Tingling of hands and vomiting

I know this isn’t the medical help subreddit however i’m desperate and need someone with basic understanding of electricity to tell me if i’ve been fucked or i’m okay
Yesterday I had my hand stuck in a vending machine, I stuck my hand in and couldn’t get it out partly because of a watch I had on (thin metal mesh watch).
At first i felt slight pressure then I started to feel tingling which I instantly knew was electricity since anytime my watch would touch the metal on the bottom part it would make my hand feel tingly. I tried multiple times to pull my hand out regardless of the watch — which caused a lot of initial bruising in the area, as well as swelling.
My hand was stuck for approximately 8 minutes
I didn’t feel a crazy electric shock while my hand was in the machine however i kept feeling tingling in my hand even a while after.
I went to the healthcare center at my uni and they checked my pressure and assessed if i can move my hand, I can move it very well nothing was broken, and I guess my pressure was fine since they didn’t point it out. They sanitized my hand and applied fucidin for a light scratch I had. After that I also went to an ER who checked off i could move my hand, but no one so far, including myself, noticed the light burn mark from my watch.
I noticed the burn only a few hours after and have been researching electric shocks and I’m not sure if I’m getting the google scaries or this is justified.
Right now there’s around three small marks around my wrist, of a quite reddish colour as well as swelling. Unfortunately I cannot attach any photos here.
I feel fatigue in my forearm and occasionally tingling towards my elbow, which all i thought were from the physical pressure on my wrist while it was stuck, but now i’m wondering if this is the aftermath of the electric shock.
Any advice is appreciated

F18, 63kg, 174cm Yesterday I had my hand stuck in a vending machine, I stuck my hand in and couldn’t get it out partly because of a watch I had on (thin metal mesh watch).
Photo of skin in comments
At first i felt slight pressure then I started to feel tingling which I instantly knew was electricity since anytime my watch would touch the metal on the bottom part it would make my hand feel tingly. I tried multiple times to pull my hand out regardless of the watch — which caused a lot of initial bruising in the area, as well as swelling.
I didn’t feel a crazy electric shock while my hand was in the machine however i kept feeling tingling in my hand even a while after.
I went to the healthcare center at my uni and they checked my pressure and assessed if i can move my hand, I can move it very well nothing was broken, and I guess my pressure was fine since they didn’t point it out. They sanitized my hand and applied fucidin for a light scratch I had. After that I also went to an ER who checked off i could move my hand, but no one so far, including myself, noticed the light burn mark from my watch.
I noticed the burn only a few hours after and have been researching electric shocks and I’m not sure if I’m getting the google scaries or this is justified.
Right now there’s around three small marks around my wrist, of a quite reddish colour as well as swelling. Unfortunately I cannot attach any photos here.
I feel fatigue in my forearm and occasionally tingling towards my elbow, which all i thought were from the physical pressure on my wrist while it was stuck, but now i’m wondering if this is the aftermath of the electric shock.
Any advice is appreciated, i will most likely go get checked up tomorrow for the burn.

In 2009 I fell 5.5 vertical metres through a roof, landing in the centre of a run of timber stairs and then rolling down the stairs to the next landing. I spent 4 days in hospital and was then released having done damage to both my hips and crushing my L2, L3, L4 and C3, C4 vertebrae. I had my accident on Monday 22/12 and came out on 24/12, a Christmas miracle, walking as if nothing had happened. Late December, early January (not a good time for me, I fell off the slippery tracks of a digger on the back of a truck, about 1.7 metres flat on my back onto a road. I got back up and carried on working. A week later I started getting an aching in my right leg and foot. I also had a burning sensation in my right calf muscle.A week later and I was getting the same pains in my left leg, same burning sensation in the left leg. I also found it hard doing certain things, like lifting my legs to get into bed. I would have to lift each leg with my arms. Also, getting into a car. I would have to sit down and lift each leg with my hands and bring them into the car. Driving a truck was worse, like climbing the steps to get into my house. I would stand at the bottom of the steps, staring at the stairs/steps, trying to figure out how I was going to get up them. I went to my doctors clinic, seeing Dr #1. He sent me to have X-rays/mri and forwarded my name to a ‘specialist’. Specialist told me he didn’t really need to see me and going off my mri/X-ray I needed both hips replaced, my left one being the worse. He said I had osteo-arthritis. He apparently put me on the waiting list for hip replacement, recommending 1 hip, left hip first, at a time. While waiting, but still working (I have a small business with up to 6 employees scaffolding, supplying swing stages on the outside of hi-rise buildings, supplying access machines and the transport of same items. All symptoms continued but I also started getting a tingling sensation in both hands. Dr#2 asked me which fingers and I said I thought it was the whole hand. Dr#1 said it must be carpel tunnel and I must be getting it in the ring and little fingers only. Meanwhile Dr#2 does an examination and while having me, laying on my back, raising my legs, says that my weakness in ability to raise the legs did not support hip replacement send me off to see another specialist, his cousin. This specialist tells me that by the way I walked into his office he could tell I needed a hip replacement. Still on the waiting list, I carried on working. I notice now, whilst at rest or laying in my bed, I started getting spasms, these were mainly in my legs but could go so far as right up to my neck. Frustrated with this going no where and my loosing my ability to go for long walks with my wife, I book a double appointment, at the end of their day, with Dr#3, the senior doctor of the practise. He examined me and tells me ‘referred pain’ doesn’t normally go below the knee of the opposite leg, ie right leg if left hip is the problem hip. He checks out some books/journals and starts talking about pressure points in my neck and other places but winds up saying ‘if I want him to follow up on that, I’ll have to book another appointment. Mean time I get an appointment to see the anesthesiologist for the hip replacement, she tells me operation won’t proceed till I have my blood pressure down to the 140 range, it was 195. I go back to Dr#1 who puts me on a tablet to reduce my blood pressure. I should mention, I have also been on since pain started Morning - 2 panadol, 2 gabapentine, 1 celecoxib Lunchtime - 2 panadol, 2 gabapentin Night - 2 panadol, 2 gabapentine, 1 celecoxib, 1 magnesium. B/p still fluctuates between 148 and 190 and I seem to be on a treadmill to no-where. I went and visited my elderly mother in hospital yesterday but the walk to her room was extremely hard. I contacted my dr’s clinic and they told me the earliest I could be seen was ‘next Tuesday’. But, since I was at a hospital’ I decided to try for a difference of opinion there. I booked in to the a&e at 11:00am and waited. Blood pressure (195) was taken and blood samples. A doctor saw me at about 6:30pm and I spoke with him about my leg pains. I also mentioned hand and foot spasms and also the fact that I also had dizzy spells. He told me that I had osteo arthritis in my hips. I asked if this could be due to the fall I had in 2009 which he didn’t know about. He scrolled back through my records and instantly told me that my left hip had gotten worse. He said I should have discussions with my osteopath. I asked ‘which one’ and he said the one I have most confidence with. As they’re all trying to send me in for hip replacements, I don’t have confidence in any of them. I feel I have a pinched nerve that is giving me the majority of my complaints. I believe the damage they’re seeing to my hips is what happened in 2009 and they want to deal to that. I do no believe I have osteo arthritis (but I could be wrong). Please, is there anyone out there that can help me????

HEIMLICHS AND BONE SPURS AND BURPS, OH MY!!!
Hello all! In passing, I mentioned to a friend that I've never been able to burp. She introduced me to RCPD and referred me to Craig Villari - the rest is history. I got surgery in March and I figured I would share my kinda crazy story! It's a long one.
In January, my friend mentioned that she suspected I have RCPD, which she had recently received treatment for after learning about it here on Reddit. I was stunned - I didn't realize this was a real thing! I had just thought all my life that I was a coward who couldn't burp
I was able to get an appointment with Dr Villari, an ENT, in early February, and he said he has been receiving lots of referrals and that he's starting to suspect that RCPD is more common than originally believed. It was a short appointment - he asked about my symptoms, explained the treatment, and then we scheduled a date for surgery. I was excitedly telling all my friends to pray for me and my 'burp surgery'
My symptoms for the last 24 years were pretty straightforward: I just couldn't burp. Anytime I tried to follow someone's advice, I felt like I was forcing myself to gag and vomit. I could never find the air or gas to make it happen. I was often bloated, I farted A LOT lmaooo and I always had emetophobia. That's about it, though - I didn't think it was anything that out of the ordinary.
My surgery was on Monday, March 25th, Dr. Villari said it went well and that my recovery should be smooth! I was surprised by how sore I was - I knew they'd be putting me under and invading my throat, but my friend had told me it was the easiest surgery of her life with no complications, so I think I just underestimated everything. My throat felt MASSIVE from the swelling and my inner gums had been nicked during the intubation, resulting in a small and swollen cut. I don't think I really processed the idea of 'slow swallowing', since it was mostly mentioned in passing as a part of the healing process - maybe I was hyperfocusing more on the 'microburps' and the excitement therein. This was also before I'd perused this subreddit.
I was back at work the following Wednesday after my surgery, feeling normal but a bit thick around the throat with a raspy voice and uncontrollable microburps. Optimistic about recovery!
Slow swallowing was really rough for me. I thought the 'soft food' was more of a tip as opposed to a prescription, and so I opted to eat somewhat normally but avoid crunchy/crumbly food. Dear reader, I should've been eating waaaayyy more applesauce and pudding. The swallowing was so slow that I constantly felt like I was being slowly suffocated by my food and throat. Along with slow swallowing, I felt a constant frog in my throat. When I'd lay down at night, my throat felt like a half full water bottle laid on its side. I don't know how else to describe the feeling of slightly drowning. I had to sleep with my head elevated for almost 3 weeks after surgery, which was mostly just a nuisance considering the otherwise simple recovery.
In the days following my surgery, I'd been making off-hand jokes to my brothers that I was slowly suffocating and being choked by my food every time I ate. Eating took FOREVER. I can usually eat a burger in 10 minutes tops LOL. That Friday, it took me the better part of an hour to eat 3/4 of the same burger. Eating was such a long winded chore that most days, I avoided food and went hungry - something I hadn't anticipated. That's not to say it was painful or truly challenging - more so just a psychological battle that I was not prepared for. I figured it would pass soon enough.
The Sunday following my surgery was Easter sunday, so my whole family would be spending the day together and having dinner. My dad made a prime rib ^.^ I was so excited. I ate everything on my plate, in small bites with lots of water. Everyone was mostly done eating after about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, I was still chewing after an hour had passed at the dinner table. At one point, a small piece of steak took an especially long time to find its way down my throat, and I touched my brother's shoulder to say 'ok keep an eye on me here Im struggling to get this down' and by the time he acknowledged me, the moment had mostly passed. That is to say, just lots of moments where the slow swallowing would get too slow and I'd struggle to breathe. But I was mostly okay! Four hours after dinner, I offhandedly grabbed a rye chip from the trail mix bowl. Literally just one rye chip - and it became lodged in my throat and I immediately started choking, like, frantic no air turning blue choking. I had to get heimliched 4 times before I was able to dislodge the chip and start breathing again. I threw up after that : ( I've never been heimliched before. I think it was just a perfect storm that was mostly borne of my own carelessness - dry, crumbly food and a thick, slow throat. I literally thought I was going to die in that moment lmao I had a gooood loooong panic attack immediately afterwards. But its okay my slow swallowing got a lot better after that!
Dr. Villari called me for my post-op check-in on the following Monday, April 8, and I relayed the heimlich story, which he sounded genuinely shocked to hear. I know it had nothing to do with him, but it still shocked me that he hadn't heard of the slow swallowing affecting anyone else so strongly. I also mentioned to him that my gums had been cut during the intubation, but that my mouth was slowly healing from that. He told me to reach out if I had further concerns. He was really kind and professional!
After the heimlich, I was much more careful about what I ate, and my slow swallowing seemed to get better each day. However, my gums were not healing from the small cut I'd received during surgery. The left side of my inner gums was acutely painful and I became worried that the cut had become infected. So I figured that I was due for a teeth cleaning anyway, and scheduled an appointment with my dentist on the soonest day they could get me in, April 30th.
There was no infection in my gums, but the dentist did acknowledge that the cut seemed to be a result from trauma, and she said she could've sworn that she saw some bone sticking out. She told me to rinse with salt water twice a day, she prescribed me with chlorhexidine, and told me to come back in two weeks once I was more healed up. I was relieved that I wasn't infected.
I came back on May 13th with less pain and what I thought was a white scab over my cut. The hygienist noted that it was odd and took a photo for the doctor to review later. We cleaned my teeth no problem and I went home. I became increasingly curious about my gums and kept prodding that rough white spot with my tongue. Eventually, I got curious and reached in with my fingers and was able to pull it out of my gums - it turned out to be a bone spicule, likely resulting from trauma during intubation. I was super disturbed, but the cut was completely healed over and the pain was gone.
Now, it is May 23rd: nearly 2 months after burp surgery. It was a fuckin TRIP to get here, but here we are. The burps are lovely. Just monstrous. I had a 15 second long burp, which had to be over 20 years in the making. I've had many friends coach me on belch strategies and I feel like I am completely relearning my table manners. I have also since learned that heartburn is a beast all its own. I am so glad that my friend recommended Dr Villari, even though the recovery was nothing like what I had anticipated. I am so happy to be burping.
Even after the heimlich and the bone spicule, I have to assert that BY FAR the most traumatic part of all is the FLAVORS of my burps. My god. I don't know if I will ever get used to it.
Thank you for reading my behemoth post! Let me know if you have any questions!
TLDR; surgery went well, slow swallowing fucked me up and I had to get heimliched, intubation fucked me up and caused a bone spicule, and burps taste really bad but feel really good. Sláinte!

