I have no idea if the admins will approve this but I’d love an opinion on something. The curse of the drink has been passed down in my family for generations. To quote Dickens, “it was the best of times and the worst of times”. I hold no anger as I’ve watched generational trauma as a direct result of the horrors they endured. We are generations of survivors.
To my point. I’ve been building a book about my people. I have this wonderful tree and I’ve just now been able to start adding on all the extras that I held back on so I can keep a straight forward focus on direct lines. I have at least 80 newspaper clippings of all kinds of various subjects. At least half are stories of drunken escapades and the occasional drunk tank. Do I use them? I have no shame and most of the clippings are awfully funny and positively show that we are the same people (with many more conveniences) throughout the generations.
My grandmothers older nieces and nephews still like to be secretive for no reason other to save face. I don’t know if they’ll be bothered. Should I care if they are? I do not want to care. I do not think I should as I’m a grown adult and these people belong to me also.
I’m also not going to share the real secrets that have caused pain for too many living people. I don’t have the right to tell those stories. I’ve spent my life making sure the history I put on paper is filled with truth backed up with contemporary sources.
I can’t imagine not putting these clippings of them there. Every bit is a glimpse into their lives. I’m so lucky to have all of this and I’ve learned so much of where, who, what, and why. I want them there.
I am going to be respectful enough to ask my mother and her siblings what they think and I’ll go from them there.
This little book will be sent off to all living heads of our direct lines and they can take it from there. Once they all have it I will publish it.
I’m so long winded.I try not to be but I never succeed. So, what say you? I truly want your opinions and I will not be negative in your response. I’ll read them all. I need outsider thoughts before I go to them. I might not be the only person here who has these questions or stories.

