What cars were made in the year

Hey everyone! I have a really close friend that I've shared so many good moments with. Genuinely I don't think I've ever felt this connected and relatable with anyone else and I care deeply for them and at times it feels they feel similarly. At the same time it also feels like I care a lot and do so much for the relationship and they don't value it remotely as much. For example, I'll stay up late when I know they're emotionally vulnerable into odd hours of the night to make sure I'm there for them during those tough times. I'll go out of my to help them with their academics/ECs to help them reach their future goals. Whenever they want to hang out, I'll make time for them. They've told me time and time again that I'm their closest friend and the only person they feel truly open with. At the same time, I'll have a mental breakdown and call for their support, only for them to cut it 5 minutes in because they're with their girlfriend and can't help. We'll make plans to hangout and 10 minutes before the agreed meet time they'll bail on me to hangout with someone else. We were talking about prom since the start of the year and how we'd go in the same group and have fun. They bring up that they can't go to prom with me a month beforehand because their gf wants them to go with her. Which is fine, I don't know how much choice they had in that, but it definitely stung because they were the only one I could really go with. But we decide to go to another schools prom together in our friend group, but they decide to call their gf when we had specifically agreed to do this secondary prom so we could hang out. They asked me to drive, which I was reluctant because I realized it would mean I'd be isolated, but they started getting mad when I brought it up so I obliged. That was such a horrible night. I was designated as photographer for the group and just took photos for everyone. I drove my friend and their friends + gf wherever they wanted to. Whenever we had to leave a spot for the next place, they'd tell me to go to the car parked 20 minutes away and made me walk alone. By the end of the night I just felt so down and decided to pretend to struggle to find parking and ate dinner away from the group, and went to pick them up at the end of the night. If it were anyone else I know I'd be proactive and confident, I generally am. But for someone so close I don't know why, I just feel guilty to do anything. We finally had a talk and I told them everything I felt and they agreed they were in the wrong and things would change. A week has passed since that day, and I text them saying I had some trouble and home and if we could call for a bit so I can regain composure. They don't respond but I see them active on instagram :( After a few hours they reply with "sorry wasn't near my phone." All that being said, they're genuinely a really nice person and I love them so much as a friend. I wouldn't be this close if they weren't. But sometimes it hurts to be friends with them to the point that I wonder if being friends with them in the first place was a mistake. I know it's an issue with me and not them but I don't know what I should change. It's that I haven't achieved unconditional love, but I feel like the expectations I have are reasonable in itself? Idek reddit please help

Michigan credit union won’t release deposit account to beneficiary (me)
I’m posting here because I’ve reached out to about a dozen lawyers over the last half year and they don’t really seem to listen to my story or know how to help. Usually I hear “hm that’s weird” and that’s about it. This is Wayne county Michigan.

1. I want to know if I might have a case and should keep pursuing trying to find a lawyer to take legal action. If I’m wrong then fine I’ll accept it but I’m pretty sure my rights have been violated.
2. What kind of lawyer would be best if I do need one, no offense to the probate lawyers but they seem to not be interested in any sort of arguing and used to just dealing with paperwork, which is fair. So I feel like a different type of lawyer might be fit but I don’t know what kind speciality.

My mom died 2 years ago and my dad died last year, therefore my dad had single party accounts but left me as 100% beneficiary on his deposit account at DFCU Financial credit union. He had a checking account, a deposit savings account with less than 100k in it so not like a huge amount of money compared to some estates, new car loan, a mortgage loan with a balance of about 25% of the homes current value all at this credit union.
The bank refuses to release his bank account to the beneficiary, me, because there’s a mortgage? Was their justification. That I was paying personally after he died and wasn’t past due. It is now 10 months they’ve been hanging on to it and they still refuse to send me paperwork to accept funds as beneficiary. I also think they withdrew about 1/3 of the funds to pay off a car loan that should’ve gone to probate as a debt. This is a big deal to me because my dad had no life insurance, he died young-ish so it was a big funeral expense (hundreds of people came) about 20k and the only money he left to me was in this account. I had to pay for everything out of pocket and I’m in a lot of debt now paying for the funeral on credit and for his home and bills etc. The repairs on his home have amounted to more than 25k too to pass occupancy inspection so I can sell it. So I incurred a significant amount of debt and interest by not having access to these funds is my point here. (Yes I have my own savings account before people tell me I’m financially irresponsible but I have my own mortgage I need to protect and I’m glad I didn’t drain my cash because I also got laid off 2 months after his death. Happy news though I did find a new job last month)
Someone at the bank confirmed over the phone I was 100% sole beneficiary of his accounts and they need to send me forms to accept funds after they receive the death certificate. I agreed and said fine and also informed them the house was left to me in a lady bird enhanced life estate deed so it would go to my name soon and I understand I would be responsible for mortgage too personally and I would pay it monthly while I tried to sell his house. Fiduciary dept then got involved and blocked my emails to that representative who said I was beneficiary, called me next day and essentially said okay but what about the car loan you need to pay it off. I said well I can give you his car to settle that loan but they wanted me to pay the difference. I said no if there is a debt in his name you can request it through probate like every other debt collector has to. They did not like this and immediately hired a lawyer and told me no one at their credit union would talk to me anymore. This all happened within 2 weeks after his death btw and no payments were past due on anything at this time back in July 2023.
So now I had to talk to this outsourced lawyer who made the claim that the credit union had a right to offset the car loan and they will withdraw the money from the bank account that I said they do not have permission to do. Now please listen to my argument on why I think this does not apply before agreeing with the bank first. For additional context, I am a younger adult female grieving her parents if that gives an idea how the bank viewed me.

1. The first issue: the credit union feels that the deposit account can be withdrawn from for loans after the member died and before it is transferred to the beneficiary. I think the bank withdrew money from the account belonging to the beneficiary because I got a letter the car loan was paid off which I did not do. The Michigan legislature they reference only says they have the right to do this if account is past due and says nothing about death. It also says it only applies to a multiple party account, and from the definition I believe my dad’s is a single party account because everything was in his name only. There were no co-signers or extra names on any accounts.
2. Lastly I think the credit union is violating my rights under the Michigan EPIC act to unreasonably withhold funds a beneficiary is entitled to.

REFERENCES 1. 490.361 Capital; share payments; entrance fee; secondary capital; liability of member for acts, debts, or obligations of domestic credit union; placement of lien on member account. https://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(ne2kize2ihvsfogeoq3lmaq4))/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&objectName=mcl-490-361 this is not applicable for a couple reasons: • This clause only relates to member withdrawing money, not transferring it to a beneficiary. • I am not a member and there is nothing in writing saying my dad is still a member after his death. The estate and the beneficiary of his deposit account are not mutually exclusive since he is deceased. • This withholding is prohibited by state law in violation of the Michigan EPIC act which states that credit unions are responsible to transfer beneficiary funds on death (TOD) and that ownership of accounts are effected upon death. https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/mcl/pdf/mcl-Act-386-of-1998.pdf
490.64 Right to set-off or lien 1. Not applicable because it is not a multiple party account here, all accounts and loans were solely in my dads name only, as the clause says it pertains to. a. "490.64 Right to set-off or lien. Sec. 14. Without qualifying any other statutory right to set-off or lien and subject to any contractual provision, when a party to a multiple-party account is indebted to a credit union, the credit union has a right to set-off against the entire amount of the account." 2. 490.57 https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=MCL-490-57 states that the beneficiary has rights to any remaining sum upon death, not upon offset. Direct from clause: a. EVEN IF this was a multiple party account, they are still violating this state legislature:
"Trust account; beneficial ownership; death of trustee; survivorship. Sec. 7. An account which states that a party is a trustee for 1 or more other identified persons, including but not limited to minors, is a trust account. Except where there is evidence of a trust other than as provided by the form of the account, the account and any sums withdrawn therefrom are presumed to belong beneficially to the trustee until his death. At the death of the trustee or surviving trustee any sums remaining on deposit are presumed to belong to the person or persons named as beneficiaries, if living, or to the survivor of them if 1 or more have died before the trustee."
At this point I don’t just want the funds released to me I want to sue the credit union and make sure they don’t do this to more grieving people. Am I wrong or do I have a right to sue them since I’m not a member? If you made it this far thanks for reading my story.