“So, how much?”
I didn’t know Charles well, but well enough to guess that the grizzled hog farmer was a talented salesman. ‘No lowballs,’ I imagined him drawling, waggling his finger, and speaking over his exceptionally jutting chin.
“Three-hundred fifty for the land, the pen, and the house,” the man said. He spat, hard, and the tobacco-black phlegm stuck to the side of the fence post and slowly ran down the side in three rivulets.
“Then another twenty grand for the hogs. Two-hundred thirty-three of ‘em, not a large passel. Price of swine is goin’ up, I’ll tell you, so t’s the best I can give you for what you’s gettin’.”
I had expected to hand him even more money. Charles and his wife had a small operation, but big enough to matter, with a beautiful two-story farmhouse to accompany it nicely. I wasn’t getting a better deal anywhere else. At least not anywhere I wanted to be. I’d longed to live as a farmer in Tennessee ever since my family’s entire property burned to the ground back in the fall of ‘68. It was dry, and we’d just fertilized after the harvest.
Not a living thing was left untouched by the flames, not even my father, who ran back to get the horses after the barn shot up with a pillar of fire. We never found his body. Or maybe we did, but the charred dust of the barn, the corn, and the animals we called our lives and the blackened remains of the man that was my world were all reduced to ashes in the end. And when the wind came, they all blew away just the same, forever to leave me, my two sisters, and my mother behind.
I held out my hand to Charles and we shook on it.
It wasn’t the life I envisioned for myself. Not when I got my engineering degree from Georgia Tech. Not when I began work at a small engineering firm. Not even when I saw the hog farm for sale less than an hour from my house did I realize that was the world I lost that I needed back. My wife didn’t care; in fact, it brought her work commute down to forty minutes from an hour ten.
After we moved there and I began consulting part-time to make allowance for the time I needed to spend raising the hogs, caring for the land, and tending to my now-pregnant wife, the fulfillment I sought seemed that much closer. But only that. Closer, yet still out of the reach of my yearning clutches. It wasn’t until two years after I bought the farm, almost to the day, that the chips seemed to fall on my side with her.
“Micah?”
Jackie was calling from the cubicle over. Then I heard footsteps coming towards my own office space.
“Hey, yeah, did you finish the drainage plans for the floodplain you were working on? If so, I’d happily review and sign off on them.”
Jackie had come here a couple of years after I did. She was an intern at first, and everybody loved her cheery smile and sharp intellect, so she was hired on after she finished her degree. The youngest of our crew, she lived by herself in an apartment, but her lack of experience didn’t keep her from coolly sharing her opinion on matters of work when she knew she was right. And she was always right.
Jackie had always taken a liking to me in a way she didn’t seem to show toward the others. I never became sure of why she did, but I had my suspicions. Trauma and mystique go hand in hand. Maybe she saw me as broken in the same way she saw herself. After all, it didn’t take a psychologist to tell Jackie had her own skeletons in her closet. She just had that aura, the one that neglected children and broken adults share with each other. Nobody knew what life she walked out of and nobody cared. She did her job, and that was all the company cared for. But not me.
I turned away from my computer screen towards the opening of my cubicle and she was there, half silhouetted by the light behind her, staring me in the eye. Jackie trailed a finger down the edge of the cubicle wall, her mouth open barely enough for me to see her tongue flit deftly over her perfectly-aligned incisors. Ignoring my question, she continued.
“Your wife, I take it?”
She gestured with an outstretched palm toward the wedding photo I had framed on my desk.
“Yeah. Hard to believe we’ll be a family of three soon. Ha!”
I chuckled, nervously. Slightly excitedly, too. I can’t tell if Jackie knew that the latter was for what I knew was coming rather than what I had already said, but I don’t think she would have cared one way or the other.
“Say, she must be lonely waiting for you at home? I know that feeling. Being lonely.”
She took a step towards me and I glanced down at my feet. Looking back, it felt like an eternity, that looking down, that knowing what was happening and making a decision. It was a choice. And while it felt like it stretched for minutes, hours, I knew it was but a moment. Yet it only took a moment to make my descent into sin.
“I know it too. Well. Too well. She’s on a business trip - a long one. Say, I raise hogs. Prize swine, there’s good money in them. What’d you say about coming to see my farm sometime?”
It had been two hours since Jackie had left the farmhouse and was almost one-thirty in the morning, yet I wasn’t tired. According to my doctor, I have insomnia. According to my mother, I have “bad juju.” According to myself, well, I guess I just don’t feel like sleep is worth the trouble sometimes. That night, though, I didn’t sleep at all until the sun shone through my window in the early hours of the morning.
Living among swine never gave me a lot of grief before then. Some people hated the stench - my wife among them - but the manure never bothered me, and, come to find out, it didn’t bother Jackie, either. I would have asked if she had been on a farm as a child, but her demeanor and attitude told me that she wasn’t interested in the slightest in my life and that I shouldn’t be in hers, either. I suppose I wasn’t - not in the one outside of our affair, at least.
But that night, when the stars were out and shining like eyes in a limitless black sea, and when the wind rustled through the trees, a gigantic army moving across the land like a plague towards destinations unseen, I started to feel bothered in a way I never had before.
I had been sitting on the back porch in view of the pig pens after having just finished the chores. I knew I wasn’t drunk, I was only on my second beer, but sitting outside, half-empty bottle in hand, I suddenly wished I could be completely wasted. I’d never been one to believe in those types of things that you can’t touch with your hand or see with your eyes. The hair stood up on my arms and the taste of metal lapped my tongue as if a storm was coming. No, I didn’t believe in the things you couldn’t really feel, but I could sure as hell feel something now.
Unsettled, I was turning around to go get another beer before something caught my eye in the pig pen that made me glance over.
All of the pigs visible from this side of the house could be seen, through the metal fencing, staring in my direction. The ones who were blocked by the lumpy bodies of the other swine stood on the hind ends of the others to see. With their combined mass, the pigs strained the metal of the pen stalls until each stall’s fencing bulged out in the middle where the weight was distributed.
Most unique of all was the unanimous behavior of the swine. Not one fell out of sync. Each one, eyes glowing like headlights in the dark, bodies silhouetted against the light of the moon, was without noise or disturbance. Once all of the pigs were in position, they all stayed ominously still.
As I watched, one by one, hundreds of eyes closed, and a wave of darkness spread over the pen as no more eyes were open to reflect the light. I swore for a moment that the stars did too and that the world around me plunged into complete darkness, but I cannot be for certain, because at that same moment, I involuntarily blinked.
I say involuntarily because, frozen in place, the scene was too strange for me to willingly turn away from. I do not know if the same force that caused the swine to flicker their eyes caused me to do the same, perhaps a gust of wind - or of something less tangible - but upon opening them, the pigs had returned to their discord, with several having already gone to sleep. Deeply disturbed, I went inside the house and drank until the morning came and I finally found sleep.
My wife returned from her trip soon enough and without much ado upon her arrival. For the next month or so, the two of us were together, and our lives were lived without significant discord. None that she knew about, anyway. I never told her about Jackie and I certainly didn’t mention the times I saw my coworker after my wife returned, either. And while I did float an innocent question to her asking if she had noticed any of the hogs’ strange behavior, I didn’t enlighten her as to the motivation for my interrogative manner. She never appreciated being in the company of swine as it was, and turning her disdain into disgust wasn’t on my agenda.
Almost as abruptly as she had returned, my wife left, again, to be gone for the next week and a half on another trip. Probably best for her, too, because the hottest days of the year hit western Tennessee when she wasn’t there to experience them. And no sooner had she gone than Jackie resumed her nightly visits to the farm. Each time, she showed up without much notice, if any at all, and left just as abruptly.
Funnily enough, I didn’t care much. I felt no more and no less empty after she left than when she was here. So after I spent my days with my eyes on my screen and my nose in my boss’s ass, I spent my nights staring up through the bottoms of bone-dry bottles, faintly wondering if the path I walked down could’ve been just a little warmer or just a little brighter if things were different.
In spite of my catering towards my boss’s every wish at the office, he didn’t return the good-will in kind.
“What do you mean you’re asking for a raise?”
I swallowed and continued.
“I mean that it’s been five years, Glenn. I simply asked that my pay might increase to match inflation.”
My boss folded his hands across his desk and sighed. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he dabbed at a couple of beads of sweat running down from his brow. We were in the heat of summer, and the air hung thick and humid around us. The office had air conditioning, but the unit was old, and the fan whistling away in the corner didn’t do much good against the record-breaking heat pressing in around us.
“I’m sorry, Micah. It’s just that you’re consulting, now, and… I can’t afford you those kinds of benefits-”
“What do you mean benefits? I’ve been here long enough I’m owed at least that, Glenn! What the fuck do you think I’m still here for? Pot lucks?”
That was the first time I had lost my temper at my boss; at least, the first time since he ripped up one of my drafts for a project several years back. That had been a long day for both of us. Now, Glenn sat back and scowled ever so slightly, and only for a brief moment, an indication that his inhibitions keeping his attitude in check were wearing thin. Nonetheless, he put on a smile, and chuckled coldly.
“Micah, look- you always were my right hand man, but you’re here so little now. One could say you’re more like my right thumb man, now.”
That was a long day too. The heat didn’t help. Somehow some bugs got into the office. Somebody probably left a door open to quash the heat, fruitlessly.
No wonder the AC’s shot, I thought to myself.
By the time it was the hour for me to leave, there were moths flitting around the lights, flies eating the stale food in the cafe, gnats alighting on every exposed surface in the office- insects were everywhere. I figured that door must have been left open most of the day.
Gotta be pretty stupid bugs, if this is where they want to be.
The time came for me to leave and I did so without a fuss. As little as I could manage, anyway. I took time to complete some errands and returned home, only to realize the heat wasn’t much less oppressive there than it was at the office, even if there weren’t any insects. If anything, it felt oddly empty without them, even after Jackie showed up. The rest of that evening was a blur of empty bottles and used cigarette butts littering the porch.
At some point — two in the morning, three, it didn’t matter — I was pulled out of my drunken slumber and forced into sobriety by a noise I could no more determine the source of than what I had eaten for dinner a year ago from the day. I sat up with a jolt and listened, suddenly feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
The sound, if it could be called that, was discordant, unnatural, wrong — and yet, I couldn’t remember another thing about it. It wasn’t a sound heard through your ears, a vibration in your skin, nor even a sensation of one’s physical brain; it was a thought processed through one’s sleeping soul, something that certainly cannot be described with words without diminishing the weightiness placed; without negating, in full, the sense of abject horror at its state of being.
I had sat atop that precipice between reality and unreality; sleep, the abyss, where devils absently play amongst the nightmares of men. I told myself it was just that, a dream, but I know now that the place I was and the places I was soon to go were gateways between the waking world and the one beneath it. Before I had time to process what I had just felt, I heard another sound, this one very much real, and resembling a dying animal. Slowly, I made my way out of my crumpled bed and opened the blinds. I almost wished, upon doing so, that I was back on the precipice.
Thirteen of the hogs stood in a circle on the lawn; how they had gotten out, I don’t know. Each stood perfectly still, equidistant from the next, and faced a quivering shadow in the middle of them all. I could make out faint features: a scraggly beard, a bottle- whether the man was a hiker or a drunk, I couldn’t tell. Nonetheless, he had wound up on my property, and found himself caught in a circle of pigs.
I watched the man’s motions and noted with rising horror that as he walked in one direction, the circle of pigs shifted to keep him at the center of the ring, and all the while they drew nearer to him. The man was clearly intoxicated now; it was almost half a minute before he stumbled, fell, and no sooner squelched in the dirt than thirteen squeals rang through the night and the animals blotted out his body from sight with their unified mass.
The man let out one scream but could manage no more than one. The ring was a blur of motion. I saw little but I saw enough; one pig reared its glistening head and I watched part of a scalp fly from its gaping mouth, arcing dark liquid as it trailed across the yard. Another couple chunks of meat rolled away from the pile and reached a stop several feet away in the yard; once the pigs were through with their feast, they broke off from the previous site, now nothing but a red stain on the earth, and gobbled up the pieces that had got away.
It took me the next four hours to get the pigs back into their pen, but I managed it. And, none had to be shot in the process, though I surmised I should come with a gun readied. A cleanup wasn’t necessary either; it was a hog farm, so it’d be getting dirty again soon. I considered another individual might find the stain, but there was no proof it was human blood, and I had no intention of calling the police out there.
That morning, my boss was late to work. I suppose that’s to be expected, though, when one has had their tires slashed. He was livid, and I didn’t correct his supposition that his ex-wife had committed the act, though I’m sure he would have loved another reason to fire me. After all, I was nothing more than a right thumb man.
The day had gone quicker and cooler than the former, and the low droning of the rain made the day seem just a little less lonely. Of course, I was slated to see Jackie that night, and after lunch I had left work, gone off to purchase more drinks from the local liquor store. I remember having gotten enough to fill the passenger seat of my truck, and felt almost as if the pile of liquor was a singular being, watching me; the silently judgemental friend. I had a twinge of anxiety, and half wondered if I was going insane; at that, I laughed.
The air was cool when Jackie got there. My mother always used to call that the first breath of autumn, when the reaper opened his eyes and cooed softly to his crop before the inferno was snuffed out by the frigid winter. As a child, I didn’t pay much attention to her words, but as I grew older I felt the cold in my bones, and tonight I felt it in my soul, a faint whisper of death like the mark of the beast. I watched Jackie’s hair whip to the side, a black flag in the wind, as she approached the house. On the doorstep, we embraced, and I recall she said she needed to talk.
“You’re an awfully successful man, Micah. And I know you’ve got a lot of money. Maybe you’re not wealthy, no, but you’re richer than me, and there’s enough to go around. It’d be a damn shame if your poor wife found out about me. No, I haven’t said a thing yet, and I know you know that, for the poor thing couldn’t take the stress and might just die. But I could say a thing, and maybe even a little more. And a nasty thing it’d be, too. I’d just ask for $1,000 a month, but times are tough, so I’m inclined to say $2,000 would be enough to keep my mouth shut. And, of course, we could continue seeing each other. . . if you’d so please.”
Some say they see red when they’re angry enough, but I still remember how I saw even less; the next five minutes of my life were no clearer to me than several brief glimpses of reality, interspersed by periods of unreality before the next glimpse. A scream, and then another. The thought: she’s got a knife. A bone snapped: mine, hers, it didn’t matter. Blood; spattered on the carpet, on my shirt, and the drip-drip of a glistening red globe, smashed in through the side like a cracked egg. I remember the silence before the adrenaline eased and I felt pain, and I remember the pain before the squelch when I issued one last kick to the body, lying on the ground.
It had been time for me to feed the pigs. Jackie usually helped me with the feeding when she came over, always with a coy look, and often it was short lived and I needed to finish the job on my own after she left. I was betting that she could help me again. Hoisting her up onto my shoulder wasn’t difficult, though I supposed she was lighter than usual. I stooped to pick up the last few pieces that didn’t come with the rest of her and took the two of us to our yard.
The part of the brain we, as people, already understand cannot possibly encompass every sensation which we, as people, feel. Scientifically, maybe- but that feeling that makes dogs bark at empty rooms; that makes cats stare into walls before jumping away, frightened; that feeling exists in humans, too. Call it a sixth sense, or ESP, it’s there, and I felt it when carrying Jackie. The birds had stopped calling, the trees had ceased rustling, and a low, droning buzz resounded outside the pig pen. It rose in volume and pitch, and as I dropped Jackie’s lifeless corpse onto the ground, it blocked entirely the noise of the world around me.
I didn’t even hear the thump. Nor did I hear the pigs, for it wasn’t until I looked up from her body, panting heavily from the effort of what had transpired, that I saw that we stood on the fringe of a gathering of the pigs. I couldn’t see if any remained in the pen, but I could see that at least a hundred gathered here outside the pen, all staring at me with glassy eyes and salivating mouths. Some stood on the haunches of the others to see, and many were covered in blood, having been left uncleaned since the events of the previous night. Even through the foggy daze I was in, my fear registered on a guttural level and, in horror at the unreality of what I was seeing, I backpedaled, eventually tripping over a rut in the earth and falling to the ground.
The next moment, each of the pigs had turned to look at what was left of Jackie. For a couple of seconds, they stared at her, and I realized that the droning in my ears had stopped, replaced with nothing but an ominous silence. That silence was short lived, for in one, unanimous, ear-splitting squeal, the pigs raced each other to the body, and carnage ensued.
The hogs in front no sooner reached the body than were ripped apart by the pigs behind them. Huge flaps of fatty skin hung in ribbons from the napes of their necks and blood sprayed in all directions as necks, limbs, tails, and extremities were mangled with the reckless abandon of a pack of wild dogs. I suppose that’s what they were; even if I treated them like domesticated creatures, they were animals, and they were out of the control of any constraints that civilization wanted to place on them.
The mass of flesh moved rhythmically and dripping bodies were flung like oversized rag dolls from the fray to land wetly and lifelessly on the earth. Occasionally, I would hear a crunch as bones were rent and snapped under the pressure of the fray, and squeals as the broken limbs stabbed through the fleshy bodies of the animals atop them. Hooves, teeth, and bones carved the flesh of the other pigs, and while blood and feces sprayed freely, chunks of gore rolled out of the fray like meaty baseballs.
The pleasant temperature drop had undone itself, as the wind had stopped blowing, and the stench of the scene hung thick in the hot and heavy air of late summer. I vomited, over and over, bent over in the shit and the blood, eyes watering from the smell, and blood dripped from everywhere on my body. It ran off my body in rivulets and pooled around my feet. Some was mine, but more was Jackie’s, and more yet was the remains of the pigs. Blood dripped from my mouth onto the dirt, and I could no longer tell if I was looking up towards the cruel stars, down at the earth, or witnessing the slaughter before me, for my sight was veiled by a coating of blood, and my senses were clouded by the rush of adrenaline, though I could do nothing but sit in shock.
Breathe.
A chunk of meat smacked me in the shoulder.
Breathe.
An ear bounced off of my forehead.
Breathe.
An opened artery sprayed blood across my face in a line.
Breathe.
My eyes recognized four pigs on the fringe of the conflict abandoning their course for what was left of Jackie and I saw turn to me, each foaming at the mouth like a rabid animal. I saw two get ripped away by two other pigs, but the remaining couple charged. The one that reached me first clamped its maw around my leg not a moment before the next reached it, bit into its neck, and thrashed it back and forth.
I couldn’t hear my own screams above the countless squeals of the hog pile and the constant wet ripping that resounded through the dark sky. Eventually, the pig that had bit me gave out with a squeal, but not before the lower half of my leg was snapped with one, final pull, and the pig behind then buried its face in the body of the dying hog before being dragged back into the conflict by another. I failed to even hear my cries of pain over the sounds of the fray; I knew I screamed only from the burning in my throat.
Breathe.
A second later, I was thrown by the arm and crashed against the soggy earth several feet away from the conflict. For a moment, I wondered if I was alive, or if the world I was seeing around me was really Hell, and I was a damned soul being punished for my sins. At that, I blacked out, and entered a timeless, dreamless slumber that sent the world back into the buzzing mayhem I had felt before the carnage.
I opened my eyes some brief time later to find that the buzzing persisted in my ears while awake. Perspiring heavily from the heat, I found I was lying on my back on the ground, facing the burning remains of my house. The buzzing was really the rush of flames lapping at the sky and the crackling of embers as the roaring fire pulled them out of sight.
“Swine,”
The voice, which rang impossibly clear in the noise of the night, above the roar of the inferno and the sounds of the approaching sirens, had come from but a few feet behind the back of my moist head. Even after all that had transpired, the word made my hair stand on end, for it was spoken with a voice that could snuff out the stars if it were to say that they ought to stop shining.
I turned my head to face behind me, groaning sharply from the pain, to see a man atop a mountain of hundreds of mutilated hogs. The pile ran with a constant stream of blood and feces, which dripped slowly over the terraced stack of corpses to form a small lake underneath, the edge of which lapped my face with miniature waves of gore.
“. . . they never learn.”
Then, the man smiled, and I realized with horror that his legs resembled those of ruminants.
And atop his head rested two ebony horns, glistening in the moonlight.