I've always been bound to death.
On my eighth birthday, a shadow strode into my house and shot me and my family dead. I remember it vividly, every detail, every angle, etched and stained and carved into my memory.
I sat very still with my knees to my chest, my gaze glued to my siblings.
Lily and PJ looked like they were sleeping, and I could almost believe it.
I didn't look at the shadow.
From the comfort of my knees, I waited for my brother to lift his head.
But his body was so limp, so still, every part of him faltering. My sister’s head was nestled in his shoulder, thick beads of red running down her face.
They're just sleeping.
I could tell myself they were— as long as I didn't look at the splatter of scarlet staining the back of the couch and pooling at their feet.
BANG.
Mom’s body dropped onto the ground.
I lunged forwards, slamming my hands over my ears.
BANG.
PJ’s head slumped forwards, a teasing smile still frozen on his lips.
BANG.
Lily gently tipped into PJ, like she was going to sleep.
Before she closed her eyes, Mom told me to run.
I can't remember how long I stayed under the shattered remnants of Mom’s favorite table. The shadow was waiting for me to move, to make a noise.
I watched booted feet crunch through glass, getting closer and closer, and slowly, fight or flight began to take over.
Making it halfway across the living room, my palms slick with my mother’s blood, I thought I was going to live.
Cruel fingers wound their way through my hair and shoved me to my knees. I remember the phantom legs of a spider creeping down the back of my neck when the shadow with no face dragged the barrel of his gun down my spine.
“Turn around.”
The shadow had a voice.
When I didn't move, the protruding metal stabbed into my neck.
“Turn around, kid!”
I did, very slowly.
Behind him, my siblings still weren't moving.
They were asleep.
Lily was still smiling, strawberry blonde ringlets stained red.
I couldn't see PJ’S face anymore.
BANG.
I didn't feel the gunshot.
I didn't feel anything.
Looking down, I glimpsed slowly spreading red blossoming like a flower.
It felt like being cut from strings.
I hit the ground, just like my mother, my body felt heavy and wrong.
Paralysed.
I remember being unable to scream, unable to cry, the salty taste of metal filling my mouth. It was like being winded. Rolling onto my side, all I could see was flickering candlelight.
The air was thick, so hard to breathe.
I rolled onto my back trying to suck in air.
The shadow took a step back, opened the front door, and bled into the night.
I don't remember the pain, and I don't remember dying. I couldn't breathe, couldn't conjure words in my mouth.
I felt warm and sticky, lying in my own blood.
I think I tried to move.
But I was so tired.
I’m not sure what death feels like, because it's like going to sleep.
I remember my last shuddering breaths, a lulling darkness beginning to swallow me up. I don't know why I wasn't afraid.
Oblivion almost felt like I was sinking into lukewarm depths on a Summer’s day.
Oblivion wasn't pain, and there was a peaceful inevitability to it.
It was endless nothing, a nothing I found myself gravitating towards. But before I could envelope myself in that darkness, it was spitting me back out.
The next thing I knew, I was in a white room, a slow beeping sound tearing me from slumber. I had a vague memory of slow spreading roses blossoming across my shirt, like summer flowers blooming.
Everything was white.
The walls, the ceiling, and my clothes.
Sensation hit me in slow waves.
Exhaustion.
I felt it tightening its grip around my brain, dragging me back onto a mountain of pillows when I tried to jump up. My Aunt May was sitting next to me on a plastic chair, her warm fingers entangled in mine. Aunt May and Mom were practically twins, with the same thick red hair and pale skin.
Mom wore her hair in a casual ponytail, while May preferred a strict bun.
I had to bite back the urge to yank my hand away.
Aunt May was asleep, used tissues filling her lap.
There was a nurse pottering around, checking my vitals and prodding my arms. My eyes felt heavy. I had to blink several times to keep myself awake.
“Charlie?”
The nurse’s voice was like wind-chimes.
I pretended not to notice her forced lipstick smile, the way she stood with her arms folded, staring at me like I was one of my cousin’s experiments. “You were in an accident, sweetie,” the nurse spoke up. I could see her trembling hands. “Just, um, try and rest, okay?”
I wanted to ask where my family was, but I already knew the answer.
I think she knew that too.
“You died, Charlie.” The nurse’s voice was eerily cold. “You were dead for thirteen minutes.”
She took slow steps towards me, her eyes growing frenzied, like she couldn't understand me, like I was a puzzle she could not solve– and it was driving her crazy. I could see it in her twitching hands, her wobbling lips that were trying and failing to appear stoic.
“In fact, I just pulled you out of the morgue, honey. I opened up your body bag that I had just zipped up, and told your aunt that you were a miracle I just… can’t understand.” The nurse sounded like she was trying to choke down a laugh, or maybe a sob.
“Charlotte, you were pronounced dead at 3:02am from a gunshot wound to the chest.” Taking a slow, sobering breath, the nurse tried to smile. “The bullet went through the right ventricle of your heart and severely damaged your left lung, rendering you unable to breathe. Your heart stopped, and after four attempts to resuscitate, we called it.”
Something slimy wound its way up my throat when she began to pace the room. “I… did all the paperwork. It took me two minutes. Your death certificate was signed, and your body was taken to the morgue to be prepped for transportation. Then I had my lunch. Tuna salad with a protein milkshake. I’m not a fan of the chocolate flavor.”
She shook her head. “Anyway, when I came back to you, you were awake inside your body bag.” Her voice was starting to break. “You were…um, alive, and asked me for apple soda.”
The nurse moved closer, and yet kept her distance.
I could feel myself moving back, panic writhing through me.
“So.” The nurse spoke calmly. “How the fuck are you still alive, Charlie?”
I think I passed out after that.
When I woke up again, my head a lot less heavier, the nurse was gone.
Slowly, my foggy brain began to find itself and connect dots.
My mouth was dry, full of cotton.
There was a sudden tightness, a sharp and cruel sting in my wrists.
Something sharp was protruding into my flesh, and no matter how many times I violently wrenched my arm, it was stuck. It didn't feel right to be able to breathe so easily.
I knew the second I woke that my Mom was dead.
Lily and PJ were dead, and it was like losing them all over again.
As clarity came over me, I found my voice, a strangled cry escaping my lips.
“Get it out.” I whispered in a shrill cry.
Tugging at the IV in my wrist, I tried to yank the needle from my skin.
“Get it out!” I shrieked, my gaze glued to the tiny spots of blood staining the insertion point.
I could see it again.
So much blood.
Mom was curled up on the floor, lying in slow spreading red that wouldn't stop, seeping across her beaded rug.
She was all over me, slick on my skin and caked in my fingernails.
I couldn't wash her off of me.
“You're okay, Charlotte.”
Aunt May’s voice came from my right, stabling me to reality.
The world started to move again, started to make sense again, when she cupped my cheeks and told me to breathe. When I opened my mouth to ask where my family were, she lightly shook her head and I swallowed my words. Aunt May handed me a glass of water, and I drained it in one gulp.
She told me I was a miracle.
Aunt May didn't say much, and when she did, she broke into sobs.
Her eyes were raw from crying, clinging onto me, her shuddery voice reassuring me that I was going to be okay.
She told me I would be living with her from now on, before wrapping me into a hug and leaving to get coffee.
Once my aunt was gone, another nurse came to prod my IV.
I tried to sleep, but the uncomfortable tightness of the needle sticking into my skin and the sterile white lights in my eyes made it impossible. I waited for grief to catch up with me, drowning me in a hollow oblivion I wouldn't be able to claw myself out of. But I didn't feel sad. I didn't feel angry.
I wanted to know why my family were dead.
I wanted to know why I was breathing, and their skin was ice cold.
Rotting.
The sudden image of maggots crawling up my brother’s nose sent me lurching into a sitting position, my stomach heaving. Reaching for my glass of water, it was empty. The sensation of throwing up felt familiar, almost comforting.
Mom was always with me when I was sick, holding my hair back and lulling my hysteria with reassuring murmurs.
I was frowning at the trash can by the door, my cotton candy brain trying to figure out if I would be able to make it in time, when a small voice drifted from the doorway, startling me.
“I don't want you to come live with us.”
My cousin was peeking through the door, hiding behind a shock of dark brown curls. Jude was the only brunette in our family. The rest of us were redheads.
I wasn't sure why he was dressed up like a ghost, draped in a white cloak that was way too big for him. Jude was a weird kid. His mother, and my auntie, had inherited the family house, so in his mind, that made him superior.
Jude made it clear he didn't like his cousins, refusing to let us play with him and banning us from family gatherings.
When the adults were drinking cocktails and losing their awareness, Jude ordered us around. The times we did play with him, our cousin showed us his spider collection, or the raccoon brain he kept in a jar. PJ was convinced our younger cousin was a serial killer. Several months earlier, he'd happily showed us the roadkill he'd been growing bacteria on under his bed.
Jude’s ‘experiments’ were worrying.
He stuffed mushrooms down my brother’s ears while he was sleeping, to, and I quote, “Recreate The Last Of Us.”
When Lily had a nosebleed during Thanksgiving dinner, Jude collected all her bloody tissues and refused to tell us where he'd put them, and what he had done with them. Fast-forward two months, and I found them under a nest of spiders. Jude was trying to adapt the spiders to be able to feed on human blood. I was surprised my cousin hadn't immediately demanded to see my siblings’ dead bodies for autopsy.
Jude stepped into the room, shuffling his feet.
“I'm sorry about Lily, PJ, and Aunt Ivy.” He mumbled, glaring at the floor tiles.
My cousin made no move to offer real sympathy, instead speaking to the floor.
“But I don't want you to come live with us.” Jude lifted his head, looking me dead in the eye. “I don't like you, Charlie. I want you to stay away.”
Before I could reply, he stepped back like I was diseased.
“You should be dead.” Jude grumbled.
He scowled at me, getting my age purposely wrong as usual before running off.
“Happy 68th birthday.”
I was six months older than him.
In Jude’s eyes, I was ready for retirement.
Still, though, my cousin was right.
I was stone cold dead, and then I was somehow alive.
Which was wrong.
Growing up, I realized Death was not so subtly attempting to fix his mistake.
It started small. I'd choke on things I wasn't supposed to choke on.
Chips.
Candy.
Ice cream.
Aunt May had to perform the heimlich manoeuvre when I choked on a piece of chicken. I thought I was just really unlucky, but then I locked myself in a freezer that didn't have a lock, and almost drowned in the local swimming pool, catching my foot in stray netting.
At the summer fair, Jude convinced me to try apple bobbing, only for my head to conveniently get stuck underwater.
It started to make sense.
I was supposed to die with my family that night, and death was out to get me.
Death started to get clever, changing his tactic. Instead of using everyday things to try to kill me, he sent reinforcements.
I turned twelve years old, and my aunt threw me a huge party, inviting all my classmates. Aunt May was rich, rich.
Mom never explained it, but our grandparents left everything to May.
The house was like a palace, a labyrinth of floors I was yet to explore, and two swimming pools.
I was in the kitchen cutting myself a slice of cake, when, out of nowhere, a dead boy came rushing at me with one of my aunt’s favorite kitchen knives.
A dead boy who I immediately recognised.
Wren Oliver.
Several years prior, he'd gone missing from his parents' yard. The town launched a full investigation, only to find his body in a ditch a week later.
So, Death had sent a footsoldier.
Hiding under a hooded sweatshirt, Wren appeared older, like he had grown up with me. But there was a startling vacancy in his expression that drew the breath from my lungs, freezing me in place. Wren’s death was announced as an accident, though his wounds suggested the opposite, dried blood smearing his right temple and a cavernous hole in his chest, his clothes painted, stained, in bright red, glued in sticky mounds clinging to him.
The boy’s eyes were wild, feral, like an animal.
His hair was longer, a mess of reddish curls matted to his forehead.
Lip split into a demented giggle.
I remember taking a slow step back, my gaze glued to the knife.
Wren’s fingers were wrapped around the handle like he knew exactly how to use it, how to plunge it into my heart and kill me for good. He moved like a predator, zero self awareness or recognition, only driven to kill me.
The dead boy prided himself in slow, intimidating steps, shoving me against the wall and dragging the blade of the knife down the curve of my throat.
His eyes confused me, writhing with hatred that was artificial, programmed into him as Death’s official soldier.
He didn't speak, only smiled, revelling in my fear. I could tell it thrilled him, my trembling hands, my sharp, heavy breaths I couldn't control. Squeezing my eyes shut, I waited to finally die.
I waited for the pain, and to lose my breath once again.
But death was playing with me.
When I opened my eyes, the dead boy was gone, and I was on my knees, screaming.
“Wren Oliver is trying to kill me!" I managed to hiss.
My aunt knelt in front of me, her expression crumpling.
*Sweetie,” She spoke softly, squeezing my hands. Aunt May was trying to appear calm for my sake, but I could tell she was scared, her frantic eyes searching mine. “Wren Oliver is dead.”
The kids surrounding me started to giggle, whispering among themselves.
In the corner of my eye, my cousin was leaning against the door, mid eye roll.
When my aunt was ushering kids back to the pool, Jude came to crouch in front of me. Ever since I started living with him, he'd made sure to keep his distance.
This time, though, Jude leaned uncomfortably close, a sparkle in his eyes I had never seen before. Inclining his head, he rocked back and forth on his heels, prodding me in the forehead.
“If you see the dead boy again, can you tell me?” His lips curved into a smile.
“I did see him.” I gritted out. “I’m not lying.”
Jude shrugged. “I never said you didn't,” he lowered his voice into a whisper, “I wanna know when you see him again.”
“Why?”
His lips curved into a smirk.
“So, I can catch him.”
My cousin got closer, his breath tickling my cheek.
“I seeeeeeee dead people.”
After that incident, death left me alone for a while.
I was fifteen, walking through the forest with a friend, catching fireflies in bell jars. Aunt May was lucky to live so close to the forest, the entrance just outside her back door. When we were littles, PJ would drag Lily and I down the trail to escape Jude’s weird experiments.
I decided to invite Jem Littlewood on a summer walk.
Jem was cute, but in a dorky way. He was chronically clumsy, and dressed like he'd been spat out of a John Hughes movie. We hiked all the way to the end of the river and had a picnic, watching the sun set over the horizon. I was having conflicting feelings for this guy.
Jem was obsessed with fireflies.
Though he seemed more interested in photographing them than me.
The guy couldn't seem to sit still, jumping to his feet to marvel at tiny specks of light dancing in the air.
“I'm just going to take photos!” Jem beamed, holding up his camera.
I had to bite back the urge to say, “Don't you have enough photos?”
I nodded, and he turned and sprinted back down the trail.
Before his footsteps ground to a sudden halt.
At first, I thought he was snapping polaroids.
When I got closer, though, blinking in the eerie dark, I caught something.
Bending down, I picked up a bell jar still spilling fireflies.
Further down the trail, Jem was lying crumpled in the dirt, his camera smashed to pieces next to him, blood running in thick rivulets down his temple. There he was. Leaning against a tree, his arms folded, was the ghost boy. Wren Oliver was growing up with me. Now, a teenager, and yet his face was carved into something else entirely, more of a monster, slight points to his ears and too-sharp teeth, eyes ignited.
Wren didn't look like a ghost boy anymore.
Death had dressed him in shackles of ivy, a crown of glass and bone forced onto his head, entangled in his curls. Death was torturing him. Wren’s flesh was its canvas, and every time I got away, he was punished, painting his failures across scarred flesh. I should have been running for my life, but I was mesmerised by each symbol cruelly carved into his neck.
The boy did a slow head incline, like he couldn't believe I was standing in front of him.
His slow spreading smile caught me off guard.
I remembered how to run, stumbling over my feet.
But I couldn't move.
The burning hatred that death had filled him with, was stronger, hollowing him out completely. I managed two shaky steps, before I felt him, an unearthly force winding its way around my spine. This time, he didn't hesitate.
I watched his mouth move, a single curve of his upper lip that wrenched my body from my control, slamming me against a tree. There was something around my throat, choking the breath from my lungs, a thick fog spreading over my eyes. Following his mouth curving into silent letters, I could feel my feet slowly leaving the ground, my legs dangling.
I was floating.
Hovering off of the ground, suspended by his words.
Through half lidded eyes, I caught the glint of a blade between his fist, but I couldn't move, couldn't scream.
He was drowning me, bleeding into my blood, spider webbing and expanding in my brain without moving a muscle.
Instead, the ghost boy stood silently, running his thumb down the teeth of his knife while he ripped my lungs apart.
It was like suffocating, sinking into that peaceful oblivion I met at eight years old.
This time, though, the darkness was starving.
“Charlie?”
My eyes found daylight, a scream clawing out of my mouth.
“Charlie, it's past curfew!”
Wren flinched, his stoic expression crumpling.
The dead boy’s lips moved again, this time in a curse.
Fuck.
“Charlotte!”
Staggering back, Wren’s eyes widened and the suffocating hold on me severed.
His head snapped in the direction my aunt was coming from.
“Charlie, answer me right now.”
He hesitated, his bare feet pivoting in the dirt, like he was considering finishing me off. Wren studied me with lazy eyes, sucking on his bottom lip. When my aunt's footsteps got louder, branches snapping under her shoes, something contorted in the boy’s face.
Fear.
I guessed the boy wasn't expecting other humans to intrude.
Wren fell over himself, shuffling on his hands and knees, before diving to his feet. When he turned and ran, I was released, slipping to the ground, trying and failing to draw in breath. I barely felt the impact, only a dull thudding pain. I could hear the ghost boy’s footsteps, his uneven, shuddery breaths as he catapulted into a run.
Under a late setting sun, I watched his dancing shadow disappear into the trees.
Mission unsuccessful, I guessed.
When I was fully conscious, Aunt May was checking over Jem, helping him sit up.
“Where did he go?” I managed to get out, scanning the darkness for Wren.
“He's okay, just concussed.” May whispered, dialling 911.
My aunt applied a dressing to Jem’s wound, ignoring the boy’s hisses.
“Keep still.” she murmured, smoothing his bandaid. “What happened, Charlotte?”
“She pushed me over.” Jem groaned, shuffling away from me. When my aunt told him to stay calm, he straightened up, leaning against the tree. “The psycho bitch tried to fucking kill me!”
When my aunt's gaze flicked to me, I shook my head.
“It was Wren Oliver.” I gritted, teetering on hysteria. I could tell she didn't believe me, but I couldn't stop myself. I prodded at my throat, clawing for the indentations where his phantom fingers snaked around my neck, squeezing the breath from my lungs.
But there was nothing.
I could feel my mind starting to unravel. I nodded to my disgruntled classmate trying to dodge my aunt’s prodding.
“Ow, ow, ow! That stings!
“He knocked Jem out.” I managed. “Then he tried to kill me.”
Jem surprised me with a scoff. “You're seriously blaming your psychotic break on a dead kid?”
Aunt May pursed her lips, motioning for Jem to be quiet. Judging from her face, however, she agreed with the boy.
May forced a smile, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. “Okay. Can you, uh, describe the boy to me, Charlotte?”
“He was wearing a crown,” I said, “And he looked my age.”
Aunt May cocked her head, and I saw real worry, like she was trying not to freak out. Jem made a snorting noise.
“I'm sorry, he was wearing a crown?”
“Yes!” I insisted, getting progressively more frustrated.
I tried to jump up, only for my aunt to gently lower me back down. “I know it sounds crazy, but death has sent Wren Oliver to kill me, just like my family. He tried to kill me when I was twelve, too!”
Jem let out a bitter laugh. “Your niece is a fucking wackadoodle.”
Aunt May’s eyes darkened. She grabbed my shoulders, her nails stabbing into my skin. “Charlie, I want you to listen to me, okay?” When my eyes found the rapidly darkening sky, my aunt forced me to look at her.
“Charlotte!”
She was as scared as me, her voice shuddering.
“Wren Oliver is dead.” My aunt said firmly, shaking me. Even then, though, I wasn't even looking at her. I was trying to find his ignited eyes lighting up the dark. “Wren died at eight years old in a terrible accident, and you can't keep using him as an excuse for your mental trauma.” There was something twitching in her expression I was trying to make sense of. When I risked a look at Jem, the boy was staring at me dazedly– like I really was crazy.
Aunt May pressed her face into my shoulder, and I could feel her tears soaking into my shirt. She was trying to hold it together, trying to understand.
“Charlie, I know you lost your family,” she whispered. “But you and Wren Oliver are not the same. You survived, and he didn't.” Her voice splintered.
“You need to come to terms with that, okay?”
When I didn't respond, she pinched my chin, forcing me to look at her.
“Charlotte.”
Aunt May’s voice turned cold. “I ignored this when you were a kid, but if you continue to use this poor boy as a coping mechanism, I will have no choice but to send you to a specialist.”
When Jem was taken away by paramedics, Aunt May held my hand, squeezing my fingers for dear life.
I caught her gaze scanning the tree's around us, delving into twisting oblivion. Every little noise sent her twisting around. She was looking for something.
“I'm going to get you help.” Aunt May said in a low murmur when we were back at the house. Jude was sitting on the kitchen counter, legs swinging. I could feel his penetrating gaze burning into the back of my head.
Aunt May set a cup of cocoa on the table.
“No more fairytales.”
By the time I was eighteen, I had bitten three therapists.
They refused to believe that death was coming to reclaim my soul, and was using a dead boy to do his dirty work.
For my 16th birthday, I braced myself to come face to face with Wren Oliver’s ghost.
I wasn't even in town, staying at a friend's house.
But dead boys, and especially dead boys moulded into Death’s personal soldiers, could materialise anywhere.
I locked every door in the house, and taped up my friend’s window.
Nothing happened.
On my seventeenth birthday, I was sick in bed with gastritis.
Still no ghost boy.
Death seemed to have finally left me alone.
On my eighteenth birthday, I was stuffing books in my locker when my cousin popped up out of nowhere, scowling as usual. After an unexpected growth spurt and losing a tonne of baby fat, my cousin had scaled the high school hierarchy, swapping his weird experiments for a varsity jacket and experimenting with his sexuality.
The two of us had come to an unspoken truce.
I kept quiet about his spider collection to his popular friends, and he tolerated my existence until I left for college.
“Your surprise party is cancelled.”
Jude leaned against my locker, running a hand through thick dark hair tucked under a baseball cap. Jude never admitted it, but he was definitely embarrassed of being the odd one out.
My siblings may be dead, but they were still redheads.
I pulled off his cap with a smile, throwing it in his face. “Sure it is.”
My cousin’s eyes widened. He lost his slick bravado, grabbing for his cap.
“Hey!”
According to my cousin, my party was unexpectedly cancelled every year.
I wasn't sure if it was his weird superiority complex, or just plain jealousy, but it was getting exhausting.
Jude followed me down the hallway, matching my stride.
“Can you just not come home tonight?”
I quickened my pace. “It's only a party. I'm having some friends over, and no, we won't go anywhere near your room.”
“No, I mean.” Jude stepped in front of me, and for the first time in a while, he wasn't trying to hide disdain for me.
His dark eyes pinned me in place for a moment, the world around us coming to a halt. Sound bled away, and all I heard were his slow breaths. There was something there, an unexplainable twitch in his eyes and lips, that twisted my gut.
Jude stepped closer, his lip curling. He shoved me back, losing his facade.
“Stay the fuck away from the house tonight.” He said, and his voice, his tone, was enough to send shivers creeping down my spine. Jude had always hid behind a ten foot wall in his mind. It was jarring to see something in him finally start to splinter. Fuck. I thought.
This kid had serious Mommy issues.
I blinked, and the world resumed, kids pushing past us.
Jude seemed to catch himself, slipping back under his mask.
“I'm having friends over,” he rolled his eyes, “Your presence will ruin the vibe.”
“It's my birthday?”
He groaned, tipping his head back. “Yes, I know. But–”
“I think you can deal with the attention off of you for one night, Jude.”
“Will Wren Oliver be there too?” Jem Littlewood hollered.
Jude didn't respond for a moment, his lip curling.
“Shut the fuck up.” He spat at Jem, who immediately backed down. With an audience this time, Jude forced an award winning smile. “Fine.” His lips split into a grin I knew he hated. My cousin clamped his hand on my shoulder, hard enough to hurt. I could feel his fingers pinching the material of my jacket. “Have it your way, dude.”
Jude backed away with a two fingered salute.
“Happy 78th birthday!”
In a sense, I wish I listened to my cousin.
My party was a success, sort of.
Four of us, a crate of beers, and no sign of my cousin.
I was mildly tipsy, sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling my legs in the water when my friend demanded more beers.
I was also hungry for cake, so I stumbled inside in search of the goods.
The house was dark, lit up in dazzling blue from the pool's lights reflecting through the windows. Aunt May was in her office on the ground floor, and Jude was getting high in his room. In my drunken state, I found myself marvelling my aunt's house, and how much of it was left unexplored.
For example, in the foyer, past the spiral staircase she’d had custom made, was an elevator I had never questioned.
There was a girl my age standing on the staircase.
She was frozen, mid run, dressed in ragged jeans and t-shirt.
Everything about her stuck out to me, bringing me to a sobering halt.
The girl reminded me of my sister– or at least, if my sister had ever grown up.
I wasn't sure if I was drunk or hallucinating.
Her flower crown was pretty…
Lily had grown wings.
I was slowly moving towards her, a sudden bang sounding from the kitchen.
The bang of something shattering on the floor.
Twisting around, I found myself gravitating towards warm golden light.
The first thing I saw was the refrigerator door hanging open, and someone, no, something, rooting around inside it.
Glued to the spot, I dazedly watched them grab milk, guzzling it down, and then soda, cracking open each can and sucking them dry, before carving their fingers into my birthday cake. But I wasn't looking at the spillage of food seeping across the floor. Instead, my gaze found a crown of antlers, both human and animal bone entangled with dead flowers and human remains glued to a head of familiar matted brown curls.
There was something sticking from battered and bruised flesh, twin gaping slits sliced through a torn shirt resembling glass wings that were not yet formed, reminding me of a butterfly.
Wings.
But not the wings I dreamed of as a kid. These things were unnatural mounds that both did and didn't make sense on a human boy. I could see the trauma of them slicing through his flesh, monstrous, looming things protruding from what was left of a human spine.
Human, and yet I couldn't call his beautifully grotesque face human.
Wren Oliver had grown up with me, now an adult.
Eighteen years old.
His clothes confused me, a single white shirt and shorts.
Wren’s feet were bare, battered and bruised, blood smearing my aunt's tiles.
Angel.
Death had turned his footsoldier, and my future killer, into an angel.
But there was nothing angelic about the dead boy, his body and mind sculpted and moulded into Death’s own.
The boy no longer resembled a human, feral eyes and a manic smile, choking down pieces of cake. His face had been contorted into a monster, gnashing teeth and sharp points in his ears, a sickly tinge to malnourished skin.
And that's when it hit me, watching him stuff himself with food.
Something slimy inched its way up my throat.
The boy didn't move. I don't even think he'd noticed me, gorging himself on anything he could get his hands on.
Chicken, raw bacon, leftover salad.
When he moved onto cupcakes, licking frosting from his fingers, I glimpsed markings on his arms, a language I didn't understand, carved into him.
His wrists were shackled, bound, in entangled iron and vine, iron that was ingrained into his skin, vines and flowers and ivy entangling his bones, that were part of him, polluting his blood. Slowly, my eyes found stab wounds splitting open his torso.
Raw flesh, where his skin had been torched, melting, and then merging, ripped apart and put back together over and over again.
I found his heart, the gaping cavern in his chest where it should be.
And it was.
Marked, carved, and branded with a symbol resembling an X.
Wren Oliver was not dead.
But, just like me, he should have been.
I remember saying his name, my voice slurred slightly.
I didn't drink that much, but I could barely coerce words, my head spinning.
Wren’s neck snapped towards me, his eyes narrowing with resentment I couldn't understand, hatred that seemed to puppeteer him. Slowly tilting his head, the boy’s lips split into a grin, eyes filled, polluted, with mania. I could see where his lips had been stitched shut, and then ripped open.
“Hi.”
He held up his hand in an awkward wave.
When one of my friends stumbled into the kitchen, Wren reacted on impulse.
He picked up a knife from the counter, throwing it like a dart, straight through the guy’s throat.
Something shattered inside my mind.
Ignoring my friend bleeding out, Wren stumbled over himself, abandoning his feast. He took a single step towards me, backing me against the wall, coming so close, close enough for me to feel his very real breath grazing my cheeks. Just like when he was a kid, he traced the teeth of his blade down my throat. I wasn't expecting him to burst out laughing, trembling with hysteria.
His eyes were wild, feral and wrong, almost euphoric.
With what all I could only recognise as relief.
BANG.
I was barely aware of the gunshot.
The bullet went straight through his head, the winged boy hitting the ground.
Dead.
I saw the blood stemming around him in a halo before the bleeding pool faltered, seeping back inside his head.
Like rewinding a VCR.
Wren was dead, and then he was alive.
Wren’s body contorted, his chest inflating.
His gasp for air was painful, strangled, eyes opening wide.
Terrified.
“You fucking idiot.”
Jude’s voice sent me twisting around.
My cousin stood in the exact same robes he wore as a child.
The world tipped off kilter, and I was on my knees, then my stomach.
I sunk to the floor, my thoughts swimming.
Jude’s murmur followed me, creeping into the dark.
“I told you not to come home.”
I can't remember how long I was unconscious for.
When I woke, I was dressed in an evening gown, a dress that used to be my mother’s.
My vision cleared, and I found myself sitting in an unfamiliar room resembling an abandoned swimming hall.
The pool itself was empty, the bottom stained revealing scarlet.
There were symbols carved into each tile.
Like a game.
“Sit up straight, Charlotte.”
I was sitting at a banquet.
Jude was in front of me, sipping on wine.
He caught my eye for half a second before averting his gaze.
At the far end of the table sat my aunt May.
Kissing the rim of her glass, her smile was twisted.
“I've been waiting so long to give you your birthday presents, Charlotte. Your memories should be returning soon.”
“Mom.” Jude muttered, hiding behind his glass. “Calm down. You're embarrassing yourself.”
Ignoring my cousin, May tapped her glass with a fork, and in walked my birthday presents.
No, dragged.
By their hair.
Wren Oliver, the dead boy, was in fact my aunt's prisoner.
Behind him, was the girl who looked so much like Lily.
I think that's why my aunt chose her.
Aunt May cleared her throat.
“For a long time, our family has lived among creatures who live in the forest you played inside! In exchange for keeping this town safe, they only ask for small favors. Wayward children who disappear into the woods are good enough payment. However, you and your siblings do not share our inheritance. Your mother never wanted fae children. She wanted you to be human.”
Aunt May’s smile faded.
“After losing my sister, and my niece and nephew, I made a deal to give my last surviving niece 100 years of life.”
Her words were white noise, my gaze glued to my birthday presents. I couldn't call them human anymore.
I couldn't call Wren human, when his face was so beautifully grotesque, painfully hypnotising.
The monstrous things sticking from twin slits in his back were supposed to be wings, except they looked wrong, cruelly protruding from his exposed spine. Under the influence of alcohol earlier, the girl made me smile.
Her wings, to me, looked like one of a real fairy.
In reality, they were torn and shredded apart, bigger than the girl herself.
When she dropped onto her stomach, she was dragged back to her feet, her knees buckling under the weight. Her tiara of flowers and bone looked pretty to me when I saw her on the stairs.
Now, though, I could see the pearly white of a human child's skull forced onto her head, dead flowers threaded through cavernous, gaping eye sockets.
The two of them were violently shoved into the empty pool.
“Jude. Please demonstrate, sweetheart.”
Jude stood, pulling out a gun, and aiming it at the winged girl.
BANG.
The girl’s body hit the tiles, her blood seeping across stained white.
“Now, of course, our king did not give you life for free.” May continued.
“The King demanded a debt, as well as two heirs to join him in his court once your hundred years were complete.”
Her lips quirked into a smile.
“The king is smart. If a child cannot be stolen from the human world, they can, however, be made, moulded and shaped from their human forms, skinned of their humanity through their suffering, leaving a hollowed out shell in the child's place.” She was speaking so casually, ignoring Wren’s whimpers.
“The conversion takes a while. 100 years to birth a fully blooded fae heir, who will lose their human memories, in preparation to join their new family.”
Jude shot Wren in the chest, his eyes empty.
This time, he dropped his weapon, using finger-guns instead.
“Bang.” He deadpanned.
Then the neck.
I watched Wren come back to life, and then die.
Over and over again.
I think at one point, he screamed and cried.
But not now.
He was their puppet on display, dancing for their entertainment.
Half lidded eyes drowned in oblivion found mine, and I understood his hatred.
Before he was shot again.
Stabbed.
Branded and burned, and ripped apart.
At some point, I screamed at them to stop. I couldn't breathe, slamming my hands over my ears and begging them.
Aunt May didn't listen, ordering for my hands to be tied down.
“The King required two human sacrifices to suffer in your place.” She concluded. “For one hundred years.”
Aunt May’s smile was suddenly sad, and she lifted her glass in a toast.
I was watching their blood trickle down each tile in the pool, like every death, every time they suffered, my body became progressively less human.
I felt disgusting. I wasn't supposed to be alive. Every single year of my life, every breath I had taken, was stolen.
Aunt May nodded at me, her lips forming a proud smile. She stood up, and was handed a sacrificial knife.
Climbing into the swimming pool herself, she strode over to Wren.
The boy slumped to the floor, trembling, his knees against his chest.
Aunt May grabbed him by the hair, forcing his head up, and sliced the blade across his throat.
His eyes flicked to me, and I swore, he smiled.
Spots of red dotted yellowing tiles, a river trickling under my aunt's heels.
“Happy 78th birthday, Charlotte.”
Last night ended with me being locked in my room.
It's been almost 15 hours, and the door is still locked. Please help me. I'm fucking terrified of what my aunt is planning.
I can't stop shgajing. FycjbfucibFUCK
If she is telling the truth, I shouldn't be here, right??
And I can't stop thinking.
Is Wren Oliver trying to kill me, or himself?