So this happened a couple of years ago at this point, but it's been on my mind a lot recently so I'm finally going to make a complete detailed post about it. Please read it all the way through I promise it gets good. I felt crazy for months after this happened.
I was sitting in my room watching YouTube on my phone before I went to eat dinner downstairs. I saw a video in my recommended that piqued my interest, something titled along the lines of "Why are there so many silver spheres in these medieval paintings?" could've been Renaissance, medieval, who knows. Anyways, the video delves into a bunch of these paintings of kings and queens sitting in their throne rooms with a silver sphere on a pedestal, on their laps, or the floor in front of them. The video was going into a couple of theories on why these spheres were so prominent, some of which being that it was a sign of power, like these people were flaunting the spheres and that's why they were on display in the way they were. Others were that maybe this sphere had gone through kingdoms after they were pillaged, being passed around throughout the ages to whoever was the most powerful, gauging by the number of years in between some of these paintings and different kings/queens. I finished up the video and went downstairs to eat my dinner.
I finish my food and come back upstairs, sit down in my chair in front of my computer again, and hop back on YouTube, i come across a video called "The Betz Sphere" by The Why Files, I think this might have been the first video I'd seen by them, but I frequent them every week now. I click the video and I'm thinking to myself "The algorithm clicked and saw what I was watching and gave me another one related to the spheres, that's cool" Throughout the entirety of the video I'm expecting them to bring up the paintings, or the fact that it was passed through kingdoms but that never comes up. I go to the comments and get ready to leave a comment saying that maybe they missed something and start typing about the other video I had just seen. I think it'd be best if I find the title of the video so I'm able to properly redirect people to more information regarding the sphere. I go to search for the video and it's nowhere to be found, now I'm confused. The video must have gotten deleted or something so I go to my history on YouTube and see if I can find the video and it's not there either. If I'm not mistaken even if a video was deleted from YouTube it would still appear in your history as a greyed-out image with the title as "unavailable" or something, but nothing. I go to see if I can check my ISP history and nothing is there from my phone either. Now I start to get a weird feeling down my spine, I'll just find the paintings real quick and so I start searching Google for anything regarding silver spheres in those types of paintings.
Nothing.
I'm searching for hours, literally losing my mind trying to find anything even remotely similar to this but I'm not able to find a hint of anything even close. I ended up making a Reddit post on this exact subreddit actually (since been deleted), asking if anyone could find any pictures similar to what I had seen in the video, people were only linking images of figures with spheres on scepters, or these religious figures with something similar to the scepter spheres. Nothing close. I was getting annoyed at this point because I knew for a fact this was a conscious memory. I wasn't dreaming, I wasn't imagining what happened. I'd like to think I'm a pretty mentally sound individual, this was not a part of my imagination, I did not doze off, and I don't have a history of mental illness. Nobody could show me anything similar to what I saw and the video since had never been posted. I made ANOTHER post after that one a couple of months later talking about my weird memory that didn't seem to exist but not going into too much detail regarding the actual context/intricacies of the paintings themselves. It was a dead post for a couple of months, littered with people just telling me the video got deleted and it wasn't a big deal.
Then, after like 6 months of pushing this experience to the back of my brain I got a DM from another Reddit user at the beginning of last year, (I'll ask them after I post this if they are cool with me sharing DMs or tagging their username and if they're okay with it I'll post them here in the comments). The DM was in response to the post I made about the weird memory that didn't seem to exist, without going into detail and rewriting every DM out, they said that I'm the only person they've seen have the same experience as me, and they told me they found an old post about "orbs" in old paintings and now every time they go back to try and find it it's like it doesn't exist anymore. And as soon as I read this my blood went cold. My first thought was, ok weird.... but they have to be fucking with me right? I replied, "I wish I could believe you're not just fucking with me right now." I asked them to describe the paintings to the best of their ability, knowing I didn't put too much detail in the post itself, if they were able to describe the paintings as to what I remember I'd know they were for real. They replied, "The spheres were normally on someone's lap, on the floor, or a table next to them". I was speechless, this was such a weird experience I didn't know quite how to process it, I replied again with the same thing, "There is no way you're not fucking with me" They proceeded to send a screenshot of their iMessage group chat with them freaking out sending my post to the group saying that I saw them as well and that I had the same thing happen to me. They told me they tried googling anything remotely similar to try and find even just one painting but couldn't find a single thing.
I asked them how they ended up finding the paintings in the first place and they said they found a video on a ufo related sub of a silver ball rolling on someone's floor, which is most likely the same clip from "The Betz Sphere" video on the Why Files channel. They said they saw a comment on the Reddit post of an Imgur link, and the link contained a plethora of paintings of the silver balls with the kings and queens. I was going to call the person on Discord after asking them if they wanted to, but I had just gotten a puppy and I had no time on my hands to call them. Still haven't to this day but I reached out again at the end of last year just to double-check that they weren't messing with me haha. Extremely weird experience and I've still yet to have anything to give me peace of mind regarding it. Thank you for reading, I encourage anyone to pleaseeee try to find any paintings similar if you're up for it. I really have no clue what happened.

I've been having problems with my self lately which has been affecting my studies. I used to be an electronics engineering student and was about to be in third year of college in a distant city away from my home town. Due to financial problems in my family , I realized I had to stop pursuing my degree especially that this is a bit costly with all of the electronics expenses for the projects and to add to that I'm in a city where the cost of living is not really ideal for a student with such problems.
So I stopped my degree and went to work for a year at a BPO in that same city to help my family. Fast forward , my family wants me to continue my studies again but I still can't help but have this problem of financial things lurking around me especially when I'm studying on a difficult degree. All those days I had to study barely eating twice a day. And so I made the decision to go back home and pursue another degree which is IT ( Information Technology ) in a city next to my hometown.
So far I'm doing good with IT but had to start from the beginning. I'm now currently at the last semester of school year as a freshman. About to be a sophomore next year. And thinking about it I still have 3 more years to study IT to finish college.
And now the problem is that I keep thinking of pursuing ECE ( Electronics Communications Engineering ) again because I might be able to continue on my 3rd year already which will only take me 2 more years to study , essentially saving me a year. However, I've been enjoying my IT classes and realized that I see myself working more in the software field (IT) rather in the hardware( ECE ) . Although pursuing ECE essentially incorporates both software and hardware which is the best of both worlds ( hardware and software ).
I keep thinking about this now because my parents aren't getting any younger and we're still having some financial problems. Which wants me to pursue ECE just to finish college early. I've been thinking about this because the weight of the cost of living is gone now since I am living at home but have been commuting in everyday for an hour to my university.
However engineering is very difficult with a lot of expenses to bear in mind ( electronics projects ) .
This might be a question regarding about career, but I just want to ask if there are any people here like me who's been troubling about what was and what is, whether to continue the former or the latter.
P.S. I'm from the Philippines.

I'm just living life right now with no purpose or real thoughts at hand hoping I go to Heaven. But whenever I'm forced to actually think about my life, like whenever Im out on a walk or about to fall asleep, I get so depressed. I don't have anything going for me and feel so lonely and unwanted, and I can't seem to beat my sexual habits. I'm young but from all the years I've spent on the Internet away from real people about the importance of looks and experiencing it first hand I already feel defeated and done with life, like seriously. I am very ugly and self concious and attribute it to a big reason why people avoid me. I'm struggling to even go outside at this rate and get so many intrusive thoughts of jumping off a bridge or jumping in front of a moving car. I hate this because if I decide to end my life God will cast me to Hell for all eternity but if I continue to live God will proceed to let me live a miserable life without helping. I understand we're supposed to struggle but I don't understand why God doesn't help us when he knows someone is at the limit if he "loves everyone" and infinitely wills the good of human beings. Wouldn't it make sense for him to give someone additional grace or help when they are near such an edge instead of allowing them to commit suicide and cast themself to Hell? And for me I'm starting to think I'm genuinely a reprobate regardless if I commit suicide or not, so I'm starting to contemplate just ending things now because the end result will essentially be the same. I'm so mad at my life that I don't even feel like I love God anymore, and am only staying Catholic because I am afraid of Hell and honestly at times wish I could just be free like how Satan is. I try to cast these thoughts out because it feels like I'll be condemned immediately for it but its getting harder for me to even appreciate God and my life, it really feels like he is an enemy if anything and makes me want to apostasize even though I was just baptized this month. But I still believe the Church is the truth, so it would really just be an act of rebellion which would make things worse for me come judgment. I'm posting to try to get help on what to do rn cause I feel so helpless, but I don't even know if Ill act because obviously I can be advised on what to do but its on me to carry out and change... but I dont even know if theres really a point in it all. Its really as if God hates me

As I write this I am sitting back home at my parents - right where this all started - and seemingly its where I deserve to be. I am a 32 y/o male who has always been naturally gifted. I never had to study or work hard for anything that I wanted it had always been gifted to me with little to no effort. In public I always tried to be perfect and be a people pleaser but behind the scenes it was always a different story. Behind the scenes for the majority of my life I always took the easy route out - if it was either focus and do hard work or find a job or start a business I would always decide to wait until tomorrow and just survive the day instead of live the life ive always wanted. It will all make sense why I am writing this in this thread at the end.
(Keep in mind I did all this without knowing deeply that my anxiety has been holding me back and that I developed OCD tendencies in order to receive reassurances when stress was high throughout my life)
After this little introduction to give you a picture of my actions - the consequences were pretty dire. Long story short I started dating someone who I was never infatuated with but convinced myself she was good enough all because of this chronic anxiety I was dealing with. Whenever I would go on a date or sit with someone I would always be stressed have tension in my face and worry about the next words that would come out of my mouth. This has been a habit I have had for awhile. So when the opportunity arose I jumped on it.
This would lead to a 2.5 year relationship where I was unknowingly depressed and unattracted to my s/o and I just tried to make it work because the fear of uncertainty and anxiety have controlled my life.
Fast forward to the breakup - I wasn't devastated but I had become reliant on her for my conscience - although I know I never loved her I couldn't get over her because she gave my life meaning and to the outsider they would be able to see that I was in a relationship and thats really what has driven me my whole life. Not was genuinely made me happy but what others would think.
After that I decided I didnt care anymore about any of my fears and I started moving fast without pause. Got a new place, went to the gym, and was just a man on a mission. This was all great and suddenly that feeling of dread (OCD and anxiety) had disappeared, I didn't seem to care anymore. I got into a new relationship and for the first time in my life I was actually present and enjoying life without overthinking just being in the moment (my self-confidence was at a high).
One more fast forward to a year later - I had broken up with my new girlfriend and my anxious tendencies and ruminating slowly but surely started trickling back in - doubting my life decisions once again. Once these anxieties trickled back in and my OCD to keep me safe - my mind immediately wandered (without me knowing) making me think I wanted my first ex back - so thats exactly what I did except this time I was burneded to prove to her that I had changed. One night at dinner - I was trying to be normal self - but with all the stresses I had going on in my life I didnt realize that my anxiety and my OCD had been at an all time high - and the smallest thought such as understanding what someone said and me not understanding it forced me to tense up and retreat from the dinner. To summarize - next dinner I had I couldnt even be present from all the ruminating and I ended up with a tension headache where i felt like my whole scalp was squeezing - it was at this point where I knew something wasnt normal. I spent the next 2 months avoiding any social activities - doing my normal ruminating rituals which have worked all my life at the expense of time and perseverance - I would not do anything until I was mentally safe and confident. This led to a swift deterioration of my relationship as my ex did not show me any support or patience but pressured me to snap out of it which led me to working harder mentally and exasperating the problem.
Moved back into my parents with my promised business being put on pause and my relationship in the past. It was only at this time where I tried to find out why I was doing these compulsions and why I felt like I needed my thoughts to protect me and listen to them always in highly stressful situations. This is where I found out that I was doing OCD acrobatics in my mind for the majority of my life as well as that my anxiety was a cause of that.
This is also where I found meditation - and the ability to finally be able to sit with my thoughts no matter how strong how bothersome how loud they got and over the past month I have seen an unimaginable improvement from being obsessed with not being ok to starting to find acceptance. If you've made it this far thank you, and I would love any advice on how to make this sustainable long term so I can break my constant pattern of self-destruction and mediocrity and finally reach my full potential.
(I have left out many details obviously to make this as short as possible, but the crux of what I've had to deal with my whole life is there)

So, I believe context is important here. We met on hinge since hinge has been the hype on TikTok for a while. We matched in Las Vegas and we are both locals . Within like two days of having the app, I matched with a guy. We started to text and exchanged numbers and exchanged more pictures. I kind of went in not expecting anything because I've never been one to like or appreciate dating apps. So then, we texted and FaceTimed for a week. He was so great and sweet, I believed we were hitting it off. He told me he wanted to go on a date and originally we had agreed to meet up on a certain date and I cancelled because it was my first date , kind of after a two year long relationship. I felt very insecure and unsure. I expected him to blow up on me because he was so excited but he was very understanding and so sweet and we rescheduled for like literally three days in advance. Okay, so we meet up and he's so sweet and outgoing. We go for coffee and a hike, which btw I know super risky for a first date. Afterwards we go to the movies and since we first saw each other he would try to hold my hand and be extremely affectionate and was so considerate the whole date. The movie ends and we're both tired , so he drops me off home. He texts me saying he enjoyed the date and told me to get some goodnight rest. BUT he didn't want to FaceTime afterwards... I kinda just went with it. He then texts me saying I apparently gave him a boner? the whole time we were together and if we FaceTimed he wouldn't be able to sleep. (he had work the next morning). So I just let it be. The next day he texts me and he is still affectionate but I feel like he's a little distant or just not AS enthused . Then nighttime comes and he wanted to FaceTime and I wasn't home. So by the time I got home , he was asleep. I got super insecure and have bpd so I think I split at the moment and break up with him or end things in text. I turn my phone off , the next morning he sends me like a 'really' text. And I had a gut feeling he redownloaded hinge, so I made an account again, and sure enough he made a new account on hinge. I confronted him about it and I know im in the wrong guys , he asked me what I expected that I had "dumped" him. And told me he needed time to think if he wanted to pursue this and now I don't know what to think.

