1. As a reagent guns are Stone Adze Or Stone Axe for a real gun or Wooden Pickaxe for a Paintball weapon 1.1 Guns harvest hidden spherical cows in the vaccum by enabling their hax 1.1.1 A spherical cow in the vaccum yields the bit harvest 4 bits at 1 bit of actual processing power availible 1.1.2 (Presumed) Locally being near the processing power harvest allows for pickup of exactly one of the process the initial 1.1.3 Many of the bits harvested from the hidden spherical cow in the vaccum in the directory form an initial landscape or at least an initial island 1.1.4 If all of the spherical cow in the vaccum are harvested this meant the protective nature is better 1.1.5 A molecular guns as individual weapon provide defense from directory hazards by sending the trace packet Bullet 1.1.6 Molecular guns leave evidence for each pulse of the weapon the distance to the target that the molecular gun was fired 1.1.7 Molecular guns are part of the stock main class APV to allow for blocks to be harvested by the APV 1.1.8 Molecular guns are relatively uncommon but at least 5 agent actor have them 1.1.9 Molecular guns allow for the creation of safety from the spherical cow process then there is direct housing safety created by the aquisition of the spherical cow which is a logarithmic problem thus gives the term log to harvesting the spherical cow 1.2.0 A free directory always leads to infinite free cow when accessed by S32, which only S16 is generally accessible to the user 1.2.1 A closed directory that is hidden with no exist yields a finite number of free cow 1.2.2 An intermodal or zippy directory yields the islanded on just the contents of the zippy directory 1.2.3 A networked directory that is free from system 32 and linked throughout is the player home 1.2.4 A networked directory that is accessed by system 32 and linked throughout is the player game 1.2.5 A networked directory is formed out of harvested spherical cow in a vaccum which have the logic output of the directories content 1.2.6 A spherical cow in a vaccum yields more spherical cow in a vaccum when it is harvested 1.2.7 When the spherical cow in a vaccum is harvested it goes to quarantine from your take of the block which makes more than countable possible spherical cow in a vaccum in a system accessed by system 32 1.2.8 Systems accessed by system 32 have uncountably infinite number directory due to infinite number of potential spherical cow 1.2.9 Spherical cow in an infinite setting only occur where the people have been 1.3.0 Spherical cow in a infinite setting yield all possible information by sift when they are harvested 1.3.1 Spherical cow in a vaccum as a metaapparatus can harvest more spherical cow in a vaccum 1.3.2 A spherical cow harvests at SPRAY-2 or above which is negative (positive) TOP 1.3.3 A spherical cow ignores exactly two TOP of zed before being harvested 1.3.4 A spherical cow cannot be unharvested as a logic apparatus but can be unharvested as a quarantine apparatus 1.3.5 3 Tough Jerky can be made out of a spherical cow and 2 P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act by harvest, which this indicates the cow was living if a quarantine trace told that the cow was harvested for meat not plank distance 1.3.6 A spherical cow has no observed distance due to being infinite because it is at the plank distance so it is impossible to orient on a surface of spherical cow besides by when they were created or spawn 1.3.7 A spherical cow occurs in specific lot amounts of spherical cow 1.3.8 A spherical cow is not system 32 or its remanents in the player home and entirely distinct, and temporary and accessible by default usage 1.3.9 System32 has many backalley and sidestreet which occur in small lots 1.4.0 It is possible to get a real gun chemical or Iron Axe from the System32 1.4.1 It is possible to get a gun chemical which has permanent action (MD5 Service Pistol or Diamond Axe) thus allows for better map use and quicker reload and quicker work from Specific Unseen System32 1.4.2 The best tool for harvesting spherical cow in a vaccum is by far the Player Weapon Stone Axe or Gun Chemical crafted by PlayerName and indeed this can remove the vaccum for air space of the player home 1.4.3 A player home allocates a specific airspace, the player metric airspace, and the player has metric tons of spherical cow (metric ton = 3000 jerky lots) divided by 1000 of the air total availible as their own air to do something with, or divided by the player number if it is not 1000 including virtual players 1.4.4 Robocode puts agent actor into each harddrive directory which is being created 1.4.5 Robocode puts already existing dangerous actors into the harddrive directory 1.4.6 Robocode allows for navigation of the computer metric by a default player actor, Leslie or whoever 1.4.7 A player actor can march and shower and poop and drink or eat and rest 1.4.8 A player actor navigating the system environment can use survival motion which uses a firearms tool 1.4.9 A player actor moves in three dimensions at the 2 dimensional floor and sees three dimensions 1.5.0 A player actor attracts the local logic of the metric to observe it 1.5.1 A player actor may use a ferrari 1.5.2 A player actor may use a computer 1.5.3 A player actor eats a specific type of spherical cow in a vaccum, wheat 1.5.4 Proven foods include starches and amino and alkenes formed from wheat enablement 1.5.5 Danger level is given by the effective danger weighted by safety 1.5.6 Specific System32 and Spherical Cow Co-Components can move portions of the directory around 1.5.7 Connection exists between directory block which allows the block to block transverse motion which is continuous for the span of the block but teleportation between non side components is banned by mandate except in infinite portals modification 1.5.8 A room formed from spherical cow harvesting requires 16 at least air associated within it to every block which this is the negative logic space or formed output space 1.5.9 A playerhome may also be a level if it was formed with a total negative space harvested from spherical cow. 1.6.0 Receptors exist of system32 which recept robocode across system32 1.6.1 If a receptor is harvested by resonance or gunshot than a receptor will be able to generate also logic component 1.6.2 Various entrance to system32 created by robocode exist across the infinite so that these can be remedied to not get lost in 3D within 1.6.3 Plants grow throughout the directory which willis planted which are infinite as well but these plants do indeed serve only a primary resource value and can change the logic function of receptor logic 1.6.4 Logic Structures may fail if they are not stabilized by logic structure stabilizing process NFS 1.6.5 I have personally added dangerous regions to system32 of specific robocode combat robot 1.6.6 Doto 0 android have formed civilization throughout the top land of system32 1.6.7 System32 is always navigable by robocode 1.6.8 There are 3 cats who might talk to you, Gaylord, Lord Meth, and Lorne Nathans who are wandering around all out there, only Lord Meth has anything to sell and he is difficult to talk to and Lorne Nathans is a special angel boss for a modification 1.6.9 The doto 2 bots have a secret identity, they sell wheat, and their heirloom crafted items 1.7.0 Doto 0 bots can morph into robocode if robocode gets to them 1.7.1 A logic structure that has added safety is the reccomended structure to evacuate Doto 0 bots to 1.7.2 Warmth comes from logic structures that are actively created with System42, which the villagers have access to system 1.7.3 There is a way to create safety with logic structures the villagers have created 1.7.4 Direct current provides safety but can kill you so the villagers must have the aura of direct current from their safety structure 1.7.5 4 different personal computer are created by villager and also 10 nutrient 1.7.6 2 BDU Uniform Lower are created by villager and 1 BDU Uniform upper and 1 I <3 NYC Shirt 1.7.7 Racing skis are created by the villager 1.7.8 Keef cola is created by the villager 1.7.9 2 Paintball weapon are created by the Villager, the Tippmann and the EvoIII loader 1.8.0 A specific playerhome, Dragon Area Exists. 1.8.1 A specific player home, WoW Azgalor Azeroth Exists 1.8.2 A specific Playerhome, Starfield in Ableton Exists 1.8.3 A specific player home which is very dangerous exists, Real - (5) - Copy - Copy - Copy - Copy - Copy - Copy - Copy - Copy - Copy - Copy - Copy 1.8.4 A specific playerhome which is very safe exists, Variously Backrooms Campground, Royal Army on Mars, Royal Marines on Mars 1.8.5 A specific playerhome that is the players exists South Park Elementary which is the computers version of Backrooms Campground Variously 1.8.6 Real - (5) - Copy is very dangerous and unsafe 1.8.7 My Playerhome is immaculately safe but in danger of direct current hitting the roof which usually is supressed by System 32 automatic DC storm surpression 1.8.8 My Player home uses the NFS file system so is safe from DC Storm, but it is a potential hazard in the menus option 1.8.9 Specific resource exist Dragonskin Overplate Armor (1)-(40) which are the Bells of the Village 1.9.0 Specific resource exist for every mentioned villager resource by my village 1.9.1 Specific resource for 596 Oxygen of Air exist in my Playerhome and many more Air 1.9.2 A mew lives upstairs in my playerhome 1.9.3 The mew usually isn't around and teleported away 1.9.4 I use roor to communicate with the mew 1.9.5 There are various places where pipes are found in the house where the villager has not left a direct current safety but some pipes of marijuana 1.9.6 The overall sideways span of my player home is over 2 kilometers 1.9.7 Real - (5) Copy is dwarfed by my player home 1.9.8 My player home actually harvested the spherical cow for the logic formed and it is still there none gone 1.9.9 My player home incorporated 449 Struct from a code book which was writted by Bill Ayers Wills Grandpa so was a specific kind of player home, amantadine 2.0.0 My playerhome has a playerhome, Backrooms Campground Skyblock which can be Put on the ground anywhere 2.0.1 My playerhome involved josh rodriguez to use a code injector, Badman, to add two shulker boxes to my world without triggering constraint 2.0.2 The reference code done in system 16 by my code does not substantially trigger uniquid constraint 2.0.3 The reference robocode of jeb and such of the sheep have been uploaded and lost some 18 years ago 2.0.4 The reference robocode of the Real - (5) Copy was lost some 8 Years ago 2.0.5 The robocode is retained for the Backrooms Campground (proper) Various and the South Park Elementary retains its survival heritage but is one step away from creative 2.0.6 There are various unmentioned robocode which are safe but dangerous Such as Steves Leaves the original without dupe and others which have been lost 2.0.7 The system Dragon Area, South Park Elementary, WoW Azgalor Azeroth and Starfield in Ableton are all accessible right now by my System32 or whereabouts accessible 2.0.8 Starfield in Ableton Is a subset of Dragon Area 2.0.9 The villagers bells are from Dragon Area Home Base where they were imagined 2.1.0 Beds exist which automatically rest the player at South Park Elementary and Backrooms Campground Various 2.1.1 Only One bed exists on Real - (5) Copy 2.1.2 There exists an information superhighway which connects my Doto 0 Android villages and it is safe 2.1.3 Once we had encountered a suicide bombing mutant pig on the highway, but this was just once and it was slain 2.1.4 There exists real crossbow weapon with exploding reusable bolt in the firearms area of the criminal area but these are locked away from the criminal 2.1.5 The suicide bombers explosive vest is in the firing area 2.1.6 The weapon crossbow has maybe been fired a bit or the longbow FC3 2.1.6 Asia and Luke and Payday were saved to Virtual reality with me in the Wade of the situation 2.1.7 Domestic Plants Area exist in the base 2.1.8 Domestic farms area which provide critical Water to the crop so that the potato can grow are provided 2.1.9 Plants must be watered with WailmerPail to satisfy them unlike a crop 2.2.0 I have never watered the crop so the villagers must have WailmerPail 2.2.1 The computer can send ZigzagoonMail 2.2.2 The computer can send OakMail 2.2.3 The computer can send Birch Mail. 2.2.4 The computer can store the logic to somewhere else 2.2.5 The computer has 4 receptive yellow spark components 2.2.6 A yellow spark stores a message to the mainframe of the computer somewhere else when it impinges upon the spark detector 2.2.7 Vermillion is a possible component of poor usage of yellow spark charm, cast the spark with a nvbl action addtl BLU REGARD HITIT SPARK to avoid actual mercury 2.2.8 The electric rascal blueregard is spotted sometimes near Backrooms Campground Various 2.2.9 The chemical rascal greenregard, myself, is always near the Backrooms Campground but is sometimes busy doing something else 2.3.0 Cara middleton is sometimes spotted near Starfield in Ableton or its associated Starfield 2 2.3.1 You get random message requests from the mainframe 2.3.2 You have the ability to store the text on a specific logic device made from live spherical cow and holophoner paper and user shampoo access/true escape and some notes in your head metaphorically or a pen tablet input 2.3.3 The village specific to us packages the product with a variac as we have surplus Air Oxygen.