I had a lot of dreams today. Several segments of them
In the first dream, I was in a classroom. Across the room, I saw my partner. He raised a waterbottle up to his face, covering one of his eyes. He had drank the water. That was a cue from my brain to hydrate when I wake up. So I did, which usually causes me lucid and vivid dreams. There was probably more drinks/water there. I was paying more attention to him, though. It seemed like a message I had to decode.
After I woke up and took barely a few sips of water, I dreamt of being online, looking at pictures of me. I saw photos of me from an alternate universe. They had been sent through facebook messenger. I was outfront, standing in the sun. In the yard. That's what I can remember. I woke up, wanting them to be real. I hate when I dream of stuff like this. Being online in my dreams makes me forget everything also.
In my next dream, I was crying about my dad. I was upstairs, commenting about how I've been 'dead inside' and 'broken' since 2014. Talking to my mom after seeing a episode of uncle grandpa randomly, took me back mentally.
Sometimes I dream that it's 2012 to 2013 roughly, taking place at my sister's old/boyfriend's house, or seeing my niece and little brothers younger. My brain takes it trauma out on me this way, showing me how/keeping me stuck and regressed; I am.
I then had a dream I was sitting ontop of a tall building, in front of a open window. Looking down at the cars and people. A cat was sitting next to me, telepathically trying to lead me away from it.
Body and soul by love and rockets was playing. I wanted to hear the song over the imagery I was seeing.
A quote from layne staley about his cat popped into my head, about how she was his love. He spoke of her like she was a human. 'She was my little - love?'
I went into a older building, going down the creepy staircase. A box with trashy deftones songs was to my right, one track had eminem on it. I then transitioned to my house, leaving the few girls that were leading me into the basement. I now sat in front of my tv, seeing a playstation 2 game playing on the screen. It started off with a generic word and had 3 added to it. I wanted to use my mom's phone to take pictures outside, annoyed with my brother because he was touching the phone. There were a couple phones set down on the table, one I recognized from earlier. It had a wishbone shaped button, blue and glowing. Y2K style. I ran outside with it, forgetting to take my makeup with me. I used the last of my elf lipstick, breaking it off accidentally. I used a paper towel to smudge it on my lips. My mascara, I don't think I used. I looked into a vintage vanity that was set up outside, wooden. It was starting to get dark and I was restless, not wanting my mom to take her phone back or leave with my little brother. The neighbors had pulled in/parked a big truck outside, which I noticed when I walked back around outfront. The girlfriend of the guy next door laughed/giggled when she saw me dancing.
Bad trash by switchblade symphony was playing. I was spinning, twirling, excited by a good song playing on the radio for once. I remembered the beginning of the song starting off in a rap song that always threw me off because I thought it was this. I didn't like the rap song. That ripped off the band by stealing the instrumental. This doesn't exist in reality.
The sky was getting darker, as I was wasting time by spinning. My lipstick looked dark in the mirror, my forehead looked textured/wrinkly from the stress. There was a spot on my forehead that was. One of my cats was watching me. I woke up, not long as the song was playing. It went straight into party in the usa by miley cyrus, immediately.