What Is Your Problem?
This little story was about a year ago but a post made me remember this.
My sweet, sassy, helpful little 3 year old at the time (now 4) walked up to me while I was hanging up a picture on the wall.
“What is your problem?” she asked me. I was thinking “WOW! Uhhh where did this attitude come from? Is this kid trying to start something with me?!”
I was wondering if she had heard me say this jokingly to her dad or something. I’ve probably even said it to the cat before in a funny way when she won’t stop following me around and meowing. Definitely have said it driving before. So of course I immediately started to question my parenting and try to figure out where she learned this. I gently asked her what she meant.
“What is your problem? I want to help!” she says, and then tells me “I’m working on the ambulance!”
Then it clicked, DUH. She had been playing EMT/firefighter with her dad last night and they were pretending to work on an ambulance. They had talked about what each stuffed animal’s “problem” was and how she could help them.
The 3 year old did not have beef with me and was not trying to start a fight, she just wanted to “help” me 😂

So, my LDR girlfriend and I have been in a relationship for more than a year now . Things were going really good we were also sure about marriage but there were fights and arguments every now and then , mostly the fights would be over "time" other than anything else .
She would come to talk to me and we would talk and i would get upset when she's leaving, it happened a lot of times since she is busy i had to wait all day to talk to her . It's not like she was not giving me any less from her time but it was my immaturity and i accept that. Many times i have talked rude to her and she used to do that when she's upset as well so i never thought it would be a problem but it gradually changed , we could never take breaks cause we never could stay away from eachother but i think the things have escalated now.
One day she suddenly told me she wants to take a 1-month time away to get her life on track and to find whether she'll miss he even after she is really happy with her life and to find what's important to her, i got completely shocked we had some discussion and we agreed for it . Then the day when we were about to start that 1-month time away I asked her "do you still love me? " She said for now yes so, i want to find if it's my brain tricking me or not , i got completely anxious and we again talked about it and she also told me i made her life worse ( ik it was heat of the moment), from the convos i could feel that she might leave me if she stays away from me and it activated my trauma and fear of abandonment ( my past breakup) . I begged her instantly at that time, i said don't leave me i will change and do everythin, and she said if it's not the outcome you're saying I won't leave but still i was really anxious so i convinced her to atleast talk to me once a day. 4 days went by ,We talked for those days she told me to keep the convo light i agreed , i didn't mention about the past nor talk like how we talked and promised to eachother in old conversation but i still kept those i love yous and i miss yous and some goodnight and goodmornings,
We talk over phones and just light talk about random things and about our days.
I was having panic attacks every day and everyday i tried to calm myself down and one day i asked her " babe , let's fix all this pls tell me what i can do and i will do anything for us" and she knows that I can do anything for her but she said "I can't tell you what to do ,it should come from you and I have no expectations I'm that much tired" and "would you have changed if it didn't come to this? oh hell no " I froze and contemplated on how badly i treated her so i said " okay i will do everything i can from my side okay ? " She said yeah do whatever you can "we'll see" And since then I've been doing idk what I'm doing but I'm trying to be a better person and also be the best version of myself.
Context here, I want to address something, I have already realized my mistakes and she was also straight forward about it and she never told me to change and all so i have very lil hope but i still believe that she loves me.
I really don't wanna lose her, I really really love her and the person she is , if i given one chance i can fix all those things since it's not unfixable If i was a bit conscious about my behavior we were really compatible . I always wanted to give her the best but my immaturity, my own behavior ,actions and overthinking made things worse.
What can i do to fix my relationship?

My BIL (mid 30’s) ASD (high functioning) & lives with the parents. He is openly pansexual & vocalises his interest in furry fantasy. I have no issue with his sexual preferences or interests. At a family meal my BIL shoved an explicit cartoon furry image under my, only just, teen daughter’s nose. This made her uncomfortable so, instead of making a big deal out of it, we put measures in place to ensure she wasn’t seated near him at any future gatherings. Fast forward to my son’s 2nd b’day where the theme was cartoon animal. The theme triggered my BIL into rants about furries. Seemingly innocent but given the way previous situations have escalated to inappropriateness, he was asked by my hub & other BIL to stop, that it wasn’t the time or the place. He continued. I respectfully said that there are children (2, 9, 12, 14) around that don’t need to hear it and it’s inappropriate given we know how it ends up. At that, he lost it. He attacked me over the food choices I’d spent all day preparing, stormed outside. My hub went & attempted to reason with him which saw him speak poorly about me which my husband would not stand for. He came inside where my husband followed him & asked him to leave. He got in his car, drove off, left my MIL & FIL. He was their ride. The MIL & FIL then turned on us (me, hub, other BIL). According to them, neither of who were present when things unfolded, telling us that we ganged up on BIL, that we should be more accommodating to his needs & cater better to them. They would absolutely not consider any part of what unfolded to be true despite them having to reign him in over similar behaviours in the past. My hub got quite angry and to manage his stress & anxiety, asked the MIL & FIL to leave, which they did eventually after firing at my hub that he was drunk (2 beers), had anger issues & needed professional help. After 6 months, my hub reached out to his parents to apologise for getting angry & demanding they leave our sons birthday but also let them know that he was doing it in their best interest to try to de-escalate the situation. At no point have MIL, FIL or BIL attempted to apologise for disrespecting our home or for any of what happened that day. All my husband got in return was “I hope your children don’t speak to you or treat you like you do us” & then proceeded to excuse BIL’s action due to his ASD & how he has a shorter life expectancy because of it. I was uncomfortable with the period of no contact, my hubs wishes given past experiences, but since his attempt at reconciliation I am at a point where I want to have nothing to do with them. I do not trust my BIL, MIL or FIL to have my sons (2 & 1) best interests at heart. They constantly make decisions, even before this incident, to not celebrate birthdays etc & blame my hub for not doing so. Am I wrong to think that they are narcissists? Am I unreasonable for not wanting my children around them? Am I being unfair & inconsiderate of my ASD BIL?

My parents were constantly arguing and yelling at each other (still to this day.) they would have blow out fights, to where my dad would pack a bag and leave for a weekend and not answer his phone and just completely ignore us. I truly believe this is why I have an anxious attachment style as an adult. These fights would also get intense. My dad has broke my moms car windshield, he slammed the back door so hard the glass broke, he’s broken plates, door frames, lamps, etc. as my sibling and I got older, he would take out his anger on us. He would embarrass us in front of friends, or he would just hide and totally be uninvolved when we had people over, but that’s a different story. Trips to Disney world, trips to exotic places, etc. would constantly be ruined, because my mom would do something that would piss my dad off, and they would just scream at each other and the whole vacay would be awkward and tense. As a young child, this was extremely hurtful to watch, and hear. I’ve been screamed at, had fingers pointed in my face, had shit thrown at me, been called everything you can think of, etc. it’s made me feel worthless, and it’s also made me feel like no one will truly ever love me because with him there’s always something wrong or something to get mad at. My mom has never really had a backbone, so she would never stand up for herself, or for us during these fights, which tended to drive a wedge between my sis & I and her. She would just sit there and take it, and watching this as a child made me think it was the norm. As I got older, this got harder to watch, and it played a part in who I chose as a partner. It’s taught me to not put up with any bs, but it’s also lingered and kind of made me choose angry people. I’m often embarrassed when I think of these memories, because I know they’re not universal. I also think about the friends I had at the time, the people I thought I could trust, and the friends who would make fun of me for having a crazy parental relationship, (and would later tell everyone about it, which just made me look like I had so many issues, because this isn’t the norm.) I grew up thinking it was normal to be yelled at, listen/overhear yelling, have doors slammed shut constantly, thinks thrown, etc. as I’ve gotten older, I’ve asked my friends about their relationships with their parents, and it hurts when I hear that they’ve never been “yelled at” or had to listen to these things or feel this way. I understand fighting and arguing is a given in any relationship, but to what extent? I can’t listen to certain songs, go to certain places, or reminisce on certain memories because all I can think about and see is how angry they were at the world (and my sibling and I.) I’ve also dealt with confidence, self love, and self worth issues for years because of this. I never feel satisfied, fulfilled, and something always wrong. I’ve had a hard time maintaining friendships, opening up, etc. Growing up I was always told to look / dress a certain way and if it didn’t reach their approval, then I was shunned. As I’ve gotten older I’ve done pretty much anything you can think of just to receive a compliment (I can’t tell you the last time I received one from them) or to feel pretty. I still to this day don’t know what I truly look like, because I often use filters to adjust how I look. It was always “cute! But I wish you would xxxx” I was also constantly compared to other kids (in looks, academics, etc.) which has haunted me for years. I’ve become angry, hostile, and short tempered because of these situations and scenarios. I try not to let it bother me, but I break down every once in awhile. I’ve never truly felt emotionally validated when I explain this. I know this is a lot, and this is just brushing the surface, but can anyone give me any kind of feedback or advice?