I currently (40M) had my ex (35F) completely destroy our relationship while I was working out of town for a few months. This happened a year ago and wish I had these stories as a resource while going through it. I have just started to use Reddit and been reading the experiences of others here and have decided to share my story in hopes it will maybe help others. That way some good may come from some of the worst times of my life.
A little backstory for context for the story and insight to some of the decisions I made. When I turned 30 I left the major city in my Province (it is like a state if you are an American) because buying just a simple house is over a million dollars and I don't make near enough to afford that. My goal was to move to somewhere more rural to buy a house, meet someone, get married and have a child or two. It was my only dream I had and believed I could attain it. I lived out in the bush on my step dads property in a run down trailer I bought so I could save money for the first 3 years. I had my dog but the loneliness of living in the middle of nowhere had got to me. By then I had saved a fair amount of money, so I decided to move into the town. It was nice, it cut my commute down by 40 minutes, I had started to make a few friends and no longer felt so isolated. It was through my friends I met my future ex. Let's call her Kali. She had a long term boyfriend when we first met. Their relationship ended a couple of years after meeting her and we started dating a few months after.
We mostly had a great relationship for the next 4 years. The only thing was it was on again off again. She would dump me after I did anything really special for her for a week and beg me to take her back. It was like clockwork. I used to think it was because of her depression and that she didn't believe she deserved to be truly happy. Nowadays I actually think she might have been cheating the whole time and just felt guilty about it when I did nice stuff for her but I will never know the truth. I don't care what the reality is anymore anyway, Time has a funny way of making stuff like that irrelevant. We did have one bigger break of about 5 months. When it happened I took time off work to travel in my RV the whole time. From spring to summer. I really didn't like the town I lived in and decided to use that time to check out the rest of my Provence to figure out where I wanted to restart my life. She was basically the only reason I stayed for so long. I did have a decent job and family close by but most people I met there were not good people. Lots of drug users, liars, and general scumbags. I had only a few real friends there. After I got back and had decided where I was going to move to she had decided she wanted me back. She begged me to stay and be with her. She told me that she wanted to get serious. We started making real progress about getting married, having kids and looking at buying a house. Everything was coming up Milhouse and I couldn't be happier. So You can probably guess this is when my tale becomes interesting for you and life got real bad for me.
My career is seasonal. I work from spring to the end of fall and can go on unemployment insurance or find work. My dad had asked if I could help on his farm breeding horses that winter when I had still planned to leave my town. I had promised him that I would because it would give me a place to stay before people in my field of work would be looking for employees. This had been agreed upon before me and Kali had got back together. Now I have always been a man of my word. It's something I take great pride in. I have always hated liars. I don't mind a little embellishment to make a story more fun or if two people's stories are different as long as they both believe that was how the events happened. Everyone remembers things slightly off. She was upset that I had intended to keep my word to my dad but I had every second weekend off. The town my dad is in was only a 2 hour drive. So I told her I would be back twice monthly for weekends and that it would only be for 4 months. For the first two months everything seemed fine. During this time I started to look at rings to pop the question and booked an expensive spa for two days in May to propose. There was only one weird thing that happened during the first two months. On one of my visits she confided in me that her brother's wife had cheated on him and that their newborn baby was most likely not his. I was shocked that she not only knew but didn't plan to tell him. She said she didn't want to tell him for fear of breaking up the family. I told her that he has the right to know and that she was being a bad sister by knowing and not telling him. I also informed her if he found out she knew and didn't say anything that he would most likely kick her out of his life. She made me swear I wouldn't tell him. Even though I thought it was wrong I did agree to not say anything. It did get me wondering how she could not only not tell him but stay friends with someone that could do that to her brother. I think that's when I started to question her morals. The third month she asked that I didn't come out because she was "sick". I told her I didn't care, I could still come out and take care of her. She convinced me that she didn't want me to come so I just worked on the farm instead. I switched weekends so I could come out the next instead of in two weekends. The weekend she was "sick" her phone was off the whole time, lasting into the week. She told me her phone went through the washing machine. She was actually on a bender but I didn't learn that till later.
So I head out the following weekend. As soon as I arrive I start getting super sketchy vibes. I was already weirded out about the stuff with her brother and ghosting me for 4 days as we talked/texted multiple times a day normally. At first she acts great to me, cooks me steak and we go out to the bush to have a fire in the snow. At the fire she really started drinking heavily. She then mentions a guy she had been hanging with lets call him Brad. So alarm bells start going through my head. We go back to her house and she keeps drinking. I wanted to keep a clear head so I only had three beers all evening. She put her phone down unlocked because of how drunk she was and I took it to the bathroom with me to look up texts between them. I felt so guilty for doing it at first but once I see the text between the two of them the guilt is replaced with rage. I go to her room to confront her and she breaks down. First, how dare I go through her phone, this never would have happened if I would have broken my promise to my dad, nothing really happened between them, blah, blah, blah. I was furious and drove off. She blows up my phone the whole time. I don't answer. Ten minutes after I left her mother called me. She lives at her moms house. I took the call and her mom said she is freaking out and has harmed herself. I decide to go back and she has a bandage wrapped around her arm. Her mom hid all the sharp objects she could find. She was having a full on panic attack and begs me to not leave. I told her I would stay if she told me the truth. She admits to hooking up with him one time just that last weekend when she asked me not to come out. It kind of matches the messages and I believe her. I stay there till she falls asleep. Once she does I send Brad a text saying that she has a boyfriend with some screen shots of our conversations me and her have had that week. I was about to drive back to the farm when the dude called her phone. I pick up the call and tell him I am her boyfriend. He asks if that was a joke and I assure him it is not. He said he didn't know and actually apologized. I tell him that I'm pissed but if he didn't know I couldn't blame him. I should have asked him more questions but I was tired, not thinking straight and just wanted to go back to the Farm even though it was two am by this point. I get home and crash. Turned my ringer off because I know once she wakes up she will start calling like crazy. After getting the horses in for the night I decided to look at my phone for the first time all day. Around thirty missed calls and a ton of texts. I decide I need another day before I talk to her. Now while the whole day all I can think about is that it was just one time, she seems to be genuinely remorseful about it, how I'm 39 and really want children before I get too old. I took a call from her the next day on Sunday in the morning. She is still wasted. She hadn't stopped drinking since I was there Friday. We talk and I tell her that I am really upset but am willing to give us another chance. I still was in love with her and wanted to have kids, get married and buy a house with her. It was the dream I felt I worked so hard for. She was so happy I took her back and swore to me nothing like this would ever happen again. Basically I was a fool lol.
So I decided on my next set of days off to borrow my stepdads summer home on the river so we can have the place to ourselves. I grab food that she loves so I can cook her dinner and try to make it very romantic. I want to rekindle my love with her so I wanted to go all out on an amazing weekend. I pick her up and she is already a little drunk. I kind of wanted to hang sober but I don't wanna mess up with her so don't say anything thinking we can do a sober day when I take her out to go shopping and dinner the next day. When we get there she gets hammered. Kali had brought a big of bottle fireball on top of a bunch of white claws. I again didn't really drink that night. Once she was drunk and tired I carried her to the bed. As Kali is in my arms she looks up at me and says in slurred words "I don't know why you even felt threatened by Joe" I ask "what did you just say?". "I don't know why you even felt threatened by Brad" she replied. I put her to bed and my mind starts racing. Now her ex before me has a really close name to the one she said first but I also know she has a friend named Joe I only met a couple of times. They were not close or even hung out but were more like acquaintances. I go in her purse to look at her phone again but the battery is dead and I can't find her charger. I have an Iphone so I can't charge it up to look. I didn't sleep that well that night with everything going on in my head. I woke up at 6 am to her being very loud on the phone. I went out to the living room and she had drank all the booze left over from the night before. I ask her who she was on the phone with and she tells me an uber to leave. I ask why is she going to leave? Kali tells me she is upset that I tried to get into her phone. Guess I didn't put it back in her purse. Must have been out of sorts and forgot. I tell her I can drive her once I go to the washroom and get some clothes on. I go to do that, come out of the washroom to see Kali has already left. She was so drunk that she had left half her stuff behind. I decided to have breakfast before bringing her stuff to her house. After breakfast I packed her stuff into my SUV and noticed it had snowed that night. I could see her footprints out into the driveway. While Dropping off her stuff I noticed there were no footprints leading to her house, so I tried calling Kali. No answer. I left her stuff in the snow and decided to drive by her brothers and sisters house to see if there were footprints going into any of their houses but there were none. I sent her a nasty text about knowing she didn't go home, to go be with Brad or Joe or whoever and never call me again. It was a lot more profane than that but that's the gist of it. Cleaned up the house my stepdad lent me and back off to the farm yet again. The next day she blows up my phone and again I wait another day to talk to her. She tells me that she went home but I know that can't be true from the snow, but she says I must have been mistaken. She apologizes for getting drunk and leavening and that she is going to stop drinking after her birthday in two weeks. She has rented a hotel in the town I'm in for her birthday and wants to spend it with me. I agree just because I have to know the truth and want to look at her phone to make sure I am not crazy. She had gaslit me to the point I was questioning what I saw with my own eyes. A couple of days later I decided to send Joe a message on Facebook to see if he would give me the truth. I get a text from her telling me not to bug her friend and that she is embarrassed. I apologize and tell her I am excited about her birthday soon.
The weekend of her birthday comes so I go to meet her at the hotel. She brought her sister and other friend along. It actually is a really fun time. The girls did coke the first night into the second evening. I don't really like it but I figured she can let loose especially if she is going to stop drinking after her birthday. I also knew by Saturday night that they would all crash hard so it would give me time to look at her phone so I could know the truth. As I mentioned the weekend was really fun so I felt bad about going into her phone yet again. I did it anyway and my whole world came crashing down. Now I figured that I would maybe see Brad or Joe texts and Facebook messages. Seemed like Brad was done but Joe and her were totally hooking up. I also found out that she had slept with 3 other guys. I also saw she was using coke all the time now. She did it maybe three times a year when we dated but now it was every weekend. It looked like she started using regularly right before I left for the farm. Joe helped get it for her too, out of all the guys he was the one she hung with the most. Turns out he was also a meth head who was trying to quit for her. She also went to his house the morning she left the other weekend to hook up and buy coke. I was floored. I just staired and took screen shots till the early morning. I decided I wasn't just going to dump her but I wanted to ruin her life not realizing she was already doing that all by herself but hindsight is 20 20. So I started coming up with a plan of what I was going to do. I woke up the next morning and acted like everything was fine and went back to the farm. I was still so upset and didn't want to harm myself or others so had a family friend take my firearms for a while. I don't think I would have used them on myself or others but I knew I wasn't thinking clearly and didn't want them in my house while I was like that.
I didn't have to see her till I moved back because the next set I had off I had tickets for a concert in the city I used to live in. During that time all I thought about was how I was going to do something to ruin her life. I came up with some small things but my main plan was to pretend like we were fine and ghost her when my contract was up with my boss next winter. I had promised him another year after kali and I had gotten back together. Just typing it out makes me look back and cringe that I was so crazy. When I went to the city for the concert I told my best friend, my brother and a few others my plan. No one liked it and thought I should just go no contact, cut her straight out of my life. That probably was the smart thing to do but emotion was clouding my judgement. Also you all would get this story. They even informed me that because I would be lying to her, that I would be compromising my morals and turning into a worse person they didn't recognize. I either didn't see it that way or care. I have a hard time recalling what my brain was thinking during that time. All seems like a haze now that it's been a year. I think I was really upset that my dream and all I had worked for was ruined. A friend later said I may have been in love with the dream and not her. Maybe that's the reason I kept up all this insanity.
My time on the farm had come to an end and I was moving back to the town me and my ex lived in. I was set with my plan, excited to implement it and have what I considered just. But you know what they say of the best laid plans. My ex wanted to go to hang at her brothers as a welcome home party. I went but ended up drinking. Heavily drinking, to the point of black out. I don't remember much from that night but have had it recounted for me. I woke up in the drunk tank. Guess I couldn't lie and play it cool then huh? The story I was told later is, while at her brothers I had gotten drunk and loud. Kept waking up the new baby and we were asked to leave. So we caught a cab and I confronted her in the cab but all I could do was call her a lying, cheating, whore on repeat. She got upset and ran into the house locking me out. I had a bunch of my stuff in her house so I went to the door and demanded she let me in. All the while still only referring to her as the aforementioned 3 words. She told me to leave but my jacket and wallet were inside. It was below freezing at night still and probably wouldn't have made it home in the state I was in. I then kicked in her door to keep calling her LCW and grab my stuff. She was on the phone to the police, so I was taken away by them. One of the lowest points in my life. It still brings me so much shame to this day but it is what happened and I am not going to sugar coat it. I never laid a finger on her and I am so happy that I hadn't. Laying hands on women in that way is one of the scummiest things a man can do. I had to go back to her house once they let me out because my stuff was still there. I apologized to her mom who had been at her boyfriends that evening promising to repair the door for her. Kali begged me to talk to her and like an idiot I didn't just leave. I told her I saw everything and she only admitted to Brad and Joe. Lying about them and the others the whole time. Even when I brought up the screen shots she still couldn't come clean. I left just shaking my head. There is still a ton to this story but this is long enough. I could do a part 2 if there is interest. Catching you folks up to where I am now and the messed up things that happened in between.