How 2 girls ruined my life 20 years ago and every night I go to sleep hoping I don't wake up.
I (39M) want to die. I have wanted to die basically every day since I was 19 years old. I will give you a little back story since everyone loves backstories. Please bear with me as this will be very long.
Growing up over weight made me the blunt of jokes all thru middle and high school. I was around 325 pounds when I graduated. When I was 17, I met a girl, lets call her Sierra. I was still a junior at this time due to me skipping school 2nd semester sophomore year and failing all my classes sophomore year due to a very bad individual I hung out with during that time. I had met her thru a friend who had a huge crush on me. Lets call said friend Lisa. Both of these girls were 15 at the time and went to school in a little town about 10 miles north of me. When it came time for me to choose, I chose Sierra.
Fast forward a month later, I was head over heels. I had previous gfs, but something about her was different. She didn't seem to care that I was overweight and genuinely seemed to love me. The day I introduced Sierra to my father (who has since passed), and she came up to my room with me. As we started fooling around, she eventually took my virginity. About 2 weeks later she called me freaking out that she was sick and had missed her period. And I thought this was great as even though we had only been dating a month, we had already decided we wanted to have kids together and even had names picked out. This freaked her out and she eventually confessed to her dad and he threatened me that If I ever so much as called his daughter again, I would be arrested.
We spent the better half of the next 18 months or so sneaking around behind her parents back and talking on the phone at night after her father went to bed. Granted, this is 2002/03, so texting isn't a big thing. We would sit in her car when we would meet and cuddle, make out, I'd finger her, things like that. However, she completely refused to do anything sexual to me. At the time, I didn't think anything of it as I thought she just had different ways of showing her affection toward me.
(Changing the tune for a minute, but this all ties in. I swear). After about a year of dating Sierra, I was chatting on MSN with my buddy and his gf in a group chat. Now, me and my best friends gf had brother sister type bond that made her off limits in my eyes. I had introduced them and they hit it off right away. However, without my noticing, she has brought in a friend of hers that had the exact same name. Lets call them both Erica 1(buddy's girl) and Erica 2 (my future gf). After about 20 minutes of thinking I'm talking to Erica 1 and messing around with her like a brother would do to a sister, I realized she started to flirt with me. Just as I was about to tell her that s**t was inappropriate, I looked at the email address under that MSN name, and noticed this Erica had a different last name. It was then that I was realized I had been teasing Erica 2 the whole time and she indeed thought I was flirting with her.
Around this time, it was summer of 2003, I was 18, about to be heading into my senior year(finally). Sierra was 15 almost 16 and going into her junior year. Erica 2 was 16 and going into her junior year. Erica 2 went to school across the state border, so these girls didn't know each other. 1 day, I get a call from Sierra saying she wanted to take a break during the summer because the sneaking around was getting to her. I was absolutely devastated. Cried for days. During this time, Erica 2 was there was for me and we eventually struck up a relationship that lasted throughout the summer. We didn't have am extremely physical relationship, but there was quite a bit of making out and griding.
Come the end of summer, I get a call from Sierra balling her eyes out telling me it was the worst 2 1/2 months of her life without me in it and wanted to get back together. After much deliberation, I ended things with Erica 2 because I couldn't get over Sierra and was still madly in love with her. From what Erica 1 told me, this absolutely devastated her, as she spent the 1st week of her junior year crying every day.
So here I was, back to sneaking around with Sierra behind her parents back. Back me to showing her how I loved her physically and her still not touching me in a loving way. Fast forward about 5 months, and my world had came crashing down. One day on AIM (for you younger folk, that's AOL instant messenger), I got an IM from a guy, and to this day I still can't remember his AIM name. All it said was, "dude, I didn't know she has a b/f". That was it. I replied asking who this was, but never received another message.
A few weeks before I received this message, Lisa has regularly been calling me asking me how I was doing and always checking in on me. I found it odd, because for the last year she had basically cut me out of her life for choosing Sierra over her. About a month later, Lisa asked to meet her at her job before closing (she worked at a local fast food place). She gave a me a recording that completely ruined my life. On it, Sierra was talking to all her friends, Lisa included, as she had still thought at the time that Lisa had cut me off, explaining how she had just have the best sex of her life last night. Lisa, was furious, saying you knew how much I liked OP and that she didn't want to hear about her and our sex life. That's when Sierra dropped the bomb to everyone. It wasn't me. When Lisa asked Sierra when she had broken up with me, she told her she hadn't. Sierra said I was basically like her best friend who she allowed to make out with and finger her every once in a while, but I was nothing more. She then told them that after we had sex that first month of dating, she couldn't feel my small dick enter her and knew that we would have a no future together. She then started making jokes about how her baby brother, who she helped take care as her parents worked until late evening, was bigger than me and he was 6. Lisa, who sounded furious at this point, asked her why she didn't just break up with me, and Sierra stated she really thought she was in love with me and enjoyed spending time with me. She figured she could sleep with other guys and keep it on the DL, and then get all the emotional parts from me and since her dad had forbidden her from seeing me. It made it easier to get away with it. She said she had an emotional connection with me that the other guys didn't give her, but that sex between us would be non existent.
After hearing all this, I flipped. I threw the recorder thru glass door at the restaurant, (thankfully this was before cameras were everywhere) and Lisa said she would handle it saying some drunk asshole fell thru the door. She apologized to me and said for a month or so she has been having suspicions that Sierra was cheating on me, and that's why she took the recorder with her, because she has been told what happened that night. As I was walking out, Lisa said she had a few more things to tell me. At this point, I was already numb. Apparently, after Lisa had stop recording, Sierra let every know her body count, which before we hooked up, was 1, was now at a whooping 21. Man she was an overachiever. Also, she had faked the pregnancy thing to use it as an excuse to never have sex with me. Yeah, every time I brought up sex, she said she still wasn't over that scare and didn't want to risk it.
Her prom night was the next month, and she ended up going with her gay best friend, and yes, this guy was gay. Everyone knew. She wanted to come over to my house afterward, but I was at my buddies and and told her she could meet me there. At this point, she has no idea I know everything. She shows up about 1030ish and we head down to his basement. About 30 minutes later, we are going at it hot and heavy, and I once again, try to initiate sex knowing this is going to the be last time we are ever together. She is hesitant and I say I can use 2 condoms to make her feel safer. After a few minutes of debating, she says she can't do it, but wants to continue fooling around. By this time, I was already drunk as my buddy and I have been drinking SOCO and E&J all night while playing Triple Play on PS2. I told her no, that I was ready to go back up to my buddies room and get back on the PS2. She was furious. She left without saying anything.
The next few weeks I got back in touch with Erica 2 to see if there was any shot as rekindling what we had. She said she has just got out of a relationship and wasn't looking to get into another one. But if I felt like fooling around, she was game. So, Erica 2 and I started fooling around for about a month before I finally let Sierra know my endgame. One night at a bonfire across the state line, Erica 2 and I finally had sex. I was on cloud nine. I was thinking back to the 9 months prior realizing what a mistake I made picking Sierra over Erica 2. I was supposed to call Sierra at 1030 as that had been out nightly routine for 18 months, but I didn't that night. She called my cellphone around 50 times that night, and I just kept ignoring her. I called Sierra that night when I got home around 3 AM. She answered and let me have it. "Where the hell have you been? I have been worried sick about you. I thought you were dead and I was about to have a panic attack". I explained that I was at a bonfire with Erica 2(by this time, she has known about me and her the previous summer) and she started to flip out on me. By this time, I was exhausted with our relationship and let her know that Erica 2 and I have sex. Sierra had the f'n nerve to start crying. Asking how I could betray her like that. I told her that her facade was over. Lisa had recorded her entire convo the other day and that we were done. She cried for a bit, then hung up on me. The next morning, she called me on her way to school like she had done every day for the 18 months we were together, crying saying she didn't want us to end and she couldn't lose me in her life. I told her she lost me the first time she let another dick penetrate her, just neither one of us knew it until she got caught. Should would call from time to time, but I never answered. I was looking forward to seeing Erica 2 that night, as there was another bonfire.
Being it was spring time and towards the end of the school year, parties were starting to pick up. I showed up late to the party as me and some buddies went to a bar to pre game for a bit. Once we got to the bonfire, I searched for Erica 2. I saw her talking to some friends. I snuch up behind to surprise her, but as I was sneaking up, I heard the convo she was having. She was making fun the guy she had sex with the last night. She said and I quote "He pulled his pants down and it took every ounce of energy in my being not to laugh. When he entered me, it felt like I was using my pinkie to masturbate." I just stood there stunned. At the time, Erica 1 saw me standing behind Erica 2. She exclaimed "OP". She didn't know Erica 2 and I had started messing around again, so Erica 1 was just excited to see me(she wasn't at the previous night bonfire because her and her b/f were out of town for the night.) At this point Erica 2 turned around. Erica 1 saw my face go pale. I looked at Erica 1 and she had a confused look on her face. Then I turned my attention to Erica 2. I started at Erica 2 for what seemed like hours, but was actually about 30 seconds. I turned and just started walking way. As I was walking away, Erica 2 "oh there goes the baby boy now". I heard a smack. I turned around and saw that Erica 1 had coldcocked Erica 2, which was basically her best friend beside me and came over to console me. I left the party about 10 minutes later.
I spent all my 20's and early 30's drinking heavily. Never once looking for a the affection of another girl. I had always wanted to have 2 kids. A boy and a girl. But within 2 months, 2 girls had ruined me. I would never let another girl touch me again. My dad and my grandparents all died while I was in my 20s within a years of each and my weight ballooned out of control. At my heaviest, I was around 500 lbs. A few months ago, I started having tests down and found out I have low T. My glands are working fine, but my body isn't making testosterone. I'm assuming this has been going on since my teen years as I have never had acne and never really developed facial hair. My dad(had) and brothers all have full beards. So they want to put me on Astro gel claiming it will help me lose weight along with Ozempic, as I am currently at around 430 lbs. But right now, I just don't care. Every day since the day after Erica 2 did that to me, I wake up every morning and say "f**k". I say that because I wake up. I'm ready for my life to be over. I have suicidal thoughts every day, even though, apparently like my relationships, I'm too much of a pussy to do anything about them.
I just got done at the doctors where they are putting me on testosterone. I was told this will make me sterile. And its hitting me hard. The realization that I will never have kids is destroying me. My parents had always asked me if I wanted kids in my 20's and I always made excuses like "I don't want to being kids into this world" or "I don't want to put up me growing up". The real reason I didn't want kids was I knew every day I woke up, I wanted it to be my last. I didn't know if I would ever have the guts to finish the job I almost started about a month after what Erica 2 had done to me, but I didn't want to take a chance leaving a child without a father. For context, I got really drunk at the town hangout about a month after the Erica 2 situation and took a bunch of pills because I wanted to it all to end. I was sitting alone when I did it, or so I thought. One of my buddies at the time saw me take all the pills and ran over to me, calling about 5 or 6 friends over to help him. Keep in mind, at the time I'm 5'11, 325. I put up a fight. But enough of them held me down and induced me to vomit up everything, which I could tell included all of the pills that were now all over the ground. I just laid there crying for what seemed like hours with a couple buddies consoling me.
So here I am, sitting here writing this post wishing my life would just end. I haven't had any friends in years, my days consist of work and going home. I just don't know what to do. I haven't kissed a girl since I was 19. I would get drunk and hit on girls in my 20's, but the next day when I was sober, I would pretend it didn't happen when they brought it up to me to avoid what would be the obvious disappointment in sex.
So that's my story. I think I might try to stick it out for 5 years just to watch my niece graduate high school as I love that girl more than anything in the world, but no one ever knows what they day brings. Sometimes, as I'm driving to work, I fantasize about what it would be like to turn my car head on into an oncoming semi. But I couldn't risk hurting someone else or putting some poor human thru that. Outside of that, I'm just dead inside. I feel nothing for anyone outside my family.
Any advice would be welcome because each day gets harder and harder and I have no one to talk to.
TLDR: penis size was made fun of by girls I had strong feelings for and attempted to end it

I (39M) want to die. I have wanted to die basically every day since I was 19 years old. I will give you a little back story since everyone loves backstories. Please bear with me as this will be very long.
Growing up over weight made me the blunt of jokes all thru middle and high school. I was around 325 pounds when I graduated. When I was 17, I met a girl, lets call her Sierra. I was still a junior at this time due to me skipping school 2nd semester sophomore year and failing all my classes sophomore year due to a very bad individual I hung out with during that time. I had met her thru a friend who had a huge crush on me. Lets call said friend Lisa. Both of these girls were 15 at the time and went to school in a little town about 10 miles north of me. When it came time for me to choose, I chose Sierra.
Fast forward a month later, I was head over heels. I had previous gfs, but something about her was different. She didn't seem to care that I was overweight and genuinely seemed to love me. The day I introduced Sierra to my father (who has since passed), and she came up to my room with me. As we started fooling around, she eventually took my virginity. About 2 weeks later she called me freaking out that she was sick and had missed her period. And I thought this was great as even though we had only been dating a month, we had already decided we wanted to have kids together and even had names picked out. This freaked her out and she eventually confessed to her dad and he threatened me that If I ever so much as called his daughter again, I would be arrested.
We spent the better half of the next 18 months or so sneaking around behind her parents back and talking on the phone at night after her father went to bed. Granted, this is 2002/03, so texting isn't a big thing. We would sit in her car when we would meet and cuddle, make out, I'd finger her, things like that. However, she completely refused to do anything sexual to me. At the time, I didn't think anything of it as I thought she just had different ways of showing her affection toward me.
(Changing the tune for a minute, but this all ties in. I swear). After about a year of dating Sierra, I was chatting on MSN with my buddy and his gf in a group chat. Now, me and my best friends gf had brother sister type bond that made her off limits in my eyes. I had introduced them and they hit it off right away. However, without my noticing, she has brought in a friend of hers that had the exact same name. Lets call them both Erica 1(buddy's girl) and Erica 2 (my future gf). After about 20 minutes of thinking I'm talking to Erica 1 and messing around with her like a brother would do to a sister, I realized she started to flirt with me. Just as I was about to tell her that s**t was inappropriate, I looked at the email address under that MSN name, and noticed this Erica had a different last name. It was then that I was realized I had been teasing Erica 2 the whole time and she indeed thought I was flirting with her.
Around this time, it was summer of 2003, I was 18, about to be heading into my senior year(finally). Sierra was 15 almost 16 and going into her junior year. Erica 2 was 16 and going into her junior year. Erica 2 went to school across the state border, so these girls didn't know each other. 1 day, I get a call from Sierra saying she wanted to take a break during the summer because the sneaking around was getting to her. I was absolutely devastated. Cried for days. During this time, Erica 2 was there was for me and we eventually struck up a relationship that lasted throughout the summer. We didn't have am extremely physical relationship, but there was quite a bit of making out and griding.
Come the end of summer, I get a call from Sierra balling her eyes out telling me it was the worst 2 1/2 months of her life without me in it and wanted to get back together. After much deliberation, I ended things with Erica 2 because I couldn't get over Sierra and was still madly in love with her. From what Erica 1 told me, this absolutely devastated her, as she spent the 1st week of her junior year crying every day.
So here I was, back to sneaking around with Sierra behind her parents back. Back me to showing her how I loved her physically and her still not touching me in a loving way. Fast forward about 5 months, and my world had came crashing down. One day on AIM (for you younger folk, that's AOL instant messenger), I got an IM from a guy, and to this day I still can't remember his AIM name. All it said was, "dude, I didn't know she has a b/f". That was it. I replied asking who this was, but never received another message.
A few weeks before I received this message, Lisa has regularly been calling me asking me how I was doing and always checking in on me. I found it odd, because for the last year she had basically cut me out of her life for choosing Sierra over her. About a month later, Lisa asked to meet her at her job before closing (she worked at a local fast food place). She gave a me a recording that completely ruined my life. On it, Sierra was talking to all her friends, Lisa included, as she had still thought at the time that Lisa had cut me off, explaining how she had just have the best sex of her life last night. Lisa, was furious, saying you knew how much I liked OP and that she didn't want to hear about her and our sex life. That's when Sierra dropped the bomb to everyone. It wasn't me. When Lisa asked Sierra when she had broken up with me, she told her she hadn't. Sierra said I was basically like her best friend who she allowed to make out with and finger her every once in a while, but I was nothing more. She then told them that after we had sex that first month of dating, she couldn't feel my small dick enter her and knew that we would have a no future together. She then started making jokes about how her baby brother, who she helped take care as her parents worked until late evening, was bigger than me and he was 6. Lisa, who sounded furious at this point, asked her why she didn't just break up with me, and Sierra stated she really thought she was in love with me and enjoyed spending time with me. She figured she could sleep with other guys and keep it on the DL, and then get all the emotional parts from me and since her dad had forbidden her from seeing me. It made it easier to get away with it. She said she had an emotional connection with me that the other guys didn't give her, but that sex between us would be non existent.
After hearing all this, I flipped. I threw the recorder thru glass door at the restaurant, (thankfully this was before cameras were everywhere) and Lisa said she would handle it saying some drunk asshole fell thru the door. She apologized to me and said for a month or so she has been having suspicions that Sierra was cheating on me, and that's why she took the recorder with her, because she has been told what happened that night. As I was walking out, Lisa said she had a few more things to tell me. At this point, I was already numb. Apparently, after Lisa had stop recording, Sierra let every know her body count, which before we hooked up, was 1, was now at a whooping 21. Man she was an overachiever. Also, she had faked the pregnancy thing to use it as an excuse to never have sex with me. Yeah, every time I brought up sex, she said she still wasn't over that scare and didn't want to risk it.
Her prom night was the next month, and she ended up going with her gay best friend, and yes, this guy was gay. Everyone knew. She wanted to come over to my house afterward, but I was at my buddies and and told her she could meet me there. At this point, she has no idea I know everything. She shows up about 1030ish and we head down to his basement. About 30 minutes later, we are going at it hot and heavy, and I once again, try to initiate sex knowing this is going to the be last time we are ever together. She is hesitant and I say I can use 2 condoms to make her feel safer. After a few minutes of debating, she says she can't do it, but wants to continue fooling around. By this time, I was already drunk as my buddy and I have been drinking SOCO and E&J all night while playing Triple Play on PS2. I told her no, that I was ready to go back up to my buddies room and get back on the PS2. She was furious. She left without saying anything.
The next few weeks I got back in touch with Erica 2 to see if there was any shot as rekindling what we had. She said she has just got out of a relationship and wasn't looking to get into another one. But if I felt like fooling around, she was game. So, Erica 2 and I started fooling around for about a month before I finally let Sierra know my endgame. One night at a bonfire across the state line, Erica 2 and I finally had sex. I was on cloud nine. I was thinking back to the 9 months prior realizing what a mistake I made picking Sierra over Erica 2. I was supposed to call Sierra at 1030 as that had been out nightly routine for 18 months, but I didn't that night. She called my cellphone around 50 times that night, and I just kept ignoring her. I called Sierra that night when I got home around 3 AM. She answered and let me have it. "Where the hell have you been? I have been worried sick about you. I thought you were dead and I was about to have a panic attack". I explained that I was at a bonfire with Erica 2(by this time, she has known about me and her the previous summer) and she started to flip out on me. By this time, I was exhausted with our relationship and let her know that Erica 2 and I have sex. Sierra had the f'n nerve to start crying. Asking how I could betray her like that. I told her that her facade was over. Lisa had recorded her entire convo the other day and that we were done. She cried for a bit, then hung up on me. The next morning, she called me on her way to school like she had done every day for the 18 months we were together, crying saying she didn't want us to end and she couldn't lose me in her life. I told her she lost me the first time she let another dick penetrate her, just neither one of us knew it until she got caught. Should would call from time to time, but I never answered. I was looking forward to seeing Erica 2 that night, as there was another bonfire.
Being it was spring time and towards the end of the school year, parties were starting to pick up. I showed up late to the party as me and some buddies went to a bar to pre game for a bit. Once we got to the bonfire, I searched for Erica 2. I saw her talking to some friends. I snuch up behind to surprise her, but as I was sneaking up, I heard the convo she was having. She was making fun the guy she had sex with the last night. She said and I quote "He pulled his pants down and it took every ounce of energy in my being not to laugh. When he entered me, it felt like I was using my pinkie to masturbate." I just stood there stunned. At the time, Erica 1 saw me standing behind Erica 2. She exclaimed "OP". She didn't know Erica 2 and I had started messing around again, so Erica 1 was just excited to see me(she wasn't at the previous night bonfire because her and her b/f were out of town for the night.) At this point Erica 2 turned around. Erica 1 saw my face go pale. I looked at Erica 1 and she had a confused look on her face. Then I turned my attention to Erica 2. I started at Erica 2 for what seemed like hours, but was actually about 30 seconds. I turned and just started walking way. As I was walking away, Erica 2 "oh there goes the baby boy now". I heard a smack. I turned around and saw that Erica 1 had coldcocked Erica 2, which was basically her best friend beside me and came over to console me. I left the party about 10 minutes later.
I spent all my 20's and early 30's drinking heavily. Never once looking for a the affection of another girl. I had always wanted to have 2 kids. A boy and a girl. But within 2 months, 2 girls had ruined me. I would never let another girl touch me again. My dad and my grandparents all died while I was in my 20s within a years of each and my weight ballooned out of control. At my heaviest, I was around 500 lbs. A few months ago, I started having tests down and found out I have low T. My glands are working fine, but my body isn't making testosterone. I'm assuming this has been going on since my teen years as I have never had acne and never really developed facial hair. My dad(had) and brothers all have full beards. So they want to put me on Astro gel claiming it will help me lose weight along with Ozempic, as I am currently at around 430 lbs. But right now, I just don't care. Every day since the day after Erica 2 did that to me, I wake up every morning and say "f**k". I say that because I wake up. I'm ready for my life to be over. I have suicidal thoughts every day, even though, apparently like my relationships, I'm too much of a pussy to do anything about them.
I just got done at the doctors where they are putting me on testosterone. I was told this will make me sterile. And its hitting me hard. The realization that I will never have kids is destroying me. My parents had always asked me if I wanted kids in my 20's and I always made excuses like "I don't want to being kids into this world" or "I don't want to put up me growing up". The real reason I didn't want kids was I knew every day I woke up, I wanted it to be my last. I didn't know if I would ever have the guts to finish the job I almost started about a month after what Erica 2 had done to me, but I didn't want to take a chance leaving a child without a father. For context, I got really drunk at the town hangout about a month after the Erica 2 situation and took a bunch of pills because I wanted to it all to end. I was sitting alone when I did it, or so I thought. One of my buddies at the time saw me take all the pills and ran over to me, calling about 5 or 6 friends over to help him. Keep in mind, at the time I'm 5'11, 325. I put up a fight. But enough of them held me down and induced me to vomit up everything, which I could tell included all of the pills that were now all over the ground. I just laid there crying for what seemed like hours with a couple buddies consoling me.
So here I am, sitting here writing this post wishing my life would just end. I haven't had any friends in years, my days consist of work and going home. I just don't know what to do. I haven't kissed a girl since I was 19. I would get drunk and hit on girls in my 20's, but the next day when I was sober, I would pretend it didn't happen when they brought it up to me to avoid what would be the obvious disappointment in sex.
So that's my story. I think I might try to stick it out for 5 years just to watch my niece graduate high school as I love that girl more than anything in the world, but no one ever knows what they day brings. Sometimes, as I'm driving to work, I fantasize about what it would be like to turn my car head on into an oncoming semi. But I couldn't risk hurting someone else or putting some poor human thru that. Outside of that, I'm just dead inside. I feel nothing for anyone outside my family.
Any advice would be welcome because each day gets harder and harder and I have no one to talk to.