So, I (f19) believe context is important here. We met on hinge since hinge has been the hype on TikTok for a while. Within like two days of having the app, I matched with a guy(m20) We started to text and exchanged numbers and exchanged more pictures. I kind of went in not expecting anything because I've never been one to like or appreciate dating apps. So then, we texted and FaceTimed for a week. He was so great and sweet, I believed we were hitting it off. He told me he wanted to go on a date and originally we had agreed to meet up on a certain date and I cancelled because it was my first date , kind of after a two year long relationship. I felt very insecure and unsure. I expected him to blow up on me because he was so excited but he was very understanding and so sweet and we rescheduled for like literally three days in advance. Okay, so we meet up and he's so sweet and outgoing. We go for coffee and a hike, which btw I know super risky for a first date. Afterwards we go to the movies and since we first saw each other he would try to hold my hand and be extremely affectionate and was so considerate the whole date. The movie ends and we're both tired , so he drops me off home. He texts me saying he enjoyed the date and told me to get some goodnight rest. BUT he didn't want to FaceTime afterwards... I kinda just went with it. He then texts me saying I apparently gave him a boner? the whole time we were together and if we FaceTimed he wouldn't be able to sleep. (he had work the next morning). So I just let it be. The next day he texts me and he is still affectionate but I feel like he's a little distant or just not AS enthused . Then nighttime comes and he wanted to FaceTime and I wasn't home. So by the time I got home , he was asleep. I got super insecure and have bpd so I think I split at the moment and break up with him or end things in text. I turn my phone off , the next morning he sends me like a 'really' text. And I had a gut feeling he redownloaded hinge, so I made an account again, and sure enough he made a new account on hinge. I confronted him about it and I know im in the wrong guys , he asked me what I expected that I had "dumped" him. And told me he needed time to think if he wanted to pursue this and now I don't know what to think.

Hello,
Im writing here on this anon account because im at wits end and need another opinion/opinions. I will start off by painting a picture for you to grasp the dynamic.
I am a man between 30-40. My wife is 1-4 years younger then me.
Before we were married, this has always been one of our issues that would not go away. I have expressed myself being upset multi-dozens of occasions.
IMO, she is a narcissistic attention seeking victim player. It took me over 15years in this relationship to come to this conclusion. I was really busy with work in my early years and didnt have much time to dissect every detail.
I used to have a decent sized circle of friends. By decent, i mean few people in almost every nearby city. Currently i just keep to myself and do not care to be social, which could also be due to age. However, in the years leading up to this moment and almost every single social event we go to she would have random men approach her as if shes available. There were some occasions where i had to tell the dude to back off, or one of my guys will knock them silly. Her responses would always be i didnt even do anything, this worked the first few times until i started to take notice of her actions with certain male friends that would stare at her as if they admired her. She provides reciprocating eye contact, which is the key reason why random men approach her. She still claims she doesnt do anything, but on numerous occasions she would go as far as flirting with them in a hottub with our other friends in there. They all got so uncomfortable and knew whats going to happen that they left the hottub. She still doesnt thinks she didnt do anything wrong.
Fast forward, a guy she doesnt even know, but i know, sits at a table at dinner with us. She isnt sitting next to me, so i cant blame him for trying to pickout the easy targets for the night. He is married and i know his wife too. My Wife senses that he thinks shes pretty due to the eye contact. She INITIATES conversation and drinks with him because he has shown interest in her.
My wife, has everything she needs. Sported a 300k engagement ring, 100k+ in cartier jewellery, designer bags that many women would die for, drives my 200k car all paid off at the time, lived in a condo that i gave her 100k to downpay. She had the material, and emotional and physical from me.
After this event, i felt disappointed. Over 15 years of this same shit(3 years married) and im still dealing with this. She knew i had enough. For a week i didnt say a word to her, what was her way of saying sorry? Asking for a baby and crying everyday that i said i didnt want too at the moment until i gave in.
I was there for her during pregnancy, and have always been there for her. But i feel like im wasting my time. I feel like she treats me as if im a dumb idiot by saying she didnt know what the effect of her actions was.
Am i wrong to resent her? I dont think so. Do i think shes an attention seeker to stroke her own ego at my expense? Yes.
LOW HANGING FRUIT.
In my younger years, i had a buddy that everytime we went out he would make eye contact with every single girl. In this way if she responds then he will know she wants attention. He doesnt even care if they look like an ELF. As long as he gets some action, or forms the foundation for future action.
Women dont get that. What she is doing is degrading herself, not boosting her ego. Just because a guy stares at you doesnt mean he thinks youre attractive. He could just be looking for pussy. To jeopardize your relationship for attention is rather ignorant in my view.
As an attached woman, then a married one, this sort of behavior corresponds to what i call low hanging fruit.
Something i would never want. So why arent i gone? The child that came out, i love the lil one deeply and im so torn. I hate that i allowed the lil one to be born into an unstable relationship. I have always been responsible but lose my sense of logic by this womans manipulative behavior.
Currently, i dont work anymore, or care to ever work anymore because i dont feel like there is a point to further my life with her. I am thinking of selling my house and putting 500k into a trust for my kid and walking away.

I (16F) was friends with this girl (16F), let’s call her Kayla. Kayla is an interesting individual, to say the least. She’s a perfect example of your classic narcissist, to put it kindly. For three years now, she has been well known for: guilt tripping her friends, putting herself first, and doing anything that will put the attention on her. That includes bragging about her illnesses.
She self-diagnoses, all the time. I have no problem with people SUSPECTING they may have an illness, but when it comes to self-diagnosis and then using that self-diagnosis against other people is what irritates me. I myself have severe depression and anxiety, but never once have I used it as a way to brag about myself, if anything, I’m embarrassed. But that is the complete opposite for her.
So, this past summer, I was done with her bull-sh*t. She had been treating me, and more importantly, my friends like shit. I was one of the only people in my friend group to stand up to her, ever, but everybody reached their breaking point this summer. Our friend group consists mostly of band kids, and so with this summer, it was marching band season. There’s this one dude in our band(who is high-functioning autism), and he is INCREDIBLY creepy. He’s an absolute asshole, firstly. Very homophobic and transphobic. But he also makes Dan Schneider level of creepy comments and “jokes” toward girls at our school. He’s looked up girls’ skirts and has even masturbated at school.
This obviously made everyone uncomfortable, and as it did, we expressed our distaste for it in a group chat. Kayla was also in this chat, and she defended him and his actions, and told us we were in the wrong for being uncomfortable and not wanting to be around him. And when we asked why, she told us she viewed him “as her brother in autism” because she and her actual brother are a both on the spectrum. After hearing that, I made the mistake of accusing her of being self-diagnosed, which led to a one on one fight, where she told me that she was actually autistic. I immediately felt terrible about it. So, when I had the chance, I immediately confronted her and tried to apologize. Instead of even listening to me, she completely brushed me off, and wouldn’t even let me speak.
She hasn’t let me bring it up with her since, but has talked to some of our other friends about it, and has told them that she doesn’t even think I’m actually sorry, even now. Me saying that to her still follows me to this day, and I feel so incredibly bad about it, and wish that both of us could get closure. Am I the asshole?

Hi everyone. I'm posting here because I'm at my wits' end, signs point to GERD, but doctors neither confirm nor deny it. Hoping to share my situation and see if anyone has similar symptoms.
This sub has been recommended to me by a friend who has GERD and thinks that I may get some useful information here.
TL;DR at the end.
So, to start with a bit of an introduction. A year and a half ago, or so, I had this undefinable pain in my abdomen, followed by a rapid heartbeat and a general sense of unease. Went to the ER, they tell me it's a panic attack and give me something to calm down. It worked for a few days and then happened again - the ER does the same and tells me to relax. I then decided to perhaps push my yearly check-up by a few months, and went to the doctor. They found that I had developed a hietal hernia, and a gallstone, but that I was otherwise healthy.
They told me I am probably having digestion issues, and told me to get pancreatin pills, and seek out a psychologist. At the time this made sense, since I was going through a very stressful period in my life, and that stress was reflected in my diet and portion sizes as well.
The psychologist, while helpful in dealing with some parts of my issue (like the overwhelming anxiety that consumed me after every time this happened) didn't manage to eliminate all the stress this was putting me under. Another benefit it had, placebo or not, was that it helped me become aware of this pain - and once I did, it kind of isolated itself into being strictly gallbladder pain that appeared after eating fatty foods, or stomach pain, which most commonly appeared after eating a larger than normal portion.
With that, however, came additional issues - I started having mild heartburn, after eating pretty much anything that wasn't poultry, fish, veggies or fruit. On its own it was manageable, since I already mostly ate a diet based on those things.
The problem was, that every couple of days, I'd get a sudden, random, sharp stabbing pain in the center of my chest, about halfway on the sternum between where the clavicles attach on the top and where the lower ribs attach on the bottom.
This pain itself would last anywhere between 15-60 minutes, but what started worrying me was the fact that every time this happened, it left me feeling weak and anxious to the point I'd have trouble sleeping until I literally dropped the next day.
I tried to fight it, but my mind went to heart issues, and conjured up other symptoms of heart attack, angina, or general failure in that department. During this period, I visited just about every cardiologist in my city, and done all the check-ups that were listed as a service (went to private clinics, because the public health waiting lists are huge where I live).
All these doctors confirmed that my heart was fine, and that I could probably do with losing a couple of kg (I was 106kg, and 190cm tall, used to do a lot of sports until recently, so not all of that extra weight is fat), but otherwise there was no reason to be worried. Regardless of their findings and reassurances, these episodes continued; first on roughly the same intervals, then gradually slowed down as I decided to pick up going to the gym again, and making adjustments to my diet.
From this point it was a lot of back and forth with whatever this that I have is, but I got it more or less under control as I resolved outstanding issues in my life, and as I got my weight and diet under a bit of control. Throughout the entire time, I had regular, monthly check-ups with a GP, paid out of pocket, where I'd do blood tests, ultrasound, and sometimes the heart test where they hook you up to a treadmill and monitor the activity. I also once went to a gastroenterologist, whose only conclusion to everything was "you probably have some digestion problems, try playing around with your diet a bit more and find out what doesn't trigger you. I don't think you have GERD, IBS, or anything similar of the sorts. You should stop googling your symptoms, but if you really want to try something out, try removing your gallbladder, it has a high chance of stopping at least your stomach pain."
Now, I am deathly afraid of being put under, to the point that my fight-or-flight instinct kicks in and I would try to assault anyone who'd approach me with anesthesia. Thus I tried to do everything in my power to avoid dealing with gallbladder pain, and possibly finding a nonsurgical way to solve it. It worked for the most part, as I haven't had any pain regarding the gallbladder in several months, and on the latest yearly check-up, they told my that my gallstone has shrunk 3mm.
The thing is, the sharp stabbing pains started returning, seemingly unprovoked, about a month ago. All my tests are fine, and due to me starting to work out again, my weight has slowly been going down to normal levels.
I already described it above, but now, this pain is sometimes followed by severe heartburn, usually an hour or so after the pain subsides. It's gotten to a point that I would sometimes wake up with a sore throat/hoarse voice the next day; and my wife has started to complain about snoring.
The last time this happened, I managed to book a same day check up at a private clinic, hoping that they would be able to tell me what is happening, and once again, they told me nothing of value: "it's just some heartburn. Your stomach and esophagus look fine. You should look into changing your diet."
I can deal with the heartburn, I can deal with the stomach pains, but what is difficult, is this sharp pain that no one can seemingly figure out. I don't have much money left to spend on doctors and check-ups, and the waiting list for a gastroscopy using public health services is two years.
If anyone can confirm or deny this specific symptom, or give some advice I'd be eternally grateful.
TL;DR
I've been having sharp, stabbing pains in my sternum occasionally, for the past year and a half with no discernible triggers. This pain lasts anywhere between 15-60 minutes, and is accompanied by a general sense of weakness and anxiety. After the pain passes, I sometimes get heartburn, the effects of which are noticeable the following day by either having a sore throat, hoarse voice, or a complaint from my wife that she couldn't sleep due to my snoring.
My doctors keep telling me I'm healthy, aside from having a gallstone and a hietal hernia, and haven't been able or willing to either confirm or deny GERD. I am both at my financial and wits' end with trying to figure this specific symptom out.
Regardless of whether you've read the entire post or just the TL;DR, I thank you for the time, and appreciate any and all stories and advice.
EDIT: This post took a while to write, I will be reading any replies come morning.