Nothing special, feedback welcome ......................
The girl was arguing with her mother on the phone about my coming for Christmas dinner. But her parents were right, she didn’t really know me. I think she was just lonely. I found her bra and smiled as I sent her on her way to spend the holiday with them.
The week of Christmas, Stockholm is mostly deserted, and there were only one or two other people on the bus to Hellasgården. The sauna was also nearly empty.
I walked from the sauna to the lake alone. The forest was full of snow and thick ice had frozen the entire lake, except for two ovals to the left and right of the dock. I took a running jump and swam out to the edge, and then, slick with sweat and tingling all over, swam next to the ice, my legs doing their egg beater pattern, and my heart beating slower and slower and slower.
I pushed through the few inches of thin, clear ice to where it was thick and white and cloudy, took a deep breath, and then swam a ways under the thick ice and then pushed up with my fist, hard. It didn’t crack or bend. I opened my eyes and tapped on it with my fist. December in Sweden is not sunny, but under the ice it was almost completely dark. I pushed my face close and tried unsuccessfully to look through it, and I could hear the noise all around me from my fist tapping. It was easy to get disoriented and I was getting short of air, so I started to swim back to where I thought the dock was, and when the light changed I came up out of breath and climbed out on the icy ladder.
I stood naked on the snowy dock for some time, and eventually saw two middle-aged women wrapped in towels as they did their duck walk down from the sauna. I could hear my heart beating in these long, slow pulses and my head would nod slightly on each beat as my blood slowed.I jumped back in the water and swam to the edge of the ice and then back, and when I got out, the women were just making their way into the water, and one of them turned and said something to me in Swedish. When I said, “Jag talar inte Svenska,” she said, “You should never do this alone, young man. You could get”-- she gestured to her chest with her hands-- “a shock.” I forced a smile and walked back up the snowy path.
On the bus back to the city I looked out the window at the snowy fields as the architecture changed and the periphery of the roads started to glow with the bright lights. I realized how hungry I was and wondered how to find a restaurant that would be open and that I could afford. There are many kinds of beauty under the lights, so many shiny things to want. Sex. Wealth. Success. Satisfaction. But I only know of one kind of love, and it is something intensely private, something that exists only in the smoky darkness under the ice. You go under alone and push your face to the frosted glass. I was as sure of this as I had been sure of anything.
There were a lot of things to think about from there. But mostly, I wondered if it was God who heard me knocking on the other side of the ice, and whether someday, if I held my breath long enough, I would have heard anything knock back. ......................
u/clown_sugars edit: The girl was arguing with her mother on the phone about my coming for Christmas dinner. But her parents were right, she didn’t really know me. I think she was just lonely. I found her bra and smiled as I sent her on her way to spend the holiday with them.
The week of Christmas, Stockholm is mostly deserted, and there were only one or two other people on the bus to Hellasgården. The sauna was also nearly empty.
I walked from the sauna to the lake alone. The forest was full of snow and thick ice had frozen the entire lake, except for two ovals to the left and right of the dock. I took a running jump and swam out to the edge, and then, slick with sweat and tingling all over, swam next to the ice, my legs doing their egg beater pattern, and my heart beating slower and slower and slower.
I pushed through the few inches of thin, clear ice to where it was thick and white and cloudy, took a deep breath, and then swam a ways under the thick ice and then pushed up with my fist, hard. It didn’t crack or bend. I opened my eyes and tapped on it with my fist. December in Sweden is not sunny, but under the ice it was almost completely dark. I pushed my face close and tried unsuccessfully to look through it, and I could hear the noise all around me from my fist tapping. It was easy to get disoriented and I was getting short of air, so I started to swim back to where I thought the dock was, and when the light changed I came up out of breath and climbed out on the icy ladder.
I stood naked on the snowy dock for some time, and eventually saw two middle-aged women wrapped in towels as they did their duck walk down from the sauna. I could hear my heart beating in these long, slow pulses and my head would nod slightly on each beat as my blood slowed.I jumped back in the water and swam to the edge of the ice and then back, and when I got out, the women were just making their way into the water, and one of them turned and said something to me in Swedish. When I said, “Jag talar inte Svenska,” she said, “You should never do this alone, young man. You could get”-- she gestured to her chest with her hands-- “a shock.” I forced a smile and walked back up the snowy path.
On the bus back to the city I looked out the window at the snowy fields as the architecture changed and the periphery of the roads started to glow with the bright lights. I realized how hungry I was and wondered how to find a restaurant that would be open and that I could afford. There are many kinds of beauty under the lights, so many shiny things to want. Sex. Wealth. Success. Satisfaction. But I only know of one kind of love, and it is something intensely private, something that exists only in the smoky darkness under the ice. You go under alone and push your face to the frosted glass. I was as sure of this as I had been sure of anything.
But for all the things to want, I remain convinced that there is something of worth that I've found only in the smoky darkness under that ice, going under alone to push your face to the frosted glass.
There were a lot of things to think about from there. But mostly, I wondered if it was God who heard me knocking on the other side of the ice, and whether someday, if I held my breath long enough, I would have heard anything knock back.

