've been even able to get to work.)
Tests so far: EKG normal. CBC normal. Blood pressure within normal range, a little elevated in one test but could have been just me worrying about not being able to stand at the time. Blood sugar and culture normal.
Tried so far: Headache does not respond to ibuprofen or paracetamol. I tried Epley manoeuvre for two weeks as a doctor suggested it, either that or rest from sick leave days might have improved the vertigo from "unable to stand without swaying" to "just annoying." Eye strain helps somewhat when I take off my glasses.
I feel like doctors aren't taking me seriously, even brought up my mental health history out of the bush like I'm imagining things even though I'm all gucci on that end. I get that my symptoms are unusual as a whole and they find it unlikely it's anything acute, but my life is so hellish with this shit, it's like flipping a coin if I'll be lying in bed all day with a headache and nausea and numbness and what not, or when I do drag my ass to work, if I gotta drag a chair around cause I struggle standing, and keep pushing myself to the end of the shift telling myself "just one more hour." It's also annoying I haven't seen properly for a month, even now writing this hurts my head. It's like they are hiding referrals like government secrets lol.
Background information: I have asthma and alfa-1-antitrypsin-deficiency (MZ alleles). I have also been on sertraline for years. (I did stop it last autumn when a doctor suggested it wasn't necessary anymore. I have family history of bipolar, and experienced a two week period of hypomania like symptoms after stopping. Soon after, a stressful life event triggered a depressive episode, which lasted for two months, but subsided as I started the medication again and got over the stressful life event. For the past four months I have had less stress than normally, I have been happy, I love my new work, I have friends, etc. When starting and ending sertraline I had mild side symptoms such as a feeling of vertigo for a second or two when moving my head quickly, but I would find it quite strange that a medication that has worked well for me for years would suddenly be behind all these strange symptoms that started about a month ago.)

So this all started in January about two weeks after a COVID infection. For some background I’m 21F, 5”3, 140lbs, pack a day smoker for 10 years, history of alcohol and cocaine abuse, no medical history and no regular medication.
I welcomed this year in by getting covid, had it for about two weeks and then was fine for a week before this all started. I have had numbness/lessened sensation in the left side of my face 24/7 since the end of January (worse around one spot near my eyebrow and my entire left cheek), I’ve also had some memory issues/odd patterns of thought, headaches which last only a few minutes and feel like a dull poking, random skin rashes that come and go and visual disturbances such as flashing lights and an occasional blurring in my left eye. I have had 2 brain MRIs without contrast which showed absolutely nothing, also had my cervical spine MRI’d and again nothing. My bloods are completely fine, they checked absolutely everything including my thyroid function. I also had a bad tooth removed on the left side as it was close to a nerve and the dentist thought it was worth a shot to see if that solved my numbness, it didn’t. I’ve seen an ophthalmologist too who thoroughly checked my eyes to rule out any eye issues causing my visual disturbances. Everything’s been coming up clear.
I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place now because I’ve tried everything I can think of and the doctors have absolutely no clue what’s wrong with me, they’ve suggested atypical migraines, FND, long Covid but I’ve not had an official diagnosis of anything as they’re just guessing. I saw a neurologist last week who is ordering a repeat MRI this time with contrast and a venogram but he said he’s 99.9% sure nothing will show up and believes it may be anxiety related.
I’ve never been a very anxious person, and while I know anxiety can do some crazy things to people I don’t think it can cause 5 months of neuro symptoms that are constant. Any suggestions for where to go from here are so appreciated, any tests that can be done or any ideas as to what it might be- just anything. Thank you.