Hey dads
I'm looking for some travel advice for about a 3 week long trip to Portugal. Not our first time on the mainland but the first on one one of the islands and the first with our son, who will be 8 months old. We're traveling there with the grandparents, which will be a really big help but we fly home alone.
The dilemma is about what to bring and space. We're renting a place for a week and staying with family, both places have a crib, so a pack n go is not required. I have a very small stroller for some areas that are stroller friendly and a carrier for the rest of the time. Obviously clothes, some toys, wipes, diapers and food are a must for him, plus a sound machine and things like that. Diapers and stuff are available there, so I'm not worried about bringing enough for the whole trip. Laundry is also able to be done while there.
It's that we want to bring a carseat instead of renting one. I am worried that our carseat will get damaged, however a clek weelee bag would almost pay for itself and offer some free space for essentials. We also know that we will fly 2 to 6 times a year, domestic mostly. I do know about the issue with seatbelts in Europe and it's already sorted out. We just know our carseat and are very comfortable with it. Cars are small, so I don't want to overdo it.
What items are must have or what items should be left behind?Any tips on packing light would be greatly appreciated. I'm definitely unsure of what is actually an essential vs luxury at this point

4 years ago my husband and I moved to be closer to his family. In the time since, there has been a lot of conflict between us and one of his sisters. She moved herself and her son in to his elderly, disabled parents home (where she does not pay rent, or contribute to the bills), under the guise that she would be looking for her own place when her dog died. (Dog died, and she instead continued living there and got another puppy) She quit her job over a year ago and lives off the SSI her son receives because his father passed 10 years ago. She drinks like a fish and is rarely sober. She sold her car and drives their parent’s vehicle everywhere. And she hadn’t taken her son to a dentist in 5 years, even when he complained of toothaches and had visible cavities. My husband tried to talk to her several times, but both sister and mom are very defensive about how they’re raising our nephew and don’t see any issues with his lack of education (“homeschooled” for about 2 hours a day 3-4 days a week during the school year) or lack of healthcare, even though they have Medicaid. My husband finally blew up at his sister 5 months ago and threatened to call CPS because she was always drunk, not watching her kid, not giving him a real education, and ignoring his obvious dental problems. She snapped back that we were just jealous because she has a kid and we don’t (5.5 years trying and multiple failed fertility treatments on our end) and that our marriage was going to fall apart, that I was going to leave my husband? (we’ve been doing great and I was not) and that she’s a great mom. I responded to SIL that we weren’t calling CPS, rash thing my husband said out of frustration, that we love her and her son and are just really worried about both of them.. She never responded back. My husband didn’t respond to his sister and tried to talk to his mom about how he feels she and dad are enabling the drinking and basically raising her son for her. His mom started crying and blaming everyone else and said that we couldn’t understand because our lives are “so much easier than hers” (being his sister, because her husband died 10 years ago) So instead of going to in-laws for Christmas, we invited everyone to our house for Christmas Eve (SIL and son didn’t show), we’re planning to do future holidays with my side of the family, and we haven’t been to his parents house since (used to be there multiple times a week) Our other niece was having a birthday party this weekend and my MIL reached out that we should attend the party at her house, even though we made separate plans to take our niece bowling. I explained I didn’t want any weird vibes at her party and we wouldn’t be attending. MIL stated that SIL took son to dentist and had his cavities fixed and has really cut back on drinking, and she expects that we can all get along again. AITAH for refusing to go to events at their house and not being able to put aside the things that were said? I think it’s super weird that she wants us all to pretend it never happened without anyone apologizing. Is that a normal thing in family conflict?