I’m on day 14 without zyn. I used 6-10 3 mg pouches a day for 2 months, and I would vape every night until I fell asleep. I was using zyns mostly as a study aid and a way to negate my shitty sleep habits while in school. I decided to quit after I graduated 2 weeks ago.
I had previously quit vaping several years ago and had no side effects, so I was expecting the same after quitting zyn. I was wrong.
• The most annoying/concerning withdrawal symptom for me by far is the brain fog. I feel like i’m living life in 3rd person. I randomly get waves of dizziness throughout the day. I feel like my eyes can’t completely focus on the things i’m looking at. I feel weird driving. My head feels congested, and i can’t find the words when talking w friends/family. I feel like I just took a bong rip or something.
• Additionally… I’ve gotten tingling sensations in my hands and feet. I feel confined to my bed. I have no motivation to do anything, and all I can think about is how weird I feel. I can’t focus on my daily tasks, and whenever I try to use my brain at work or at home I feel like half of it’s missing.
Im having a hard time convincing myself that all this has occurred from removing nicotine pouches from my daily routine. I almost want to try another zyn to see if it clears up my cognition, just so I can be sure that zyn withdrawal is the cause of my brain fog. I’ve always been an active guy, both physically and mentally, and I just feel like a shell of myself. Nothing I’ve tried (caffeine, exercise, eating healthy, plenty of water) seems to get me the mental clarity i’m after.
I write all this to ask you guys if you’ve experienced anything similar? Is this zyn withdrawal or something else? For those who made it past all these awful symptoms, when did it get better? What helped you push through? I just want my old self back.

Hey everybody! This is gonna be a long one, but here's my situation... I'm back in my hometown after several years away. I work remotely, and my living situation in the city where the company I work for is headquartered changed. I had application in to graduate school programs and didn't want to sign a lease that would leave me on the hook for rent after I might be moving for grad school anyway, so I decided to go back to my hometown and stay with my parents until I knew the outcome of the applications. Soon after I moved back I got a social media message from someone I sort of knew in high school. She's not even really an acquaintance, just somebody I knew existed. She says she's looking into her family history and thinks we might be related. We talk a bit, and it turns out she's right. She's a distant relative on my dad's side. She still lives in my hometown and asks if I'd like to meet up. It sounded good to me. Tbh, I've been meaning to look more into that side of my family for a long time. We meet up, and she's cool, so we start hanging out a bit more regularly. It's nothing crazy. We mostly go on walks and hikes around our hometown and junk, but a few things soon become pretty clear. 1. She's in an abusive marriage that feels trapped in. Her husband is emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive. I don't wanna go into too much detail there. They have two kids together, and he is the sole income earner in the household. She used to work in a low level healthcare role, but since the birth of their child, she's been a stay at home mom. She's not happy with the situation at all, but she feels trapped, because she's financially dependent on her husband. 2. She also has emotional issues and is potentially suicidal. I don't know how much of it is caused by the abusive situation and how much is outside of it. I figure it's a combination of the two things, but in the few months I've known her she's gotten into fights with her husband which have led her to leave and move in with her dad, who also has a history of abusing her, multiple times. Her dad doesn't mind her and her kids living with him, but she's still financially dependent on her husband, and when she does that (apparently it's a common thing) using his hold on the financial purse strings as it relates to her and the kids is how he gets her to come back. At one point, she texted me what looked VERY suspiciously like a suicide note (things like telling me where her kids birth certificates and stuff are, the kind of things someone would need to know if she were no longer around). I asked her if she wanted to talk, and we agreed to meet up. When I got there she had a giant handful of sleeping pills that she was methodically taking one by one. I stopped her. We called an ambulance. She made herself vomit the pills she'd taken, and she ended up being fine, but it scared the hell out of me. After she had calmed down, she asked me to hold onto the medication for her in order to ensure it doesn't happen again. I've done so. 3. She's developing a bit of a thing for me. There has been some flirtatiousness for sure, and if I'm honest, I've returned some of it. My feelings are mostly empathy and wanting her to be safe, but there's a base level of physical attraction as well. She tells me I'm the only person in her life who is kind to her, and while I don't think I desire a relationship with her in the same way she might with me, I absolutely care about her and want her to be safe and want to do what I can to help her be able to do that. I've talked to her about her potential long term plans, and she has one that involves going back to school using some money she gets from her husband's employer to attend college in order to advance in the same field she used to work in and get a job sufficient enough to support herself and her child without needing his income. She thinks it may be feasible to do this once her son is in school, so she has more time. It would be challenging, but I've known people who've done the same thing she plans to do in similar circumstances, granted with more family support, so I think it's doable. The problem with this plan, of course, is that it requires spending YEARS more in an abusive situation. Then when I think about myself in this situation... I'm a single dude making a solid income living alone with his parents. If I'm honest about what I'm capable of financially doing in my current situation, I could help her get out of this situation. The problem with that is threefold... 1. Would she accept the help? I honestly don't know the answer to this. 2. How do I do it in such a way that she doesn't see it as me wanting a long term relationship with her? Because honestly, I don't. I care a lot about her, and I want to see her safe, but I'm not looking to settle down with her, and I don't want to hurt her in that category more than I already have. 3. Here's the grad school situation coming back around... Ok, so back to the grad school thing... Well, I got in *pops metaphorical champaign* and in a lot of ways it's a FANTASTIC opportunity. Like once in a lifetime stuff. I'm not gonna name it, but you know the school, because it's a household fucking name, and the typical income of people who graduate from it is more than double my current income in their first year out and usually rises from there. Well, you're probably seeing it by now, but my ability to financially help her goes away if I quit my job and move across the country to go to grad school. My ability to emotionally support her also goes away, because I'd be across the country. Now, the other side of the grad school question is that I'm not even sure if I'm gonna go, aside from the situation with her. In some ways they're almost separate questions even if they're intertwined. I've worked toward this opportunity for a long time, but I'm actually thinking about changing my career potentially in a completely different direction than this opportunity. I don't wanna go into a whole lotta detail about this, but I bring it up to say that the situation with her is NOT the only reason I might turn down my admission. I wanna emphasize that, because without that point, it kind of looks like I'm thinking of giving up some sort of deep personal dream, and truthfully I don't feel that way about it. It's a good opportunity, but it's not a deep personal dream. Ugh.... I've been thinking about this so damn much, and I'm to the point that I have to make a decision. I told my manager that I was having second thoughts (BEFORE I even met her btw, just to be clear. The second thoughts are NOT solely about her), and I told him I'd have my mind made up by the end of May. I have a one on one next week, and that's the moment to decide. I don't know what to do to help her. I don't even know if financially supporting her is the right move, because I can tell there are other emotional issues getting in the way for her even if you take out the financial reasons, and that might be exacerbated by someone she already has a crush on swooping in to help her out. Then there's the question of the husband and whether he's dangerous not only to her but to ME. I don't know the answer to that. I think it's an honest maybe? I just want to help, and I don't know what to do...

The timeline of events here is around 2 months long, and I will try my best to condense it and not vent too much. Looking back on what I've wrote it is super long, but I hope someone will read and maybe offer advice
As a brief background, I have never had a good relationship with my father but we do, or did, have a relationship. He is diagnosed bipolar and often cites this as a reason for his...faults. I am not a medical professional in that I can dispute that diagnosis but having lived with him for 11 years (my parents divorced when i was 11) and at arms length relationship for the following years, I do not agree with this and instead feel he has antisocial personality disorder. I think this just through my reading online in times when I've been trying to figure everything out
Anyway, for 26 years he had never said he loves me. I have many upsetting memories of his anger, emotional neglect, racism and bigotry. I could write paragraphs on events and behaviours to try and paint a picture of who he is but to me, he is a damaged man who is not capable of true love or empathy, and is very manipulative.
Around 2 months ago he started to get sick. He had been vomitting and struggling to eat, and because of his lifestyle and I feel poor choices, this got worse and worse until he had to be taken to A&E (UK), where he was hospitalised. He had initial testing done and was told he had a form of GI cancer. This was heartbreaking, and actually brought out a response I didn't think was possible - he told me he loved me, and that he was sorry. It meant a lot at the time althought obviously difficult to process.
At the same time, he was Nil by mouth (meaning no food or fluids) for days at a time. While this is of course uncomfortable he was aggressive with family members who would not ignore his medical teams advice and bring him water and junk items. He would threaten to self discharge often until certain family members would comply because they wanted him to of course stay in hospital. This went on for a while.
Until, we get the news he was misdiagnosed with cancer. He had no cancer, he had a bad GI infection and a blockage that could be managed. He was sent home Family arranged for further support from social services and a social worker from the hospital.
After his discharge, he ignored medical advice to eat small amounts of soft food and plain drinks. He would chug Fanta, coffees. We set him up with a lot of appropriate foods but he would constantly ask for different inappropriate foods. He would just throw them back up. He would not rest. He would ask for tobacco and junk to be brought to him and get nasty or manipulative when people wouldn't.
He progressively got worse and visited A&E multiple times in the last 1.5 months being told he was fine, and on his last visit was told he again has a major GI infection, onset of renal failure and some other issues. All treatable but still serious conditions that needed treatment. Whilst awaiting a bed on the ward, a lady who is a good friend of his was with him and told the nurse he was asking her to get tobacco and being nasty when she would not bring it. He wasn't allowed to go out to smoke due to needing to receive treatment. He exploded on her, calling her a grass and sending her abuse. My sister caved and brought him tobacco, I drove her there and asked he not know id visited because I could not keep enabling his behaviour. He exploded on her, to the point where security has to be called. Told her he didn't want to see her. We both left. He later discharged himself, saying people would not help him. That he didn't want any more pity, that he wanted to go home and die, essentially.
That was two days ago. I asked him why he was doing this and never got any response from him. Me and my sister have tried all available resources to get medical or psychiatric intervention but no where can help as he was deemed to have capacity at the hospital. I couldn't take this, I see this as a slow suicide and a fuck you to everyone. It is very similar but obviously exaggerated to his first visit to hospital.
I can't forgive the behaviour. He called me yesterday and I answered, but he just went on a torrent of abuse about his friend who was looking after his dog, and that she had to give him back so he can die with him. She did, and I've tried to get an animal charity involved because he cannot care for the dog, but I've had no luck so far. Anyway, on this call I told him I love him but I can't understand why he is doing this, he is scaring me and I can't forgive his behaviour to me and everyone. I had to block him because I was approaching my breaking point after the last 2 months of everything.
My aunt, his sister, called me this morning to say he is likely to die today and he wants to speak with me. He spoke with me sister and they made peace, apparently. I thought about it all morning and eventually called him, he just went off about how he never laid hands on my mother (reference to a disagreement we had a week or two ago), and when I said I saw it myself he said goodbye and hung up on me. I asked him during this if this is what he really wanted to talk about, he kept on. I was calm. I blocked him again after. Supposedly our last conversation.
I am trying to stand up for myself. I have tried so hard, and so has my sister, to get all available resources to support him. I am trying to walk the line of not letting him destroy me as I believe is his intention, but acting in a way that allows me to live with myself. But it's killing me. I feel like it's my dad rejecting me, that he doesn't care enough about his kids to even try. That he is taking his own life in the most cruel way possible.
I've told everyone to not contact me with any updates, but I still keep waiting for that notification that he's died, or relented and called an ambulance. Both scenarios feel as equally painful to me. If he was to somehow live, I could never see him again I don't think. If he dies, how do I stop this from ruining me for weeks months years.
I have a wonderful boyfriend and I don't think I would still be standing after all of this without him, but any time without him holding my hand feels like theres wind blowing right through me and I will dissolve and blow away in pieces. I have my own mental health issues and I am trying my hardest to not turn to substances or self harm, so that I can feel something different
Can anyone offer any advice :( How can I protect myself from this, or do I just have to try and white knuckle it all? I can't sleep properly, I can't eat. I feel physically sick all the time. Has anyone ever experienced anything similar? I fear all the guilt and resentment