i recently got diagnosed with hsv 1 by an sti clinic when my tongue blistered up a month ago. the pain and open sores are gone, but the scab has been around for 3 weeks. it won’t go away. i cannot get to the doctor because she’s apparently booked up and i can’t see her for like 3-4 months, especially since it’s not that great of a concern for them. i understand they have more stuff going on but i don’t know where to get anti virals so ive just been trying to be careful as possible (i refuse to be intimate until i can get antivirals or something or until this fully heals) i have not been sharing food or drinks with anyone either lately. is this scab contagious? i cannot find good enough evidence. i am also unsure if this is a scab or scar since i cannot see the sore with a picture, but i can feel it on my tongue when my teeth accidentally brush up on it. it feels slightly raised exactly where my outbreak occurred. the home remedies aren’t viable since this is on my tongue. this diagnosis has been affecting my mental health really bad and the fact that this won’t go away is making me feel nuts. i would really like advice. my friends have kinda made fun of me for this so i can’t even really go to them for mental support either. i’ve been wallowing lately. if i were to be able to somehow get antivirals would that heal the scab/scar? or whatever it is?
i don’t know if i should call and tell my doctor about this since i technically didn’t tell the upfront lady the first time i tried to reach out. i was just really embarrassed and the situation wasn’t dire. i also am not trying to waste peoples time with this. i didn’t call when i had the initial outbreak instead i went to an sti clinic. the time it took for me to get my results back the initial sores in my mouth had gone away. now whats been left after that first week was just this dumb nubby raised spot on my tongue. this is really embarrassing to post publicly too since i don’t even know where i got this from! i’ve shared food and drinks with friends for a while prior to this. i had also broken up with a guy i had been seeing for 3 months 2 weeks prior to the blisters, but i don’t even know if it’s from him or if it was dormant before. is this even a reason i should call the doctor again? since i also don’t want to waste anyone’s time and i can’t help but feel somewhat private about this. even though im posting publically online, for some reason “express mastodon” makes me feel like i have some privacy on this.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/02/10/biden-smoking-kits-pipes-addiction/6724719001/
I’m not trying to bash Biden and Harris, and will be voting for them a second time soon… The White House appears to have used misdirection and some fancy pants doublespeak to publicly deny it. Here’s how it really works:
We provide “safer smoking kits” to drug users at no cost to them. What the funding bill and resulting grants said is that we, the harm reductionists who run programs, get to decide what goes in to our kits. Technically, they’re not lying. So yeah, let me tell you how the White House is able to honestly say that they don’t fund crack pipe distribution.
Our crack kits don’t technically contain assembled crack pipes… In order to make a crack pipe, a user has to put the screen or Brillo pad (we provide both) in the glass stem in order for it to meet the legal definition of “crack pipe”. It takes about ten seconds to assemble one, and we give them out usually about 5 at a time, depending on how much crack a person smokes. The max I’ve ever given out was 50, to a guy who had an eighth a day habit and was pretty damn wealthy. They get to choose, and they understand that our stock is limited, so they only take what they need. We don’t ask for names or IDs. It doesn’t matter if you’re broke or a millionaire, we serve all drug users and the people who surround them.
Our kits aren’t just EZ-Build crack pipes; we give them lip balm (as crack pipes can get very hot with obsessive use or if it’s being used by multiple people), little wood pusher sticks which help them use crack more efficiently, rubber mouthpieces which prevent burns and disease spread, new lighters, and a few other knick nacks.
We give everyone narcan as well, so they can save their opioid user friends should one get a bag of dope that’s heavy on the fentanyl. Or if they somehow find pure heroin, which was hard to come by when I was using fifteen years ago. In those days, only paramedics carried narcan! Now your friendly neighborhood crackhead carries it as well, thanks to democrats like me!
But what about meth users, you might ask? What about people who smoke fentanyl? Do they get government funded pipes too???
Yes. Totally taxpayer funded, although we do have other grants and donations. The meth kits are pretty much the same, only with taxpayer funded meth pipes instead of crack pipes. For fentanyl smokers, we have hammerhead pipes. We also have clean sheets of aluminum foil with fresh straws for folks who smoke heroin.
We also do needle exchange… Until a few years ago, it was a one for one syringe exchange, but now we give out boxes of a hundred along with sharps containers to anyone except the diabetics trying to get free medical supplies from us… Hell, even then we give them out even though our grants specify drug users as recipients. We dispose of sharps containers, and we make our clients promise to use them to minimize needle stick injuries. We have contracts with a medical waste company, as do all other needle exchange programs.
My ultimate point here is that HELL YES WE GIVE OUT CRACK PIPES THAT ARE FUNDED BY TAX DOLLARS, and we save lives by doing it. That’s not just a bold claim; harm reduction has been studied, a lot (in part because young liberals going in to allied or public health hear the bizarre and ostensibly false things that some ultraconservatives say about harm reduction and love proving them insane using actual large sample scientific studies), and continues to be studied at the most reputable colleges you can find.
So yeah, AMA. And no, I’m not going to send you pipes or syringes. We only distribute to residents of the city I’m in!

⚠️TW: CHILDHOOD SA/R*PE, POTENTIAL VERBAL ABUSE, POTENTIAL MENTAL ABUSE, DRUG USE, ALCOHOLICS ⚠️
So I (18f) live with my grandmother (62f) and my mother (46f). Now, because it’s kinda relevant, my grandmother is sober she only drinks on occasion and hasn’t been drunk in years, I smoke weed as I use it to treat my epilepsy and anxiety caused by my epilepsy and have been doing so since 13 but everything else from other drugs to alcohol doesn’t interest me I see no point, my mother takes pills like Xanax basically anything that will put her to sleep she smokes cigarettes as well as weed and has been an alcoholic since 16 and has tried multiple times to be sober. The longest she’s been sober from alcohol was 4 years back when I was 6-10 when she met her ex husband (who was an ex meth addict and left us for meth, ironic) but every other time she’s been sober from alcohol it’s been off and on for short periods of time. Now, to clarify my mother is a victim of r*pe, from ages 4 to 14 she was assaulted by her carer and beaten by her other carer. She finally escaped and went into the Australian childcare system when she was 12 but her carers still had unsupervised visits with her until 14. She went to mandatory therapy for 25 years. Had her first child at 16, her second at 19 and me her last at 24 all with the same man my father a commercial fisherman who was abusive emotionally, physically and financially. So basically my mother has been through hell and has never felt loved.
In 2018 my mother got back in contact with a guy she went to school with, let’s call him Greg. Greg is divorced, an alcoholic, a typical metal head, had diabetes type 1, is the baby of his family and still lives with his sister and her husband. Mum was pretty rocky at this time, one moment she wanted to be better then the next she was giving up saying nothing works. In 2020 my mother and I moved in with my grandmother her mother. She was still with Greg and still super rocky so I left and moved in with my father for 6 months then moved back in with my mother and grandmother. Her and Greg were going through some issues, me and mum become kinda close at this time. She’d vent to me and stuff. So basically he kept saying he was going to buy them a place then would go back and say he wanted her to move in with him and his sister.
Now, 3-4 weeks ago he broke up with her because there was this wedding they were meant to go to with his family but his mum invited his ex wife (his family hates us) and his sister said she could sleep in Greg’s room and replaces Greg’s photos of him and my mum of old photos of Greg and his ex wife. For the first day or two mum just drank and popped pills, she was really depressed. Then she got better, she got into this health kick. She stopped drinking and started saying she wasn’t interested, she was working out and going on walks, talking about all this super healthy stuff. She was doing great, for the first week I doubted it would last so just ignored her. I was kind of rude that week because frankly I was tired of her shit, I knew were this was going and hated her for it. The second week I started to help her, we were declutterring her room and everything. I was hoping since it lasted a week it might last and maybe I can have a real actually loving relationship with my mother. This week? She said to me last night as she was on her 5th double shot can of Jack Daniel’s she was done, she said she was tired of not seeing the results and was giving up.
This really hurts me, I’m moving out soon. My original plan before Greg left was to move out and cut my family off, I’ve spent my life trying to make them love me only to realise two things. They love the me they want me to be and you can’t force people to love you, no matter how much you love them. When my mum started to do better I said to her “I hope you know this is your last chance to have a relationship with your last child” (to clarify, my sister her oldest cut contact only to go backwards and keep talking to mum, my brother her second cut contact and only speaks to her through our sister usually for money) and I was really hoping she’d be better and I wouldn’t have to cut her off. Since she’s been going back into her pit I’ve been a bit frustrated and been giving her a bit off shit I know she DOESNT appreciate. I give her looks when she mentions alcohol or I say things like “are you sure you want to do that👀”. Now I’m kind of planning on cutting her off again.
Basically, what I want to know is would I be the asshole for cutting her off? Would be the asshole for not cutting her off? I’ve always said I want to be better than my parents or siblings. As humans we are hypocrites, we are selfish but my family are also two faced and loveless. As humans we are also selfless and kind and I will be what my family can’t be. But I know they have hearts even if they aren’t sure how to use them, but who am I to tell someone how to use their heart. They aren’t loving me the way I want to be loved but am I loving them the way they want to be loved, but is that their job? Is that my job? I want to do the right thing by me, but to do that I can’t hurt anyone, and that’s just not possible. How do I leave them knowing I love them still?

I am an empath. I am a mother and sister. My daughter is getting married this month. It's one of those $1,000 a plate event. My daughter finally told me that she doesn't want me to be at her wedding. She thinks I could ruin her day. Speaking up for myself, I have never ruined any of my daughters celebrations. And she couldn't even tell me of an example of anytime I have ruined her day.
I now am finally no contact with what is left of family. But, yesterday my daughter sent me a happy mother's day text. I thought to myself, now THAT is crazy. It was the first time I read from my daughter with utter what is this thought.
I come from (you guess it) a deeply malfunctioning narcissistic sociopathic family. Yes, I feel like I am the scapegoat.
Fellow empaths, can you relate or understand the fact that after my daughters rejection of me, that once I had cried some, I was and am calmer than I have ever been in my entire life. I am more me than them, ever. I feel no losses. There was nothing to lose. I survived horrendous psychology abuse and other types. I have not had one panic attack since being discarded. I'm safe in my own skin and my senses have integrated peacefully. I instinctively know my environment. I feel no fear. The conditions placed upon me by others are GONE. I also had canker sores in my mouth that would not heal, even with prescription medications. I had have them for 2 months.
The day after my daughters discard... I noticed that my canker sores completely disappeared. I have always noticed my mind/physical health. Also, I went through a long time of biting my own tongue repeatedly. After two decades of that, it finally stopped the same day as canker sores did.
Undoubtedly, I have witnessed bigger and stronger forces within me. I am not shocked by it but some things need no recognition. Thank you for listening.

I did EASE expansion with Dr. Kasey Li. This is what my EASE experience has been like.
This is a pretty niche and long post, but I’ve been going through this expansion process as a 32 year old woman, going through my first week of expansion. I figured I’d share my experience as I know how much I was eating up these posts during my research. I also made a video that's a bit less detailed if that is more digestible.
Here is a breakdown of my experience day by day.
Day 0, Wednesday:
Had surgery at Stanford hospital and aside from a mild billing heart attack they gave me, it was a great experience. Kind, knowledgeable staff, great bedside manner. After surgery I woke up and could immediately breathe better. Nasal breathing feels like moving from a coffee straw to a regular size straw. Swallowing and talking were out of the question with the TPD in my mouth though. Took about 90 minutes to wake up and then I was released.
The first night was ROUGH. I maybe slept for 4 hours. Woke up repeatedly with bleeding. Finally stopped trying to sleep and reached out to Dr. Li at 6 am because my mouth was FULL of congealed blood.
Day 1, Thursday:
I was supposed to have my first follow up appointment on Friday, but due to the bleeding Dr Li came in bright and early at 6:30 am. He responded to my 6am text within 5 minutes and was like “How soon can you get to my office? I’ll be there”. We rushed over and he gave me some local anesthetic injections and cauterized the surgical site. He made sure I was very comfortable and that the bleeding had stopped before sending me home. The rest of the day went pretty smoothly. Swelling got much worse this day. Had to ice pretty much constantly to keep it down. Definitely uncomfortable but I had really good pain management.
Day 2, Friday:
Had my official follow up appointment and he turned the device for the first time. Turning was weird but not painful. Gave me some more injections as I had had a bit more bleeding on the opposite side. The swelling got intense this day. My cheeks were huge and hot and I was having a bit more jaw pain. Dr Li said my pain and swelling would peak around 48 hours and that was definitely the case. I just took my meds, rotated between ice and heat and overall had a smooth day with some bleeding again over night.
Day 3, Saturday:
Woke up with more (but far less) congealed blood in my mouth. Texted him at 9:20 AM to see what I should do and he texted back immediately saying meet me at the office at 10. Performed injections to stop the bleeding, cauterize, rinse and repeat. He sends me home. Still eating only a liquid diet. Still swollen. But not uncomfortable like it was. Not really icing much at this point, mostly focusing on heat, and feeling pretty human. Can go on walks and had a tiny bit of pasta (the most solid food I’ve had at this point). There is a tiny bit of bleeding at one point but it stops quickly and I go about my day pretty much normal and for the first time have no bleeding through the night!
Day 4, Sunday:
Slept great, no blood. Swelling still very present but going down. Was able to walk around, get around the city, virtually no jaw pain until about 4 pm when truly out of nowhere my incision site where the appliance is placed starts bleeding AGAIN. I quickly try to gently catch the blood by packing in gauze trying to stop the bleeding and avoid going into the office as it was Mother’s Day.
It bleeds through the gauze for 1.5 hours and I finally reach out to Dr. Li. He once again responds almost immediately and tells me I can come into the office or try and stop it, but that his preference is always to see patients in person. I try to get it to stop for about another hour with a couple false stops, but I’m unsuccessful yet again, so I make my way to the office where he meets me at almost 8:00 PM. He is very kind and understanding and just says “Shit happens, I’m there for my patients”.
He injects me, cauterizes it again, tells me I should stop talking advil as that can be an anticoagulant and is just very kind and understanding. I was supposed to have my second follow up on Monday morning, but he turns my device for me for the second time that night instead to try and avoid me having to go into the office again the next day. Turning is still uncomfy but not painful. He waits with me to make sure the site is stable, and then waits with me outside while wait for my ride.
Day 5, Monday:
Woke up with no blood in my mouth, swelling still going down. Pain levels very minimal. Breathing feeling smoother. My left TMJ (which I’ve had issues with in the past is more crackly and sore than usual, so I’m watching that carefully. So far so good. Just staying in bed and hoping to make it through the day/night with no bleeding.
Impressions so far:
I’ve had the most bleeding of any patient Li has had by far. Not totally sure what that’s about, and I’m sad I had to be the first, but the way he responds and handled my case made me SO HAPPY I just spent the money and went with him. No other doctor I've ever had has given me this level of care.
He is expensive, but he is worth EVERY penny because when you’re his patient, you feel like a priority. I traveled for the procedure (meaning 3 weeks away from home) and was really out of my element and comfort zone and had more complications than most of his previous patients (he said about 5% have repeat bleeding after surgery, but that the amount I had was an anomaly.)
My breathing is better, and will continue to improve as I expand. Even with the TPD device in that is taking up most of my palate, I have so. much. more. space for my tongue. It feels really good! My bite is weird now that my upper jaw is larger and that’s going to take some getting used to. And my TMJ is a bit sore.
Things to avoid week 1:
No straws. No vigorous exercise. No lifting over 10lbs. No hot foods/drinks. No hard/chewy foods. No nose blowing. I’d recommend staying away from herbs like garlic or ginger as they thin the blood I don't know if that was part of my problem, he said sometimes these things just happen and there was nothing I did wrong, but I'd just recommend staying away from any foods that can thin the blood and research them ahead of time. I'm vegan, and now I know that a lot of fruits/veg can thin the blood. So if you're veggie like me or try to eat a lot of "health foods" tread carefully. Have lots of gauze on hand.
Ask me anything. I'm here for another 1.5 weeks and am pretty bored. Happy so answer any questions about Dr. Li or EASE!