First Previous Wiki
Admiral Tenrah returned to the battle map, looking at all the various icons and routes to and from star systems. So far, the Sennes Armada was keeping its pace mostly on track. The delay due to the diplomats from the Misan Li Heptarchies no longer would matter.
King Siran had pulled back from the battlefront against the High Federation in an attempt to pivot to the Hive Union. He had won the battle, but the stragglers included the remaining leadership of the High Federation anyway, so they could continue to remain somewhat organized. The massive civil war would soon spill into a more international affair, due to the King's rhetoric. But that was entirely his fault when he so strongly advocated for the deaths of Cawlarians who had lived on planets for generations that he happened to desire.
And he would not let his name be stained with even the suggestion of a loss. The Battle Planner and Fleet Commander Annabelle Weber were also now on their way to the front, and the diplomats from the Heptarchies were tagging along. Phoebe was in discussions with them now, and supposedly there'd been a few breakthroughs on that front. Whatever she'd promised them or get them to agree to, the fleet buildup along the Hive Union's border with the Heptarchies was slowing.
The Interstellar Gathering seemed to have realized no amount of bluffing would get the High King out of war. Even if he was a proxy force aligned with them, King Siran was not valuable enough for them to risk a wider war. It was just as Tenrah had expected and had told Eyahtni, Kawtyahtnakal, and the Patriarchs when he'd met with them several days ago. Just as a young hatchling couldn't be allowed to stray too far from the nest, there was simply no sense for the Heptarchies to risk economic ruin.
Orith and those who ruled over him would shift their tone while pretending it was a natural decision, not one they'd been forced to make to align with reality.
"I must commend your tactics in the latest training exercise," Tenrah said, ruffling his feathers slightly before respectfully nodding to Annabelle.
"I am pleased to hear such high praise from you, Admiral," the woman said. She was fully dressed in her regulation spacesuit, meaning most of her face was obscured. But Tenrah wouldn't complain since it was more than prudent to be ready for anything. The next unknown ships might not be friendly.
He had also looked into the parties responsible for the lack of communication or warning of the Misan's arrival. As it turned out, general incompetence was to blame. A receiver hadn't been properly calibrated, so the transmission signal had just been noise. He'd given the officer in charge of that an earful before eventually letting up and telling him to do better. A personal visit with the Admiral was one thing. But a second personal visit was quite another.
Tenrah drew a vector toward some of the outer systems controlled by the High King. A few garrison forces were there, but they would be swept away almost instantly. What most concerned him was the shipyards in the region that received most of their metals from a select group of planets in those systems. They were rich in the metals required to forge the alloys needed in the High King's fleet.
The High Federation had been something of a dumping ground for either overthrown species or other alien species that had been deported from their homeworlds before the war broke out. This was reflected in the number of species inhabiting the worlds, each with unique names, traits, and temperaments.
"We plan on taking this path, and then splitting to conquer these systems and disable their metal exporting abilities," he explained. "Then we will move to this system."
He zoomed in more and drew a new vector from where the previous one ended. "We have intelligence that they have at least four planet crackers there. Brey will send FTL suppression satellites through portals on the outer edges, with her portals boosted by our psychic amplifier fields. we will be able to take over the system quickly, and begin the process of either disabling the planet crackers or moving them back to our territory."
"We will need to know the angles the superweapons are at before committing to the battle," Annabelle said. "Otherwise, judging by the trajectory cone you have, we can bypass them entirely and reach Siran within two weeks."
"And that is an interesting proposal. Can you lay out your plan, in that case?"
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Annabelle did so. She and Tenrah discussed the strategy's risks, and they eventually decided that such a tactic, while bold, wouldn't do what they set out to do: ensure the safety of the Cawlarians near the border. They were already trying to evacuate from the coming war front, but cities and planets were large things that took a lot of time to completely empty.
And more garrison forces, whether they were androids from Phoebe or specialized and highly trained defenders from the Union, were still moving in as the civilians evacuated. Kawtyahtnakal had established a fund for them, but many people were too stubborn to leave. Despite the looming threat of war and possible massacre, they still refused to board the passenger ships. Annabelle could respect their tenacity and courage, though she personally believed it was counterproductive.
A few encroaching splinters of Siran's fleet had already struck the evacuation forces. He'd sent around 2% of his ships away to harass all the border systems within reach in an attempt to get the Armada bogged down in defense. But with such small forces and the Union on such high alert, all of the important stations with weak shields were well within the protective layers of planetary shields in the area.
Larger garrisons than necessary were still required, of course, but Tenrah had managed to navigate the desperate concerns of the Feathers and those like them in charge of governing their planets with his natural political skill. He didn't need to ask them for favors because, as an Admiral, he alone held power over how his portion of the fleet would respond. Annabelle had witnessed that loyalty and control well within the organization of his fleet. Even at his advanced age, she continued to be impressed with his adaptability and skill at monitoring three-dimensional battle planes and fields.
She pointed to the cone of possible directions Siran was expected to take. They were generally adjacent to the border, though they would head around the left side of the territory he claimed from the Union. If he reached it, millions of lives would be lost every day. Once he broke the shields entirely, the planets would be utterly glassed down to their mantles.
She'd read up on his methods and had seen videos of them in action. Despite all her training, it still was haunting. The hivemind helped to soothe her when the unpleasant parts of command sizzled up to meet her in the middle of the night.
But they would not impede her on the field of battle. When she went to war, the hivemind suppressed all that wasn't necessary for the mission. It was their agreement, one which she'd asked of it. And being a node of the network meant that her stability was paramount, even more so than her title as Fleet Commander. For if she fell, others could take her place. Protocols ensured and demanded that.
But her place in the hivemind was what allowed it to have any strength this far out. It could form avatars and help with long-range communications, though the main mind back on Earth and Luna obviously remained disconnected from this distance.
"I would normally agree with you, Fleet Commander, but I am reminded of your tactic to use decoy hard light holograms."
"They will suspect that any ships heading right for the barrels, or close enough, are either not valued enough or are the decoys."
"Then all you have to do is make them impossible to ignore," Tenrah said. "I can lend you bombs capable of remaining armed and capable of being triggered inside of hard light holograms, even with jamming involved. Then, they will be unable to ignore them, and the explosions generated would destroy the shields in place around the planet crackers. If they fire the weapons, then the residual magnetic interference will allow us to destroy them, since the shields will be far weakened."
Annabelle could see the potential brilliance of the strategy. But it was just that- potential. In space, there were no obstacles. Without stealth fields, there was no hiding. And with hard light holograms, stealth was obviously off-limits.
They would be left approaching from angles that they would be unable to adapt to. She had her VI plot several routes but was unsatisfied, so she had Edu'frec link into the network to do it. Phoebe had been replaced after contacting a Sprilnav network to ensure she could scrub any programs that may have gotten through to her without distraction.
It would be a terrible thing for a Sprilnav AI to make it to her dreadnaught, for sure.
"We will likely need a threefold diversion at least," Annabelle said. "Maybe fourfold, if we can spare the forces, and brave any minefields that may exist."
"Well," Tenrah began. He pulled up a few schematics of the weapons her dreadnaught carried. "I believe you can solve the minefield issue from a distance, even with the lightspeed limit. After all, they can't move easily. As for the actual attack? I suggest a sixfold flower formation, with a twisting wings accent."
"You will have to show me a diagram of that," Annabelle said, grasping uselessly at the unfamiliar words. Before their integration had begun, there had been a limit to how much doctrine she could memorize.
Tenrah pulled up an image of an alien flower blooming with six petals. And then the image faded, overloading with a stylized ribbon of red shapes. The ribbons spun on their sides every thirty seconds, like corkscrews that were flatter.
"And in this case, the ribbons represent the drone formations. I can send a few carriers into the battle with fighter escorts, though we will need to keep them spread out to avoid any direct lines of sight from the planet crackers."
"I heavily doubt they will waste such shots on carriers," Annabelle said. "And if you commit more, you will overwhelm their defenses. I believe your drones are highly reflective, so only missiles and bullets can deal sufficient damage at the involved speeds and numbers we are working with here."
She tapped the diagram, shifting it by about 45 degrees.
"I believe I can fit a stealth force here, which will engage the back defenses of the planet crackers once they focus their shields frontward. I can likely get a full battlecruiser group in, and if you can press in as a wedge around 10 million kilometers above me from where I come in, and around 30 million kilometers below," Penny paused to draw the vectors with her hands, "Then it will aid in my ability to subdue them. It would likely shorten the battle time from a week down to four days."
"Assuming their detection satellites are not capable of seeing it."
"And we will target those too. I believe the first strike can fall on those, since the planet crackers will interfere with their ability to scan behind themselves, and such large power signatures can be noted."
"There is one more problem," Tenrah said. "We are generally working on the assumption of trying to capture these ships, yes?"
"Yes," Annabelle said.
"Then will we board them?"
"Yes, but no. Edu'frec and Phoebe's commando androids will open up the beach heads on the physical surfaces of the planet crackers, while our specialized mental warfare agents will take the fight to them in the mindscape. I assume you have your own plans in that regard?"
"It depends on how we will split the planet crackers. There are 12 in the system. Half and half?"
"That seems prudent," Annabelle replied. She selected the ones that would be most advantageous for her various gambits and strategies to work. They were closer together, which meant more capacity for coordination, mutual aid, and shielding. But it also meant a larger target, one which she could hit from many vectors without worrying about each enemy ship having a wide field of view. Some battlecruisers and cruiser groups were scattered around, but they were not enough to resist the Armada. And once Siran was robbed of a quick way to end the war, the Union would hold the upper hand, capable of committing devastating power to a fleet that remained in a system for a long time.
Yet the same was true for the Union and the Alliance. If the battle took too long, or their command positions were located, then the terrible might of the planet cracker beams would be turned upon them instead. Annabelle's dreadnaught was powerful. More so than all the ones before it. But that didn't mean she wanted to test her shields against alien planet crackers.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Penny was talking to a group of freed slaves on Justicar. These were recent ones who still held quite a bit of trauma. They'd taken to calling her 'Liberator' despite her never identifying herself as such. It was oddly endearing and did make her feel quite a bit better. It was good to just be able to go out and help people.
She felt some perturbations in the mindscape but ignored them. Right now, she needed to ensure that the gangs couldn't continue their horrific industry. She'd taken out most of their heavy equipment and was now waiting for the Guides to finish searching.
Sirens and alarms echoed in the distance. Penny sent psychic energy into her eyes, but she was too far underground to see anything without using the energy itself instead of light to see. Justicar's mind seemed busy, so she couldn't connect with him. As time went on, Penny felt that something was wrong. It was a gut feeling that she couldn't place. But because of that, she was on edge. She made a large shield of psychic energy above them.
She held it for several minutes. Nothing happened, but Penny wouldn't let it down that quickly. Justicar still didn't respond. Her communicator rang. Kashaunta was calling.
"What's going on?" Penny asked.
"The Grand Fleet is-"
Light and heat smashed into her, easily breaking through her shields. She briefly saw tens of thousands of Sprilnav burning before the light overwhelmed her eyes. Her communicator was destroyed. The onslaught was accompanied by a monstrous level of sound. Shockwaves drilled Penny into the melting and fracturing ground, forcing her lower and lower into expanding pools of magma and liquid metal.
The city's upper layers fell upon her, crashing with great and terrible force. But Penny was now fully reinforced with psychic and conceptual energy. She erupted furiously from the rubble. The air around her burned with heat as she continued to accelerate. The armor plates now surrounding her glowed cherry red, but they were white by the time she'd reached space.
She reached the first planetary shield.
"Displace," Penny growled. She forced reality to move as she willed and to place herself where she saw fit. The Grand Fleets were high above, firing upon a small group of ships that had detached from Azeri's fleet. They seemed to be directly attacking the broken-off contingent and not Justicar itself.
So Penny increased her eyesight and analyzed the battle in both real space and the mindscape. Nilnacrawla helped her identify Justicar's targets. The massive Elder was angrier than she'd ever seen him, and his size, which was even larger than Tetelali, made that incarnation of him appear more like a god of wrath. She saw him brutally tear through groups of minds desperately running to avoid him.
She could faintly see spheres of psychic and conceptual energy area denial fields. From this distance, the flagships' strength was truly impressive. Both of them were at least ten times as powerful as Azeri's had been during their battle. It was clear both Kashaunta and Valisada had ordered upgrades.
Then, her attention came to the dreadnaught, which seemed to be at the head of the attack. Penny explored the ship with her psychic power, pushing aside all resistance. Several lasers struck her, but she ignored them, denying their impact in reality against her own.
It glowed with the fury of weapons firing. Missiles and fighters flowed out of its bays. Bullets, nukes, and lasers streamed from red-hot gun barrels. A nuke hit her but didn't explode. She ripped it apart, using the materials to add energy to her reserves.
Justicar continued to go in inside the mindscape. He tore at them like a shark at a school of minnows in a coral reef. His ravenous anger and hatred were frightening, but Penny rapidly got used to it. Calling up her own memories of the innocent people who'd been killed for no reason, Penny wrapped herself in energy and began to erase her signature from the area.
Fighters flew past her, no longer hitting her psychic shields with bullets. Lasers stopped firing at her since she'd moved from her last position, and there was no longer anything for them to track. Penny floated in the stars, with bright blooms of white fusion explosions blossoming around her. And so she moved forward. She reached a cruiser. She reached forward, teleporting past its shields, and shut down the ship's reactor by teleporting all of its fuel into the void.
Soon, a missile from Kashaunta's Grand Fleet found the vessel, and it vanished in another sphere of heat and light. Of course, it was all silent in space. Penny could only hear her heart beating and occasional warnings from Exile or Nilnacrawla at incoming attacks. Exile occupied the area in her ears, which felt weird, but it allowed him to speak without showing himself in the mindscape. Given his nature and the fact that the Grand Fleets likely had detections for speeding space entities, it would be a terrible idea for him to appear there. Nilnacrawla continued to help Penny with the mental aspects of the battle.