like the title says, I've not had a flare up for a few months now, and I thought I was progressively getting better at knowing my limits, my fatigue was generally better and my pain usually below 5/10. seems like I've been managing okay with a good dose of CBD daily, extra vitamins and supplements and some gentle weekly exercise (it's taken me around 6 months to see improvement this way)
a week or two ago I started getting electric shooting pains through my hands and fingers, it would last a few minutes and then go away, a few times a day at first and then increasing until it just stopped as soon as it started.
then my knees started to get sharp pains, then my hips. then my neck pain got increasingly bad. I always have neck pain to some degree but I couldn't turn my head without awful pain, and I was using topical relief (I try not to use pain killers because of GI issues)
my fatigue level was still okay so I didn't think too much of the increase in pain levels and the new types of electric shooting pains. I put it down to an increase in being able to do things so I was drawing more, and just tried to keep moving about as normal.
today I woke up with a bit of a sniff. I thought it was hay fever and took my normal antihistamine. that didn't do anything. my eyes seemed sensitive to light and dry, blinking a lot, but I just thought it was allergies and the antihistamine wasn't working (I've had this before and have to change to a different type). I got up and had breakfast, and it just got worse. my nose started running constantly, it would drip if I tilted my head forward, like someone turned on a water tap in my head. I started getting shivers and feeling cold, even though it's quite warm here at the minute and I was wearing multiple layers. I started sneezing frequently. still thinking it's allergies, I used an allergy wet wipe to remove anything on my skin and hair that could be trigging this. I tried to relax on the sofa and just watch videos on my phone, but wrapped up in a blanket, waves of tingling full body shivers, sneezing fits and blocked feeling sinuses...it slowly crept up on me- this is not allergies, this is the start of a flare up. and the weighed blanket of fatigue was laid on me like lead by midday.
couldn't get out of work, so I've been dealing with a constantly running nose, fatigue, brain fog, shivers running through my body, feeling cold all day, sneezing fits of up to 8 consecutive sneezes, twitches and increased clumsiness all day whilst trying to do my job where I cant sit down and have to interact with customers frequently.
and now I have to change all my plans for tomorrow, luckily a day off work, to "rest in bed and hope that staves off a full flare up" when I actually should have been going through all my stuff and sorting things out because we have to move house in just over a month. it's so frustrating that there's nothing I can do, no medicine I can take helps with these symptoms, not antihistamines, not cold medicines, not pain killers, nothing. I've tried it all before and I know these feelings. I'm not getting a cold or the flu. it's just my chronic illness reminding me that it can take me out whenever it likes and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
I just needed to vent about this. I'm not even sure if anyone else gets anything like this with fibro, but that's what the Dr has labelled this as, and from tracking my symptoms for over a year now, I know this is how it starts for me. and I don't want it to start going down hill again.

April 1746, Scotland.
A time of warring clans, used as pawns to replace one king, George II, with another, James VIII, living in France. His son, Prince Charles Edward Stewart, raised clans loyal to his father in 1745 and won a series of battles that caused London to recall one of her generals from the mainland to stop this rebellion.
He was running.
His mind was a mix of fear and anger. He was being shoved and forced with the group around him. All control was gone with the smell of death and blood in the air. Somewhere, a voice rose up,
“Back to the town! Run for your lives!”
He didn’t understand why they were running, they should have stayed with the Prince. They were winning, until they came to this moor. A campaign of victories, with a march into England itself. It was all so close. …
Suddenly a hand grabbed him.
“There you are, where are the others?”
“I don’t know, let go of me!”
A voice from the rear made them turn their heads,
“They’re coming!”
Behind them, large horses with men wearing red cloaks were riding into the rear of the mob of humanity. Swords were raised and brought down onto the heads of any in their way. Horses were used as battering rams, running down the helpless. Women with children became targets for these dragoons. People not involved with the uprising were ridden down or cleaved through.
All he could do was run.
He never had a choice ‘being out with Charlie’. Clan Cameron were staunch Jacobites since the ‘15 however there was a quiet peace in Scotland since those days. His father was obliged to follow the chieftain regardless of his personal beliefs, and his son would come along. If not, they risked being kicked off their small piece of land.
“This served your grandfather well in the ‘15” his father said, a hand resting on the hilt of the broadsword.
“And it will help us bring our king over the water, with god on our side.”
He was too young to understand what this meant, tradition was tradition spilled in the blood of his kinsfolk. Spending time with his sister, Fiona, made him happy. She was only 7 but had old eyes, the women said.
“She will be wise and fierce.”
He didn't know or care about that, he was her protector and older brother.
His mother, a proud member of the MacDonalds, made sure anyone in earshot knew it, much to the chagrin of her husband. Her people were the Lord of the Isles with no equal anywhere in the Highlands.
“Only a MacDonald woman can give birth to a true Highlander” she told her son, instilling her love and sense of honor that was passed down.
“And never trust a Campbell.”
It was a warning MacDonalds took to heart. Campbells, like many clans, used opportunity and cunning to improve their standing with the crown and take advantage of smaller clans. After the Scottish Reformation, many clans became staunch protestants, with the Campbells the largest in the Highlands. They also massacred the MacDonalds of Glencoe. Other clans stayed with the Catholic church, this compiled with ancient animosities would destroy the Highland way of life.
He came from people who for centuries drew their strength from others around them. Called by the chieftain in times when their king needed them or to fight another clan. Hundreds of years they lived this life, of this land, of this piece of glen.
But beyond his own comprehension, great powers in far off lands, moved men and ships from one place to another trying to either help or prevent a queen from taking her fathers throne.This rebellion was sideshow in the larger picture of European politics and London wanted it dealt with, severely. This final act in a great and bloody play would end in a desolate livestock pasture far from his home.
His father.
Where was he?
He remembered they were in line, reciting their lineage to ancestors long ago. Rain beating on their faces, wind blowing in their eyes. Men packed together awaiting the Prince to sound the charge. He saw the government cannon being moved into position and he saw the dragoons move to the flanks of the enemy lines. And he saw the traitors. Highlanders that sided with the government.
Cannon shots struck their ranks. Men fell, disemboweled, entrails and blood mixing with the ground. Horrible wounds that no one could live from. The officers tried to close up ranks as lead balls pierced the ranks of meat. Their own artillery was woefully undergunned when compared to the Hanovarian war machine. Before the battle hundreds of men wandered off in search of food or sleep after a night march to ambush the government forces failed. The ranks were too thin to endure this onslaught, something had to be done.
It was moving so fast his mind couldn’t comprehend what this reality presented him. His 15 years of life wouldn’t change anything in the next 45 minutes.
The Camerons could not wait, their honor and rising casualties forced them forward. Stewarts of Appin to their left followed. The Fraisers, Clan Chattan, Farquharsons pushed forward. Other clans followed their lead over the uneven ground.
He saw his father in front of him running across the moor with the other men of Clan Cameron. Heart beating, mouth dry, legs pumping. An ache in his body. He wanted to stop. However, he knew what was next, an ancient cry pulled from his ancestors, that would steel his resolve.
Chlanna nan con thigibh a' so 's gheibh sibh feòil! / Sons of the Hounds, Come hither and get flesh!
The war cry bellowed from their throats, mixed with screams, gunshots and worse of all, the cannons. Pipers played ancient piobaireachd while swaths of men were wiped away.They had made it to the first line of red jacked soldiers,their bayonets at the ready.
”Claymore!” screamed the Highlanders, the cue to push on the final yards.
Running to catch up to the men in front, targe lowered in the left arm and broadsword raised in the right hand, his world exploded in white smoke. Legs and arms shot away. And others stood frozen and no amount of honor with clansmen screaming at them could move those vessels. And so they died.
The courage that brought him here, left after the brains of a clansman painted his face red. Prestonpants, Falkirk were easy victories for the army. Now it was being disassembled piecemeal. Vomit rose up and he fell to his knees. His stomach was empty since they hadn’t eaten in days, so a gruel of nothing came up. Smoke mixed with men's screams, his targe lost among the heather. He scrambled to his feet and ran past the Lowlanders who formed precise lines and returned fire. Irish and French-Scottish troops held off most of the government soldiers until they could retire in good order. The Prince was spirited away by his bodyguards and into history.
The road back to Inverness became the only escape for these refugees of the battle. Government troops began the slaughter of wounded rebels on the moor. He searched for other Cameron men to flee with, however the deluge of running Highlanders pushed him the four miles toward Inverness.
“They’re coming!”
The carrion call brought him back. Mustering his own strength he pulled away from this hand who grabbed him.
“Donald! It’s Malcolm, come with me!”
The name struck a nerve, Malcolm was his friend from Lochaber. As little boys they played among the cows and hills fighting imaginary enemies coming to take their livestock. His bloodshot eyes settled on Malcolm. For the first time today, he smiled.
“We will get ou….”
A slashing sound filled the air. Malcolm received the dragoons heavy saber to his skull.
“Come ‘ere ya little cunt!”
The language was foreign to Donald but it was the tongue of his enemies. Malcolm's body crumbled under the hooves of the massive horse. Donald scrambled away toward town.
“Where are ye rebel cur!”
With his blood up, the horse turned into a group of civilians trying to pass the dead Highlander. With his saber above his head, the dragoon brought it down on a woman carrying a small bundle. Her scream startled the child in her arms. Falling she let the baby fall away from her.
“Oi, there’s a rebel!” the dragoon hissed. Bringing his mount around, he trampled the bundle into the cold Scottish mud.
Townsfolk ran from the retreating Jacobite army, but most fled from the approaching Hanoverians. News quickly spread of the defeat and caused a panic that could not be stemmed. Donald ran through the streets with other Jacobites and civilians trying to get out of town. Falling, he backed into a wall and watched as people with few belongings or children ran before him. “We need to fight.” he thought, “This can’t be it!”
Pulling his knees up to his chest, Donald started to cry. He wanted to go home, with his father and be held by his mother. Play with his little sister and take her to her favorite part of the glen where the big tree gave them shade. Who would protect his little sister now? He shook with a violence he never knew, he felt sick. His body was shutting down. This was beyond fear, nothing like his fathers punishment or his mothers harsh tongue. It became simple human fight or flight, and Donald was immobile. Urine soaked his kilt as his small knees became the only protection from the violent world around him.
“Laddie, come with me, now!” He looked up to see another hand grab his arm. This time he didn't pull away. “We're going to Ruthven.”