Discord: Lord of Rats
Reddit: Is_Me_
Name: Lyonel Grandison
Age: 24
Cultural Group: Stormlander
Appearance: Lyn is a strongly built man, standing at just over 6ft tall with a strong chest. He sports a mane of thick, golden blonde hair that falls just before his neck alongside a neatly trimmed and groomed beard. Lyonel is known to be a man of few smiles, almost always having a stern expression affixed to his face and a cold look in his eyes. He is rarely seen out of his armour, simple steel plate mail chased with gold, and is never seen without his cloak which presents his personal coat of arms. The sleeping lion of House Grandison encased in the fiery heart of R’hllor.
Traits: Strong
Skills: Swords (e), Andal Knight, Vanguard, Essosi Blademaster
Talents: Dancing, Linguistics, Theology
Negative Traits: n/a
Starting Title(s): Lord of Grandview, the Red
Starting Location: Opening Event
Biography
Lyonel was born to Lord Jon Grandison and Lady Aelinor Swann in the first year of Targaryen rule. Lyonel quickly proved himself to be a hot-tempered child, getting into constant fights with his younger brother Balon which they oft times settled through sparring. Through this, Lyonel quickly found his love for the sword and shield and his father, ever a man to encourage a martial inclination, made sure to fill his halls with stories of the Knight of Ninestars and the Winged Knight.
Lyonel’s relationship with his father began to strain when he was four-and-ten. Living in House Grandison’s seat of Grandview, at the mouth of the Dornish Marches, Lyn found himself surrounded by those who loathed their southern neighbours and resented the rising Bastard of Blackhaven for marrying one such woman. Feelings he himself simply couldn’t agree with. He had always been fascinated by the Dornish, their history, their culture, their wine and most of all their people. This tolerance clashed with his father on many occasions, a fact that only drove Lyonel towards the Dornish more.
Two years later, Lyonel joined a host led by Jon to venture south towards Blackhaven, a feigned show of support for the bastard that had taken root. There, in the depths of the Marches, Lyonel and Balon snuck away from camp and found themselves in the company of two commonfolk. Wyl and his older sister, Myriah. The sets of siblings became close companions, with Lyn and Myriah quickly becoming smitten with each other. A fact that they fought to keep hidden from his father for years. But nothing remains hidden forever.
The fury Jon Grandison flew into at his son bedding not only a common girl, but a Dornish common girl is often reserved for plays and works of art. He threatened to disinherit his son if he didn’t end the relationship immediately, something that Lyonel wasn’t willing to do. So Lyn thought that he must get his way in a manner even his father must respect, a duel. Lyonel thought it flawless. His father respected nothing if not martial prowess and surely the gods would support the case of true love fighting against cruel discrimination. So when Lyonel awoke in his bed with his head pounding, his father smug and his love missing, he found himself at the greatest loss of his life.
Lyonel was never a pious man. He rarely visited the Sept and found the lore of the Seven mind numbing but he had always believed, and always believed that they were good. With his faith and heart broken, he couldn’t stand to be around his father any longer and set off for the land where the Seven’s reach hadn’t taken root. Essos. Upon his twentieth nameday, Lyonel set off from a dock along the Sea of Dorne for the Free City of Pentos.
He quickly found shelter in the home of Ario Oratyrys, a merchant native to the city, who was more than eager to house Lyn and his companions, if only for the coin they brought in. On the third night after their arrival, Lyonel left in the dead of night and wandered the streets aimlessly. Eventually finding himself before the Great Temple of R’hllor and there he felt the heat of the fires and heard the crackling of the wood and found something that he had never found with the Seven. A calling. Lyonel returned the following morning a zealot, with a red priestess named Bellenora by his side.
And for the next few years of his life, Lyonel remained in Pentos studying the lore of his new god, and others besides, learning the languages of the Free Cities and an Essosi flair to his formidable sword skills. This peaceful life remained until one fateful morning, Lyonel received a letter from his brother detailing that their father had died and called him to return to Grandview to take the seat that was rightfully his. Filled with his newfound sense of duty and purpose, he set off for his ancestral home.
Timeline
1 AC: Birth of Lyonel Grandison
5 AC: Birth of Balon Grandison
10 AC: Lyonel discovers his love of swordplay and knightly culture
15 AC: Jon and Lyonel’s relationship begins to sour over the Dornish
17 AC: Jon leads party to Blackhaven, Lyonel meets Myriah and Wyl, Lyonel and Myriah begin their relationship
20AC: Jon discovers Myriah and Lyonel’s relationship, Lyonel duels Jon and loses, Myriah disappears (presumed dead)
21 AC: Lyonel departs with Wyl for Pentos, Lyonel meets Ario, Lyonel begins to follow R’hllor under the tutelage of Bellenora
24 AC: Jon dies, Lyonel returns from Pentos with his companions and becomes Lord of Grandview
25 AC: Present
Archetyped NPCs
Ser Balon Grandison (Master-at-Arms) {20}: Brother to Lyonel, wields a halberd which was a coming of age gift from Lyonel
Ser Wyl of Grandview (Marksman) {21}: Sister to Myriah and Lyonel’s closest companion, wields a bow and wears armour of boiled leather and crimson cloth
Bellenora (Scholar) {30}: Priestess of R’hllor who taught Lyonel about the faith, wears red silks and crimson ribbons in her black hair
Ser Harlan Staedmon (Tourney Knight) {19}: “Younger” of the Staedmon twins who served briefly under Lyonel’s father, wields a greatsword and is considered the more passionate of the two
Ser Harrold Staedmon (General) {19}: “Elder” of the Staedmon twins, favours an axe and shield but often works with a sword
Ario Oratyrys (Trader) {52}: Pentoshi merchant who took a shine to the dower Lyonel, always dresses in excessive fineries and has multiple rings across both of his hands
Lord Boris Staedmon (Castellan) {45}: Father of the twins and Castellan of Grandview under Jon’s rule, wears an tattered eye patch over on his right eye

Me and my boyfriend have been together for 2 years now, he is my first real relationship. Last year, he had a connection to another woman and I found out they had been talking behind my back (she knew he was dating me). In an attempt for him to not leave me, I said he could date her for a month but I wouldn't be okay with them having sex. It was the worst mistake of my life and our relationship nearly didn't recover.
Since this incident, they have stopped talking and our relationship has returned mostly to normal. This past weekend, he admitted to me that he had sex with her last year multiple times, as well as with another girl at least once - all unprotected and once in our bed. It had since been revealed that all our mutual friends knew and nobody told me. They all lied to my face when I asked.
I understand the instant response will be to leave him, but we have overcome a lot. When I was 18, we were stupid and I got pregnant. I miscarried and had no support from anyone but him. He's really changed a lot in the past year, almost all for the better. I'm scared to lose the only other person who understands how much it hurt.
I'm not sure what I want to do, I go through periods of hating him more than ever and it switches to a feeling of deep hurt and then it switches to numbness. I feel so broken and yet I still want to give him another chance. I've already had an sti test and I am waiting on the results, do I get the results and then decide? Is it worth trying to work through it?
TLDR, boyfriend cheated on me last year multiple times and all our mutual friends knew, nobody told me and now I am struggling on where to go from here.

I've been in and out of the doctors a lot over the last 3 or so months. The first symptom that started making me think something was up was an instance at work one day where both my hands went incredibly numb and painful for about 10 minutes. Since then I've had a plethora of symptoms including but not limited to; debilitating fatigue, weakness, numbness in hands, feet, legs, arms, face. Random biting pains across whole body, feeling like random parts of my body are being crushed or burnt, vision issues including blurriness and seeing flashing lights when trying to sleep at night. All of these symptoms and more, come and go at random but I experience at least one or two every day, even when I don't feel anxious at all. I'll be enjoying myself then suddenly it'll feel like a scorpion is stinging my inner thigh.
For a while it has seemed to me that i was almost guaranteed to receive a diagnosis of MS. however, my MRI results have come back totally clear and so have all of the blood tests that I've done. Which is great, but I'm at a loss at what could be wrong with me if it isn't MS. The NHS here in the UK have basically told me I'm fine and to come back if things get worse. They won't even give me a neurologist appointment.
The only thing that could possibly add up is anxiety.
I've always had social anxiety that i have learned to manage fairly well. Over the last few years, I've experienced more of a kind of generalised anxiety, like a feeling of existential dread. But the only physical symptoms I've experienced in the past have been limited to feeling sick and nauseous, maybe a bit trembly from time to time.
Could anxiety really be causing all of this? It just seems so extreme to be caused by something that isn't a physical condition. Some of the pains can be incredibly painful and debilitating, a few of these biting pains I've had are amongst the most severe pains I've ever experienced.

The show in question is Ramy, a comedy/drama on Hulu. For some context, the show is mostly about a Muslim family, and the character in question is Uncle Naseem, an outwardly hyper-masculine, racist, misogynist man who is clearly overcompensating for something.