Previous Post - https://www.reddit.com/AITAH/comments/1bsb0jl/aitah_i_27m_want_to_give_up_my_parental_rights_of/
I couple of hours ago someone asked about my situation. So I thought to give an update and few responses.
First of all except 2 comments each and every comment helped me. Both negative and positive ones. So thanks for that.
To the first dude that irritated me to you I want to say YES I read your comment that I don't deserve my GF and she should leave me. You don't need to reach me everywhere possible to say this to me. I read it once.
To the second dude. I am quoting a line I read in one reddit post for you. "You only have two brain cells competing for third place". You said I should leave my GF and get in relationship with my AP because she must have something which my GF lacks that why I cheated.
Now reason of the update. I am the father. But it is in the best interest of both me and the child that I am not involved in the child's life. Because of all the comments I thought about it for a long time and came to a conclusion that no bio-father is better than a bio-father who resents. I will still pay the child support. My GF also advised me that I should also create a college fund for the child. If there is something else I can do then you can give me some advice.
During my IC it has been revealed that I have developed borderline psychopathic tendencies due to my childhood and my work ethics. To be honest I always suspected this. I always had some degree of reduced empathy, risk-taking, and overly high self-regard when it comes to people who are not my family and GF. So I hope you can see the dangers here.
Now lets come to my family. Situation is not right. I am on LC with everyone except my grandparents and brother. It is my sister who has cut me the deepest. Two year ago when she got pregnant. Both she and husband decided to abort the child because they were not "emotionally prepared". It was their words. If my parents got to know about this all hells would have broken loose. It was I who kept her secret. It was I who helped both of them to get abortion as smoothly as possible without anyone knowing. Now when I needed her support she is saying it will be amazing to have a nephew or niece and she will be an amazing aunt. She is treating me like this now. Our relationship will never be the same again.
Now why AP did this. We were friends since we were 13 and we became FWB since we were 16. Somewhere down the line she started liking me romantically but I never saw her that way. I should have nip the problem in the bud back then but I was too selfish back then. Then my GF came in my life and I thought that it was too long her feelings would be long gone by now but now it has come to bite me back. Why she thought that by doing this we can be together I don't now. I think drugs has addled her mind or she is suffering with serious mental problems or she is obsessed with me.
Now lets come to the most important person in my life my GF. Some people were saying I should set her free and let her be happy. I am nor holding her captive neither I am forcing her to be with me. She is free to do what she wants. I even told her if all this get too much and she decides to leave me I will not hold it against her and I will understand why she did so and there will be no negative feeling from my side. She chose to stay with me. She also goes to IC. I am doing everything possible to make sure she doesn't suffer emotional torture from my family(except my grandparents and brother), AP, AP's family and AP's friends. Till now I have been successful. She also have got close to my grandmother and her sister. Its good to see that she has a good support system.
Now on to the comments saying that I was sexually assaulted. That night when AP made her move I remember saying "no it's not right" but she kept pestering and eventually gave in. If it was six years ago I could have resisted against AP's advances. Now I am thinking has my tolerance decreased or if I really cheated. I really don't know. But one thing is sure that I still betrayed her that night by doing drugs.
AITAH?

Previous Post - https://www.reddit.com/relationship_advice/comments/1bsay74/i_27m_want_to_give_up_my_parental_rights_of_my/
I couple of hours ago someone asked about my situation. So I thought to give an update and few responses.
First of all except 2 comments each and every comment helped me. Both negative and positive ones. So thanks for that.
To the first dude that irritated me to you I want to say YES I read your comment that I don't deserve my GF and she should leave me. You don't need to reach me everywhere possible to say this to me. I read it once.
To the second dude. I am quoting a line I read in one reddit post for you. "You only have two brain cells competing for third place". You said I should leave my GF and get in relationship with my AP because she must have something which my GF lacks that why I cheated.
Now reason of the update. I am the father. But it is in the best interest of both me and the child that I am not involved in the child's life. Because of all the comments I thought about it for a long time and came to a conclusion that no bio-father is better than a bio-father who resents. I will still pay the child support. My GF also advised me that I should also create a college fund for the child. If there is something else I can do then you can give me some advice.
During my IC it has been revealed that I have developed borderline psychopathic tendencies due to my childhood and my work ethics. To be honest I always suspected this. I always had some degree of reduced empathy, risk-taking, and overly high self-regard when it comes to people who are not my family and GF. So I hope you can see the dangers here.
Now lets come to my family. Situation is not right. I am on LC with everyone except my grandparents and brother. It is my sister who has cut me the deepest. Two year ago when she got pregnant. Both she and husband decided to abort the child because they were not "emotionally prepared". It was their words. If my parents got to know about this all hells would have broken loose. It was I who kept her secret. It was I who helped both of them to get abortion as smoothly as possible without anyone knowing. Now when I needed her support she is saying it will be amazing to have a nephew or niece and she will be an amazing aunt. She is treating me like this now. Our relationship will never be the same again.
Now why AP did this. We were friends since we were 13 and we became FWB since we were 16. Somewhere down the line she started liking me romantically but I never saw her that way. I should have nip the problem in the bud back then but I was too selfish back then. Then my GF came in my life and I thought that it was too long her feelings would be long gone by now but now it has come to bite me back. Why she thought that by doing this we can be together I don't now. I think drugs has addled her mind or she is suffering with serious mental problems or she is obsessed with me.
Now lets come to the most important person in my life my GF. Some people were saying I should set her free and let her be happy. I am nor holding her captive neither I am forcing her to be with me. She is free to do what she wants. I even told her if all this get too much and she decides to leave me I will not hold it against her and I will understand why she did so and there will be no negative feeling from my side. She chose to stay with me. She also goes to IC. I am doing everything possible to make sure she doesn't suffer emotional torture from my family(except my grandparents and brother), AP, AP's family and AP's friends. Till now I have been successful. She also have got close to my grandmother and her sister. Its good to see that she has a good support system.
Now on to the comments saying that I was sexually assaulted. That night when AP made her move I remember saying "no it's not right" but she kept pestering and eventually gave in. If it was six years ago I could have resisted against AP's advances. Now I am thinking has my tolerance decreased or if I really cheated. I really don't know. But one thing is sure that I still betrayed her that night by doing drugs.
Anymore suggestions?
TLDR: I want to give up my parental rights of my potential affair child with previous FWB to save my relationship with my GF of 6 years. Now there is a rift in family because of this.

In August of last year we had a whirlpool tub crack and leak water into the downstairs office. Mitigation teams were called out to deal with the water damage and they ended up tearing up the ceiling of the office and both the bathtub and the floor of the shower in our master bathroom, leaving me and my husband with no upstairs shower.
A little backstory - we have tenants/friends living in our downstairs basement. At the time of the incident, they were living here rent free because my disabled father was also living with me and I agreed to let my friends live here for a year with no rent because they had just moved here from Texas and were trying to save money and build credit to buy a house as long as they helped me care for my father. They did so and it was overall a great deal for everyone involved and I'm happy to have been in a position to make that arrangement with them.
So there are three full bathrooms in my house - the basement bathroom that my tenants used, the main floor bathroom that was my fathers (and needed to be available at all times because when he needed to go he needed to go and he couldn't do stairs and was 100% oxygen bound), and the upstairs master bathroom - the bathroom that is no longer useable.
After the bathroom got torn apart, we had to start sharing a bathroom in the basement with our teneants. My dad's shower was converted to be an elderly walk in tub so it wasn't even really a viable option for us to use because it took too long to fill the tub and my dad used the bathroom on average once an hour.
We called out our favorite plumbing company to survey the damage and he recommended a contracting company. Owner of the company, we'll call him Mark, came out and met with me and I showed him what I wanted to do to the space, let him know how much insurance was willing to cover and let him know what my budget was for the remaining work. (The existing bathroom had a shower smaller than most closets and a bathtub that could have fit 8 people comfortably, and that was not serving us so I decided if we were living through construction I might as well pay the extra and get a bathroom I wanted out of it complete with a bigger shower, smaller tub, and some semblance of storage space.)
Mark came out and seemed very agreeable at first. I told him what my vision was - showed him what vanity I had picked out, photos of what I was hoping to accomplish, and basically my list of priorities in the build out. The entire time I was speaking to him I was making sure to say "this is what I'm hoping for, but if that's not reasonable or doable just tell me and we can adjust." I am aware that I am not a contractor and if a professional tells me there are fundamental issues or complications with what I'm requesting, I can easily pivot to plan B or plan C. At no point did he say "whoa, I don't think that'll be doable" or "If you do x we'll need to do y and z which will cost v" - he just kept saying "Oh yeah, we can make that happen. That sounds good. Ok, perfect." Basically he was 100% a yes man re: everything.
After this conversation, he wrote me out an estimate for 18k over what insurance was covering (14k). It was steeper than I hoped for but I was going to have my dream bathroom at the end so I took the financial blow and agreed. The contract that I signed also stated in no uncertain terms that the estimated time for the project was 2-3 weeks. Which, from my research, sounded about average for what a bathroom buildout took. It also clearly stated "labor and materials" were being accounted for in the estimate.
December 27th, Mark and company came in and did full demo on the bathroom. Full demo in this case included removing the toilet, though after us expressing that sharing a restroom with my dad was not really possible, he did put the toilet back in place in the down-to-the-studs-and-plywood bathroom and we had to do the awkward skip down the stairs holding our hands up so we didn't touch anything so we could wash our hands in the kitchen sink after every trip to the restroom for two months. After the bathroom was full demoed it was almost an entire 3 weeks before they even returned to start anything. Already well past the initial estimate of time.
Everything got worse from there and I'll summarize the rest with cute little bullet points for simplicity.