Hi my name is Evan and I’m 22 years old about to turn 23. I first started experiencing symptoms in 2019 with twitching that started in my feet but spread to my whole body within a couple weeks. I have non stop twitching in the arches of both feet and twitching that jumps all over the rest of my body. I’ve also had hotspots where it lasts for awhile in certain spots then calms down. I’m had twitches on my face, arms hands, legs, feet, back, scalp, and even places like the anus. I get muscle pains, burning in certain muscles (both fatigue burning and like a nerve burning sensation), stiffness in muscles, memory problems, constipation, tingling in arms or legs when they’re in certain positions, myoclonic jerks, mispronouncing some words occasionally or with certain letter sounds, the feeling of stuff going through my nose when eating and drinking, but the most concerning symptoms right now are atrophy in my right leg and left arm and shoulder (possibly perceived) and stretch marks appearing in spots like my thighs on both sides and my left shouldearmpit area. Since 2019 I’ve had 5-6 EMGs done and they’ve all been clean. With my most recent one in July of 2023. I’ve done nothing but search other forums and this forum for some relief but with the symptoms I’m having it’s really hard. Does this stuff sound concerning? I’m lost at this point.

My apologies for the long story, but I would love some outside perspective on this- and want to share this with other new dads in case they encounter a similar situation, with the hopes they can manage the situation better than I did.
I (33M) was really excited to become a dad when my (now ex) wife (32F) became pregnant. We were both busy professionals. She had 3 months of maternity leave, and I got only 4 weeks, so we agreed I'd take two weeks at first, and then another 2 weeks when she transitioned back to work.
When my son was born, my ex became unexpectedly angry and aggressive like she was a totally different person... and other than breastfeeding she refused to cooperate with me or help take care of our son. I ended up doing 100% of the housework, diaper changes, etc. while she would scream and berate me over things like making a small noise on accident, so I was always walking on eggshells. Our son also had "colic" and would cry from about 10pm-4am everyday, and I would stay up all night with him rocking him, while she locked herself in a room with noise cancelling headphones on.
I could not coordinate with her to get any sleep for myself, and was not sleeping at all. I started having hallucinations, suddenly had vision loss/dark spots in one eye, and just generally being confused, and had trouble thinking through simple problems and making basic decisions. My blood pressure was over 170.
I reached out to a few friends and family for help, and they were 100% dismissive: they said parenting is really easy, especially for dads, and that I was just complaining about nothing. They reassured me that it would get easier quickly, and that I shouldn't do anything but wait it out... and they refused to help.
When 2 weeks came up, I decided to go back to work- partly because I hadn't slept more than a few minutes in two weeks, and couldn't get my wife to let me sleep at home, and my body and mind were failing in a big way. I wasn't actually able to work, so ended up sleeping during the day at work in the breast pumping room, and coming back to stay up all night with my son.
On top of that there was big layoffs at work, and they had to let half of the employees go. I was new and so I was on the list to cut: I ended up having to push to get a big result to keep my job. This job was a once in a lifetime opportunity- practically the scientist equivalent of getting drafted in the NBA, so I ended up pushing to get a big result out, and keeping my job, while still getting sleep only at work.
My ex wife begged me to not go back to work, saying she desperately needed help. I didn't really explain well how badly I was doing, but I begged her back to work out a schedule so I could sleep at home, and she angrily refused, saying I didn't just give birth, and shouldn't be asking for anything. She said I was delusional if I thought my job was at risk, despite them telling me half of everyone would go, and being new.
I went back to work and the situation at home increasingly deteriorated. I tried many times to reach out to her, put my arm around her, listen to her, etc. and she only responded with aggression. Once my son was in daycare a few months later and she was back at work, we entered marriage counseling, but I was too afraid to basically call her out for being verbally abusive, preventing me from sleeping etc. so I didn't say anything or really participate. The counselor said I was wrong to go back to work, and that I needed to start apologizing to her everyday to build her trust back. Apologizing to someone that was still actively abusing me felt wrong, so I simply didn't do it.
We had situations like when my son was sick for days and vomiting- likely from norovirus, and she blamed me saying I was burping him wrong. At one point, I had vomit in my eyes, and she refused to hold my son so I could clean my face saying I "deserved it" for burping him wrong and not listening to her proper burping instructions.
We stayed together for a few more years, but it became increasingly bad, and we had zero physical or emotional intimacy. I didn't push her for sex because I thought she was just too stressed and still recovering from the pregnancy.
She said she wanted to buy a house together, and I said I didn't think it was a good idea because our marriage was in shambles. She cried and said she cared about me, and started treating me much kinder, so I agreed after a few months to buy the house.
The day the house closed escrow she "came out" as being polyamorous and handed me a book about it. She told me she was going to sleep with other men, and that I could stay with her, or not, but I had no choice. I initially broke up with her on the spot, but decided to get back together and try it for my son's sake. I did have some friends that were polyamorous and seemed to like it, and was always curious about it, and also just felt lonely. It was a living nightmare, watching my wife excited about other men while having zero interest in me. I also dated two other women, but mostly out of terror of having my wife date when I wasn't. The other two women I dated were kind to me and were basically just free counseling rather than actual dating- I was in no place emotionally or mentally to date, and was so stressed I couldn't even sleep (once again). They listened to me, and helped me navigate the situation. It turns my wife had already been talking with other men before the house closed, and before she told me about "being polyamorous."
At one point, she went on a week long vacation with another man, while I was parenting alone, so I took my son and moved out without telling her while she was away, and a high conflict divorce ensued, and we now can barely cooperate as co-parents.
In hindsight I realized a few things: she was having bad postpartum depression manifesting as rage, and I needed to help her to get help. I really didn't realize this at the time, because I didn't know depression could manifest as rage, and I wasn't sleeping enough to think straight. I also had zero ability or skill to communicate clearly, be vulnerable, or set boundaries. Moreover, I think she was abused as a child and has all 3 of the "dark triad" personality traits - and had them the entire time we were together, and I was willfully ignorant of it. For her, this is a major disability more than anything- her lack of ability to feel empathy meant she was constantly alienating people to the detriment of her career and ability to make friends.
Nevertheless, I never felt like I was acting selfishly, but felt I was fighting for our lives, to get all of my family through a difficult time with our health, finances, and future potential still intact. I poured every ounce of energy I had into supporting my wife and son, until I had nothing left to give and collapsed.

Chapter 2 of True Love story (see posting of "Metropolitan Meet-Up" for Chapter 1).
First Visit
Chaz and Morena texted each other relentlessly the next day. They were both surprised and amused at how responsive the other was. Having slept on their experience, they still experienced the same glow. Chaz had a networking event at a sports bar that evening, and he had hoped Morena would join him on this “business” pursuant to their conversation the night before. She did attempt to arrange to join him, but was unable on such short notice. Still, neither could believe the joyful intensity of their conversation that was nearly continuous from the moment they parted. But there they were.
While networking at the sports bar, Chaz could not stop thinking about Morena. He felt empowered by her attention, and he asserted himself in multiple conversations among potential business associates. He wondered if Morena would have enjoyed herself if she had been able to come. Indeed, they most likely would have turned the networking event into an unofficial first date, with only personal business attended.
After the event, Chaz felt that the evening was early, and he found his way to a well-known drinking establishment in the inner harbor area of the city. Since he hadn’t been in town for a while, he thought it would be fun to listen to the band playing, and contemplate Morena. They had continued to text, and Chaz was wondering if this interaction would be fleeting, and if Morena – this veritably supernatural creature – was simply too good to be true.
Chaz decided to explore her taste in music. He scrolled through the playlists on his phone, and looked for favorite songs and artists that create partisan responses. He texted her, “Apple or Spotify?” to which she replied, “Spotify!” He selected a favorite, rather romantic song, with a swaying beat and pretty tones, and pressed “send.” Chaz thought that Morena might dislike the song, potentially putting a damper on their budding relationship. But in fact, the song was one of her favorites from one of her favorite bands as well. And since this was unusual and unexpected, Chaz thought for sure this was fate. They arranged to meet the next day, where Morena would travel to his house after work, and they could talk “business” from the night’s networking. Chaz had needed to attend another event that Friday, so they both knew that their time together would be limited.
Morena was eager to see Chaz. Their continuous texting, and their shared musical tastes, excited her and awakened feelings in her that were long since dormant. Better yet, she couldn’t stop laughing. They were having so much fun just texting that she wondered what a relationship with him might look like. She was constantly distracted through her workday with thoughts of Chaz, and what might transpire once she arrived at his house.
Chaz was also wondering what would transpire. He had concerns about Morena’s marital status, and did not want to cheat, deceive, or hurt anyone, notably, Morena’s live-in husband and professional work associate. Still, Chaz wanted her badly, and he was torn about how to proceed with this lovely woman, who clearly wanted to be with him, too.
When Morena arrived, she observed that Chaz was just as attractive, tall, and yummy as she remembered from the other night, and she detected a hint of cologne that wafted from him – clearly he had prepared for her. He invited her in, with the door opening to a living room that was clean and organized. She noticed that he was barefoot, so she kicked off her shoes accordingly. He offered her a place on the couch, and she padded across the thick carpet to join him.
Now, Morena was seated next to Chaz, on his couch, in his living room. And she looked delicious. They could barely speak. Chaz’s thoughts were racing, and, was it his imagination? They seemed to be drawing closer as he tried to maintain a semblance of platonic talk. He tried to resist. If only for a moment. And then they kissed, releasing the pent-up passion that had escalated for days.
Morena felt dizzy, with Chaz kissing her skillfully as he started to lean over her. She tilted her head back so that their mouths could open together. His mouth rubbed against hers, and she felt his tongue gently caress her lips. She wanted to take all of him in her mouth, so she met his tongue with hers and twirled them together. Chaz was tingling, overwhelmed as Morena aroused him with her expressive lips.
They paused for breaths, which were coming fast and heavy with the intensity of their first kiss. “Wow” – she said it first, but they both thought it. They were both electrified. He took her hand in his, and leaned in to kiss her again. They were more aggressive this time, hungrily moving their mouths together, faster and with greater determination. Chaz released her hand and began caressing her thigh, which was frustratingly sheathed in denim. He began kissing her neck, and Morena could feel him gently running his tongue underneath her ears and under her jawline.
Morena was aroused in ways she had not experienced in years. She wanted him so badly, and was shocked at this overpowering desire to give herself to this man because she’s “not that kind of girl.” But the fire she felt! The electricity! It only intensified as she permitted him to reach into her brassiere, and caressed her bare skin. Morena had not been touched like that in so long, and Chaz continued to kiss her while he squeezed gently.
Eventually Morena could not resist, and she removed her top to expose her breasts to him. Chaz leaned in and kissed her right nipple, which was pert with her arousal. He gently sucked the nipple into his mouth, moistening it. He began to lick around the sides and then to the tip of her nipple, switching from left to right – she noticed that Chaz liked to give equal attention. Morena had forgotten how sensitive her nipples were, and his attention was bringing a level of arousal between her legs that she had never before experienced. She felt that she could orgasm from his nipple stimulation alone.
Chaz was thoroughly aroused and asked Morena if she would like to join him upstairs. She noticed the time and reminded him of his evening obligation. She was also aware that it would be unheard of for her to have sex with this man after only meeting him two days prior. Chaz was more than happy to delay his departure…. However, they adjourned this afternoon’s encounter, and promised to meet again soon.
They continued to text, sharing funny stories about themselves. Chaz even went as far as to text the picture of him with Morena to his father, and said, “This is escalating quickly,” Morena had affected him so much. But she was married! Chaz texted her late that Saturday, feeling lonely, and she replied with her selfie, saying only, “You are never alone.” Chaz was already wondering if he had fallen in love with her.