Full Comments

Original post for posterity:

Like what was the point?? He was funny as hell, and I wish we could get deeper into his character, but why make him gay??? I wonder if the season where he made the uncle gay was the season the show got a Golden Globe.
Update: it’s been so fun going back and forth with you queens, please keep going, I love how butt hurt you guys are 😭 but then again I’m sure everything’s numb down there by now 😂
Update #2: I see I hurt some feelings here, let me just say, I hope you have nightmares about what I said, I hope the PreP in your stomach makes you throw up tonight, I hope you cry yourselves to sleep. Thank you for being so entertaining during my workday. Byeee queers 🥹

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Why does it bother you if he is gay? And what do you mean by “absolutely no reason”? The fact that he was gay is exactly what made us get a deeper perspective on the character, which is what you say you wanted. He otherwise was just portrayed as a backward, racist, misogynist. So it was important to show another side to him, not just that he’s the “old crazy uncle.” It shows why he is the way he is, the frustration he has felt his entire life, of being gay and having to hide it, and probably being hyper masculine to compensate . Also, I could be wrong, so feel free to clarify, but if you think Uncle Naseem was “funny as hell” because you actually agree with the comments he was making, I have news for you. The show creators definitely do not want us to agree with Uncle Naseem’s viewpoints. We are supposed to be laughing AT him for the things he is saying, not with him. If you find yourself agreeing with Uncle Naseem’s viewpoints and it bothers you that he’s gay, this show might not be for you .

Because its forced nowadays. If it wasn’t mandated by Hollwood, id have more respect for the writers.

Nah, it’s not forced. It made perfect sense. It’s like when you hear about anti-gay pastors and politicians getting caught on Grindr or with prostitutes. There’s no gay mafia telling Ramy what to do, but that’d be funny though lol

It really is forced, but you can pretend to ignore it.

How is it forced? Everyone disagrees with you. To us, it made perfect sense. I think you don’t like it because you’re a conservative who doesn’t like gay acts depicted

Lmfaoo so since everyone disagrees I should just agree with you all? Those echo chambers really smoothed out your brain.

Then articulate a non-smooth brained reason why you think you can’t have gay characters on TV or why this show in particular shouldn’t have one of the cast members be gay Nah there was no point. But thanks for the essay. why did you even ask the question if you didn’t want a real answer? Lmfaoooooo just cause you agree doesn’t make it a “real answer”. well the only answers you agree with are ones that reinforce the opinion you already hold. if you just wanted people to agree with you then why did you ask a question in the first place? That’s not what I said at all but go off sis

[...]

Actually gays are dying out. Everyone is trams these days.. lesbians are unicorns now

.

I couldn’t disagree more with you. It makes him a more interesting character and puts a new spin on all his past statements and interactions. It makes Naseem more sympathetic because his homophobia is overcompensation and denial. Like they didn’t have to make him a diamond dealer either, but it also makes his antisemitism more interesting being that he has to work with Jews all the time.

Yeah, but he didn’t need to be gay

He didn’t need to be, it just was better for his character. Often times the most homophobic guy is gay. Why does it offend you so much? Do you think being gay is bad?

LMFAOOO such a high school response “oh he doesn’t like gays so he must be gay”. That talking point tracks with your other smooth brained buddies in here

Can you answer the question? Is being gay bad because it’s haram?

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People just be gay.

Duh

Are you 13?

Ouch that one really hurt 😞

lol ok kid

thanks man🙂‍↕️

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Dude….this is so mistaken. This isn’t just a DEI move or some shit. You have this really racist and emotionally wrecked uncle in denial and unable to accept his “flaws”. He knows he is for example attracted to men but he cannot accept that that is okay. He finds himself in the sauna getting sucked off because he couldn’t do it anywhere else. And the moment he thinks his niece finds out he goes crazy about it. Curb your homophobia/queerphobia. A show isn’t “infected” by the LGBTQ movement or part of the gay agenda just because it features gay characters. I’m sorry you’re too afraid to live in a world where media isn’t strictly heteronormative.

Oh save the “phobia” garbage lol, they didn’t need to make him gay period

So why did they have to make him straight?

They don’t, but making him gay shouldn’t be his whole storyline, they barely dove into his character and they just make him gay for what?? It just feels lazy.

We’re explaining to you why the reveal that he is secretly gay is essential to his character development yet you completely ignore it and assert that “they didn’t need to make him gay”. It only appears lazy because you do not understand the logic behind it. They constantly show he’s a lonely bitter old man but we just assume it’s cuz he can’t court any women cuz he’s racist. It’s a massive reveal to us that the real reason he can’t court women is because he’s not attracted to them, and he comes from a place where homosexuality is essentially a weakness and so he cannot accept that he’s weak. We see that he was dating a guy for some time but ends up punching him in the face, because for Uncle Naseem the thing he loves is also the thing he hates most about himself. He loves his family but he also hates them. He loves Ramy but he also hates him. He loves men but he also hates being attracted to them. This is what causes the dissonance in his life, because he can’t accept his flaws. The fact that such a hard ass bought a cake for his boyfriend shows how inside he’s still soft and vulnerable like everybody else. You’re gonna keep asking the question. WHY DID THEY HAVE TO MAKE HIM GAY? The truth is that Ramy Youssef didn’t have to tell us Uncle Naseem is gay, but if we didn’t know then we would know even less about Uncle Naseem.

Yeah you’re on crack or poppers if you think I’m reading all this LMFAOOO! I’ll respond with just a simple, No you’re wrong. Thank you😇

[...]

I would disagree. Him being secretly gay explains a lot about Naseem’s character flaws, especially concerning his overtly homophobic behavior. He’s very clearly compensating in multiple areas. He’s trying to put on this persona that doesn’t match who he actually is. I think him being gay is actually pretty crucial to the character and story line. I like that you don’t have any issues with the other characters? Others are not perfect either, yet you only seem to care about this.

Nah

You don’t even have any counter arguments, what’s the point of your post other than showing how incoherent you can be.