• They would not give us any indication of when they were coming or when they were done for the day, meaning our dogs were in their crates way more than necessary because they have stranger danger and because of the location of the bathroom and the access points to the house there was no safe way to have the dogs out while the crew was present.
• At no point did Mark create any kind of a draft of a floorplan with the information I had given him. He took no notes at our first conversation where I told him what I was looking for and he said "YEP WE CAN DO IT NO PROBLEM." As more time passed and more subcontractors got involved, I found myself having to remind Mark of our initial conversation a lot. Things like a nook in the shower for shampoo bottles, the glass enclosure for the shower being a full enclosure instead of partial, etc. - sometimes these reminders came too late and required something to be redone, which he of course blamed me for even though I had mentioned everything up front. I literally had a list of bullet points I had walked through with him at our first meeting. I'm very organized and thorough with stuff like this so the fact that he had the nerve to try to blame me for him forgetting or neglecting to write anything down is beyond me. It became very clear that his MO was to overpromise and underdeliver.
• My biggest want with the bathroom was a "wet room" type of design that had a glass wall/door encapsulating both the shower and the bathtub. I wanted this because I also run a dog rescue and giving puppies a bath would be so much easier if I could just enclose them in the shower area to dry off and suds up. If you know, you know. When I first showed him inspo photos and explained to him what I was looking for he enthusiastically said "oh, yeah, I got a glass guy I can have set that up for you no problem." But he seemed to completely put that out of his mind and then acted like it was a huge deal when I reminded him about it. He behaved as if this was an entirely new thing that I was springing on him. It wasn't. This was part of the mock floor plan I had literally texted him on day one. So then it became "well if we can't do a shower pan, we have to tile the shower floor" (WHICH I HAD ALSO REQUESTED IN THE BEGINNING). and then "the bigger the floor tile the better" turned into "we have to use the smallest tile possible in the bathroom because the tile guys have to slope the entire bathroom floor to the drain now since "the wife" doesn't want a shower pan. Keep in mind, I never said I wasn't ok with having to step into a shower over a short tiled ledge... I just wanted the floors and walls to be tiled and to have it enclosed by glass. Had he said to me "it's going to be 5k more expensive to slope the floor" I would have said oh no that's too much, what are the other options -- but never did he discuss options with me. Never did he discuss that any of these things that I was reminding him that we had ALREADY TALKED ABOUT BEFORE HE GAVE ME THE CONTRACT TO SIGN were going to cost more and more money. It wasn't mentioned until after it was done and the money was magically owed.
• There was a nearly 1 month delay for the tile work because the tile guys just straight up stopped coming because Mark hadn't paid them. They would show up at the house and say "Mark said he can't pay us because you haven't paid him -- leading to me showing them the receipts and text conversation where it showed we were paid up -- leading to them literally leaving saying they can't do work that they're not being paid for (understandably.) 20 minutes later Mark called us and lied to us saying the tile guys had something come up at a different project and couldn't make it to work on our project today because he didn't know we just sat on my porch and had a conversation about it. When we tried to call him on the lie he got beligerant and started yelling at me and telling me I kept moving the goalposts and it was my fault everything was taking so long.
• When we started this project I bought everything up front. Tub, vanity, shower head, etc. -- Mark picked it up himself stating that he wanted to "have the measurements" and kept it at his shop. Somehow, despite the fact that the vanity was sitting in his shop since January, he did not give the plumbers the correct information when they came to do the rough-in plumbing in February - so the plumbing was set up incorrectly for the vanity and needed to be completely redone, which was a cost that got passed down to me. An extra 1.6k to redo the plumbing for the vanity. When I asked the plumbers why they didn't do it correctly in the first place they said that Mark had told them the plumbing wasn't changing from the original vanity (not true, the new vanity we got is VERY different.) -- so now again because of Mark's inability to communicate, I'm out an extra almost 2k on top of the extra 5k from the tile work and 1k from switching our order to a different tub because he insisted a tub that took a month to be delivered would delay the entire project and then they didn't even TOUCH the newer more expensive tub until 2w after the original tub would have been delivered.
• His original estimate stated "materials and labor", therefore leading me to believe that the cost of all the tile, grout, drywall, etc. would be included in the 18k estimate. Not according to all the photos of receipts he sent to me and the fact that I had to order the tub, the vanity, etc. all out of pocket and STILL paid him 18k+ -- His original contract also did not mention anywhere that subcontracting work would need to be paid separately, but somehow his "glass guy" that installed the glass enclosure for the shower charged us 2k on top of everything else, too. I'm literally hemorrhaging money. I acknowledge, of course, that this could have been my misunderstanding, and if that is the case I still have PLENTY to be mad about aside from this.
• At one point they put up a temporary piece of drywall to cover the hole in the office beneath the bathroom. Apparently when he did this, he did not cap off any of the pipes in the ceiling, and when the piece of drywall was brought down for final plumb out to be completed, the plumbers discovered a giant pile of human waste that slowly leaked out of the open pipes onto the ceiling of the room my father on hospice had been living in. Cute, right?

This entire situation has caused me so much turmoil in my life.

• We own a dog rescue and I foster pregnant dogs and litters of puppies. I said no and turned down SO MANY FOSTER DOGS during that initial time period because I didn't want them to have to give birth through the stress of construction noises. We finally said yes to an urgent case in late January and those puppies were born, raised, and adopted without ever being able to be bathed in a tub because this project has taken so long. Dobermans are not kitchen sink dogs and having to bathe them in the sink was a nightmare.
• My dad was hospitalized twice with lack of sleep being a contributing factor both times because he lived through two and a half months of not being able to sleep during the day because of the construction noise. The second time he returned from the hospital it was on hospice care. I couldn't have family come and stay with us to say goodbye to my dad because I had nowhere to put them because all of our bathroom stuff was in the one spare bedroom and we couldn't have MORE people sharing the downstairs bathroom.
• My dad passed away a week after returning home on hospice care. I still could not have my family come and stay with me and help me in the wake of my father's passing because I had no bathroom or spare bedroom for them to use.
• I run two side-businesses. One of which is dog-sitting. My summer calendar has been filling up for months, but in January when I started saying yes to the spring/summer dog sitting requests, I would never have dreamed the construction would still be going on. I've had to call people and tell them I can't watch their dog that is terrified of loud noises because my house is still regularly burdened with the sounds of drilling, sawing, tile cutting, etc. - I've probably lost $3k in revenue from those cancelled appointments.
• My other side business is an actual retail shop that I run online. We closed down orders in January because the spare bedroom that got taken over by bathroom stuff was also our office for product manufacturing, shipping, etc. and it's not a functional space with all the bathroom stuff in there. Literally at times theres just been a toilet sitting in the middle of the room. It's not a useable space. 3+ months of lost revenue from that business is probably close to 3k at this point as well.
• Since my dad passed away and my tenants hit the year mark, it became time to start collecting rent. I can't yet collect full rent in good conscience because they don't have their own private space because my husband and I have to keep coming down to use their bathroom and I can't move my stuff upstairs because the spare bedroom is still full of the bathroom stuff, the office still has a big hole in the ceiling with debris falling through constantly (thankful my dad isn't still living in that room, to be honest. I'm sure the constant debris wasn't helping his lung diseases). They agreed to pay half of what rent would be until we no longer have to share their private space with them. That's about $400 a month I'm losing out on while this project is still going, so approximately $1200 now.
• My husband and I have both used more than 8 days of PTO a piece taking time off to be here to let new subcontractors in or receive deliveries being sent to our house, or just be present so we could talk to the team and get a status update. I'm not sure the monetary value of that loss, but it's there.

When I started to get frustrated with Mark about the crappy communication, the length of time everything was taking, the lying, etc. - he got very defensive, told me it was entirely my fault, took zero accountability, and basically said he wanted to only talk to my husband from then on out. Since then, we have more than 4 recordings of Mark standing in MY LIVING ROOM talking shit about me to my husband. Literally trying to bro out with him by being a misogynist mf saying stuff like "women getting involved in stuff like this is always a nightmare" and my husband saying "no, she's been pretty consistent the entire time." or "no, I get why she's frustrated".
All of the subcontracting companies he's been working with have informed me that all he does is complain about this project and how much money HE'S OUT because of it. All of those contractors have also informed me that they will never again do business with this guy because of how unprofessional he's been through everything.
That said, as of today, the bathroom is still not done. it has been over four months since this "two week reno" began, and almost 8 months since the inciting incident that caused the damage. We thought we were nearing the end, but now the toilet that was finally reinstalled is not flushing and an extra plumbing charge later ($300 for 2 hours of their troubleshooting time) we have to have the water-jetter truck come out to blast the pipes because there is evidence of a bunch of plaster having been dumped into the pipe. Was that just his employee's being careless or did he do it on purpose? Who knows. But if the plumbing hadn't been sitting there open for over 3 months I assume this wouldn't have been an issue. The jetter truck is going to cost us 1k per hour and if they can't dislodge the block with that truck they'll have to cut further into the ceiling below and fully replace a large section of the pipes. Estimated cost for which will be between 2.5k and 5k depending on severity.
All in all the project cost $9k more than what was estimated at minimum plus 2.5k-5k more for whatever plumbing has to happen tomorrow,(and not including all the big ticket items we had to buy that we expected would be a part of the "supplies" in "supplies and labor"), has taken 8x the amount of time originally quoted, and cost us an additional almost $10k from ongoing loss of profit from our home-run businesses. In addition, the emotional and mental toll that this has taken on me, and that it took on my father before he passed away, is something that I will never forgive. The way that this guy just could not give a crap less about how much he's destroyed my life over the last 4 months is baffling to me. My last days with my father were filled with so much stress about contractors coming in and out and disturbing his sleep and impacting his ability to visit with his family, etc. -- we've cancelled family visits and trips home so that work could continue on this project and I've literally never been so mad and misled in my life.
Mark and team was supposed to be out to my house today to finish the minor things they had left to do, but he texted this morning and said they weren't coming and hasn't responded to any inquiries since. We cancelled a trip to Michigan to see my nieces perform in a musical because of this, and he's not even going to show up. Again.
I've been told that I should take him to small claims court and sue him, but I'd love to hear other people's experiences with things like this to gauge how much of a fight it will be. In the meantime I still have a bathroom that is not completed, a toilet that doesn't work, and an absolutely depleted savings from all of the residual costs this project has continued to incur for us.
My instinct today is to call out some contractors and get a quote from them on how much they'd charge to fix what is remaining to be done and then let him know how much they're charging me and ask him for a refund of that amount and put his mountain of tools taking up permanent residence in my upstairs hallway out on the porch and tell him to come get his equipment and be gone.
Any advice appreciated. If there are parts of this story that I am clearly in the wrong for and just not identifying them, please let me know, because I am not afraid of taking accountability for anywhere that I may have created issues.
Thanks for listening, reddit.