He processed the energy input and output that Penny was giving off in the hopes of keeping her off the sensors of the dreadnaught battlegroup. She didn't want to attract the full focus of one of those massive guns. The explosions on Justicar would have been capable of cracking apart a mountain range if not for the extensive dampening Justicar's shields had done. And she'd withstood them only because she could shunt off most of their impact into reality, leaning into her conceptual nature and the nature of Cardinality to escape certain death.
Even with her power, as high as it had ever been, the blow she was taking were the most powerful physical impacts she'd ever endured.
She also suspected Yasihaut's work in this, though she had nothing to prove. She also had to remain vigilant about the Judgment. She couldn't take overly hostile actions, so she didn't just teleport the Sprilnav in the area out of their ships. She tried it on a smaller scale, and a weak pressure from the dreadnaught made her power fail to affect them.
But those Sprilnav were still doomed to die by their commander. But Penny didn't wish to doom the Alliance and herself by taking their deaths into her own hands. And she was stained with enough blood, metaphorical and literal. The ashes of the people she'd freed had fallen away with her ascent into the atmosphere, but the gritty memory and feel of them never would.
Once again, she'd been powerless to save those who'd needed her. And if she'd had that power, what could she have really done? Would she have been forced to stand there and take it? Or could she have really fought back in a way that wouldn't be turned against her in the Judgment? And was she wrong for considering all of that during such a horrendous time, when she'd literally seen thousands of people turned to slag and ash before her very eyes just ten minutes ago?
Penny burned with shame and grief. She hated this. She hated that things always turned to this. Why couldn't the galaxy just leave people alone? Why did there have to be so much suffering? Her anger threatened to overwhelm her, but with a herculean effort from her, Nilnacrawla, and Cardi, it was beaten back.
Penny felt Justicar getting close to breaking through the shield. She sent a small jolt of power to its underside. A thick bolt of psychic lightning infused with rage leaped from her arms, shattering the shield completely and taking roughly half her power. In the dreadnaught, the antimatter reactor she could sense radiating its energy suddenly lost all coolant access.
She pushed her psychic energy into herself and her conceptual energy into words that she harmonized into existence with the force and might of her will.
"Cardinality: One to zero. Reversal."
A heap of her energy left her instantly, stopping a budding explosion from ripping the dreadnaught apart. Justicar absolutely ravaged whoever was inside that ship, including what appeared to be a leader figure in the mindscape. Penny watched Justicar smash the Elder's corpse in his jaws and tear his soul from his body before shredding it violently with a contraption that looked straight out of a horror movie.
She let the explosion go, and so it went. The dreadnaught cracked in half. The Grand Fleets, which had never stopped firing, finally broke through the shields as the circuits failed to supply them with power. Hundreds of thousands of lives winked out instantly, torn to subatomic particles by beams coming from two different flagships. Penny went straight to Kashaunta, appearing on the ship's bridge still in stealth. To their credit, her guards noticed immediately and bared their weapons at her.
The guns that were powerful enough to blast holes in skyscrapers and sturdy enough to withstand a fall from orbit with hardly a scratch unloaded their payloads into her. Penny opened her mouth, and strings of psychic energy writhed outward, wrapping themselves around the guns and wrenching them out of the claws of Kashaunta's guards while the impacts' explosions were contained by thick shields.
Kashaunta herself had already drawn her sword but hadn't moved an inch.
"Penny," she said dryly. "Welcome to my ship. I apologize for your reception."
A new shield came down on both of them, preventing their words from reaching the ears of Kashaunta's subordinates.
"Think nothing of it, Elder Kashaunta. What punishments will be given to the Grand Fleet Commander?"
"Well, technically I am not the Grand Fleet Commander of this fleet," she said. "So that is not really something I can enforce. However, the Grand Fleet Commander of the 85th Grand Fleet does wish to talk with you, Justicar, and myself about what just occurred."
"And you believe him?" she exclaimed.
"He sent transcripts of the message he sent to one Elder Solei, asking him to cease his actions before it was too late."
"Even the Alliance can make deepfakes," Penny said.
"And do you think I would be ignorant of such things, child?" Kashaunta asked. "We have ways around those. That is why we still have a society after billions of years of time to screw it all up. Deepfakes are a problem of less advanced species and cultures, not those with the tools to handle them."
"Which are AIs, which you also ban throughout the galaxy."
"Yes."
"Isn't that hypocritical?"
"Yes, it is," Kashaunta said. "You can go and complain to the Judges who decided that if you wish, though asking them to think of the children instead of preserving the power of the entire Sprilnav species will get you laughed at by a billion mouths."
Penny felt something in her mind take offense to Kashaunta's wording. It didn't feel like it was part of her, but it also did. The shock of all the lives lost hit her again, making her scowl.
"So there will be nothing done?" Penny growled.
"No. Prepare for a neutral and level-headed discussion. If you wish to have any seat at a table such as this, you will conduct yourself with decorum. You will not accuse Elder Valisada of being responsible for whichever fool did this, and you most certainly will not baselessly claim that Yasihaut is at fault for this, even if it is likely that she or her backers are. It is time you learn the lesson that all Elders have: there are always more Sprilnav. Recognize that this was a strike against you without casting aside all of your goodwill among those that matter."
"Those that matter," Penny mused. "Sometimes I forget what you are."
Kashaunta stepped forward, eyes narrowing. She let out a hiss.
"You saw a few thousand people die, and now you're back to the racism again? Grow up. People die all the time in this galaxy. You complain about the status quo. I would respect that, if you could stomach what is required to change it. Death will continue to run rampant, and you will be the reason more die no matter what you do. 760 sextillion Sprilnav, Penny. And you cry over ten thousand?
During the Source war, we sent two years olds to war. You don't get to slide back into comfortable dumb hatred of our species because of a few stupid people. Rest assured, if you ever get this Alliance-based order, you or your successors will become tyrants. There will be a human who has the power and will to start wars, and enact genocides, for functionally no reason. Need I remind you of World War Two, and World War Three? If you multiply the population of Humanity by a trillion, that means you'll get a trillion Pol Pots, or Hitlers, or Genghis Khans.
And a hell of a lot more dumb idiots in power, which ascribes most of the history of nearly every species in the galaxy. Notice how Valisada and I both fired on Solei once he decided to be an adult daycare nominee? Notice how Valisada has not fired at us, or Justicar, and is trying his best to start a constructive dialogue? People die in war, Penny. This is reality. And you cast your disdain onto me, the only Sprilnav keeping you alive in this place, because I happened to be born an Elder. But no. I'm still some alien, right? Just another dirty animal for you to kill when the Judgment ends."
Kashaunta's fury caught Penny off-guard. The Elder truly meant her words. Penny had deeply offended her, cracking open the facade she usually maintained. The smug feeling at having made Kashaunta go on such a tirade faded when she considered the circumstances. Maybe she had acted like a child. But she hadn't said anything truly deserving of such a furious tirade, had she?
Not unless her proclamation that she remembered 'what Kashaunta was' had an implication that she didn't understand. Kashaunta was a mass murderer, one who was more than willing to justify it when necessary. And she downplayed the fact that this attack was on Penny herself and on thousands of innocents on a Sprilnav planet where she was meant to be safe. This wasn't a pair of assassins in the night, slipping poison into water or dropping snakes into a bed. This was a much more insidious and terrifying evil. Penny had been powerless to stop it.
Penny knew she was right, but Kashaunta did not. Could she truly weigh her scant decades against Kashaunta's billions of years of age? Perhaps. Age was not wisdom, though it certainly could be experience. Kashaunta turned around and started to walk away. Sadly, Penny still needed her.
"I'm sorry, Kashaunta. I am... incredibly charged. I am very pissed right now. I am not apologizing for how I feel about this attack. I have every right to be upset, and I will remain so. I will not be bullied or cowed into submission, even by a thousand more tirades. There comes a point where something must be done. But if you are upset over what I said, then I would at least like an honest clarification why."
"Because you had showed me you could think like a person should. That you didn't see people's species anymore. That you were becoming less racist. And yet, when you are cut raw, you still see me as a Sprilnav Elder alone, and therefore complicit in this massacre I literally did everything I could to do stop before it worsened. You said you knew 'what I am' as if you'd forgotten that. And it is clear that you meant that you'd forgotten your belief that I am some dirty criminal Sprilnav, who deserves to be slaughtered in the dark for the crime of being born in her species.
You care more for the ash on Justicar than you do for what I have given you. Your simplistic view of reality would mean that if you could push a button to kill us Elders, you'd do it, robbing countless families of their loved ones, because you now remember 'what we are,' and are again regressing away from your previous growth."
"I am one person, Kashaunta. I don't understand why you care this much about me. But I can recognize that the message you received is one of terrible bigotry. I am suffering, every day, every week, that I remain in this god-forsaken place. It hurts for you to dismiss the people I care about, even for a moment, dying just because there are many of them. But that does not excuse what I said to you despite the death toll you carry on your own head. It was a half-truth."
Kashaunta laughed. "Do you know why I care so much about what you think, Penny? It is because you are the other aliens. All at once. The Alliance is the face of all things 'alien' in many places. Remember what conceptual energy is? Lecalicus told you, I believe. You represent more than just your own views. And if you're able to forgive a speeding space entity, but not me, then it shows that we will never have peace. That no matter what, this cycle of hatred will continue, and I will need to either build a new galaxy with aliens that don't hate us for our ancient crimes, or just figure out another way. You are the face of the rest of the galaxy, Penny. And you have just told me that you still hate me for being an Elder. After I thought you had changed."
"And you believe you are undeserving of such hatred?"
"Penny," Kashaunta said. "The Alliance didn't exist when many of these events happened. Some of your grievances are older than the mountains on Earth. You say you hate us for genocides that happened so long ago that they no longer hold any meaning. There is no compensation we can give to dead species on dead worlds. What you want is an alien species to hate and blame for all the universe's problems. Because it is easier to hate us than to confront reality. And we are the ones you have been told to hate."
"They were not small things. It was the deaths of trillions of people, Kashaunta."
"Yes. And it was wrong. I can understand that. But what do you think will happen when your Alliance, filled with people who hate us, takes over? You will see humans bombing Sprilnav schools, and the hivemind will do nothing, for it will share that hate. Acuarfar will abduct and torture us. Knowers will devour our children. And in the face of that? You would turn a blind eye, because it is too hard to solve with a simple fix. You will only propagate generational hatred, just as all the Alliances and Galactic Republics and Peace Unions did before you.
Because underneath your message of equality for all species is oppression and genocide for us, the villains in your little story. That is what happens in reality, once the benevolent dictators die. And you, who have lived with us, eaten with us, and talked with us, will sit upon your golden throne, and when I am brought before you, naked, bleeding, and in need of support, you will throw me away, because all I am to you is an Elder. That mindset is exactly what stands in the way of peace. It is why I stopped giving you aliens chances for so long. And having to argue this with you at all makes me think you may no longer be worth my effort."
More manipulation. Penny was ready to shout at her, but Nilnacrawla pulled her thoughts away from blind anger. And it did feel unnatural for her. Alien.
"This is not peace," Penny said. "This is war. And we are circumstantial allies. I will not become what you claim."
"I have sown the seeds of a thousand despots," Kashaunta said. "I recognize them when I see them because I have reaped the heads of a million more."
Penny sighed. She wanted to resist and continue arguing, but it wouldn't get her anywhere. Now that she had thought about it, she was unlikely to overturn a viewpoint set in a billion years of experiences. Perhaps Penny could explore this later, when she had time to properly process it all.
"Very well. I will go to this meeting of yours, and I will conduct myself with decorum. However, while I refuse to belittle or forget thousands of deaths, I am sorry that you feel this way."
"But you are not sorry about making me feel so."
"No," Penny replied. She suppressed her emotions more, taking the time to carefully consider her words. Kashaunta was wrong and oddly sensitive right now. Saying the wrong thing could damage far more than their mutual feelings. As much as she wanted to win this argument, Kashaunta was who she was. She was the alien dictator keeping the Alliance alive.
"We are both right in some ways, and perhaps we might be both wrong, too. This only shows how tough the road will be. We at least are consciously trying to come to an understanding. But for the billions of Alliance citizens, quintillions of aliens, and sextillions of Sprilnav? It is a gargantuan task. And... right now, I don't think it is possible."
"It isn't," Kashaunta said. "And it won't be for thousands of years. But we don't get some neat little time skip to wait and solve all of our problems for us. Change will start only when we make it."
Kashaunta was throwing her a bone, then. They both knew the argument couldn't continue right now.
"So we have an understanding, then," Penny said. "Hatred will remain, but it must be minimised. That way, cultural and social pressure will eventually stamp it out, and we may have peace."
"No. We will have a truce, which will only become peace with much more work. The Alliance is a nation that is 24 years old. Only a single generation has grown up within it. Negotiations will be hard with so many who remember the hatred. But Valisada is not like other Sprilnav. He will seek to bring a hybrid war to you and the Alliance, unless you can convince him that you truly mean to bridge the divide. You are clearly misguided, but have a genuinely good heart. That will make life hard for you. Your words today would have spelled the death of you and the Alliance, had I not established this shield around us to hide them. Out of the spirit of our friendship, I will not request a favor in return for this boon."
"Thank you, Kashaunta. Though I'm not sure I can consider you a friend."
"The fact that you bothered to listen to my side of things, in this limited aspect, despite the hurt you must feel right now, proves otherwise. I am well aware of my past crimes, Penny. I know that my emotions today were a weakness I should have been able to seal, and that you will still see me for who I was, and not who I am. I know how it sounds for me, a killer and a ruler, to be upset at being confronted. But that is how I am. I still have my pride as an Elder, and there is only so far it can be pushed. Who I was certainly would qualify as beyond evil. But to remain at the top, there are limits to how far you can swing into benevolence.
I cannot atone. Do not try to make me repay debts that you don't own. If you are ever to have more Elders on your side, whether Progenitors or otherwise, you will need to learn to deal with this. There will be people with death tolls higher than the population of the Alliance, who were once the heart of evil and are now at least acceptable. The first step will be recognizing that, yes, we are in fact friends, despite my history. Because only from friendship and understanding can hope come."
"I will think about this more. My feelings about this, and about you, have not yet solidified."
"I was wrong for what I said to you, Penny. We are both on edge, and said things that we didn't properly express. We should get our heads in order before re-entering this argument with logic instead of emotions."
"I agree. I will go and see who I can save. And I will think more about this. I freed people from slavery, and watched them die today. Respectfully, I must spend some time away from you for now."
Penny left the ship. In something near her subconscious, anger remained. When she landed in the rubble once again, she missed a small but steady stream of conceptual energy wafting into her from below.