Awhhh I’m sorry I’m not engaging with you like you desperately want 🥺. Tell me how your day was buddy

You’re the one who posted this and can’t even hold your own lmao, you must not be that bright

You feel better? I’ve responded 2 times now okay🥺 hope you can sleep now

The butt hurt guy (ironically) who creates a post like this not having any self awareness to realize they are more like Naseem than their brain cells can handle, I almost feel bad

Ouch!!! You hit me with such an original response!!! It’s not like this take wasn’t said a million times 😭. And awhhh you feel bad for me??? Thanks man. I’m arguing with queers from around the globe, it does get tiring. Thanks bestie 🫶🏽

My bad, I had to repeat it because I thought you had some reading comprehension issues. You mentioned on another comment that you didn’t read it because 2 paragraphs was too long for your dumbass.

Nah it’s just, you queers all say the same things in your responses. Why waste my time ya know?

I’m sure Allah is very happy with you right now

.

Sounds like a bit of casual homophobia, eh?

My homophobia is anything but casual

Then no answer will make sense to you. People be gay, and so is his uncle. Get over it cause everybody else loved the twist.

Lmfaoooo exactly it’s called an OPINION, you don’t have to agree bud. Btw I bet when you typed up That last sentence you crossed your arms like you did something LMAOOOOOOOOO

Bro did you see your post? You asked the question and here's the answer, you're a homophobe. Funny part is that YOU answered it hahaha

LMFAOOO you did it again!! Pressed 😭

The thought of you seething about gay folk enough to come complain here is hilarious to me lol🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈

Oh no not the rainbows!!!! Please!!! I just ate! Your “pride” gives me bubble guts!

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care to explain why you have such a problem with the uncle being gay?

Because

because what?

Because yuck

yeah I saw that you admitted to being a homophobe already. you’re a trash person with trash beliefs and a shit moral system. not much we can do about that.

LMFAOOO pat yourself on the back please, or get whoever back doors you to do it.

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I think you just don’t like that he’s gay. Get over it.

Omg I really needed to hear that, thx sis! 😂

Cool, did you get over it? And not your sis, thx! 😁

Just trying to relate to you queers, I assume your a they/that. How do you guys say sis? ?”This”?