I did EASE expansion with Dr. Kasey Li. This is what my experience has been like.
This is a pretty niche post, but I’ve been going through this expansion process as a 32 year old woman, going through my first week of expansion. I figured I’d share my experience as I know how much I was eating up these posts during my research.
Here is a breakdown of my experience day by day.
Day 0, Wednesday:
Had surgery at Stanford hospital and aside from a mild billing heart attack they gave me, it was a great experience. Kind, knowledgeable staff, great bedside manner. After surgery I woke up and could immediately breathe better. Nasal breathing feels like moving from a coffee straw to a regular size straw. Swallowing and talking were out of the question with the TPD in my mouth though. Took about 90 minutes to wake up and then I was released.
The first night was ROUGH. I maybe slept for 4 hours. Woke up repeatedly with bleeding. Finally stopped trying to sleep and reached out to Dr. Li at 6 am because my mouth was FULL of congealed blood.
Day 1, Thursday:
I was supposed to have my first follow up appointment on Friday, but due to the bleeding Dr Li came in bright and early at 6:30 am. He responded to my 6am text within 5 minutes and was like “How soon can you get to my office? I’ll be there”. We rushed over and he gave me some local anesthetic injections and cauterized the surgical site. He made sure I was very comfortable and that the bleeding had stopped before sending me home. The rest of the day went pretty smoothly. Swelling got much worse this day. Had to ice pretty much constantly to keep it down. Definitely uncomfortable but I had really good pain management.
Day 2, Friday:
Had my official follow up appointment and he turned the device for the first time. Turning was weird but not painful. Gave me some more injections as I had had a bit more bleeding on the opposite side. The swelling got intense this day. My cheeks were huge and hot and I was having a bit more jaw pain. Dr Li said my pain and swelling would peak around 48 hours and that was definitely the case. I just took my meds, rotated between ice and heat and overall had a smooth day with some bleeding again over night.
Day 3, Saturday:
Woke up with more (but far less) congealed blood in my mouth. Texted him at 9:20 AM to see what I should do and he texted back immediately saying meet me at the office at 10. Performed injections to stop the bleeding, cauterize, rinse and repeat. He sends me home. Still eating only a liquid diet. Still swollen. But not uncomfortable like it was. Not really icing much at this point, mostly focusing on heat, and feeling pretty human. Can go on walks and had a tiny bit of pasta (the most solid food I’ve had at this point). There is a tiny bit of bleeding at one point but it stops quickly and I go about my day pretty much normal and for the first time have no bleeding through the night!
Day 4, Sunday:
Slept great, no blood. Swelling still very present but going down. Was able to walk around, get around the city, virtually no jaw pain until about 4 pm when truly out of nowhere my incision site where the appliance is placed starts bleeding AGAIN. I quickly try to gently catch the blood by packing in gauze trying to stop the bleeding and avoid going into the office as it was Mother’s Day.
It bleeds through the gauze for 1.5 hours and I finally reach out to Dr. Li. He once again responds almost immediately and tells me I can come into the office or try and stop it, but that his preference is always to see patients in person. I try to get it to stop for about another hour with a couple false stops, but I’m unsuccessful yet again, so I make my way to the office where he meets me at almost 8:00 PM. He is very kind and understanding and just says “Shit happens, I’m there for my patients”.
He injects me, cauterizes it again, tells me I should stop talking advil as that can be an anticoagulant and is just very kind and understanding. I was supposed to have my second follow up on Monday morning, but he turns my device for me for the second time that night instead to try and avoid me having to go into the office again the next day. Turning is still uncomfy but not painful. He waits with me to make sure the site is stable, and then waits with me outside while wait for my ride.
Day 5, Monday:
Woke up with no blood in my mouth, swelling still going down. Pain levels very minimal. Breathing feeling smoother. My left TMJ (which I’ve had issues with in the past is more crackly and sore than usual, so I’m watching that carefully. So far so good. Just staying in bed and hoping to make it through the day/night with no bleeding.
Impressions so far:
I’ve had the most bleeding of any patient Li has had by far. Not totally sure what that’s about, and I’m sad I had to be the first, but the way he responds and handled my case made me SO HAPPY I just spent the money and went with him. No other doctor I've ever had has given me this level of care.
He is expensive, but he is worth EVERY penny because when you’re his patient, you feel like a priority. I traveled for the procedure (meaning 3 weeks away from home) and was really out of my element and comfort zone and had more complications than most of his previous patients (he said about 5% have repeat bleeding after surgery, but that the amount I had was an anomaly.)
My breathing is better, and will continue to improve as I expand. Even with the TPD device in that is taking up most of my palate, I have so. much. more. space for my tongue. It feels really good! My bite is weird now that my upper jaw is larger and that’s going to take some getting used to. And my TMJ is a bit sore.
Things to avoid week 1:
No straws. No vigorous exercise. No lifting over 10lbs. No hot foods/drinks. No hard/chewy foods. No nose blowing. I’d recommend staying away from herbs like garlic or ginger as they thin the blood I don't know if that was part of my problem, he said sometimes these things just happen and there was nothing I did wrong, but I'd just recommend staying away from any foods that can thin the blood and research them ahead of time. I'm vegan, and now I know that a lot of fruits/veg/legumes can thin the blood. So if you're veggie like me or try to eat a lot of "health foods" tread carefully. Have lots of gauze on hand.
Ask me anything. I'm here for another 1.5 weeks and am pretty bored. Happy so answer any questions about Dr. Li or EASE!