First / Previous
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Sleep that night after the boys had been killed in front of me did not come easily. I tossed and turned, and when I finally did sleep, it was plagued with nightmares that soaked my sheets in sweat and had me startling awake with a scream caught in my throat. I spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling, wondering if I would need to see a therapist. I figured I should. I really couldn’t carry all this on my own, both the terror and the guilt.
Everyone in town saw what had happened at the zoo on the morning news. Luckily, it seemed Andrew was a master of spin with authorities, so while the word spread like wildfire, everyone said, “Boys will be boys” and nobody blamed us. There was also no actual footage inside the zoo, only establishing shots, emphasizing the fact that this was private property and we could decide who to let in, and that did not include reporters. Andrew apparently only spoke once to those at our gate the next morning.
They were told that it was a rare territorial bear, who was even more protective than usual because she currently had cubs, having been impregnated to help the species grow. And there was no footage of the small fence that served as the only visible barrier, and no one doubted the police’s report, so that was that. I guessed that, lacking any evidence to the contrary, they assumed there was a real gate that the boys had ignored. Everyone was left to believe the two boys hadn’t just been foolish enough to break into a zoo and go into an enclosure, but that they had chosen the enclosure of a bear.
‘Everyone’, by the way, included my dad. For Stanley, however, I had written a note. I hadn’t wanted him to be ambushed at school about what happened, but I took the coward’s way out rather than waiting for him to wake up. Instead, I fell asleep at about 6 a.m. like I usually do after my shift. In the note, I apologized for what happened and for not being able to keep his friends safe. I went with the same bland cover story as the news.
Dad knew I tended to wake at a little after 1 p.m., though my alarm was set to wake me at two in the afternoon if I overslept. So, he took a late lunch from his job and came home when he knew I’d be up for the special occasion of freaking out at me for a few minutes. I’d finally dragged myself out of bed at 1:30, drowsy from the low quality of sleep, and had just finished my breakfast when he walked in through the front door.
“I saw what was on the news, but what in the hell happened?” he snapped. “You’ve been working with these animals for weeks now. Are you saying this could have been you?”
“If I had about half as many braincells, sure,” I told him. He glared at me and I glared back defensively. “There’s a reason I’ve been working there for weeks and I’m fine. There are rules, and I follow them, not to mention I have my taser and pepper spray. But those are literally supposed to be used on intruders. The fact that I wish I’d tasered one of those boys instead of-”
I cut myself off, not wanting to start crying again like I had as I’d tried to get to sleep the previous night. Taking a deep breath, I shut my eyes and let it out slowly before reopening them and looking to my father, who’d released some of the tension in his stance at the sight of this clearly affecting me. “This isn’t about me,” I growled. “It’s about two kids who didn’t listen when I told them I couldn’t come into the zoo. Who literally climbed the fence, went over to the nearest enclosure, and strolled on in as I continued to tell them over and over that they needed to leave.”
“I understand that part of all this,” my father told me. “What I don’t understand is how it happened. Were they really so stupid that they walked past the signs saying it was a bear enclosure?”
I shook my head tiredly. “There are no signs,” I told him. “There don’t need to be signs because the private parties who pay for a tour have a tour guide with them. That’s my boss. He talks about the animals and answers questions.”
He finally fell into a chair at the table I was sitting at, adjacent to me, letting out a long sigh of pent-up exhaustion that had clearly been simmering since that morning. “Listen, Rip, I don’t want you to be doing a dangerous job just because it pays well,” he said. “Is that what this is?”
“No,” I said softly. “I mean, the pay is part of it, I won’t lie, but this is…important. The animals are important. I’m putting together enrichment ideas right now. The first one went great, so I’m going to try all the others on my next shifts. And the animals are treated really well. The owner sincerely cares about them; it’s obvious from how much effort she put into building this zoo for them.
“And it’s not just that the money is good; I genuinely enjoy my job. Most of it has been sitting and reading, checking the cameras, and I’ve been able to watch the animals. Like I said, I can’t talk about them, but they’re incredible. This job is important, and…” It took me a moment to finish what I wanted to say. “I want to do important things. With all the horrible shit people do every day, I’m in a place where what I do matters and I see the results, and it…it’s awesome.”
My father stared at me for a long moment before looking away, having some internal debate. “Okay,” he finally said quietly. Some crumpled up tenseness in my chest released when he spoke that word. “If you say you’re not in danger, I trust you. And I get how much pride you have for what you do. I don’t want you to quit when you’ve been so happy there. It’s clear to me that it makes you genuinely happy.”
I blinked. “Really?”
He managed a small smile as he met my gaze. “You kidding? You got home one morning recently and instead of going to bed you made chocolate-chip pancakes, leaving them in the fridge with a little note that said, ‘For my favorite brother and favorite dad’. The only time you cook is on our birthdays. Not to mention you complain less. Even working in the back of a store, you always had someone who bothered you. Now, with no coworkers to deal with and working with animals, I hear no complaints, not even about your boss. I’m not sure how much you’re familiar with the average person, but pretty much all of them have some sort of complaints about their boss.”
“Right.” I gave a half-smile and shrugged. “He seems like good guy. Always was, from the start. And yeah, he’s the only one I work with. And he didn’t even…” My voice trailed off as my brain caught up with what I was saying.
“Rip?” my dad prompted.
I sighed. “So…he didn’t blame me. For what happened.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why would he blame you? This wasn’t your fault.”
Leaning back in my chair, I wrung my shirt in my hands. “I didn’t stop them,” I told him. “I could’ve backed up my threats to tase them or spray them-”
“Oh no, no no no,” my dad told me. “I don’t want to hear that. You’re thinking this is about how you back off from confrontation, right? You were wary about this job because of the ‘security guard’ label. You mentioned that. Is that what you’re getting at?”
“Yeah.”
“Ripley, look at me.” I did so. “You are not responsible for what happened to those boys,” he said, his voice soft but firm.
I took a breath. “Okay,” I said.
That’s why my dad is so great. He gets me. Do you have a parent who gets you? If not, I suggest you get a surrogate, because that is a role that can make your life infinitely better if it’s filled with someone competent. We discussed things a little more and he agreed that I should see a psychologist, reminding me that I’d seen one in a neighboring town before and I could check to see if she was still in business.
I know I mentioned I take pain pills for an old shoulder injury. What I didn’t mention was what happened to me that put me in this state. High school was a bit difficult for me, because I’m asexual. The fact that I knew that by the time I was sixteen, thanks to the internet, probably saved me a lot of trouble in life, but being ace as a teenager meant saying no to boys. One of them took offense to that. He didn’t rape me, if that’s what just came to mind, but I ended up in the hospital after he physically assaulted me, including repeatedly kicking me while I was down, literally. I don’t like talking about it, but he got a four-year stretch in juvie/prison. That means he’s out now but, thankfully, he did move to another state.
To this day I have chronic nerve pain, and occasional numbness and tingling, in my left shoulder. I also have a chronic issue of being hesitant to stand up to people. Great characteristic for someone who’s supposed to be a security guard, right? Except if I’d said that out loud, my father would’ve pointed out that Andrew told me my weapons were for defense, not offense. And he would have been right.
My dad shook his head and pushed himself back to his feet. “I’ve got to get back to work. Just…” Rubbing his hands over his face, he blinked a few times, trying to dislodge everything that was bothering him from his brain. “If you do ever have a moment there where you’re unsafe, promise me you’ll quit, okay? No job is worth your life.”
I stared at him for a few moments, unsure of what to say. When I’d first met Yui, I’d been terrified, but had I actually been unsafe? Well, no, as was proved by the wards keeping her from me. So, I let myself sink into the feeling of being loved and cared for by my dad, which put a genuine smile on my face. “I promise,” I said. And I hoped I wasn’t lying.
I know that I’ve complained a lot about other people being stupid, so I hope that I’m not being stupid. You might understand why I have such disdain for our species, but at this point you know it’s not because of excessive ego issues. Though I’ll admit to having a larger ego than typical. If you don’t understand, all you have to do is look at us, and I don’t mean look at what we do to the planet, which is bad enough. I mean look at us.
Do you know why places all over the country have problems with bears getting into their garbage cans? It’s because there’s a significant overlap between the smartest bear and the dumbest human. That’s not an exaggeration; look it up. Us wildlife biology majors have tried our best, and the perfect garbage bin has yet to be designed.
It bothers me like a sibling sitting next to you who would continuously poke you until you boil over and punch them. Stanley went through a phase when he was a kid where he was a little shit who’d do stuff like that. But the worst is when they try to use logic to justify something completely absurd, looking like a three-year-old with Lincoln Logs, presenting a house and declaring it fit for their hamster to live in when it could collapse if you breathed on it.
With Gary and Shaun, it wasn’t just that they hadn’t known what was in the enclosure they’d wanted to go into, but that they’d kept pushing me away when I tried to keep them from it. And so, getting back to the security office tonight was a bit surreal. I didn’t know if I was supposed to call Andrew again, discuss the incident, or whether it was best to just assume things were taken care of.
Actually, I already knew they were, to some extent. Andrew said Suzanne had gone to see the parents of the boys in person and was going to cover all funeral costs, no matter what the parents wanted done. That was a huge deal, considering how much that industry tries to squeeze out of you when a loved one dies.
While we’re on that topic, all of that doesn’t make sense to me. We are supposed to preserve our bodies, which are completely decomposable, and then put them in airtight boxes priced at ten thousand dollars?
That was not my area, though, and I was glad for it. I’ve been trying as hard as I can to put their deaths out of my mind, though I’ve only been marginally successful. Most of what I’m going over again and again was what I could’ve done differently. I determined that I could have kept them from going in the enclosure by tasering just one of them, and that would’ve been better than nothing. So, it was decided. If anyone ever tried it again, they were getting zapped. Even if they tried to sue us, I don’t care. It wasn’t worth their lives.
Today, though, my mind was occupied with enrichment activities.
Andrew told me about the animal in enclosure nine in passing, saying that he wished the boys had chosen that one. Apparently the consensus is that whoever on Earth invented the chupacabra must’ve seen one of these, because it was vampiric, preferring goats as its prey. Not that it wouldn’t go after humans, blood was blood, but it would’ve given me a chance to save the boys, since it would have taken time to drain enough blood to be fatal.
In regard to the enrichment for enclosure nine’s animal, I was thinking about hanging bags of blood from trees and letting it pounce on them in midair, tearing them down. They’d be made from extra thick plastic, of course, so blood wouldn’t go everywhere. But honestly, nothing beat the fact that all the animals received live prey to hunt, so that wasn’t exactly an innovative idea.
I settled on olfactory enrichment, which was a strategy that used objects that smelled like cooking extracts, spices, and/or fresh herbs. Essentially, the equivalent of engaging its brain in that part of hunting, but with toys instead. That would have to wait until I could see it, though, so I put my notes aside in anticipation of another boring shift.
However, two hours later I had some more excitement when I saw my next animal. I wasn’t sure how fast this was supposed to happen, but things seemed to be moving quickly. At least compared to Andrew’s estimate of three months. Maybe he meant that was the point at which I would become comfortable with the animals as animals, but I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever get to that point. They’re too spectacular.
There were a handful of animals I’d seen wandering around the enclosures, including the typical ones like squirrels and rabbits to ones that had been put in there purposefully to be hunted like goats and sheep. Allegedly there were also deer, but I hadn’t seen any of those. In this case, I’m not sure if the animal went after any of them, considering its size. It couldn’t chase prey, nor could it sneak up on it.
I was walking my route and passing the small lake when I heard the roar again. The one that prickled at the hairs on the back of my neck, thrumming through my body and priming me for fight or flight. Slowing to a stop, I kept my flashlight off, since the lamps gave off plenty of that red glow I’d become accustomed to. Then, I saw a shadow start to rise out of the lake and realized it was coming up onto the shore.
“Holy shit,” I muttered under my breath, taking a couple steps back instinctively.
Roger had named this one Fiona and called her a seal-hippo, and I could see why. She was amphibious with a round head, long neck, and the body of a hippo, though unlike hippos, I knew for a fact she wasn’t a vegetarian. She had short, sharp tusks, shaggy fur instead of the smooth skin of a seal, and her flippers had claws. Those claws could easily disembowel any prey it went after.
She seemed to be curious about me. Eyes that seemed too small for her head faced forward and locked onto me, which froze me in my tracks. Her jaw spread wide in a yawn, revealing teeth fit for a carnivore and I jerkily took two more steps backwards. My heart pounded in my chest and I blinked rapidly to keep focusing on her rather than avert my gaze, as my instincts were urging. Her front flippers were probably eight feet from tip to tip, and I feel like she must never have problems killing anything, whatever her prey of choice was. Her eyes flashed under the red lights as she scanned the area around me and then trundled further forward, vibrating the ground, which I felt through my shoes.
This was the point where my mind made connections to Jurassic Park. It just felt like this thing was from another epoch. Then she roared.
For those of you who don’t know, there is something called ‘infrasound’. Essentially, it’s a sound found in the roars and snarls of animals like big cats and bears, and our hindbrains have earmarked it so we panic if we hear it. Funnily enough, it’s often found in older buildings, the deep resonance of an elevator built fifty years ago turning out to be one of the reasons people ‘feel’ a place is haunted.
That’s what I felt, deep in the pit of my stomach. I knew that’s what I was feeling. This thing was a predator, I was prey, and there was nothing I could do about it. So, I didn’t. I watched it for a few minutes as it lumbered around, scanning its surroundings, no doubt smelling things that my dinky little nose would never detect. After a while, once my heartbeat had slowed to merely double its typical rate, I managed to get full control over my legs again and slowly turned, keeping the animal in my peripheral vision as I continued on my way.
And yes, of course, there was a little part of my mind that had the same awe you saw in the faces of the main characters in Jurassic Park when they see brachiosaurus grazing in a field. This job has its ups and downs, and its downs are way down, but its ups are way up. It’s a hell of a gig.
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My journey….two months ago I thought I was having a stroke…panic attack…next day I had back to back anxiety attacks in waves every couple minutes and I was extremely dizzy so I went to the ER. Had about three more panic attacks that I could breathe through and then bam! ER with an extreme panic attack that they found put me in SVT and now I’m on propranolol..I’ve had so many symptoms since then, chest pain, headaches, tingling, numbness, loss of feeling in both arms and hands, palpitations, dizziness, back pain…you name it…I’ve had an echo, stress test, ekg, blood tests, endoscopy, colonoscopy, mri of neck, ct scan of chest, abdomen and head…what gives…never having anxiety before and all of a sudden it’s 24/7? My main concern is chest pain in my heart area and back 24/7…nothing alleviates it and doctors think I’m nuts for feeling all of these new symptoms and being concerned…its way more physical than mental…my mental was fine…I still expose myself, I still do things…any advice PLEASE!!! Edit: no personal medical history other than molar pregnancy in sept. History of cardiac issues on both sides of family Female 30 5’2 144 lbs