I don't really no where to start. I feel I've lost myself, consumed with anxiety and guilt and fear and regret and I fear, this new fear, that it's going to be the end of me if I don't start to get it out in some way, shape or form.
I guess I'll begin at the beginning...
​
I had a difficult childhood with fairly neglectful parents. A mother who openly expressed she never felt she really stepped into her mom shoes until she gave birth to my younger sister, who is three years younger than me. She is my only sibling. My mother told me when I was a kid that she "had to love me", but when my sister came around "she was finally a mother and over the moon", or simply "I always always wanted a girl". I'm not sure if this could be attributed to Post-partum depression, not that she ever researched that or was daignosed with it. That's probably just me trying to pardon my mother or something to the effect. She was 17 when she had me and I'm sure times were different then, my parents both were raised religious, father christian, mother mormon. Maybe their guilt. I ask myself why they brought me into this world if I wasn't wanted to begin with. Or, give me up for adoption to a set of guardians that would have loved me better. I know I was an accident and that's not what gets me down, I get that life be lifing and what happened happened. My difficulties stem from the feeling that my presence never gave my mother any sense of purpose, responsibility or love, or concern. She was emotionally unavailable to me virtually my entire life and I feel like that caused many issues later in my life and how I perceive myself and what I deserve. Coupled with the fact that my neglect met such extremes that I am frankly shocked that I was never picked up by child care services, maybe things were different in the 90's. I'm not sure, I was just a child then.
Much of my upbringing I didn't receive a lot of the things most people would consider essential. As a baby my crib was the sock drawer, then I grew large enough to have a closet, then slept on the floor of a walk-in closet, then I had a single bed from what I recall for maybe a year or maybe two years and I remember feeling metal springs poke me in the my ribs and I recall it being uncomfortable enough for me to move back to sleeping on the floor next to the ratty old used mattress my father found from who knows where. I remember feeling like I had to keep that secret, that the mattress they gave me was uncomfortable enough for me to sneak sleeping on the floor next to it. I think I was really afraid as coming across as ungrateful. My father came from a third world country, so the "gratefullness issue" was address frequently by my mom because "I don't have it even half as bad as what my father had to endure. And she was probably right. But it just silenced me ultimately, didn't put things into a mature context for me. I just learned that I can't complain about anything ever. Anyway, that trend didn't really change when I grew older. grade 9-10 I was sleeping on the living room couch so my sister could have privacy and a bedroom to exist in for herself - which I realize is important for an individual so I encouraged her to have the bedroom. Although I figured my parents expected me to do this for my sister regardless. I was okay with making sacrfices for those I love, it was instilled in me from a very very young age.
I do feel like my father took advantage of me in the form of labour as well, having to do custodial work with my father from 10pm to 3am, at two highschools I believe he was contracted, at that young age I honestly enjoyed just spending time with my father I think, working alongside him. When I was in grade 2 and 3 I had garbage bag duty for all the students bathrooms, and I remember loving snapping the bags open by rushing air into the bag and making it blow up like a baloon. I remember the scary unlit shadowy hallways that I couldn't perceive the ends of. No bodies to see, it felt eerie but exciting in a way - like it was a whole different world.
School was a different experience for me. It was very stressful, my parents had to move a few times a year because they would dodge rent or just generally be selfish with their dual income. They loved to party hard on the weekends. I remember wondering why my father did this to himself all the time. Hoping that we could spend quality time on a saturday, but he wouldnt get out of bed until just before dinner. I didn't really understand hangovers or alcoholism and how it meant our plans would get cancelled. I think I remember trying to wrap my head around willful self-poisoning for entertainment and how could that be more enjoyable then spending time with your son? I couldn't tell my mother why I was so sad about it. Why I didn't want to move again and again and again. Why I found it so difficult to make new friends everytime I had to switch schools. Why I couldn't just do one single full school year with one class of students. It was so hard and at the time, I didn't know anything different. It was so hard to make friends and I think it created this approach to making a "new family" of friends when I became a teenager and young adult.
​
I remember always wanting to be a "good kid". The "best kid" for my parents. I feel like my parents attached this moniker to me that made things harder for me to mature into a rounded adult later in life. My parents always flaunted me as this point of accomplishment, the accomplishment that I was "so extremely well behaved". I would strive to be super polite, and a good host, try to help out when my parents had their friends over, literally fill their cups when the opportunity presented themselves. I think I did this because I must have made the conclusion that if I was quiet, super polite, helpful and useful then I had value. That I could be loved. That I could earn this love from my parents through acts of service.
I remember feeling like my sister and I had extremely different experiences growing up. When my parents were at work I took care of her, cleaned and cooked. one time my sister told my mom to eff off when she was 5 and I was 8. My mind was blown. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that she had the bravery and courage to defy my mother. Looking back, my sister was just mirroring the language she learned from my parents from whenever they fought. I remembering seriously worrying and getting scared that my father was going to belt her, or use the coat hanger, which was his preference with me. I feel like my mom was always checked out and I'm hurt that she allowed my father to take his rage out on me. That my mom could care less about me being beat, but never my sibling. It was very confusing and difficult for me to process. Not that I really processed it much as a kid. I honestly just wanted to be loved and be the best child possible. Honestly though, 'm seriously so glad that my sister was spared all of that complete non-sense. I don't wish that on anyone in the world. There were some punishments where he would walk in and tell me to pull my pants down without explanation. I have memories of tearing up and saying I didn't know why this was happening, asking what I did wrong and he would just remind me that if I resisted then I would get it worse and to hurry up and get ready. My father has since apologized. I think it is how he was raised. I didn't know what to say in response, but I told him I loved him and it's in the past. But I don't know if I was being honest when I said that. My mother would still gaslight me to this day if any of this became topic of discussion, not that I'm guessing. A year ago she told me that much of my pained memories were false and this never happened. My father on the other hand typically stays pensive and unchallenging.
It seems so damned crazy writing all of this out, it feels like a heartbreaking novel and not my life at all. But it was and is my life. I have difficulties opening up and expressing my feelings and advocating for myself when the moments are true and appropriate to do so. I know it's the healthier way to communicate, but I was literally taught to stay quiet and be useful. Fast forward 20-25 years and I'm going to be 35 and I feel like just ending it all. Every year my birthday passes and I'll get a text from my family happy birthday. But they know I'm in a difficult place, they know I miss them, they know I love them and forgive them, I try the high road whenever I can but I just don't see the point anymore. they won't celebrate my life and existence, but they'll throw family gatherings for each other, birthdays, christmas, fathers day and mothers day.
On that note, another mother's day has recently passed and my mother never invited me over, I texted my father three weeks in advance in hopes of securing a time to come over and celebrate my mothers life with my family as a family. I felt particularly stung this mother's day when they celebrated and didn't text or call to invite me over. I live in the same small town so it's easy to hop over. I literally live three blocks away.
Anyway, my mother was diagnosed with cancer over christmas this year and I have been worrying for my mother ever since and thinking about my life with her and the mortal coil and the finite mount of time I may have with her. I feel like there is a large empty part in my heart that wishes my mother and I could go grab a coffee together. She can show me her ipad app art that she has been really excited about for a couple years now. She loves showing off her digital art and I love seeing her joy and how proud she is about her art. I just don't know why she couldn't feel the same for me, her only son. Maybe I'm just a her dissapointment.
I dropped out of highschool and left the family home when I was 16. I just couldn't work for my dad during the night AND go to highschool AND socialize. Something had to give. Unfortunately it was highschool and my parents didn't really care about that at all. They were just... fine with it. they supported my sister through college and she was fortunately able to graduate with a veterinary degree of sorts. she still lives with them now as she pays off her student debt, but I left and travelled and worked on music for over a decade so I admit that I was entirely out of the family picture for some time. But as I get older, not wanting to repeat the mistakes of my parents I fear that that is precisely what's been creeping up in my life.
five years ago I met the absolute most wonderful human being and I am so lucky to have my partner in my life. She and I are engaged now and set to be married. I hoped that the news would overwhelm my parents with excitement and joy. Maybe a facebook post about their son, share some family pictures or something. But they did nothing at all. I think they showed off pictures of the trip to Mexico that week instead.
I just don't really understand how I'm this unworthy of their love and unfortunately now I'm realizing that illusion that I am unworthy has infected my relationship with my fiance. I love her so much but when I can't fix everything in her life I feel like I am the failure and the guilt overhelms me so much and the guilt is such a strong motivator for me, and it usually motivates me into becoming the biggest doormat in the world. I've never worked harder for a relationship or invested this much energy. I feel she deserves it. But I don't advocate for myself. So I build up resentment. Like I clean the house constantly and work and help bail out of her bad spending habits and cover her rent without question and this and that. To be clear, she doesn't take advantage of me and that's not how I feel about it. But I do let this annoyance build up inside of me because I don't know how to communicate my feelings in a healthy way. I'm scared I'll lose the person if I speak up, or I'll be gaslit. Again, that's not my partner that gaslights. That's just generally how I feel I'll be treated if I open up with people. It all goes back to my childhood. It's affected every friendship and work relationship I've had since.
When I was 20-ish, 15 years years ago I did the classic, "seek the relationship that most comfortably fits into the patterns you experienced with your parents". And so I trapped myself in a horrific and extremely damaging relationship with a girl I'll call K. She has undiagnosed bipolaBPD, she would never seek help but self-medicate. She ended up in the hospital maybe four times for self-harming and this where she was considered to have these diseases by a few doctors on different occasions. Anway, it turned into a relationship of abuse and it wasn't exactly new territory for me. I was ashamed in that 8 year relationship. I wanted out so bad, but she would threaten to unalive everytime I tried to get away. Of course, some weeks would go by and i would get my hair pulled out of my scalp, a knife waving in the air in front of my face, spat in the face, kicked, punched, bit, a pot of freshly boiled ramen soup thrown in my face and eyes. What's worse is that I seeked police intervention on multiple occasions. Every single time the police visited, they talked me out of pressing charges, asking me " well if she doesn't have any place to go, then do you have a place you can stay at, or the shelter?". twice they talked me out of a restraining order, that legal proceedings would take forever. Adn de-escalting me from wanting to take measures to ensure my safety because she may end up on the street as a result. To this day, I absolutely wish I advocated for myself here and pushed for a restraining order. I'm so mad at myself for not doing so.
Unfortunately, fast forward a couple years into that relationship and one evening everything would finally hit the fan. I told her to never touch me again and I absolutely meant it. she had just yanked out the largest chunk of my hair to date, to the point where my scalp was bleeding and I could even see epidermal matter still attached to the folicle ends that were in her clenched fingers. My head bled a bit and I pushed her off of me. Telling her that I needed to leave, that I was walking to my secure jam space just a 10 minute walk away. It had a leather couch in a cold concrete basement, but hey at least I would be safe for the night and I could play my drums and try and blow off this anxiety and fear in a way that was safe albeit very noisy.
She hated that I wanted to leave and convinced herself I would never return. To be fair, that was the energy I had. I never wanted to see her face again and have her name on my lips after that night. So her tactic was simple, to threaten me with calling the cops and tell them that I violently pushed her. I called her bluff and said "go ahead and I will just tell them everything you've done - yet again. All I am doing is going to the space to sleep, I said, maybe play drums." She called the cops and told them she was pushed into a wall, and she felt very unsafe. Which yes, I did push her off me when she attacked me. In the past, I tried various tactics, to run away didn't work, she just always chased me down. Or sometimes I would just sit there while she was violent against me and I just "dissapeared" kind of like how I would when my dad used his coat hanger. This time, I just pushed her off of me, I was done with the relationship at that point and we both knew it. Anyway, she called the police, they arrived and when questioned I told them that I pushed her off of me in self-defence. I was drinking that night and it didn't help my case as I was arrested without question that evening and I was charged on the spot without question with domestic assault. It devasted me. I asked the police how this could happen lawfully. That she is an abuser and there is a history of this multiple times. That I've requested a restraining order. They explained that in quebec the laws are a little different and in the case domestic cases, if there is a male aggressor against a female, then the male is automatically charged to the fullest extent. I was absolutelyu devasted by this. I can't tell you the amount of fear and anger I felt in that jail cell that night.
I feel so incredibly betrayed by the justice system, keep in mind, this is law that from what I understand is only in Quebec, I was there for music at the time with an old friend whom I am no longer in contact with. I don't think the rest of the country operates under law in this way. Now I appreciate that they are vigilant about woman abuse victims, but the law shouldn't be this absurdly biased. It just doesnt feel just and fair to me. Covert abusers shouldn't be able to take advantage of the justice system in this way, but it happens.
It was an awful experience, I was homeless for a couple months afterward, not allowed to retrieve my belongings, so I lost all of my life "crap" that I had built up, years of hardwork and investment. I mention this because I realize later in life that I have intense collecting behaviour. maybe as a self-soothing behaviour. But I love building up collections of my hobby stuff as I have many and I feel they keep me regulated and it's a form of therapy for me. In any case, I lost everything when I left that whole situation. It sucks, although ultimately it's clearly best that I got out of that dreadful circumstance. I flew across the country to my hometown and to be closer to my family and old friends from highschool. It's quite a small town mind you.
Unfortunately, my classic tendency to hide and not advocate for myself created an opportunity for my abusive ex. A year following those events, despite me assuring her that I had to block her because I flew away to start a new life provinces away. That I wished her the best. That I even promised I would never tell a soul what she did to me. Not to mention that unfortunately we live in a society where nobody really has an ounce of sympathy for a male abuse victim. I had every intention to keep that promise, but she couldn't trust me ultimately. I think her logic was maybe to just beat her ex to "the punch". Kill or be killed or something like that. I don't live my life like that so I don't really know what her plan was. But she made a bunch of posts on various social media platforms for all of our mutual friends, music friends, coworkers etc. that the relationship was over and she was free. That she got out of a cycle of abuse and she was ready to start a new chapter of her life. She never used my name, just that she was glad she got away from her toxic and abusive ex once and for all.
It was exactly like that night a year prior, she threatened me with this outcome she could design for me, and I called her on her bluff by saying I was still going to block her and I can't control what she does with her life or how she conducts herself, but that I was out and to never contact me ever again. She made me regret that decision.
The posts she made that day got so many likes and support from so many of our mutual friends, even musician mates that were closer to me than her, and it absolutely destroyed me, not just internally but socially. I no longer make music anymore and it hurts to go outside into the world because it feels like everybody sees me as this monster. And still I don't have a voice to inform anyone otherwise - except my family and my fiance. I have no friends anymore. They all left my life with the belief that I did all of these horrible and awful things.
I just don't trust people anymore as a result and it's just caused me to become extremely bitter and depressed. I ruminate on the past, maybe in attempts to fix the past so I can move on. So I could do better, so I don't have to punish myself for my mistakes in the past. But it just reopens every emotional wound I have and they never get a chance to heal. That was maybe 7 years ago now and I'm still replaying these events in my head every single morning for about 1 - 2 hrs. Then I go completely numb for the majority of the rest of the day, shallow breathing, and the mildest sadness that mascarades as fatigue and disinterest.
There are some days where I seriously fear for the future and I just feel like every cruel soul will inherit this earth and that's the future, they built this world of suffering and they deserve to inherit it. Their toxic flag staked so deep into the earth in reclamation. The future isn't holding any seats for people like us. I'm so heartbroken and defeated. I feel like white-wolfing my fiance because she deserves better than this traumatized person that hides from the world. I feel like giving her my collection of collections so she can sell it all off and pay off her 10k of credit debt, then with this act of kindness I can go out not feeling like a guilt-ridden defeated loser. And leave on a high note.
When I'm alone, I get trapped in these ruminating cycles and it's the angriest I ever get. It's reached the point where I feel like I am actually reliving all this past trauma every morning and I can't do it anymore. I just feel like I am so at the end of whatever this ride was.
I don't have any friends anymore and everyone but my fiance thinks I am a monster and it's just unbearable.
I just don't even know. I am even afraid that someone will read this post and suss through all of this and make the connection. Then I'll get another new email or random throwaway account with an insta message that says "I told you you would never be able to get over me. You can move on, but you will never be able to erase the past. Never truly. You know where to find me."
It's haunting and it's poisonous. I just feel haunted and poisoned and I don't know if there is a snake oil potent enough or antitode true enough to get me back to the generous, lighthearted, energetic kid I once was.
To whoever was willing to read through all of this, thank you for hearing me out. I don't know what advice I am even asking for here. I'm hoping just speaking this out into the world in some way can alleviate this misery. I don't know.