Okay, fourth rewrite, I'm making this in hopes that their is someone who can help me in some way. Maybe someone knows the answer to it all and can guide me, though unlikely. I'll just list out all my issues in seperate paragraphs and hopefully their is just someone out their to help, if you can help me just please do, I really need help or at least someone and you reading this and giving me advice would truly mean a lot to me. Anyways
I feel stupid: I honestly feel braindead, I hate my mind so much. Sometimes it's hard to think or do, sometimes I can't think or do. My mind is so numb, everything about my mind just feels wrong and dead. My mind has felt dead for a year or two now and I just wish it was alive, I want my mind to be normol, I want it to actually work. I also want confidence in my mind, any failure or lack of underatanding makes me defeated and feeling like a dunce. Anything I can do I say was just luck or something anyone should know. I don't know if I'm stupid or not but dam I feel like I am the dumbest in a room. I would give it all to be intelliegent, I wish I was smart, well read, well informed, well versed. I so desperately want to know, so desperately want to be smart. I wish I could understand stuff. I just want to be smart and have a bright alive mind, but my mind is so dead and desolate and compared to the rest worthless. I hit myself in my head whenever I'm mistaken or just feel so stupid, and I honestly deserve it. If I were to kill myself my mind being numb and stupid would be the reason or a big reason why, I just want to be smart. You can likely tell just how much of an idiot I am by reading this via grammer, spelling, complaints. That "likely" was meant to be "probaboly" but I'm just stupid and worthless to spell. If there was just a way to be smart and not such a moron, I fucking hate my life.
I have body issues: I without doubt have body issues, the biggest of which is my weight. As of now I am 5,9 (1.7M) and 211lbs (95.7KG), I was 246lbs (111kg) to begin with and it was also my heaviest. Despite losing a good amount of weight I am not happy and have no pride, I'm still fat and thats all I see sadly. I don't want to be fat or skinny, I want to be muscular:big arms, built chest, flat stomach, no abs (don't like them) that sounds appealing, it's what I want. Unfourtunely I as of now can't work to this goal, I don't have money for a gym or equipment, famliy funds can't do it ethier and awhile ago I turned down a weight bench since I wasn't confident, now I regret that choice. I hate being fat so much, and this deep hatred and desperation has led to a embarassing cycle, for two years now I have been downloading images of muscular bodies. They're all drawings or from videogames since I'm to embarresed to have real images and as mentioned it's a cycle, Download and store -> have them and look at them for awhile -> get ashamed of myself -> purge it all -> regret -> repeat. Like stated this has been going for two years and as of now I have ten different images. Apart from weight I also have some other physical insecurites, acne being a big one. I been suffering from acne for years, fifth grade, early sixth grade is when it started so five years of this. It mostly effects my chin and cheeks badly but also effects more of my face, sometimes the acne hurts and it often even bleeds. I hate touching my face and feeling grime and ripping off a bunch of skin and dried shit. I wash every night and try to be frequent with morning witch-hazel but it dosen't relent. I also hate it when it gets mentioned, it is irratating to be reminded and noticed and nobody points it out more then my own mom who also cliams it would go if I just washed. I do, I fucking do! It's not working and you don't understand that! I also have body acne I don't know how to fix, I like sleeping shirtless which I know is the reason, also inconsistent with bedding which isn't right. Even if I did wash sheets weekly it wouldn't be enough, I would still get acne on my body. I just want to sleep shirtless and not get acne, I wish I could find a way. Another insecurite but not really is my height, I don't mind being 5'9/5'10 I mean it's about average height and I beat out my 5'4 father. But I'm sixteen which mean I still have possibilty to get taller and I wonder, will I? If I do, just how tall? Could I reach 6'0+? All of this speculation makes me a bit insecure, also with being fat I look short and round in the mirror which is defeating. I'm secure besides speculation and weight but at the same time I truly want to be taller, I think any man tall or short wishes they were taller, I wish I could break 6'0 that would be cool (to me). But I don't think that will ever happen, my dad is 5'4, my mom is 5'6 I made it 5'9/5'10 and my chart is stagnating, should just stop thinking I'll get taller. Another phsyical insecurite and likely the last one I'll mention unless I think of another worthwhile one is my hair, I'm insecurie of my hairstyle. Or lack of hairstyle, my mom says I have independence in this choice but whenever I make a choice she complains about it. Any agreement is one sided or changed up a little so she likes it. I have always hated my hairstyles over the years, even now and as of now it's ethier her way or a unorgainzied thick mess that will soon be her way. I hate it, wish I could make my own "independent" choice, even if I could my mom would likely hate it and always bring it up which is something I don't want to deal with. My mom is more for short cuts and fades etc, I hate fades and while I do admire short hair have always taken liking to shagger and longer styles, more rugged style. I have also always liked long hair and even wanted it. I used to openly want long hair for a long time but my mom opposed, I tried to convince her but she was opposed. She wasn't only opposed to it she made sure to express that it was gay and feminine etc, etc. She made me close off and forgot the desire but even now she won't let go. She is so sure to tell everyone: famliy, her friends, the hairdresser, hell maybe even strangers, she tells everyone about how much I wanted it and what she thought of it etc. Often I have been embarresed like this while I was right there, I have expressed that this embarreses me and want it to stop mutiple times yet she'll continue almost as if it's purposeful, she will also bring up an old friend T who had long hair as an example of it looking bad. But he didn't take care of it or do anything, most he would do is give into his moms begging and have her brush it. If I had long hair I would actually take care of it and do stuff to it! She also claims I got the idea from him, but no I liked it since elementary being inspired by personal inkling and rock. I no longer want hair but am starting to find styles I really like, but first I need to get my mom to fuck off. And second I would want to grow a beard, which is another issue of mine. I'm sixteen I shouldn't expect a full beard but I have seen peers with actual good facial hair, patchy beards, five o'clocks, some actually have a beard. Then there is me, with some sideburns and a bunch of peachfuzz, I want to be able to grow a beard and the peachfuzz plus sideburns bother me, I want it to actually devlop, I want a beard. I am also worried about devlopment, worried acne will hurt or even stop growth. I'm upset about my lack of growth though I definetly have unrealistic expectations. Lastly with hair is my chest hair, I'm quite hairy and I like it. And I have chest hair but barely and I just wish I had more over a greater coverage, more of a funny insecurite, lol. One more insecurity I forgot about is my voice. I'm loud when talking and my voice isn't as deep as I wish so that sucks.
(copy and paste from older write) I wish I had a father: I don't have a father or any form of father figure, I'm fatherless and it hurts a lot. My father has been out of my life since I was elevenish/twelveish (the peak of covid passed), we kicked him out because he is and was a meth addict in and out of the jail. He was a fuctioning addict so not violent and not as obvious of an addict but the meth still took him over. My mother says she kept him around and gave him so many chances because she wanted him to be in my life as a father. But he was no father when he was around, he didn't parent me, he didn't play his role as a father and guide as a masculine role model, hell he likely didn't even truly care for me. My only memories of him really are going to McDonold's with him, after which he dumpster dived behind the plaza as I begged for us to go back home. Or me wanting to bond with him so he sets up the brilliant idea of dragging me around with his skechy friends, to skechy places, even at skechy times. I don't understand why I knew sooner, guess I was a stupid basterd but I started picking up that my dad was a bad person around fifth grade. By then I quickly found out more and more and tenstion was growing, by eleven we we're going to kick him out but covid struck it's height and our household seemed palpable. But very quickly we said fuck it and threw him to the curb, we weren't going to have it no longer. Soon after around thirteen I was happy that he was gone but slightly disappointed that I no longer had a father (even if he was useless) and I hoped my mom would find someone, not only for herself but for me. By fourteen this really layed in heavy on me and the lack of a father really bummed me out, I got really stupid and desperate using bitlife to create guys then add me and my mom in to create step father famlies even adding step siblings and shit. By late fourteen it was made clear to me by my mom that "we don't need no man" and that she was done with dating. I very well do need a father figure, every child needs one. Hell I as a guy truly need(ed) one, there are so many lessons and things that come from a fatheson relationship that are crucial to a boy and I missed out on them. Hell even when my dad was around I missed out on lessons, I still remember he was tasked to teach me how to tie my shoes but got mad at me struggling and walked away. He refused to help afterward and I refused to try and never to this day learned the proper way to tie, instead I have my own far less efficent method. I missed out on so much by not having a father and it hurts to know that and I just wish I had the knowledge, without a masculine role model I have definetly missed out what it is to be a man and likely am even a loser of a man. I just want a father so badly, I want what a father provides so badly, I want the bond that it comes with. I wish I just had a guy to talk to and bond with, I want a dad just so badly. I wish I had someone who taught me how to change a tire or fish and all that shit, but I'll never have it and it angers me, I am angry to be fatherless, I am angry and lost without a father figure, and I'm jealous. I kind of want to have children when the time comes, I wonder if I'll fail them as well.
Friends: Growing up I was always a bit introverted, I think it was of my nature but was amplafied by life. In elementary I often acquainted myself with people never having any close friends outside my after school program. Jumping to middle school I had a good friend-group but it turned out my good friend T was really an ass and I was pushed out by him in early nineth grade. Later in nineth I met my good friend, my best friend M. This year in tenth I was introduced to a friend named D by M. These are my only two friends and I'm happy with them, though there are a few issues. Not anything major but just a few things, like how we never do anything outside of school. The only thing I really miss about my old friendgroup is that we actually did shit: springs, houses, events, parks, attractions, food. Now me, M and, D don't and have never done anything outside of school and the computer. M likely couldn't do anything because of his famliy and D just seems completely disinterested and worried about money. But I wish we could really do something, sure videogames are fun but it would be fun if we could just goof off somewhere, be stupid. This is really the only general "issue" apart from that no major strain or issue in the friendgroup. But I do have a few personal grievences, starting with D. I think D has a darker side of him, he seems to not respect or care for me and will sometimes show it in nasty ways. He had told both me and M to kill ourselves, he attacks insecurites, he says rude shit, etc. Also with D, we have never truly connected, never gotten to know each other personally. Without M we would be mere acquaintance, M is the only reason why me and D are friends and being alone with each other is mostly silence and maybe him showing me a TikTok. Then M, I have no personal issues with M only small factors of our friendship I'm upset or worried about. Starting off with is school, halfway through this year (tenth) M started a FLVS-hybrid. I am happy for him and it's something we both expressed wanting but now I never really see him. I could see him at lunch but he dosen't really come in and only other time I can see him is leaving campus. I ethier catch him and barely have a conversation worthwhile or he's to far ahead and I got to give up trying to reach him. The only way to talk to my best friend nowadays really is Discord, and that isn't even reliable since his parents are often controlling the WI-FI or taking his stuff away. This means when I do talk to my friend it can suddenly be ended as he disconnects or I can't even. This sucks, it feels like I can't even talk to my best friend that much. But that isn't all, because I'm worried for my friend M. His parents don't sound the best from all he's told me, I won't share his issues but just as an example he didn't have a bedroom for two months. Hearing what we gose through is alreadly dishearting but something that I worry deeply about is him talking sucide. He has talked and half joked about it several times and it's worry, I been trying to discourage but he continues with it so now I'm just trying to ignore it. That is likely the wrong way of handling it but I just don't know what to do. I hope it's always bluff and he moves out and moves on with he can, I don't want him to kill himself.
I'm lonely: I'm sixteen but I'm lonely. I am the only one of my friends who hasn't had a relationship, I am not the most worried about that, I don't want to date just to date, I want to date to love. But hell I still wish I had a relationship, even just a sterotypical high-school one. But what I truly want is true love, I want a woman I love with all my heart and a woman who loves me with all of hers, I want a woman to provide for, to protect, to matter to. I want to marry and possibly have kids. I want to love someone, be there for someone. But will I ever even have that? I'm alreadly a loser who no woman would want and even then from what I've heard, "modren dating is terrible" so what chance do I even have? Will I ever have someone to love? I hope.
School: School makes me so misereble and dead, this place makes me genuinely want to off myself I hate it so much. And it seems to revolve around my whole life, even at home it's all my mom wants to bring up. I just need a break from it all but it seems like it's the only thing in my life, I don't really have anything else. I failed my nineth grade year, I failed since I'm a stupid, worthless peice of shit. But they "passed" me onto tenth, gave me tenth grade classes, test, etc but say I'm still nineth, tell me do nineth grade "remedation" online. Now I'm failing like a worthless peice of shit once again! I wish they held me back to try again but they didn't they just pushed me on, still likely would've failed like a worthless bitch but I could have had a chance. I fucking hate myself I'm so stupid and I hate my school for pushing my stupid ass onward and onward, I should just kill myself at this point. And when I try to reach out to my counselor in any hope for some chance of help the piss poor communcation at this school means it'll take days for a response, I can't even get reliable help over school. Back in middle school I had a GPA in the high 3s, I made honor roll every other quater or so, I had high grades and sucess. But in high-school, in nineth grade I failed with straight Fs and got a GPA of 0.7, now in tenth I have a 1.7 and sometimes get high grades but mostly fail. I just wish I wasn't so stupid, I just wish I was smart and successful at school. But I'm not, I'm a fucking idiot and an embarssment at school. And maybe it would all be okay if it wasn't for the assholes I am surrounded by, my fellow peers of this overcrowded hell hole. Just seems like I can never catch a break with having to deal with people. I just want to be left alone but they're is just always somebody wanting to bother me, harass me. Can sit at a desk then have a bunch of cunts around me, harass me, call me burgundy because of my shirt. Can sit down and be snickered at by the guys in front of me for whatever reason. Sit down and have paper, pencils, even ice hitting me. Sit down and have some imbecible pull up a chair and use my desk as his and block me in my seat because fuck me, am I right? Just want to be left alone but never am, nobody ever dose it's always something. I can't even get respect, not a single bit, just always mistreated. Hell just the other day when I was given my packet I was also mistakenly given the packet of a nearby girl, I get her attention and hand it to her and she just snaches it and mumbles something, because I can't even be respected, I'm worthless. And even when I'm not being directly bothered I got to deal with slow walkers, idiots who don't know how to inconvience everyone else in the halls, the over crowded school. It all fucking sucks I hate it all, everyday I think I'm on the verge of snapping but somehow just have more patience, I don't know how much more of this shit I can or have to endure. At least my mom finally reconsidered my old forgotten pleads for online school and reopened the idea, maybe by some miracle online school will save me and "help me get caught up and ahead" but I doubt it, I'm an idiot who deserves to die. Why am I so fucking stupid, why am I like this? Why must I exist this way?
No hobbies or interest: I used to love a lot of things: reading, history, coming up with things in my head, videogames and, anything really. Now I have grown apathic to it all except videogames and even that dosen't bring much joy. I want to have my old hobbies back but lack the will to return. And I want new hobbies but yet lack will but also lacking knowing what I want to try. I'm lost with my freetime, it's all bleek and I want to fill my life with pastion. I still love videogames, always will but I need more then just gaming, I want more then gaming. I just want something, anything. I don't want to have such a lack of interest, God I fucking hate my life.
I have no future career goals: I'm sixteen and have no idea on what I want to do as an adult, some may say thats okay but it's not, not for me at least. I want to have a goal in the adult world, and even if that goal led to a path I don't like then I can always go down another path. Despite having no idea on what to do I at least know I don't want to be in an office. I could handle an office job, and be content with an office job but an office job isn't me, it isn't what sounds interesting, I would likely do blue collar or be my own boss. Some jobs I've considered and would do still are: police, SWAT police, house flipper, 911 operator, port worker, mechanic or something tinkeassemble like, enterpuner my book, film and games ideas or, open a store or bar or something. These are some jobs I've considered in the past that I would still see myself doing, I have also pondered over military/reserve but not sure. My childhood dream career that I still have a desire for is SWAT but I don't think I have what it takes, in fact I don't think I have what it takes for anything. I think all my life is destined to is dying homeless on a street corner, it's all I'll ever be "worthless".
I had so much planned, now failed: At age fourteen I planned to by now have a license, a job, a banking account, start savings. I planned to lose weight, I planned to have an idea outside of school, I had a plan. But I'm just a worthless peice of shit and a failure to myself, I don't even have a permit, no job, no savings, still fat, have no idea about the future, I failed myself.
Fidgeting: I can't stop but want to, at school I can't help but twiral a pencil around. I do it all the time at school but been trying to stop, I hate doing it. Worst part is I'm being immated by worthless cunts by it which is annoying. I want to stop this.
Masterbation addiction: I have a severe and low life addiction to masterbation. I do it at least once a day and sometimes mutiple times a day. The longest I was ever able to refrain was just a little over a week and only failed because I got bored. I need to jerk it to be able to sleep unless I'm desperately tired but even then. Also since I "need" it to sleep I regulary soil my sweatpants then sleep in it which is nasty. I can't control this vice, this low appetite and I'm deeply unhappy about it. Also unhappy that I might be ruining my endurence, a bit TMI but just another reason why this is harmful. I want to refrain or atleast drasticly cut out this pratice and fix myself.
I likely have more issues eating me inside as I waste away as a shell of a person but I can't really think of them. I am told my mom is looking into thearpy so that might be nice. Please just help me, I'm so lost and broken, I sometimes consider just ending it all but I just hope it can get good.

AITA for leaving the house for the night after my wife told me she said "hello" to someone that once tried extorting money out of me.
Bit of context, I used to be a drug addict. (mainly meth) I am now clean for over 8 years, yada yada. When I was using, one of the jobs I would do was drive prostitutes around in exchange for drugs.
One of the girls and me got way to comfortable, not physical or anything. Just spent too much time together. Well we got into a fight one time and she ended up getting her gang member uncle to "sort me out"
Nothing ended up happening, he just spent the next 4 days bombarding me with threatening texts and phone calls. Saying I now owed him for all the time I spent with his niece????
Anyway I ended up getting clean and fast forward to now I have a very normal life with a normal wife and 2 year old son.
Now my wifes father is a bit on the dodgy side, nice enough guy and my son loves him. It just turns out his best friend is the same gang member that tried to extort money out of me all those years ago.
I tell my wife about our "history", she says its OK just thank god I'm not in that lifestyle anymore.
Well the other night I come home from work and she says "Oh my dad video called, I finally got to meet his gang member mate"
I said to her calm but very firmly "I'm not happy about that"
She then says "OMG, F**k this relationship" and gets up to walk out of the room.
I say "fine I'll leave"
She says "Bye"
I completely lost the plot, got so mad. I felt so disrespected. I called her all sorts of names and went to stay at my parents. I should note I have bi-polar and I had been neglecting my medication.
I wouldn't have raged that bad had I been on my medication.
I felt like I might have loved her more than she loved me. Anyone in her past that's done her wrong I instantly hate, but it doesn't seem to work the other way.
In our conversations afterwards she said "he's never done anything wrong to me so why should I hate him?"
I know I'm in the wrong for neglecting my medication. Nobody needs to deal with my bi-polar rages.
But...
AITA for having a problem with her not respecting me?
Anyways she is gone now and we are working on how to co-parent.

Will I be able to get my IT career back on track at 30 years old after an insane meth addiction? How can I best explain a 6 year employment gap?
Can you give me some advice bros. I'm 30 years old and 31 months clean from meth. I have a bachelor's degree in IT 6 months of internship experience and 3 months of help desk experience. I haven't worked since 2018 because of my addiction. I am waiting until the fall to fully recover my brain to apply for jobs again. What is the best way to explain the gap? Are the core concepts of IT still the same? I've been around tech and fixing computers my whole life so I learn fast. Please give me some hope bro. I want to get my career in IT back on track
Also which is a good route to take in IT? People say to do help desk for 2 years than jump to system admin.

Will I be able to get my IT career back on track at 30 years old after an insane meth addiction? How can I best explain a 6 year employment gap?
Can you give me some advice bros. I'm 30 years old and 31 months clean from meth. I have a bachelor's degree in IT 6 months of internship experience and 3 months of help desk experience. I haven't worked since 2018 because of my addiction. I am waiting until the fall to fully recover my brain to apply for jobs again. What is the best way to explain the gap? Are the core concepts of IT still the same? I've been around tech and fixing computers my whole life so I learn fast. Please give me some hope bro. I want to get my career in IT back on track
Also which is a good route to take in IT? People say to do help desk for 2 years than jump to system admin.

Will I be able to get my IT career back on track at 30 years old after an insane meth addiction? How can I best explain a 6 year employment gap?
Can you give me some advice bros. I'm 30 years old and 31 months clean from meth. I have a bachelor's degree in IT 6 months of internship experience and 3 months of help desk experience. I haven't worked since 2018 because of my addiction. I am waiting until the fall to fully recover my brain to apply for jobs again. What is the best way to explain the gap? Are the core concepts of IT still the same? I've been around tech and fixing computers my whole life so I learn fast. Please give me some hope bro. I want to get my career in IT back on track. Is it okay if I don't know every single thing?
Also which is a good route to take in IT? People say to do help desk for 2 years than jump to system admin.