names changed to protect identities
Dear Jason,
I can’t understanding how you can want me but then not want to see me IRL.
I’m not a fantasy. I’m a real person that really loves and cares for you. I was not looking to fall for you and neither were you. But we just clicked as though we had known each other for years. You gave me tingles down there just thinking of you and you became uncharacteristically careless in trying to hide the fact of my existence because you were so euphoric after we spoke the first time.
You said it would be easier if you hated your significant other (SO) the way I hate my husband. But this is not about your SO. It is about us.
You also said she was your dream girl. Past tense. My husband was also my dream in the beginning. He changed.
People change. I don’t know much about your relationship with her but you have described it as one of complacency and dependence. I call that settling and shortchanging yourself. You call that “love” because you think people will always take their partner for granted (which I vehemently disagree with). You also described yourself as often “provoking” your SOs anger and as a loyal abused dog.
I would be miserable if I was you because my current self refuses to settle or be a victim anymore.
However, I’m not you. I’m not asking you to hate or leave her. Im not asking you to describe all the negatives in your relationship. I don’t care about all that. That is your business whether you stay with her or not. And whatever you decide I will honor it. In other words, even though you aren’t married to her and have no kids with her, I would never ask you to be exclusive with me.
What I am asking is for you to show up for me in real life.
I’ve never felt this way before and I don’t want to let it or you go. You said you don’t want to and can’t let me go. For my part, know that it has been worth all the copious tears to feel this intense connection with you.
You said you miss me and that you fell for me from the beginning. You want to walk with me holding hands. You want to go out to lunch and spend time with me every day. You get hard when you think about me. You dream of me. Oh Jason!
You describe the tug of war that you have inside you and feeling guilty for loving me. How I “pull you back,” which makes it sound like you are consciously pulling away from me. I understand how hard it is for you and that you may never be able to give me your entire self.
But can you give me just a part of you? Can’t you spare just a piece of your big heart? A teeny tiny piece? Just for me? I will be very careful and not hurt you, please know that.
Your childlike exuberance and playfulness, your intelligence, your kindness and inner radiant joy, your funny and erotic sides. These are the things I love about you. Your full lips, sexy face, agile hands, and slender body. The yummy smell of the soft skin on your neck. You are so wonderful and so fu—king sexy. You drive me wild and you know it. This is not just about sex anymore, although I want to share that with you.
But you said prior GFs teased you about your appearance and were manipulative and mean. Prior to your SO you’ve never had a good or decent relationship. You are afraid to give that up and you want to stay with her.
You said that you fell for me and love your SO.
If you can’t spare a teeny tiny piece of your heart then please can you speak to what follows? Help me understand.
Is there any part of you that sees me like this, completely transparent and vulnerable, where you just say “fuck it! I want to just meet Jasmine and give her what I (as the only man she loves and is in heat for) am only capable of giving her right now;” or “I really love Jasmine- she is so loving and devoted to me. I want to show her my love and possess her as only a man can even for a few hours?” I am alluding to sex because it is the thing you know I desperately need and which I have turned down from other guys since meeting you.
I’m not expressing these sentiments well. I am not a man and cannot fully understand the mentality but I have observed this drive manifest in other men, but I understand such traits are not universal.
Can you be the man that I need right now to be able to at least give me what you know I crave?
I don’t believe I can do anything more than what I already have done.
If you ever read this you will know where to find me. I hope you like how I changed our names, lol.
:-)
Xoxo
Jasmine

I carried out my first MA last night in my room and created this throw away account to help those who are about to be on same boat to help ease worries.
I found out last week that I was five weeks pregnant through a one night stand and was in denial for the first two days. I immediately booked a consultation but couldn't receive the pills until I went in for an ultrasound to ensure the pregnancy was not ectopic as I had taken a morning afteplan B pill and already ovulated.
Like every browser on this subreddit, I was spiralling into the worse case scenarios after reading about the ectopic pregnancies and bad MA experiences. I carried on with my day to day tasks in the five days leading up to the scan but I would wake up in the middle of the night palpitating, sweating and feeling racked up with guilt for what I was about to do to myself. Every part of me knew this was the right decision, but I felt this unexplainable sadness and fear. I also found myself thinking about the possibility and what ifs of bearing it into full term. I spent my free time at work reading many MA stories and played out in my head how unwell I was going to be. The five days felt like five weeks and I kept regretting the recklessness that got me into this situation. I was assured some close friends that it happens so much more often than society makes it known but I just couldn't bring myself to believe it happened to me.
On the day of the scan, I was so sure it was going to be ectopic (my advice is not read too many bad stories! It really makes you've got bad luck too). The doctor shoved a US device up my area and looked around (I thought it was a gel-on-the-stomach scenario but it's vaginal early on). To my relief, everything was normal and I could start the MA asap. From everyone's advice, I bought myself (1) ibuprofen, (2) a hot bottle/heat pad, (3) post-natal maternity pads. I also asked (4) a friend to be with me in case of possible haemorrhages and infections. Those are the top 4 things you must need for an MA from experience.
So after the scan, I shoved the mifreprestione in my mouth. I felt absolutely nothing.
24h later. My friend was in the room with me...
15h00: I ate some cereal and took 400mg (200mg x 2) ibuprofen and filled up my hot bottle. I put the 4x misoprostol above my front teeth between my gum and inner lip
15h20: After 20 minutes, it started dissolving but progress was poor. It felt hard upon touching. It just sat up there, I felt like a vampire putting on fake fangs.
15h30: My friend suggested I move it to under my tongue and it dissolved much faster. There was no taste but it was very chalky. By this time it was 30 minutes in, so I swallowed the paste with some fruit juice to "cleanse" my mouth.
16h00: I still felt nothing. The heat pad was on my pelvis the whole time.
16h30: You know when you need to do a really big fart and you get this tension/general discomfort in your pelvis? It started happening
17h00: I was already nauseous with morning sickness in the last week but it now doubled whenever the cramps in my pelvis started. I tried not to speak too long or I felt like I could throw up. I was uncomfortable. I had a bin next to me but there was never sudden violent pain that made me want to vomit or run to the toilet. I could feel liquid passing onto the pad. I still felt like I wanted to fart the whole time. Not great. I think the uterus was contracting. It was a 3/10 pain.
17h10: My friend tried to distract me and we watched some funny videos, I ended up laughing pretty hard and that's when my first clot came through. Like a usual period clot. So I got up to the toilet and pulled my pants down. When I sat on the toilet, two more clots passed. I wiped myself but it was a lot of blood.
17h30: The cramps subsided and I continued bleeding, but I was more comfortable. I tried to sit up more so blood could trickle through. I was still nauseous but better.
18h00: We ordered dinner. I thought the worse was over at this point so I ate a quite a bit.
19h00: Boy was I wrong, roughly an hour later, the cramps came back in a slighter bigger wave. I was wincing and immediately took 400mg ibuprofen. The pain was somewhat sharp like a 6/10. It was like a stomach ache before you're about to explode with diarrhoea.
19h45: It carried on in waves, between 3/10 to 6/10. The cramps spread to my lower back and my legs were weak from the contraction - like I've just done 30k steps. The heat pad helped so much. Absorbing heat helped distract and "cover up" the pain. The maternity pads were excellent, I shifted around so much finding a comfortable position and nothing leaked
20h00 My friend went home and I ran to the toilet straight away. 2 clots some loose stools passed. No diarrhoea. I felt much better.
I was very tired for the rest of the night but I could still get up to make tea. I ate the rest of the dinner to take another 200mg ibuprofen before bed.
I changed a total of three maternity pads that evening. Needless to say, after the half dose of ibuprofen, I slept pretty well due to the fatigue. No nightmares/anxiety for the first time in a week. I did't need the codeine I was prescribed but avoided it too as I was nauseous enough.
It wasn't as scary as I thought. There are periods of intense cramps but it lasted only about 3hrs, on and off. 30 min off, 5 min on, 20 min off, 5 min on. And I managed dinner during that time. I was so relieved none of the rare but possible complications happened. I would describe the experience like nausea from mild food poisoning combined with a heavy period.
I woke up today feeling hungry and relieved to not be nauseous anymore. My nipples calmed down and my breasts less sore. My symptoms went away overnight. It feels like the first day of your cycle when that grey cloud over your head goes away. The burden & guilt of knowing you're about to carry out a tough choice like this is now behind me. I will do what I can to avoid being in this situation again but I am relieved it nowhere near as traumatic as I prepared for it to be.
The process itself was easier to go through than waiting for answers from the US scan and getting my hands on the pill by a long shot. Complications happen but I wanted to share my story to assure those who choose this path that it does not happen to the majority.
Hope it helps. You got this.

I'm Feeling so nauseous & want to vomit lately. I have been newly diagnosed w NAFLD with blood tests, I did a complete ultrasound on my internal organs, but I am suspecting I've had this for at least a year and a half as ive had major symptoms for at least that long, ranging from major abd pain, constant diarrhea, calf pain\spasms, extreme itchiness, unexplained weight loss (50lbs in 1•1\2 years) extremely hot 24\7, hunger loss, but I've also had the typical 'liver hands' for at least 6 years that have just recently began to have a burning\stinging sensation in my palms..I've changed my diet, and am doing the recommended things - 3 weeks now, but certain things keep popping up, like extremely dark urine, & all of a sudden I'm extremely nauseous. I made up a concoction that really seems to take it away within minutes which I'm glad about-but it really sucks when I'm on the road when it hits & we have a family business where we are on the road 5 months out of the year, is this going to continue? Does anyone know how long it actually takes to reverse this taking the proper channels? And any advice would be greatly appreciated, my results from the ultrasound aren't in yet so I don't know how bad it is - but just to know, I'm not a drinker.

Feeling so nauseous & want to vomit lately. I have been newly diagnosed w NAFLD with blood tests, I did a complete ultrasound on my internal organs, but I am suspecting I've had this for at least a year and a half as ive had major symptoms for at least that long, ranging from major abd pain, constant diarrhea, calf pain\spasms, extreme itchiness, unexplained weight loss (50lbs in 1•1\2 years) extremely hot 24\7, hunger loss, but I've also had the typical 'liver hands' for at least 6 years that have just recently began to have a burning\stinging sensation in my palms..I've changed my diet, and am doing the recommended things - 3 weeks now, but certain things keep popping up, like extremely dark urine, & all of a sudden I'm extremely nauseous. I made up a concoction that really seems to take it away within minutes which I'm glad about-but it really sucks when I'm on the road when it hits & we have a family business where we are on the road 5 months out of the year, is this going to continue? Does anyone know how long it actually takes to reverse this taking the proper channels?