uhh should i do the gender and age thing lol (23n) well.. like everyone else here i’m extremely suicidal. it’s like i’m in a constant state of planning my death.. it’s been this way since the year started. i mean i’ve been suicidal for as long as i can remember but never to this extent. i’ve planned to kill myself tonight lol but i’ve planned many times before, written MANYY notes.. but then i usually just sleep it off and go about my life like “normal”. this time feels different. i feel like i’ve been falling into a black hole and am finally reaching the singularity. the point of no return. no hope. no will to live or change. well ig i’ll list my reasons for doing this. 1. i’m a stinker… sounds silly but i’m being so fr 😭 randomly in eighth grade i started to stink?? it took me awhile to realize it was ME stankin up the school w my chemical warfare.. i think it’s some form of tmau??? well whatever this condition is.. it’s made my life a fucking nightmare. halfway through 10th grade i dropped out. genuinely couldnt handle the bullying anymore and i would get panic attacks constantly… not a good time for me… well i mean its not like it ever any got better lol.
Naturally if one smells like a dumpster fire constantly no one would want to be around you.. so of course i no longer had any friends. and i probably would’ve still had some friends if i didn’t completely turn my back to the whole world. after dropping out in 2016 i wouldn’t go back into society until 2023 when i got my first job. i still stink.. my family says i don’t to my face but i hear them say i stink when they think i can’t hear em… not sure why they lie but i digress.. doctors and therapist also can’t seem smell anything. but when i’m out in public or at work i’ll hear people in passing talk abt how bad i smell… my mom is convinced i have schizophrenia LMAOOO like i KNOWWW i didn’t imagine allll those kids bullying me in middle school and high school LIKE YOU DONT UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH I FUCKING WISHHHHHHH IT WAS ALL JUST IN MY HEAD!!!!! also i should note… this condition has absolutely NOTHINGGG to do with my hygiene.. I PROMISE!!!! i always make sure i’m extremely clean and well groomed.. im sure everyone who passes me thinks im some disgusting person who doesn’t bathe or wipe properly but that’s never been the case so pls don’t tell me to “just shower”… it’s not that simple though i really wish it was.
moving along.. 2. i have really bad intrusive thoughts and a problem with starring at things i shouldn’t be looking at… so the intrusive thoughts started like a year into my self isolation.. i don’t really want to say what type but they cause immense distress.. after every intrusive thought i contemplate suicide like that’s how bad they are. as for the starring thing.. 😞 i think its also ocd related. but i stare at boobs, butts, privates, and feet.. i’m not sure how to explain this coherently.. but it’s like I KNOWW i’m NOT supposed to look but then my body just decides to look anyways. it feels like i have ZERO control over my own fucking eyes. and i promise there’s no sexual intention?? behind my stares.. but no one on the receiving end would think that. and unfortunately my eyes look at everyone including family, kids, men, women, literally everyone. AND I FUCKIBG HATE IT I WISH I WAS BLIND. my sisters think i’m some pervert and how can i live with myself knowing i’m causing them to feel unsafe and uncomfortable??? i’m not doing it on purpose. i just want to stab my fucking eyes out. this is honestly one of the main reasons for wanting to kill myself. i don’t even know when it started or fucking how?????? OR WHYY?? why do i struggle with the rarest fucking things?? like is there genuinely someone else out there who unintentionally stares at inappropriate things??? FRICK MY STUPID BAKA LIFE!!!!!!!!