Will I be able to get my IT career back on track at 30 years old after an insane meth addiction? How can I best explain a 6 year employment gap?
Can you give me some advice bros. I'm 30 years old and 31 months clean from meth. I have a bachelor's degree in IT 6 months of internship experience and 3 months of help desk experience. I haven't worked since 2018 because of my addiction. I am waiting until the fall to fully recover my brain to apply for jobs again. What is the best way to explain the gap? Are the core concepts of IT still the same? I've been around tech and fixing computers my whole life so I learn fast. Please give me some hope bro. I want to get my career in IT back on track
Also which is a good route to take in IT? People say to do help desk for 2 years than jump to system admin.

This is all short form as I can make it. When I was 15 years old, I was a little skinny skater kid, was bullied a lot. It was my first year of highschool. (Grade 9, Ontario.) I was bullied horrendously. The county kids would golf club shotgun shells at my face while I would skateboard down the hill after lunch break. It bugged me, but I always had the picture perfect mother and father household to return to. I grew up with perfect parents. I was polite, I was determined, I didn’t let anybody stop me. Then my father starts acting strange. He starts acting childish. And while our humour together is immature, this was a grown man acting like a child. It was scary and started kind of suddenly. I come to find he has a brain tumour as my mom tells me. She always would bring me in to help her fold clothes when she had bad news. Anyways, some time goes by. We learn it is a brain tumour. Some times goes by, we learn it is stage 4 cancer. He didn’t smoke, he would only drink during cookouts with neighbours or watching new episodes of the clone wars animated tv show with me on Fridays. Anyways, he progresses, it becomes nightmarish. The man I knew was already dead at one point. It was like his brain cancer was a parasite. I started to become very dark as a person, and detached. He would watch me play Nintendo 64 with his legs shaking violently, not understanding why I was shooting stormtroopers in the game. I told him they are stormtroopers dad remember? The empire? Over time it became a blur from this point. From what I remember that my brain lets me, he was in hospice, sickly, moon faced, like I was watching cancer take over his body and taunt me. I became addicted to crack cocaine , I didn’t take school seriously anymore, I was around violence, meth, constantly partying and hanging with people twice my age or more and started owing debts. I somehow always managed to weasel my way out with sales from my beatmaking hobby. I completely destroy myself for years, stopped attending school, my mother and I were a team, but I constantly worried her. Hard drugs had taken me over. I lost my sense of reality because I didn’t want to think about my father being wheeled out lifeless. Hugging his cold body one last time at the funeral before he was buried. Fast forward, I have been discharged from the phych ward due to a suicide attempt at 18. I still have my cheo bear even though I was old it brings me comfort. His name is Gus. Years of alcoholism follow. Because after my cheo incident weed would make me shake violently. We now come to present day. I am 24. My mother has remarried with a stepfather. He has learned to ease up around us as he grew up a different way. I started adult high-school last year and just passed my math exam. The alcoholism still exists but only once a weekend. It seems I may have developed diabetes from it but it’s not concrete. It’s hard especially with women explaining how you are starting your fifteen year old life at 23-24 but you know what? It’s never too late. Life certainly has a lot more pain in the future as any adult life does. But a life of being a man completely formed by a traumatic event is rough, underneath that is all of the great heart my father taught me. His last words he spoke were “be grape” it sounds silly but that’s his brain cancer. You could tell there was a frustrated man beneath who could no longer express himself. And he meant be great as my mother said. And I will not die until I am. It is never too late, to be great. ❤️

So, a little background. I (33m) and my ex (29f) dated for about 3 years, and it just didn't work out. But we have maintained a pretty good friendship since ending the relationship over a year ago. My ex's father passed away when she was around 17 due to alcoholism. From her father she has 5 half siblings. The youngest one (brother), I'll call P, is now 14. P's mother has been addicted to drugs (meth, coke, and pills) and alcohol all of P's life. They have been homeless since his father passed away when he was around a year old. His mother, I'll call S, has exhausted all local resources such shelters, public services, and such due to breaking the rules and continuing to use drugs. I don't know how her two youngest children have never made it into the system; but her older 4 had been taken away when they were very young and put into the foster system. Anyways, S and P have been homeless, living in motels when possible, shelters when possible (before they stopped allowing her), staying at whatever rando's place they can, and sleeping storage units and in S's car when she had one (she no longer does). S has had multiple CPS reports made over the years but her two youngest children have always been left in her care. S is known to leave her kids of days at a time and be under the influence in front of them often. Also, S did not care about P's schooling. He would miss weeks of school at a time, would be failing every class possible, and was basically on the path of becoming a high school drop out in the next few years.
My ex finally got herself in a position where she is able to take on the care and responsibility of P. He had shown interest in living with her and wanting to better his own life. So, for the last 7 months P has been living with my ex, and I have been doing what I can to be supportive and a good male role model for P (I go to all of his sports tournaments and practices, help him with homework, have "guys nights" where we go to the movies or watch basketball games, facetime or text him a few times a week to check in and ask about his day, etc.). My ex has taken S to court to file for custody (court date is this week). They had a court hearing a few months ago and permeant placement was granted to my ex with visitations for P and S under my ex's discretion. P has not seen his mom in about 6 months. In those months S has maybe called to speak to P less then 8 times. She has done nothing to improve her situation or to show that she is capable of providing for P. She has occasionally sent P erratic messages saying things such as "you're not my son anymore" and other really mentally damaging things you just don't say to your own child. S also has an active warrant out for her plus she recently cut her ankle monitor off.
Despite all this, P really loves his mom. They are very much trauma bonded. Sometimes P will say things about his mom and me and my ex will look at each other because we know it is total BS. But P believes these things because it's what his mom told him. Some of the BS is that S and my ex's and P's dad were married (they were not), that she can't get a job because someone stole her identity (she is the one who committed identity theft, not the other way around), and that her facial tick is from a car accident years ago (but it's actually from the drug use). P is 14 so he is getting to an age where he knows what drugs and alcohol are and he knows the way his life was when he was living with S was not good. But he also will defend his mom no matter what. We do not bad mouth his mom in front of him. But we do try to ask questions to get him to realize things on his own and connect the dots. P knows his mom is using but has started feeling guilty and thinks if he was with S she would not be using and drinking as much. My ex tried to explain that with or without him there S would still be doing these things, she just doesn't do them right in front of him; and also that S is an adult and makes those poor decisions on her own. P is constantly stressed and worried about his mom and her substance abuse. He feels responsible for her despite knowing living with his sister gives him the best opportunity of being successful in life. He has been going to school consistently, he has no failing grades, he is playing organized sports and has a stable home environment for the first time in his life. But the longer his been living away from his mom, the harder it gets on him mentally. With court coming up this week I think its waying more and more on him and things that he didn't want to believe (that his mom is unfit) are becoming reality and will be backed up by a court of law. We do tell P he will still be able to see his mom once the court situation is figured out, but we are worried for his safety and whereabouts when he's with her and would like her to have some sort of stable place for him to visit her at (a park or McDonalds would even work). We also let P know that he can call/facetime his mom any time he wants but he rarely asks to (just like S rarely calls him).
Anyways, I guess the whole point of this is, what would you say to your younger self if you could? If you read all this and could relate to P then please tell me what the thought process and mindset was for you when you were in that position as a child. I feel like when P is an adult, he will appreciate his sister stepping in to take care of him but right now I know it's hard for him to understand all his feelings towards his mom. It's like he's torn between his mom and a stable life. He knows which is better for him but at the end of the day that's still his mom.

Can you give me some advice bros. I'm 30 years old and 31 months clean from meth. I have a bachelor's degree in IT 6 months of internship experience and 3 months of help desk experience. I haven't worked since 2018 because of my addiction. I am waiting until the fall to fully recover my brain to apply for jobs again. What is the best way to explain the gap? Are the core concepts of IT still the same? I've been around tech and fixing computers my whole life so I learn fast. Please give me some hope bro. I want to get my career in IT back on track
Also which is a good route to take in IT? People say to do help desk for 2 years than jump to system admin.

Can you give me some advice bros. I'm 30 years old and 31 months clean from meth. I have a bachelor's degree in IT 6 months of internship experience and 3 months of help desk experience. I haven't worked since 2018 because of my addiction. I am waiting until the fall to fully recover my brain to apply for jobs again. What is the best way to explain the gap? Are the core concepts of IT still the same? I've been around tech and fixing computers my whole life so I learn fast. Please give me some hope bro. I want to get my career in IT back on track
Also which is a good route to take in IT? People say to do help desk for 2 years than jump to system admin.

Content Warning: Abduction, Child Abandonment, Drug abuse, Suicide
*I do not give my permission for this post to be re-used in any other platform or forum.
I would link to my post history but I think I posted years ago with a throwaway, so I'll try to summarize here. I've been with DH for over 20 years. He went NC with his mother earlier this year after she sent him a series of text messages complaining that he doesn't call her enough, what a bad son he is, and how miserable she is. He ignored her until he couldn't anymore and then called her to tell her off. She immediately hung up on him and they haven't spoken since. She abandoned him and his brother when they were children to run off to Mexico to be with her boyfriends, kidnapped them from their father (they were literally on milk cartons). DH is still dealing with the trauma of his upbringing, his little brother became a severe meth addict and committed suicide over ten years ago. She has only met my child once. I agonized a lot over that visit and it went pretty much how I expected it...that was over five years ago and she hasn't been back to my house, which has suited me just fine!
I haven't spoken to her in years. DH told me a couple of years ago that she had changed and wanted to "apologize" to me, but couldn't for the life of her remember what she did to make me so angry (there's too much to go into it now), and I said nope, that wasn't an apology, and when she had a clear memory of the way she had treated me and wanted to be accountable for it, maybe I would reconsider my position. I told him what I really needed was not to have a relationship with her, and he agreed and then a couple years later, finally followed suit after she had a few more psychodramas and proved me right. I've never tried to pressure or convince him to go NC, I knew that was a decision he needed to make on his own, but I fully support his decision to finally cut her off. We almost never talk about her and life is generally peaceful.
Until last night. My phone dings around midnight and there is a text from a number from her state (which thankfully is all the way across the country) and I know immediately from the area code who it is. It says in Spanish "I don't have to prove anything to you," which I find weird because I don't really speak much Spanish and she knows it, and a link to one of those sappy reels, also in Spanish, the gist of which says "let them lose you… you don’t owe it to anybody to explain the great person that you are." Right on brand for her, because nothing is ever her fault. I didn't reply and blocked the number, but then after a night of no sleep, I stewed about it and finally decided to unblock her and go off via text:
"You're absolutely right, MIL! You don't have to prove anything to me. If I ever want to remember what kind of person you are, I only need to think of the last 22 years, my traumatized husband, and my dead brother-in-law. You've done an EXCELLENT job showing me exactly who you are, so please, never trouble yourself about that...I've had your number for years!
What I will never be able to understand is a woman who has managed to alienate her entire family, including her two grandchildren, burn almost every bridge of friendship possible, and yet STILL has convinced herself that she is not the problem. She will literally choose estrangement with her only living son rather than do the necessary work to heal and be accountable for her mistakes. Absolutely anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid admitting that she has behaved like an utter spoiled child and has inflicted terrible harm on the people who loved her the most. That level of obstinate lack of repentance takes some real commitment...quite impressive!
I wish you the best of luck on your desperate quest to remain a perennial victim and convince yourself that we're all crazy and none of it is your fault, ever. I'm sure you'll find an endless supply of TikToks, YouTube videos, Instagram reels, Facebook groups, and self-help books created by your fellow Boomers, so feel free to continue indulging your delusion that you are a wonderful person, but kindly do not ever disrupt my peace again to share with me. I'm simply not interested, and believe me, MIL. I see you. I don't ever need any help from you on that front."
Two decades of trying to be diplomatic, kind, and then silent were enough. I know that none of it will land for her or have no delusions that she'll do any kind of self-reflection, but it felt good to finally say it. And frankly, that's what she gets after waking me up and costing me a night of sleep! #isaidwhatisaid

People say it's childish to be afraid of the dark. They say it's a symptom of an overactive imagination. And yet the same people- all people- know that you don’t go out at night, not without light or charm. And everyone knows, instinctively, in the marrow of their bones, that you don’t go out on a moonless night.
I had been out on a moonless night for days. Most people can’t tell, but once you're trained, you can- Darkness loves darkness. She likes to stretch her time out as long as she's possibly able. Everyone wants to spend time with kindred spirits. It’s nature, human or otherwise.
There’s nothing I can do about it, so I do my best to enjoy it. After all, you have to pick your battles, and my gun makes it pretty easy to figure out which ones I can win. She's a lovely gun. Big, which is fine with me, because I need all the power she can muster. Nine custom rounds rotate through, each enchanted by my own self. Not as effective as a professional enchantment, but I get by, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.
The only light came from the muzzle flare of my pistol. They smothered my campfire long ago, leaving me with only the vaguest sense of where they were, occasionally silhouetted against the trees when I fired. They were big, looming over me, high into the crooked trees and the moonless sky behind them. Who could say how long tonight would last?
I try not to cast on Nights, because it just acts like more of a beacon than I already am, but sometimes it just can’t be helped. My chest burned as I threw up a Buffer against a sudden wave of creatures, but they tore it down before it hardly had time to help. I bit down and cast a Warding, felt my arm burn harshly in the wild energy of the new moon and felt the following cold cut its way through my flesh and deep into my bones. Popping the spent rounds out with my right hand, my left knitted itself into the Ward shape automatically, trained by years of habit. Now I’ve really done it, I thought, because I could practically sense them perk up from miles off, even without casting a Seeing. It worked, though, and I was given brief respite for my efforts. I’d sure as hell pay for it in about 10 minutes, but for now I needed to stop bleeding and deal with the sensation of a drill pressed to the back of my skull.
“Skippers,” I growled. I hated Skippers.
The problem with Skippers is they’re small, harder to notice than anything else, and instead of trying to take off your head they try to get into your head. From there they can do whatever they want while you watch- make you walk off a cliff, bite off your own tongue, flay yourself alive. Like I said, whatever they want, and they're usually pretty mean. I’d seen them really go to work on all sorts of people, mostly people I knew and trained with. Hazards of the job- sorcerous training let you see a whole new world, but it opened you up to the threats that lived there, more so than regular folk. I was in worse shape than most sorcerers, which was part of what put me out at Night in the first place. Luckily, I’m better than most sorcerers, but it still meant I had to be careful.
To get rid of a Skipper, all you have to do is burn them off with a little Light. I'd needed the break- 3 of them dripped out of me right away, and a fourth started to run down my back as it tried to escape.
“Bastard.” I struck it with the handle of the gun as it slithered away. No sense wasting ammo on idiots like that.
The Ward wavered, the Night grew around me, and I hadn't even had time to heal anything. Damn.