Ayonna is a busy little beaver cleaning house before her same-day visit with Jamahl and her court sentencing of 15 or 90 days. Her friend, Lexi, with the mini springy Slinky-like curls is helping her round up her daughter, Ahmira, and her son, Darien, who maybe not so surprisingly doesn’t live with his mother full-time, but visits on weekdays. Otherwise, Darien stays at his grandmother’s, Keisha’s, house. Starting early to avoid responsibility, Ayonna had her son when she was 17 years old and wasn’t ready to be a mom so that arrangement became a comfortable habit. But for all her fake mommy-hood vibes, she only has eyes and time for boopie who gets an ass load of thonged buttock décolletage because Romeo’s Juliet is as happy to gratify her man as to piss off the guards. Girlfriend don’t care who sees her jump up and down to chizzel so that thing sits right. Clack clack on the track – all a-bord while her tongue is hanging out waiting for a traffic signal to retract back into its mouth. She wants to be a slut for Jamahl (like Camilla wanted to be a tampon for Prince Charles.) No worries, honey, you already are his 4-ever ho giddy with the prospect of your felon drilling you with his motorized gearbox snugly aiming for your precisely-sized diameter. He’ll miss her over her “dumb ass bid” – a sentiment she shares with Keisha when she flings herself onto Mom’s couch after the kids are safely tucked away. Jamahl is human so he’ll speak to other people just not any other females – like Clinton’s famous 1998 quote about Monica Lewinsky, “I did not have sex with that woman,” because he knows she’s jealous. Both misbegotten lovers are in the same boat and need to keep a watch on each other’s sanity - the same two people who jumped into their respective boats with little foresight and a lot of alacrity. Keisha, softer, younger, and prettier looking than her stumpy daughter – she of the bad choices, stoically listens as Ayonna continues to blame her situation on the police who confoundingly penalized for the “dumbest charge they made in America” setting in motion a chain reaction of events over which she has no control. Doesn’t Mommy get it? Apparently not because when Mommy says she’s been further discommoded and won’t be around forever to assist, Ayonna nearly jumps off the couch on which she had so lazily been resting to screech that she better be there to pick up the pieces because that’s what mothers are for, ironically disregarding the fact that she isn’t picking up the pieces for her children; she’s smashing them to bits as she waits for her man to come home to pick up the rest of her pieces. I mean if someone doesn’t hand her a broom and a dustpan, what is a selfish girl supposed to do?
True, standing so proudly in the jail’s culinary art kitchen with his sunglasses perched on his head ready to avoid the glare of fluorescent and LED lighting, his popping chest straining against the white-on-white undershirt and shirt, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet unable to contain the fineness of himself, is playing with recipes to possibly outcook Shonta. He’s just now encountering squid and mixing it with crab and mozz-a-rella to make a seafood omelet – a dish many on the outside can’t afford to eat – assuming they would want to. The restaurant is Shonta’s long-held idea for which she saved 25K, but it was stolen and now True is to be the invisible (in more ways than one) restaurant manager – as sound an idea as LaTisha and Keith’s loan business - so she visits Fannie’s African restaurant for advice while True is on the phone. Fannie had to wait two years to see a profit – typical for that industry, but True wants to see it in two months. Fannie wisely suggests that Shonta ensures that one-half the restaurant is officially hers as partners, in love and life, can change as easily as a seasonal menu. Later, Fred, her sticky-fingered, pimp-vibing stepbrother with as checkered a past as True, even having been fellow inmates in the same jail for 6 months, comes limping in to try and salvage some trust in their relationship. He’s the 5K safe stealing equivalent of the cookie thief who denies, denies, denies stealing cookies even as the crumbs fall from his lying lips. Why would this addict rob his relative of a golden opportunity just because the situation unfolded itself in his lap with the exuberance of a dandelion’s fluffy seedhead? Furthermore, he adds that she doesn’t know what she’s getting into when she gets with True, awakening Shonta’s Spidey senses, and they need to be quivering as she is as surrounded by victimizing men as Conestoga wagons in the untamed West.
Outdoors man Rick is shopping with his nieces, Dyana and Veronica, a corrections officer, to spice up his wardrobe. He’s supposed to be a ladies’ man. Kind of Kevin Bacon-ish. Divorced, he decides to try and find his high school crush, Samantha, recently released and now working at a re-entry center. She’s still blond and attractive, three granddaughters and resisting/obstructing officers and two felony DUI offenses later. They’ve been “dating" for over 3 months. Can we digress for a minute here? Old-fashioned dating wasn’t a blanket term used as a fig leaf for surfing through dating apps, speed-dating strangers in a neutral space, having quickies in the front seat of a car in a Compton-like neighborhood like Hugh Grant, or timed jail calls. Well, that’s ok, Rick has also had an alcohol and party problem himself, like Sammi, until 2 ½ years ago. In fact, he was a functional drunk until he started blacking out, which was when he started getting help. They have that in common. He awkwardly confesses that he’s been sending her money, never mind how much, 25K, and intends to marry her. The nieces are shocked, and Ronnie explains cons’ cons while Rick is scrunched in embarrassment looking wretched as his younger relatives admonish him for his naïveté.
That family video chat didn’t go that well. Conflict-avoidant Joey was outed by his sister’s minor bombshell of his prior relapse. As he relates this to a cavalier Michael on their phone chat, a fight is going down in the jail background as pepper spray cuts off their communication temporarily, perfectly illustrating Joey’s concerns about their communication skills. It’s not so much that as the ubiquitous secret one partner always has. This time it’s the release date. Pre-board in three months and parole board in 6 months before finding the recommended release date, and if parole is denied, Michael can wait from 6 months up to a year before being reconsidered. In fact, he could be in for another 6 years and that’s the straight answer he doesn’t want to give Joey, as well as the number of his past lovers, in and out of stir, and who knows what else. Of course, the silver lining to an extended sentence could be either time for honing those skills, which will require every one of those minutes, or the chance to reconsider throwing in with a fellow addict whose spent more time behind bars than in front of them.
It's a Joan Rivers, “Can we talk”? moment or coming to a gunfight unarmed as Kate begins to unwind, like an ectothermic snake after the equinox, feeling the warm sun spilling from the rock it’s hiding under. That’s because Tennie tells Kate some hard truths like her initiating a petition to address excessive sentencing that Kate wouldn’t assist with or even sign. Tennie explains but doesn’t apologize for her past. Cheyenne’s dad died when she was 1-years old and Mi’yah’s dad is MIA. When Kate discovers that Tennie isn’t a spoiled selfish boogie hogging the spoils to which Kate feels she’s being rightfully denied, she reluctantly admits, “I might like her,” but it wouldn’t do to like her right away, of course. They both walk away unsettled; Tennie concerned that Rob hasn’t called to find out how the visit went so Tennie decides to weaponize those insidious cameras to have a night to herself. Rob is incredulous and turns the convo into telling her his case manager suggested turning down parole and staying in longer which Rob unilaterally decided to do. He doesn’t tell her he’s got a portrait-sized tattoo of a past girlfriend on his arm he somehow needs to erase and that’s more important than disrupting other peoples’ plans. Well, it’s what happens when you decide to become a permanent living art installation with few chances of rotation. And speaking of art, the slightly tilted looking piece over Tennie’s bed looks like either a crude attempt at Pointillism or mold spreading like cracked black pepper flung on a crumpled Saltine.

This is my first time writing anything like this about my life so I'm sorry if it's too long as there's a lot to unpack and I want to just lay everything out to get the best advice to help my decision.
I come from a family of 6. There was me, my mother, father and three sisters. I'm the youngest and there's an 8 year gap between me and my sisters, who only have around a one year gap between each of them. Growing up it was always World War 3 in our house with them as when they were in their teens the three of them shared a room. The sister in question, "Sarah", is the middle in age of the three, "Winifred" the oldest and "Mary" the youngest.
Sarah has always been the least like any of us, we're all very different, both in personality and looks, it's been pointed out multiple times by friends how different we all are from each other, but Sarah has always carried an air of superiority I've never seen in the rest of my family.
The one trait me and my siblings share would be we all have/had put ourselves first, which can be a good thing but can lean into selfishness pretty easily, a problem that plagued my personality until I met my husband who helped me see the difference in putting myself first and being a selfish AH.
Sarah has never been the type to let anything go. She always brings up things that happened when my sisters were teenagers (they're all in their 40s now) along with embellishing or completely fabricating things that have happened that make her out to be completely blameless. She retells these story's over and over until she genuinely believes them and then throws a tantrum when one or more of us correct her. I remember arguments Sarah would have with my parents that always ended up with her storming out of the house, she tends to run away from problems.
Sarah and my mother have never seen eye to eye. In many ways they're too similar, always need the last word, headstrong, never apologizing, the need to always be right and they obsess way too much about what people think (in different ways, Sarah cares about how people/ strangers perceive her and her families manners/ social status and success, my mother is particularly obsessive on people knowing details about her personal life and is a very private person). It's always been my view that Sarah has always lacked my mother's warmth and her honesty (mostly to a fault but she would always try and spare someone's feelings and bite her tongue when she really needed to). Sarah's name calling about my other sisters was always a main spark to her and my mothers arguments.
Her and Winifred got on well for the most part from what I remember, and when we all got older she was fine to talk to. There were even a few times when my father was sick, myself, Sarah and Winifred had some bonding time which was nice.
Several years ago Mary was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia ( severely effects her central nervous system, can cause wide spread pain and can easily cause fatigue) and a few years ago she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She had a full hysterectomy and the cancer seems to be a memory but this still wasn't enough for Sarah to not belittle Mary and her, what Sarah calls "life choices". Mary has struggled with her weight since she was a teenager and Sarah never held back in letting her know her opinions on it.
It's common knowledge in our family that Sarah has always been ashamed of where she comes from and would always be embarrassed by how my mother and Mary acted and spoke (little filter and Sarah considers this candour and how they speak "lower class" ). Mary has always Sarah's verbal punching bag, both to her face and behind her back but has always disliked when people, mainly my mother, would call her out and tell her to stop. The most recent example of this I was told about was that at my wedding, she made a nasty comment about the dress Mary was wearing. Months later my mother mentioned it in an argument to Sarah that her sister (my aunt) overheard Sarah's remarks and made a disapproving face. Sarah apparently just walked away from the conversation. The next day my aunt called my mother and asked that she "not be involved in my family's drama". My mother, confused asked her what she meant and my aunt said that Sarah drove (1.5 hours) to her house to confront her about it even though it happened just short of a year before.
For years our father had been desperately trying to get my mother to agree for them to move and downsize homes so they could enjoy their retirement with a little extra money but she was extremely reluctant to leave the family home due to a combination of leaving happy memories behind and being afraid of such a big change.
Then one day, Sarah offered to give up some of her land for them to live on as a cheaper option. I think we all agreed it was a good idea and we were all so surprised by what seemed to be generosity, it blindsided us all and we mistook it as her turning over a new leaf. Our father was all for the idea as him and Sarah agreed it was good to be near family in their golden years.
I replay my parents asking my advice on this over and over in my head, as in hindsight it was obviously an awful idea. But like Winifred and Mary, I agreed it would be the best move.
Their original idea was for them to get a tiny home and have it about 100 yards from Sarah's home. Sarah entertained that idea for a short while but convinced them a built small property attached to their home would be better.
The family home was nearly 2 hours drive away from Sarah's home so her and her husband took charge with contractors and overseen almost anything to do with the build if my parents couldn't make it.
The first quote, pre-build, they received was 50k. But in the end it tripled into 150k. Over the course of the build Sarah had changed things, the location of the front door, which was now facing the window to her home office (which is her main place of work), and back door, which changed to face the back of Sarah's house ( I know this all seems like major red flags but again, her and her husband convinced them it was to do with not damaging parts of her property and what seemed like other valid reasonings).
Cut to the house being built, selling the family home and them moving in, it wasn't long until our father became ill. First we noticed his memory wasn't as sharp as it was, then he had difficulty driving and had to stop completely. It was around this time and slightly after the sale of their house Sarah started pestering him for a loan. He told me this himself, at first it was suggesting they bring everyone on a big holiday, then it was saying it would be nice to give all their kids 20k and how it would be nice to see us enjoy it. She eventually wore him down and he loaned her 20k, I'm assuming to get her off his back. At some point after she booked a trip to New York, brought 2 suitcases, one of which was empty but came back with them both packed full. I know it was her business what she wanted the money for but even if it was for a shopping trip she could have had the decency to conceal it a bit better. She promised him time and time again she'd pay him back. He never seen a penny. Previous to this he offered Winifred the same amount as she was going through a divorce and it would have gone to a house for her to move out, she thanked him for offering but turned it down and said she'd be ok. She didn't tell him that it was because she thought it wasn't right to accept money from him knowing he was sick as he was a very proud man.
My father was the best man I've ever known. Incredibly down to earth, very open and friendly and could make friends at the drop of a hat. I remember a couple of vacations when we were kids. Thousands of miles from home he'd bump into old friends of his.
He was the kind of person who rarely got a cold so his decline was obvious to everyone. It was a year of being misdiagnosed until he was finally correctly diagnosed with stage four liver cancer, which had moved to his lung and towards the end, a part of his brain.
His last month was the worst time of my entire life. The arguments, the tears, My mother and one of my sisters (I can't remember who) caught covid so we had to juggle who could be where. It was also the first time in nearly 20 years all of us were together for longer than a day.
Myself and Winifred were lucky enough to have bosses that were very understanding and adjusted our schedules so we were given the month off to be with our family.
As I said Sarah works from home and sees clients from her home office. She maintained her regular work schedule while we were all meters away. I understand that was her choice but it seems like odd while our father was literally wasting away in his bed, especially since she works for herself so has a pretty good control of when she can work.
Our father was such a strong person. Every palliative nurse that came were more and more taken aback with each visit that he was still with us.
We all said our individual goodbyes and promises to look after each other when his condition had advanced too much not to, and the next morning, he passed.
He had a special relationship with all of us and things Sarah has said since his passing leads me to believe she thought hers was the only one that mattered.
The funeral ceremony was quick (as per his wishes). We elected Sarah to be the one to give the eulogy as the rest of us have anxiety issues with public speaking, but we read what she was going to say a few days before the ceremony. I was the first one to read what she wrote and noticed a bulk of the corrections were changing "My Dad" to "Our Dad", I wouldn't have mentioned it but there were even times even in conversation I would correct her on this, it may seem insignificant but it's just something that really bothered me. I mean when siblings talk about their parents to each other is normal to just say "mom" or "dad" to each other.
There was light food and drinks in a local bar afterwards. As there were so many arguments the previous month between Winifred, Sarah, Mary & my mother, me and my husband were really the only people making conversation with her and her husband, apart from the odd distant relative or two. A week or so later Sarah flew off to New York, something she tried to conceal from my mother but she forgot she mentioned it to her almost a year before. There was yet another huge argument between Winifred & Sarah when Sarah thought Winifred told my mother this big secret. This is another trait Sarah and my mother share, forgetting they say things and to whom. When asked why she was so mad if my mother knew she was going away was something along the lines of "Because I didn't want to give her any ammunition use and tell everyone at the funeral". My mother is a chronic complainer who has never seen the bigger picture in social situations, but she knows better than that. Plus she had just lost her husband of 46 years who was also her best friend of 50, something I think Sarah will never see
The last two years without our father have not gotten any better, Winifred was diagnosed with breast cancer, started chemo, then discovered it has spread to her other breast, all while looking after 2 teenagers with CF and going through a divorce to a deplorable human being who seems to take pleasure in making her miserable. When Sarah heard the news of the divorce she offered to attend court with her, Winifred told me she yelled at her and her representation for not saying enough in court and then later told my mother "I only helped her because she has cancer".
When going on vacation with her family Sarah told my mother days before there departure and I later found out her children caught chicken pox but she took them on the plane anyway. My mother does not drive and there is no stores that are easily accessible for her.
Sarah was also diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in her colon. Both have had treatments and they seem to be on the mend.
The relationship between Sarah and my mother did not get any better in fact Sarah's partner Billy became a reluctant go between for them both.
After our father passed, my mother asked Billy could her utility bills be altered as she was still paying half of everything, even though there was four people in their house (2 kids) and she was now on her own. His response was no and that her and our father agreed to split utilities evenly. We advised my mother to organize a pre-pay electric meter for her part of the house so she could manage it properly. Shortly after, Sarah and Billy stopped using the jacuzzi they recently purchased as it was too expensive for them to run.
One month my mother paid €400, the next month €200, 2 months later it was €500, there's no way a pensioner living on her own could rack up half of those bills (The average household here only gets their oil refilled once every 3-6 months). She also bought a free standing gas bottle heater in her main living area and had her upstairs radiators were turned off to try and limit the usage as she never really went up there. I will add that Sarahs business requires a somewhat constant use of energy so even a 50/50 split of bills seemed unfair. Since our fathers passing, my mother would also spend days at time either with me, Winifred or Mary, but she paid it anyway just to not have any arguments.
She made one small payment of about 4% of the total 20k to my mother before our father passed and laid out a payment plan to her about how much she'd pay each month. There were no further payments. A year later Sarahs family dog got seriously ill and needed a surgery that would cost 1300 and asked my mother to lend her this money & my mother, being soft hearted loaned it to her. She did make an attempt to pay my mother back but again, one small payment was made and no more. Each time my mother brought up the money she'd brush her off and not speak to her for a while. The longest was 3 weeks with zero contact, and remember, she lived right beside her and my mother doesn't drive and it would be impossible for her to walk to a store. If it weren't for Myself and Winifred constantly checking in my mother would have just rationed the food she had. We had suggested to arrange a food delivery in the past but Sarah and Billy didn't want strangers to know the code for the gate to the property, but knowing she hadn't spoken to our mother for 3 weeks and didn't care enough to ask if she needed anything in the store forced my hand to arrange one anyway.
Everything that's happened with Sarah has made us seriously re-think everything she said has happened in her life, and a pattern we've noticed is that she's pushed away all her serious partners family from them. Her first serious boyfriend of 7-8 years, then her ex husband and her current husband Billy. First it would start with their mother or sisters, small squabbles at here and there, then on a weekly basis, followed by a giant falling out which would result in her partners only seeing their family on occasion and eventually cutting contact. At the time we all took her at her word: their mothers didn't want their sons taken away, they were rude, they were jealous of her independence etc. But seeing her push us all away and seeing the same thing happen to us we all feel incredibly foolish.
Sarah has done and said some pretty horrible stuff over the years. I can't remember specific times or dates and some may seem trivial but these ones just stuck with me:
- When Winifred was fighting with my mother over something trivial, she suggested "keep your kids away from her (my mother), that will hurt her". She's always used her children under the guise of care anytime they had a disagreement, to try and manipulate the argument in her favour. On several occasions my mother would wave to them playing outside or walking by her window and they'd rapidly put their heads down as if being scolded, so god knows what Sarah has ben saying to them. While we were helping my mother was move out, my niece came inside and she was in tears because my mother was not there for her birthday a few weeks before. She asked her why she didn't come out to her, why she didn't see her on her birthday and asked why she was moving and if she still loved her. Taken aback when she heard this she said of course she told her she loved her and she always would, she told her once she has a phone she could call her every day if she wanted, she explained she needed to be somewhere she could go grocery shopping and have things close to her home. I wasn't thee for the whole interaction but when my niece left my mother said the things my niece said were things Sarah had said to my mother in the past verbatim.
- Bringing her kids on a plane to vacation while they (1 or both I can't remember) had chicken pox.
- Casually mentioning to my mother about money she has left from the sale of the house and what pension she’s getting and how much (some of my mothers post had gone missing)
- She once ran away from home when she was a teenager for several weeks because my parents gave her an 11PM curfew
- Always passing comment and keeping tally about how much her or her children received for birthdays or any kind of milestone event (most recently my aunt gave her son €30 and it was the first thing she mentioned when she talked about my aunt not staying until the end for her sons birthday, something along the lines of "€30? What can he buy with that?" He just turned 12 and we only see this aunt a couple of times a year. (Also I give all my nieces and nephews that amount for birthdays and Christmas so hearing this made me re-think all her past thank yous)
- Decades of berating Mary and putting her down, always about her weight or the way she acted (hyperactive, no filter etc)
- Admitting to Winifred that she decided to build a barrier at the end of her patio to make my mother take a less direct route and, in-turn, from "looking into her house" when she needed access the trash, but told us all it was a wind barrier. My mother has always preferred to keep her own blinds shut so she's usually adamant on not looking in other peoples houses.
- After divorcing her first husband my parents took her in until she had somewhere to live. Sarah was insistent on compensating them and our father eventually accepted as she wouldn't let it go. Months later during a heated argument she said they never cared for her, to which they argued that they recently asked her to live with them after her divorce, and without missing a beat she replied calmly "you were well paid for that"
-While our father was in decline he wasn't very verbal and his motor skills weren't the best, one time she brought her and her family out for waffles, she posted a photo of them in the car, and on inspection I noticed he is holding a knife, backwards trying to eat, I still think about this photo regularly because it just angers me that she mostly wanted to be seen taking care of him, without first seeing if he was even able to eat. She documents almost every activity her and her family do, which is fine, but it really calls into question if any of it is for the sake of the activity and trying to capture the moment for her family to remember, or just to be seen doing it. Another instance of this was each morning if it wasn't her turn to stay up for the night shift, the palliative care nurse would arrive Sarah would bring everyone breakfast, but if the nurse wasn't there there'd be nothing, which I know she didn't owe anyone and I shouldn't expect good deeds from people, but she'd also be in to see our father much later those days.
- Once my parents moved into the house, not a week had passed and her and Billy would say things such as "you know we're not your carers so if it comes to it you should have something arranged" and there was always snide comments about how they built their property on her kids play area, suggesting it was an inconvenience and big of her to let them build but I don't think she's ever thought how my parents chose to spend their retirement years with her and her kids. Both my parents had told me this and we were all appalled.
- While our father was unconscious towards the end, my mother just asked Billy about an additional €5 on her utility bill. He said the internet went up and my mother either just asked when or that she didn't know it increased. He left and then 20 minutes or so later, Sarah marched in and loudly exclaimed something like "Do you think Billly is a thief or something?!". This could normally be passed off as a somewhat regular family argument, but it was generally agreed between all of us that my father could still hear us. There were certain reactions when my mother would speak to him, or when I played him his favourite songs, so her choice to start a fight about this with our dying father inches away still infuriates me.
- My mother was an avid gardener, but when she got to Sarah's land she only allowed her to have 4 plant pots at the back of the house. So many times I remember waking up with her already outside, she'd have her visor on with dirt on her clothes waving to me in the kitchen. I've been asking her what plans she has for her garden now it's taking a lot of encouragement from the rest of us for her to get back into it now she has the space.
- When me and my sisters were alone while my father was sick, we were talking about my mother and how she would cope with life when my father passed. He was responsible for everything, bills being paid on time, insurance etc. Her finances came up and Winifred asked the room if she'll have enough coming in to live off. Sarah, with a combined covetous and grudging tone I'll never forget, listed off payments my mother would be getting and ended with a " so she'll be fine" and then scanned the room for our reactions. I immediately responded with "Oh thank god, I was so worried she'd be struggling", shocked by my relieved response she stared at me for a couple of seconds and then shifted to a softer tone "Oh yeah she'll be ok" then changed the subject. I know this is conjecture, but I know my sister. Her repeated mentioning of my parents money and her general obsession with how much people have, I know she was hoping for us all to join in on what I know would have been an acquisitive rant.
- Close to our fathers end, I could only bare to be at the top of his bed. It was too much for me too look at him. This shell of a person, who was so strong in life was now half his body weight and all my family in agony around him. When it got too much for me I'd ask someone (occasionally Sarah) to sit with him while I called my husband for support and to help me through it. I later found out she brought this up against me and said I was a wreck and kept running off and my sleep breaks were too long (I stayed up for 24-30 hours at a time so I was the only one to sleep more than 5 hours). Who is she to monitor how anyone grieves. She could go into Billy whenever it got too much so she had her support system right there.
I'm sure Sarah is a good mother to her children, as they're both always so happy and care free, but Sarah sees the rest of us all as this big stain on her life she's more than happy to wash out. She's said this in some form of another several times to my mother over the past few years, "I don't need any of you, I have my family, they're there for me". I've never been the most involved in all of my sister's life, but I always make sure to never miss a Christmas or birthday for them and I always send money or buy gifts for her children, I've sent her flowers when she was unwell and when she received her diagnosis, but with everything she's done even the idea of keeping up the pretence of civility puts a bad taste in my mouth.
My mother has recently bought a new house and looking at her it's like a light switch has turned back on. I haven't seen her so relaxed and happy since my father was alive. The years living on Sarah's land she barely decorated and never really got comfortable. But the same day of moving in the first thing she did was put up one or two stuffed animals and other trinkets. Our mother decided to keep buying a house a secret to not cause an argument with Sarah as it was too draining and Sarah would make an argument out of anything my mother said. When she had signed the papers she decided to message Sarah to tell her she was leaving (Sarah had decided to not speak with her at all and for months had only spoke to her through Billy, but if my mother was outside while Sarah was with a client she would wave and say hello to her) her response was very nonchalant with a "that's your decision" all of us expected a huge reaction as it was the norm.
A part of me thinks maybe this was her end game all along, not speaking to my mother, not helping her with groceries and never having time to knock on her door to see if she was even alive. Sarah's last words to my father while he was unconscious were that she was going to try and make it work with my mother and my mother promised the same. With 2 kids and a business to run she's always so busy so any text messages my mother would always sign off with "I'm her if you need me, you know I'm always here" and varying ways to let her know the ball was very much in Sarah's court. Myself, Mary and Winifred all have been visiting my mother from hours away so I don't know why she expects my mother to be the one walk 15 meters to her front door, one time my mother tried and she was greeted with Sarah's arm literally blocking the doorway to stop her from coming in. It's my view that Sarah's last words to my father were a complete and utter lie to him, a lie she can never take back or explain and I hope it haunts her.
The way Sarah has acted and the things she has said since my father’s passing it’s obvious she has warped the memory of who my dad was and it couldn't be more wrong. Being the youngest, quiet, and sort of on my own a lot growing up I was always a very observant person. My father worshiped my mother, they were best friends, did absolutely everything together, he always took her side about everything, every argument, every situation, he was her number one fan and it never faltered no matter what, they were always a united front. I know he would be incredibly ashamed and appalled of what Sarah and Billy have put my mother through, squeezing her for every penny, being incredibly cold and not even feigning that they care, although through outside sources she's painted a completely different picture, to which my mother and sisters have used pain remover each and every time. To Sarah, she lost her father and her father only. She is starting chemo soon and sources say things are looking better for her health wise but I'd still like advice.
Thank you.