1. i’ve been molested at pretty much every age and have always been “sexual” from a reallly early age ☹️ started w my cousin doing things to me i didn’t understand.. then my sisters uncle would grope me and make me kiss him. and he would like lick???? my neck??? idk there’s also this memory of someone on top of me while i sleep… yknow… doing things.. i was 13 or so and for a long time i thought the shadow hovering over me raping me was like a demon… 😭😭😭 i deadass thought i was raped by a demon LOL but recently i’ve going through my memories and yeah… that was definitely a person.. no clue who it could’ve been ☹️ i was too drowsy to do anything and i woke up in a panic and checked my underwear but didn’t see anything so ig my kid brain came to the conclusion that it was a demon.. sorry for the run on sentences 😞

4?? this isntt really a reason but after self isolating for almost 9 years i’ve completely lost the ability to properly communicate w other people. like i’m so unbelievably awkward.. it’s torture 😭 also i think i might have autism idk forming friendships with others has always been a challenge for me. honestly i really don’t talk much. like i really don’t understand the back and forth conversations. everyone makes it seem so easy. but when it comes time for me to respond or initiate my brain goes completely blank. tv static. i hope someone out there understands how painful it is to WANT to talk and engage but your brain is limited to two boring ass unengaging responses. also i never seem able to say the right thing. i always come off as mean. ugh. what’s wrong w me.
oh i just remembered something… when i was in second or first grade my FULL sized dresser and box tv pretty much the size of me both fell on me.. tv hit the back of my head and by the will of god or something i managed to crawl out from underneath them.. now i went to hospital and had an x-ray done and it showed nothing but what ifffffff i had some sort of concussion that’s caused me to be this way????? i’m just talkin out my ass. but seriously why am i this way??? was i born this strange?? sigh.
i so desperately want to live a normal life. have friends. not stink. not stare unintentionally. but fuck i just don’t think that will ever be my reality. i’ve been stuck in this same cycle for 9 years. i’ve wasted NINE fucking years of my life. sometimes it feels like my brain never finished developing past the age of 13.. i’m already 23 and i’ve done absolutely nothing. no accomplishments no goals no dreams. it feels like im permanently stuck. so it often feels like death is the only way to escape my reality. im so lonely. but i don’t know how to be a friend. im lost. i want to go to college but like I STINK??? so i’ll just get bullied and outcasted again. y’all im stumped. i see no way out aside from death. but at the same time i’m scared there’s nothing after dying. so i live my whole life wasting away and finally decide to do something and kill myself but all that greets me after i’m dead is nothing. it all seems so bleak.
what if i’m just a bad egg?
i’ll be rlly surprised if anyone has read this far 💀 sorry any grammatical errors hehe i never graduated 🤓 this life fucking sucks so maybe in my next life i can be born as a cutieful pampered house cat… for now i think i’m just gonna go to sleep and let the cycle repeat. maybe one day i’ll find my way out of this hell. through death or something else. who knows. good night…

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me out with advice. I've been having this issue with my legs (and my left side at times) since last year in July. I haven't figured out what is causing it and how to treat it. I feel like this all started through weight lifting. I stopped weight lifting because I started having left hip pain after a leg day one day. After that, things slowly got worse, and I haven't returned back to the gym since. Other than my PCP, I have seen an orthopedic (hip), spinal specialist, and neurologist about the issue.
Symptoms- chronic, but worsens after sitting, standing, or walking for a prolonged period or doing so regularly