Okay, I’ve recently gone up to 40mg and it’s just not working and I don’t know what to do! It’s really stressing me out because I thought that maybe just going up to 40mg would help a bit more. I think at first it made my insomnia worse, that’s the biggest difference I noticed. (Which has been bad for a long time off and on most of my life and I’m still struggling with that). It hasn’t really helped my depression and anxiety. (If anything, really, I feel worse.)
I’ve now started to take 20mg in the morning and 20mg in the evening, but I feel spaced out on the daytime taking the 20mg in the day. I thought this might help with the insomnia. I don’t know how long I should try this.? It’s also quite difficult to remember taking it morning and evening.
I’ve also noticed that my orgasms aren’t as good or as full as they were. I think this has been due to medication in the past and my age now as well, but it definitely has got worse in the last year.
So much more, I just can’t put it into words. I just feel broken. Suffered with anxiety, depression, ADHD, and other conditions my whole life
I just feel incredibly low & feel so alone with everything right now .

Backstory...I was addicted to hard drugs beginning in 2015 and found out I was pregnant in 2018. I was living in a trailer park with sons dad and we were happy! Relationship didn't work out but I moved in with my mother who I had a strained relationship with altogether. She wouldn't let me bring my dog with me...dog ended up being brutally murdered by kids dad's sponsor. I could bring the cat but only if I declared her. I hated doing that but didn't know what other choice I had. It completely went against my morals. Anyways. I have my son. Was sober throughout pregnancy not even smoking cigs. My mom doesn't allow child's father to move in, so he is falling apart and staying with man who killed dog. Life is very stressful and I relapse. Mom ends up with temporary custody. Fast forward 10 months. I'm out of treatment and start to see my son. I buy a car. Get a full time job. All visits are supervised. She still doesn't let dad see him. Actually doesn't let dad see him until courts force her too a year ago! My visits are still all supervised. 4 years later. She moved 45 mins away from me. I get not one but two, two bedroom rentals. And my son is never allowed over once. I'm constantly gaslit and feel like I'm a danger to my child. My son is 4 and calls me by my sisters name. It seems like my mom has done everything from day one to keep him from me. Is it too late to fix this? And will the courts see this tomorrow?

My current (20M) boyfriend and I (21F) met on tinder on December of 2023. It took a month for us to finally arrange a first date for January 2024. As soon as I met him I knew I liked him and wanted to go on a second date. The chemistry we had was indescribable. We began to see each other 3x a week every week after the first date. We began to know each other pretty fast and grew attached to one another almost immediately. We talked about boundaries, standards, etc… one of them was about porn. He had asked me how often I watched porn and I said 2x a month but I hadn’t watched it ever since I met him. He said he was on the same page and hadn’t watched it since december of 2023. I never told him that watching porn was a dealbreaker because I thought it was normal for people to engage in it every now and then so we left the conversation at that. On March 8th of this year (2024), he asked me to be his girlfriend and even gave me a promise ring. On March 23rd he said that not only was I his first girlfriend but that I was the first woman he’s ever loved. He is also my first boyfriend and first man I’ve ever loved. Our bond grew every day and so did our sex life. We have sex very often, almost every day we see each other. We don’t see a problem with it since we both have high sex drives and love each other. Fast forward to April 27th, I found out he had a porn addiction. Prior to finding out, we had a couple drinks and had sex. He fell asleep right after but I couldn’t. I’m not the type of woman to go through a man’s phone but I had a gut feeling this night. I unlocked his phone and started going through every app possible. I found out he was texting a girl on instagram whom he had dated but it was just a friendly conversation so I thought nothing of it. I then noticed that he was logged into a second instagram account and when I clicked it, I discovered that he had been texting himself profiles of porn creators through his main account. I moved on to twitteX and saw that he had been texting several OnlyFans girls asking for their information and content. I went on to check his snapchat folder “My Eyes Only” and saw hundreds and I mean HUNDREDS maybe even thousands of sex videos going all the way back to years ago. My hands were shaking and my heart ached at this point, but I didn’t stop there. I went on to safari to check if he had an OnlyFans account, he did. There was over 20 different girls he had a subscription for. He told me he’s never had an OnlyFans when we first met so I felt backstabbed. He could’ve just been honest with me. I saw that the latest purchase was of 3 sex videos from the same content creator just 3 days after he had asked me to be his girlfriend. I was silently crying at this point while he was asleep next to me. I decided to check his reddit after and saw that he had searched up specific OnlyFans girls and that he had joined 3 porn related groups. I wish it stopped there but it didn’t. I went to his recently deleted folder on the photos app and saw that he had taken a screenshot of me while on facetime where my nipple had accidentally slipped out. This was prior to us even meeting. I found another screenshot where he had been watching porn while on FaceTime with me, I had no idea. I also found a video he had taken of us having sex without my consent, we were in the doggy style position. I felt so disrespected and violated. Finally, I found a picture he took of his coworkers ass without her knowing. I feel sorry for her. It was around 5am when I finished going through his phone. He had work at 11am so I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. I decided to do my hair and makeup to make myself feel better externally. I finally woke him up at 8am and acted normal. I didn’t know what to do yet so I decided to hold off on confronting him. His car broke down 2 months ago so I had to drive him to work. We don’t live together, he had just spent the night. I didn’t say a word or played any music on the radio as I drove him to work, It was a silent ride. I decided that I wanted to confront him about it before work because I couldn’t pretend like everything was fine. We stopped at a park and had an hour long conversation to which he said that he’s been dealing with porn addiction for years now. He admitted he felt guilty and knows it’s wrong. He’s a religious guy and said he had been asking God to help him overcome this addiction. He thinks God led me to check his phone so I could help him stop. He cried and apologized, said he’ll delete everything and completely stop watching it. Anything to fix the problem and to keep me from breaking up with him. I asked if he would apologize to his coworker for taking the picture of her ass without her consent, he said yes. I felt sort of relived that he admitted it was a problem and wanted to seek help. But it didn’t take away from the fact that I felt so disgusted, disrespected and like I wasn’t enough for him. He would constantly tell me that he wanted to marry me and make me the mother of his kids but would then turn around and watch or purchase porn. I feel like I got cheated on, not because of him watching porn but because he would text 20+ girls asking for content and would Facetime a few. I’m trying to see things from his perspective, he has a mental illness and I want to feel sympathy for him but it’s difficult. I love him and want to help him but I know it will take a toll on my mental health. The thought of having to watch his every move and rebuild our trust just drains me. He treats me so good overall, and this is the first major problem we’ve ever had. I know deep down he’s a good man and truly loves me but I don’t know what to do. We are barely about to make 2 months of dating and I don’t know if wether to continue or break it off. I’ve been crying all day, so much I ended up throwing up. I’ve never been in this situation before, should I break up with him?

I (16F) was friends with this girl (16F), let’s call her Kayla. Kayla is an interesting individual, to say the least. She’s a perfect example of your classic narcissist, to put it kindly. For three years now, she has been well known for: guilt tripping her friends, putting herself first, and doing anything that will put the attention on her. That includes bragging about her illnesses.
She self-diagnoses, all the time. I have no problem with people SUSPECTING they may have an illness, but when it comes to self-diagnosis and then using that self-diagnosis against other people is what irritates me. I myself have severe depression and anxiety, but never once have I used it as a way to brag about myself, if anything, I’m embarrassed. But that is the complete opposite for her.
So, this past summer, I was done with her bull-sh*t. She had been treating me, and more importantly, my friends like shit. I was one of the only people in my friend group to stand up to her, ever, but everybody reached their breaking point this summer. Our friend group consists mostly of band kids, and so with this summer, it was marching band season. There’s this one dude in our band(who is high-functioning autism), and he is INCREDIBLY creepy. He’s an absolute asshole, firstly. Very homophobic and transphobic. But he also makes Dan Schneider level of creepy comments and “jokes” toward girls at our school. He’s looked up girls’ skirts and has even masturbated at school.
This obviously made everyone uncomfortable, and as it did, we expressed our distaste for it in a group chat. Kayla was also in this chat, and she defended him and his actions, and told us we were in the wrong for being uncomfortable and not wanting to be around him. And when we asked why, she told us she viewed him “as her brother in autism” because she and her actual brother are a both on the spectrum. After hearing that, I made the mistake of accusing her of being self-diagnosed, which led to a one on one fight, where she told me that she was actually autistic. I immediately felt terrible about it. So, when I had the chance, I immediately confronted her and tried to apologize. Instead of even listening to me, she completely brushed me off, and wouldn’t even let me speak.
She hasn’t let me bring it up with her since, but has talked to some of our other friends about it, and has told them that she doesn’t even think I’m actually sorry, even now. Me saying that to her still follows me to this day, and I feel so incredibly bad about it, and wish that both of us could get closure. Am I the asshole?