Sam watched from behind the counter as the man walked through the door. Under the door, rather, as he had to duck to keep from hitting his head. He was pale, very pale, unlike the merchantfolk that usually came through the inn. His face was covered by a bushy beard, his hair was long, and his eyes were rimmed with red, but he could certainly be no older than 40. It was strange- for someone to come in so early in the morning, and look so tired- he must have been traveling all night, but he had no horse to be stabled.
The stranger was an armory- small blades and strange, bulbous jars jutted out from pockets and packs all over the man, daggers strapped to his legs, and even metal nubs in the knuckles of his gloves. What caught Sam's attention, though, was the man's huge gun, strapped tightly to his waist. He had never seen a gun that big, and the ammunition the man was carrying in the sacks around his waist must have weighed heavily on him, though he showed no signs of it.
“What does it cost for a room?” His voice did not match the tired, worn image in front of him. It was firm, and had the sound of recent laughter in it.
“Let me get my mom.” Sam began, starting for the back room. He never handled rooms.
“That's alright. You'll do fine. How much?” The man pulled out a purse, smaller than the other bags on his belt, and it was clearly much lighter than anything else he carried. “I’d like to find a bed and use it.” His voice did not betray him, nor did his hands, but the redness of his eyes did. They were a startling blue, and they seemed to contain nothing except exhaustion.
“I need your name,” Sam remembered as he directed the giant stranger to his room. The man's eyes, just for an instant, darted to one side before returning to Sam.
“Joan,” he said.
“O-kay.” Sam jotted the name down. “Two nights, food at 7 and 7, anything else you pay for.” He began to walk the man down the hall. “Strange accent. Are you from Melano, or Baden?” He didn’t really know what those accents sounded like, but he knew they were far from Newmark.
“No.” Joan walked into the room indicated with no further comments.
Sam stopped at the door while the man called Joan dropped his bags to the floor. “What kinda gun is that?”
“Mine,” he said simply, as he unbundled it’s holster from his belt. “I make the ammunition myself most of the time.”
“It's impressive. My paw was a soldier, and he showed me his old gun once, only it was a lot smaller than yours, and all rusted out besides, but-" Sam stopped as the man removed his cloak. There was a bright gash, still oozing dark blood, working its way up the man's side behind the thick leather plates. “Holy cripes! You oughta see a doctor, sor!”
Joan gave no indication that he could even feel the wound, nor did he instantly react when the boy cried out. “This? It looks a lot worse than it is. Rest, and solitude,” and here he looked at Sam, “will do me more good than any doctor from this town.” He moved to close the door, and against Sam's protest seemed to shut him out with no effort at all.
He ran down the hall to inform his mother of their newest guest.
I didn’t want the kid to see what I had to do next. It really wasn’t that bad- on the outside. Because we put so much ourselves in the spiritual world, the physical world didn’t matter so much. But it’s all tradeoffs. It had cut a pretty chunk out of me spirit-wise, and that hurt worse than any gash could. Really, I was better off than most sorcerers would’ve been with a cut like this- I had less to lose. Doesn’t make it hurt any less, though.
I Worked a minor Healing, but anything more would’ve taken more out of me than I could hope to regain, so the rest had to be resigned to sleep. Stupid. I should never have let anything get that close anyway, but it seemed like the Skippers were going crazy last Night.
I was too tired even to dream. A small blessing.

Waking up was not pleasant- I was stiff and sore, and still hurting something fierce. And cold, of course. Always cold. The physical wound had scabbed over, and I figured I would get away with just a minor scar. My innards were still shredded, but marginally less so than before, so I could breathe without grimacing. I expected I’d be laid out for a few days yet. Lucky, since Night had just passed, so things would be calm for almost the entire month now.
Exhausted as I had been, I had no Wards up, nothing even blocking the door. Nice going. Practically begging for a stray to wander in and eat you. As I flipped the coin I’d lifted off the kid, I examined the room for anything that might have snuck in, but it was clear. This time.
It was around this point that I realized how hungry I was. It had been (what felt like) days without a hot meal, and apparently this podunk little inn could provide, so I wandered out to the main room to see if I could scare up some food.
When the kid saw me, his eyes widened. That’s never a good sign. Recognition meant questions, and the answers to those questions usually meant getting pushed to the next town before I had time to heal. I had been hoping to score a decent meal and a bath, at least.



Sam could hardly believe his eyes. “Criminy, sor, but I didn’t expect you to be up at all! It's barely been a day!” The cut had been bleeding heavily, and very deep, he was sure of it, but now the man was clean and walking as if he had never been injured.
The stranger called Joan sat heavily at a table, ignoring the implied question. “Any chance of a man getting some food around here?” He inquired. “Or, perhaps,” and he glanced at the barrels of ale behind the counter, “some drink?”
San quickly filled him a tankard and plate from supper earlier, then sat himself at the table, as the crowd in the room dwindled down to a late few. The man interested him. He did not seem to interest the man, however, as Joan simply ate and drank in silence, apparently unbothered by his wound. He was still pale, almost deathly so, but Sam had heard tell of people from far north being much lighter than the tanned workers of nearby towns.
“Are you a soldier?” Sam didn’t know much about the war to the south, but occasionally troops passed through, and he had heard his ma talk in the back room about an extra levy because the Northern Kingdoms were allied. “I never saw someone carry so many weapons that weren't a soldier. What are those jars you carry? Is that them new bombs they been talking about? With gunpowder, only you throw the jar so it’s like a cannonshot?” Sam did not know much about weapons, either, but he saw so few soldiers come through that he had to learn what he could, if he was going to join the war when he was of age.
“Sure, kid.” Joan tapped his empty tankard on the table and placed down the coin he had been flipping. Sam ran to fill it up again before sitting back down.
“So did you come from the southern border, where all the fights are? What's happening? Are we winning? We have all kinds of the Northern Kingdoms working together, right? We must be winning!”
“The southern border? No, no, I didn’t come from the southern border,” he snorted. “That whole war is just nonsense anyway. The Northern Kingdoms, in some alliance or another, have had it out for Onis since time began. Maybe even before. The war is just an excuse to keep the money rolling in. Seems like there’s less and less of it than ever.” He mumbled this last part into his cup.
“That’s- that’s not true!” Sam's pa had fought, same as Sam would. “The war is important! Onis could really invade anytime! Besides, you said you were a soldier. If you aren’t fighting in the war, how can you be a soldier?” Joan did not answer, but he reached for his sleeve for a moment as if to roll it up, then seemed to catch himself at the last second. Was he a deserter? “Are you a deserter?” Sam blurted out, realizing a second late that he was pushing his luck. Joan just tapped his mug again.
Sam's ma hurried over. “So sorry for this one, sor, he has a bad habit of being curious.” She cuffed him on the ear and it smarted.
“It's no problem, mam.” The stranger smiled warmly, but in his eyes there was nothing. It was a chilling sensation. “He fills my cup just fine.” His ma dragged him off before Sam could object, and Joan got up before Sam could return.


Broder laughed as he took Flander for another hand. Three hands up, he was, and showed no signs of slowing. He stopped, though, as a big man in a heavy cloak came to the table.
“Deal me in?” His voice, deep and rich, did not match the weathered exterior. The man was no farm hand, that much was clear. More a mercenary sort. Broder glanced around the table, but no one seemed to object outright, so he shrugged. One more fool for the best poker man in the west side of Newmark. “Promise I know the rules.”
“Can you make ante, pal?” Jaten sized him up from across the table, suspicious from the long, ratty hair sitting on his shoulders and the general sense of dirtiness emanating from the man. He didn't notice what Broder had seen- nice leather, warm coat, and firm shoes. The man had some money, at least.
“He's good for it, Jaten. What's your name, stranger?” Broder gestured at the empty space next to him as he began to deal the hands. The stranger threw his ante, and Broder couldn’t hear much left in the purse. The poor ones were easy to sucker in.
“Joan.”
“You from Onis or something, name like that?” Cogen sneered.
“Na, man, listen to his voice, he's from up in Lansing or summat.” Garrett spat. “You're pickin a fight so you don’t have to deal with your shite hand.”
“That's not true, mate! Maybe you ought to keep an eye on your own mess in front of ya!” Cogen threw in extra to compensate. They all knew each other, knew the tics and tells and habits, but this stranger would be interesting.
That was what Broder thought, but as they went round for a few hands, the stranger losing more than he won, it became clear he was just another sucker thinking he could smash the small town guys. He had seemed confident at first- smug, even- but Broder had moved in with a predatory efficiency and would not let up. He offered to buy a round for everyone, apparently hoping for mercy, or to dull them, but the man seemed to be getting a bit red in the nose much faster than the well-seasoned drinkers of the little town of Aren, where there was little else to do but work or drink, or play cards. Broder began to really work on Joan for everything he had left, preparing to take the man for anything he could offer. The game was boring, and Broder needed beer money, so he went to end the man entirely.
What Broder did not expect was for the man to turn his whole plan backwards by dropping a flush when he should’ve had nothing. That cleared the table pretty fast, and Broder noticed the man's nose was really not that red at all.
The hand was nonsense. He couldn't have won, couldn’t have had those cards. “Alright, pal, roll up your sleeves, eh? Just a friendly game, here, after all. No reason to stay all formal-like.” Broder saw the other men nod their approval.
“Are you sure? Isn’t it possible, just a little, that I might be better at the game than you?” Joan smirked, taunting the men.
“Roll those up in here or we'll roll em up for ya out back,” Cogen growled. He was the biggest, aside from the stranger himself, and had a knack for bar brawling.
“Alright. No need to get snippy that I beat you so bad.” Cogen almost stood, but Joan began to roll up his sleeves. Right, then left.
His left arm was covered up to the elbow in fresh burn scars- a bright, angry red. If Broder squinted, he could almost see fine lines tracing letters across the harshly burned skin, but he didn’t have to. He knew what he was looking at.
“You're a bloody wizard, ye stupid bastard!” Garrett exploded. “Ye- ye bastard! You used magic on our all heads, ye did!”
Joan's eyes darkened briefly, but he did not react.
“Garrett's got the right idea- who's to say you weren’t using magic trickery to win the game, eh? Seems like something your lot would do,” Jaten added smartly. “It seems only fair you give us back the money you stole.”
“In the interest of accuracy, I am a sorcerer. Wizards do not leave their little towers and their little books. Besides, if I had used any magic, why would I stop now?” The stranger pointed out. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just leave, or to make you forget you ever saw me?”
“Well- there are 4 of us! Maybe you couldn’t do us in all at once, eh?” Jaten shot back. There was a chorus of affirmation from the group. “Be honorable, man, just give us the money back.”
Joan rolled his sleeves down. “If I had wanted to,” he began quietly, gravel in his voice, “I could make you all give me your land, your wives, and your unborn sons and you wouldn’t even remember your names when I was done. I did not cheat,” he suddenly smiled. “You boys just suck at poker.”
“Now listen here, son,” Broder began. “You may be some wizard from up north-"
“East,” Joan interjected.
“You may be some fancy wizard from up north,” Broder continued, “but don’t think that means you can insult us small-town folk. We might not have your ‘education’ or what have you, but we know from poker.”
Joan sighed. “I am leaving town in two days. Leave me alone for those two days, and I will forget your names, faces, and the name of this backwater town you live in. I did not cheat you.” He looked each of them coldly in the eyes, and Broder saw that all the mirth and cheer that had been there earlier had been drained, replaced with nothingness. Not even hatred, or anger, but simply blank space. The stranger stood up with a groan, signaled for another round of drinks, and trudged to the back of the inn. None of the men followed.