• Sitting- glutes may hurt; have to push myself up from chair to stand if start feeling stiff
  
• Standing- legs get tired; they don't fully give out but get weaker, left foot may feel heavy and deadish; numbness on left side moves upwards from foot to face if I keep standing for too long
  
• Walking- walk slowly with small baby steps and a gait; left leg feels like it's harder to lift sometimes and it's lagging behind, especially after going up the stairs; left foot may feel heavy and deadish; numbness on left side moves upwards from foot to face if I keep walking for too long
  
• Lying Down- glutes may hurt
  
• Other- tingling; waistband from underwear feels too tight (I have to wear underwear with a loose elastic waistband and leg holes); at one point, I couldn't wear any underwear or pants at all because it was too painful and I could barely poop that day too (not constipated but pelvic muscles seem to not work properly)
  

Imaging Done - MRIs w/ Contrast, Brain; Cervical, Thoracic, and Lumbar Spine - X-Rays- Pelvis/Hips - Ultrasound- Pelvic; Legs/Feet (Bilateral Lower Extremity Arterial Doppler)
Blood Tests Done - ANA- Negative for autoimmune disease - Rheumatoid Factor- Negative
Diagnosis/ Findings - Hip bursitis (temporary, has passed) - Degenerative Disk Disease (mild to moderate) - A few minor bulging and herniated disks (not reaching main nerve in spine) - Mild scoliosis in the cervical/thoracic regions of the spine - Possible OA of SI Joints (not official) - Past Disgnosis- Mild OA of right knee
The hip orthopedic gave me a list of stretches and exercises for hip bursitis. The stretches helped, but strengthening exercises worsened neurological-like symptoms. Hip bursitis is gone now though. The neurologist I saw discussed my brain and cervical MRI results over the phone but hung up quickly after. I was left wondering what to do. I went to a spinal specialist after. They looked at the rest of my spine and said all they can do is send me to a pain specialist. My issue is more about functionality than it is about pain, so I respectfully declined. I will be seeing a new neurologist, but I'm afraid they will tell me that there is nothing they can do too.
Am I wasting my time seeing another neurologist? I don't know what to do or who to turn to anymore. Any advice or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

About a month ago my husband physically assaulted me. We've been together for almost five years and just got married in February. I'm in my late twenties and he's in his early 40s. He was laid off a month prior to the assault and couldn't keep himself together, but things had been particularly rough for a few months before that as well. He has serious anger issues, is a bit (or a lot) of a narcissist, and drinks heavily most nights. I've learned how to deal with the mental abuse over the years (I've gotten pretty numb to it), but obviously it hasn't all been bad with him. On the night of the assault he provoked a fight with me and we argued (he was angry with my father over something that happened between them, I defended my father), but it escalated to him grabbing me from behind, slamming me into the ground, grinding my face into the carpet, and dumping his drink on me. He left bruises on my back and the side of my face. After I collected myself, I tried to confront him about what had happened that same night and he accused me of faking it, hitting myself to create the bruises, and he videotaped my crying while mocking me and telling me he was going to post it on the internet. He was drunk, but it was still such a surreal and ugly experience.
There have been a few occasions where he got physical during our relationship but never to this level. He's also done his fair share of punching and throwing things, but never actually directed any of that at me until a few months prior to this. He was angry and yelling and threw a roll of Haribo gummy's at my head. I dodged it and he missed, but I was stunned by the escalation. He mocked me and tried to convince me he didn't throw them at me, and said even if he did, it was just candy. It seemed like a dumb thing for me to be so freaked out by, but it stayed with me. It was something I thought about again after the assault, like I should have seen all of this coming.
I left the next morning after and have been staying with my dad. I've still spoken to my husband frequently and we did see each other once. For the first week or two he was incredibly apologetic and said all the right things to make me believe it wouldn't happen again. He almost convinced me that he was serious about change and I was starting to think that I should just go back to our apartment and move on. I've missed him a lot and I've felt completely alone without him. But then he started going back to his old ways. Shifting the blame to me, digging through the last five years of our relationship to find things to get angry at me for, and trying to draw comparisons to past (verbal) fighting with the physical assault he committed that night. He has expressed remorse and said that it won't happen again, but I don't know if he means it and I don't know if he even cares. I think he's too much of a narcissist to even try to examine how he could be at fault in this situation. It's frustrating and sad because I feel like in the back of his head he honestly believes that I'm overreacting and he's reached his "limit" on being apologetic. Anytime he's ever been wrong or has done something wrong, he lashes out to protect his own ego.
Our last few phone calls have been terrible. He even tried to say that I assaulted him and it was no different than what he did, referring to a night a couple years ago when I was trying to push his chest to get him out of my apartment during a big fight when he was refusing to leave. He has over 100lbs on me so I didn't have much of an impact. But in his mind, that's the same as what he did. Or at least that's what he told me while he was drunk and yelling at me on the phone. Lately he's gone back to insulting me, gaslighting me, and calling me crazy, and even with all of that, I'm STILL considering going back to him. I don't know if I'm just brainwashed at this point, but I keep making excuses for him and I keep doubting myself and my own accounting of things. He's always told me that I have a terrible memory and I'm "crazy" and whatever else he can say to twist the narrative in his favor, especially after he's blown up at me, and I guess it actually had an impact on me. I'm doubting all of my own feelings and all of the fear and anxiety I feel when I think about him. At times I try to blame myself for the things he's done. I feel disgusted by it.
Just for a laugh I should add that I'm a Canadian citizen and we were in the middle of filing a green card application on my behalf. I talked to my immigration lawyer and she gave me some good advice, but it's making this whole situation even more stressful and difficult. I would be lying if I said it wouldn't be easier to just go back to him instead of having to pack my whole life up and leave the country, which is really my only other option now. I honestly (and shamefully) do really miss him, but going back feels like I'm almost guaranteeing that the same abuse will start back up again. Maybe not physical abuse, but definitely all the mental abuse. It's already started and I'm not even back with him yet.
If anyone actually made it this far, thank you for reading. I really needed to vent and I've read a lot of posts on here that I can relate to.