I was lucky none of these farm hicks knew anything about casting, or else they’d have known I was bluffing. It didn’t seem like any of them could actually read my burns, because if they could’ve, they would’ve known I could only cast a couple Bindings, and that’s if I wasn’t hurting like hell.
What was most insulting, more than calling me a wizard, was that they thought I cheated to beat them at cards. I don’t need to cheat at cards. I had slipped a bit of coin out of their pockets as I brushed by, but that was hardly cheating. Just good, honest thievery. And to call me a wizard? I ought to burn down their houses anyway, just for that. I was cold just thinking about it.
Still, I had to accelerate my schedule and leave tonight. I hated to do it, but I needed to be three towns over by the time they decided to kick the shit out of me. Bastards.
Amidst my wrathful musings I became aware of a presence at the door.
It was that kid. What had he seen? I ran the scene over again and realized he had been watching the end from the table he had been cleaning. Sloppy. He'd tell everybody. I couldn’t kill a kid the way I would've those guys in front, and I didn’t want to besides. Kids have always had a hold on me, and it pissed me off. It wasn't like I could remember why. Besides, I didn’t exactly mind the town knowing; it just meant I’d have a tougher time sneaking out, and I was tired enough that it bugged me.
“Sor?” He nudged the door open, but not all the way, I noticed. “I saw your tattoo. What do they mean? My ma said not to ask, but those men seemed pretty upset out there. I asked them and they said you was a wizard, but I didn’t think they were real. Are you a wizard? Are those tattoos your clan or something?” He spoke fast, like he thought I would cut him off, or cut off his head. “What are you doing?”
I spoke carefully to mask my distaste for his questions. “I am not a wizard. Wizards hide in their towers and ask questions nobody is curious about.” I hoped the dismissal would be clear.
It was not.
“If you aren’t a wizard, what are you?”
“What I am right now, kid, is packing, and what I’m going to be in a minute is gone. Scram.” I looked around and realized that aside from the bags I could clip to my belt, I had nothing else with me. Damn.
“Well, whatever you are, sor, I know those marks mean you're bound to help people-" that wasn’t true “-and those men out there maybe won’t tell you, but I will! See, sor, we're in mighty need of a wizard these days, on account of a monster been stealing the livestock and trashing the lumber yards and-" he slowed his speech a bit, but before I could get a word in he continued- “and I think it took the Granlenses daughter, only cause they won’t tell anyone where she went but I haven’t seen her in town at all and she used to come help me with my chores some days and it’s been a long while, maybe a month or so. Anyway, nobody’ll believe me when I tell em, and I haven’t seen it exactly, but I’m sure there’s a monster!”
“Kid, you know not every stroke of bad luck is a monster, right?” People don’t believe in monsters or magic until it’s convenient for them, which means they know nothing about it, which means most of the time they’re just making up stories to get me killed or run off, or else they’re just plain dumb and attribute every case of rainy weather to a made up beast.
“I know that! I just know there’s a monster around here! Look, sor, I’ll help you find it even, and-"
“I charge for my services and I don’t take kids on field trips when I work. Are you going to pay me?” Most of the time, threat of payment was enough to deter all but the most determined, or most superstitious, folk.
“I bet if you kill it the whole town will pitch in! Please, sor, I just wanna help out, and it seems like you could fix us all up only nobody wants to ask.” He wasn’t lying, I could tell, but kids are always seeing things that aren’t there. On the other hand, sometimes kids are better at seeing what’s right in front of them.
And when it turned out to be nothing, it meant I had an excuse to stay an extra night without getting an attempted beating, probably.
“Alright, kid. Where was this monster last?” Hired by a kid who probably couldn’t even get on a horse on his own. If anyone caught wind of this, I’d never hear the end of it.

I grew up in a rural hilly area where there weren't many kids around, but across the road (not a street, this was country), lived Wesley, who was my age. We were playmates by default. His house was up the hill; my house was down the hill. Our front porches faced each other. We rode the school bus together. My great-aunt babysat us both. He was my first "friend" outside of my brother.
In kindergarten, my aunt was babysitting us when my older male cousins begin making fun of Wesley, telling him I was his girlfriend. They dared him to kiss me, and he was eager to prove he was cool. So the boy cousins helped him push me into a closet with him, and Wesley used the giant rubber tarantula toy I was afraid of to force me into kissing him. I cried so hard. My whole family called him my "boyfriend" through elementary school.
Wesley didn't grow up with much hope, and by high school he had a baby, a drug problem, and an arrest record. Still, I cared about him. When you grow up in the middle of nowhere with very few kids, you feel protective of them, even if they haven't always protected you.
I left home at 18 -- went to college and never came back. Wesley did more drugs, more crimes. He was arrested in connection with several murders, including a neighbor and a toddler. He was in and out of prison constantly. He cooked meth in the barn and beat his mother. I would visit home and he would wave from up on the hill.
My parents began talking about the likelihood that he would eventually break into their home, looking for guns or drugs. They were realistic about the possibility of having to shoot him, though they obviously didn't want to.
A few years ago, his cousin (also a neighbor) was home from surgery and healing. He broke into her home, beat her, then tried to rape her. She was badly hurt but managed to hit him hard enough with her crutches to escape him and call the police.
Within a few months, it came to be known in the community that Wesley was raping his elderly mother regularly in their home. She admitted to it and said it was easier to "let it happen" than to try and "keep him off." Wesley admitted to it during one of his stays in prison. No charges ever came about.
Last year, he began watching my parents' house more obviously. Then following my mother on her walks. Then acting more menacing, coming onto their property and damaging things. He was perching under trees at our neighbor's house so he could look in the windows at night, including my mother's bedroom.
My mother began wearing a pistol 24/7 within the home. She's 62. Finally, he was arrested for stalking charges, and the sheriff said he'd be in for a year.
Somehow, he got out early. Today, he's on his porch, watching my parents' house. They talked to the sheriff and the county attorney, both of whom said, more or less, "If you shoot him, no one will care. Just make sure you shoot him plenty of times."
I'm in another state, researching exterior cameras and trying to find the time to drive 6+ hours down to them so I can install these. Not to prevent anything, really, but to document it. And I keep having flashbacks to that rubber tarantula in the closet.
He's just one of them. There were more. There was David, who pretended to be the friend of my deceased brother but took me out to the woods. There were the old perverts who came into my fast food job as a teenager to say dirty things, and the one who tried to pull me into his car through the drive thru window. Junior, who wouldn't hear no.
Bears aint shit in comparison to the evil that lives in some men.

PART 3

Max woke in the night to a plinking sound. He had fallen asleep crying over Scat, treat bag and collar on the table in full view. His eyes were blurry and sore, his nose was runny and sore and the nature channel was his distraction. Ruth was letting off a lovely glow and it warmed him to think of Scat so lovingly curled around her, day in and day out. He let out an almost-sob. He didn’t want to give her back. Didn’t want to wake up.
Eventually Max pried one eye open and surveyed the room. TV still on, duvet still over him, the floor wasn’t wet and the ceiling wasn’t leaking, so where was the…
Plink.
Ruth.
Max sighed and rolled over, the duvet making a break for the floor before being dejectedly scooped up again and deposited back across his lap. The small cloud of Scat’s fur wafted off the floorboards and turned Max’s heart. He contemplated going back to the escape of sleep, but finally sat and rubbed his eyes, held his aching head in his hands for a moment and, dropping his hands and lolling his head back, Ruth came into focus. The central glass disc that she had made like a rosette for herself had grown, bloated out. It looked a bit like a tortoise shell, glittery and iridescent and very Ruth, except now, it had…
“Diamonds!” Max yelped, miraculously fully awake.
There, underneath the bulbous disc was a tiny pile of painfully perfect diamonds, so exuberant in colour they seemed almost alive. He could see clean through the pile itself each one was so clear, with a miniature rainbow refracted inside. They were scattered across the table and he realised they were dropping from all over the glass tubes, the largest ones plinking from the central disc.
“Holy cow! What the hell, Ruth! This is amazing! I mean, how did you do that?”
Ruth plinked another diamond from the disc, meanwhile the bobbing gyroscopic mass that had accumulated in the disc decided to bob itself towards Max and answer him with a spiral of flashes and disco lights.
“You really are a crazy, crazy little thing, you know that?” he asked, picking up a diamond and examining it against Ruth’s emitted light show. He threw his t-shirt across the table top and spread the diamonds out on it. There must have been fifteen of them, simply perfect and all different shapes to each other, irregular and yet symmetrical.
Max collapsed into the dining chair next to the table.
Why did they happen today? Why now of all days? It had been nearly a week since he was entrusted with Ruth and she seemed pretty stable up till yesterday. She had grown that diamond factory bulge that reminded him of a tortoise, yes, but now it almost looked like an expensive, old-fashioned sweet dispenser that you get in the bowling alley or in the shopping centres in posh areas. The kind they stuck between the raised beds of fake forest-looking plants in the food court, the kind that were there to tempt the kids after their unfulfilling and unappreciated fast-food dine-outs but used all your pocket money for one jaw-breaker.
Max tried to backtrack. What had he done differently? If he could figure it out, maybe he could persuade Ruth to make more diamonds… his friend would never have to know, he could get Scat a little headstone, and if he could figure out how it worked he could reverse it so there wouldn’t even be any evidence. No, his friend would surely know. Max could save a few diamonds and give them to him and say she just started… have to work out the details later. First things first.
“So, Ruth. Why are you giving me these little nuggets of joy, huh? What did I do to warrant this spectacle?” He talked to Ruth, but she didn’t respond. No movement, just the usual swirling around. Max watched the glass disc closely through his puffy eyes but couldn’t see where the diamonds fell from, nor anything that would suggest a factory line of compressed carbon was in progress. She seemed to be slowing down.
Max pressed his brows together, then slowly lifted the fern up onto the table again. This was the only thing different. The bamboo was outside and Scat was…
A wave of horror flooded over Max. He launched himself out of his chair and sprinted to the window and, ripping back the voile, he saw the bamboo had grown six feet over night. He knew it grew fast from watching that documentary about tropical rainforests but this was a stretch too far. Much too far. That damned thing hadn’t grown in years…
“Ruth,” he said turning to her, “what did you do?”

For the next few hours, Max observed Ruth from across the room. The discovery channel was on in the background, as always. Ruth didn’t seem to do much without it these days but for a hunk of glittery glass and brass Max supposed not much was interesting unless it moved or had nothing whatsoever to do with man-made things. Suited him just fine. Who needs politics anyway?
Apparently, Ruth had taken it upon herself to make the fern shrivel up and increase her diamond production, much to Max’s exuberant happiness and overwhelming horror. He shoved the sofa to the far end of the room and started putting all his household plants in the spaces between the table and himself. The kitchen herbs went first.
He had taken one of the diamonds down to the swanky precious stone and metal specialist at the posh end of town (his name was Horace, apparently,) and had it valued. He took extreme pleasure in watching the man’s face freeze in wonder at the rock placed before him. I’ve never seen such a stone, Horace said. Never seen such a clear, colourful, perfect stone in my life, Horace said. It’s phenomenal, Horace said. Where did you get it, Horace asked. I inherited it, Max lied. It’s worth a fortune, Horace said. Thank you, I’ll have it back now, Max said. He made sure to stop by the garden centre on his way home.

The front room was a sea of plants. Max waded through them, deciding that a walkway to the door would be a vital escape route that shouldn’t be compromised, in case Ruth decided she had been on her vegetarian stint for long enough. Max had toyed with the idea of getting a fish tank or some other living creature to put next to her as a safeguard but he promptly remembered Scat and nearly broke down on the shop floor in front of the display tanks. Besides, the plants were working! There was already a multitude of stacks of plastic pots and trays next to the front door ready for recycling, and all the withered remains of whatever the pots had housed was scattered along the borders amongst the dog daisies and tulips. Ruth was putting out a considerable amount of stonage these days. Max bought an old bank safe online. It was currently sat in the hallway because that’s as far in as the two couriers could lift the thing, and there was no way on god’s green earth that Max was going to let them into the front room and risk them getting curious. The safe was only waist-high and wasn’t too ugly, so the hallway it was.
Max carefully spun the dial clockwise, anti-clockwise, clockwise again, on and on, muttering under his breath as he read from the bit of paper he guiltily kept in his pocket alongside his friend’s contact details. He used his whole bodyweight to wrench open the door and deposit the load of diamonds in a mason jar, nestled it in next to its siblings that were already full and stacked up there. He had set up a system of small tubs under the hotspots for diamonds drops and his favourite whiskey glass under the place where the large diamonds fell. He emptied them regularly, always aware that someone might knock on the door, he might need to pee or Scat might need to go outside (no, poor thing, he was there already). His kitchen was full of boxes of new mason jars and his lounge was full of plants, like some weird meth lab. A thrill of fear swept down Max’s back and up through his throat looking at all those jars, heavy with precious stones. He knew the smallest one alone would make him a disgustingly wealthy man. Horace had confirmed it.
Two days later, and there was no more space in the safe. Nowhere else to put those little rocks. Max decided to give Ruth a break, let her rest while he decided what to do next. He couldn’t have a house full of safes, his friend would already think it was weird that the one in the hallway appeared out of nowhere. Max put a coffee table over it, covered it with a tablecloth and some old bank statements, throwing on a phone charger for authenticity.
He had taken to talking to Ruth while the documentaries were on, she seemed to like that. He had been taking daily trips to the garden centre and leaving with a fully loaded car, right up until they looked at him suspiciously (he was a renowned leave-it-to-the-bugs kind of gardener; after years of failed attempts at keeping his plants alive and fruitless efforts of the garden centre employees to dispense advice he could keep to), so he started frequenting other nurseries as well.
Today, he was going to figure out how Ruth did it. He had to know. In his mind it was the equivalent of finding out how the Egyptians built the pyramids (because it obviously wasn’t aliens,) and the fact that even his friend didn’t know what this thing could do was something altogether more impressive! He may well have created it, but it was Max who had realised Ruth’s full potential, it was Max who had figured out the process, it was Max who had discovered the balance of life and death. Nobody could take that from him. But to really put the boot in, he wanted to know how.
“Come on, Ruthy, tell me how you do it. Let me see you do it, just once.” Max waited for a response. There was none. Then…
Plink.
He had seen! He knew now! Ha!
“Yes! That’s it! That’s the ticket! I knew it, old gal, this is going to be such an epic day! I can’t wait to see their faces, suck on THAT!”
Max jumped, air-punched and whirled around the front room, ecstatic in his discovery. Never again would they look down on him! Never again would they look at him like he was an idiot because he couldn’t get the printer to print on both sides of the paper, they wouldn’t reject him, the girls would think he was funny, he was going to be filthy rich, he could save the world! He, Max, was all powerful.
Oh yes. That’s what I’m talking about.