I don’t know what to do. So my Fiancé and I are moving across the country. I looked into so many different moving companies and options to find the most budget friendly option. I was looking a few months ahead of time so MANY companies were having deals. I decided to go with a company that was friendly and had good reviews. Before i booked with them, I did extensive research into reviews on all platforms, average pricing to make sure it lined up, and looked into the company on the Federal Department of Transportation and Better Business Bureau. Everything was good, they had no formal complaints, all good reviews, and didn’t seem like anything would go wrong. When I booked, I didn’t have a drop off address yet but they said that that’s 100% normal and to just give them a call once we have it to update it. So I tried calling and I got bounced around and hung up on and just seemed to ghost me. I tried multiple times and it was just the same thing over and over again. So I began to have a bad feeling and decided to see if there’s been any updates on reviews to see if they have had any issues with customer service or anything. To my luck, in the past month about 10 reviews came out saying that they are scam artists. They purposely provide the quote wrong to charge more, they won’t answer the phones to try to pin any and everything on you, and all the good reviews are bots. They additionally also had 2 formal complains filled through the Department of Transportation and their BBB rating dropped to a D+. I had to leave a deposit of around 1100 and they have a no refund policy. I know i was probably niece and stupid but I really tried to do as much research as possible and it all looked good. I just don’t know what to do and was wondering if anyone had any advice. Should i dispute the charge, should i just take the L on the 1,100 even though i can’t really afford to. Just what do i do, im freaking out.
If you read this thank you lol, it’s so long im sorry.

I moved to New Mexico from California in January. I first visited Albuquerque a few months prior, for the Balloon Fiesta, and absolutely loved it! I loved the mountains, sunsets, green chile stew, and twinning of Hispanic and Native American cultures. I was a little bored in San Diego, and I wanted more space for myself and my dog. I had a peripatetic childhood, and every few years I get the itch to move.
A week after my move, I closed on a house. I spent the next month renovating it before moving in. Major work included updating the flooring throughout the house and updating the kitchen. While my realtor showed me glossy houses with floor to ceiling windows and pools, I opted for a quirky stucco house built in 1946 in an old growth neighborhood with a big yard. Although I moved in 2 months ago, and bought a ton of furniture, I am still buying and installing a lot of "one off" items, like a chimney cover and gate lock. I'm looking forward to the dust settling and and end to the many home purchases.
Home projects I'm considering this year include building a privacy fence--my dog is way too interested in the neighbor's cats--xeriscaping the front yard, planting fruit trees, and planting grass or some other ground cover in the back yard. In the next few years, I'm going to think about installing a hot tub or an ufuro (Japanese soaking tub) in the back yard, building an art studio or an ADU and installing solar.
I wrote a money diary a few years ago, when I got a puppy, and it includes historical information about my student loans, condo purchase, and income progression.
Real Estate
I am poised to sell my San Diego condo in four months to friends, who are currently renting from me. I am giving them a price that is significantly below market rate, and because we aren't using brokers, I will avoid realtor fees. Plus, I really like the neighborly approach of selling to friends. After my move to New Mexico, I agonized over renting it out permanently. In the end, I didn't want the expense and the risk of renting it out, and I did not want to to be a landlord. I also had the strong sense that I do not want to live there again in the future. Although I drafted spreadsheet after spreadsheet with various financial scenarios, in the end, it was a gut decision.
I have a mortgage on my condo and a HELOC, which I used for the downpayment and renovations on my house. I also have a mortgage on my New Mexico house. When I sell my condo, I will pay off the condo mortgage and HELOC. After the sale, I have some options with what to do with the net proceeds: pay off the mortgage on my New Mexico house, fund some home upgrade projects, save for retirement, buy land to build in the mountains or some combination of these ideas.
What would you do?
Assets and Debt

• Retirement Balance (IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k), Roth 401(k) and company stock): $360,078
• Savings and checking accounts: This is divided into accounts for travel, pet expenses, clothes, etc.: $30,221
• Student loan debt:$2,629 at 3% interest. While I can pay this off, the interest rate is low, and I'm curious about where student loan forgiveness will end up.
• Health Savings Account: $4,785
• 529 Account (for my niece and nephew): $15,128. I just opened a New Mexico 529 account, which is state tax deductible.

Income
I'm a public health professional, and I love my job! I've worked at the same company for 12 years, and my job is portable--I've brought it with me to Brooklyn, San Diego and now ABQ.
Monthly Income

• Rental income on San Diego condo: $2,900
• Monthly net income: $5,626

Individual Deductions

• Taxes: $2,224
• Health insurance, dental and vision: $165
• Health Savings Account: $192
• Retirement contributions: $1,050
• Stock purchase plan: $286

Real Estate Monthly Expenses

• San Diego condo mortgage (includes taxes and insurance): $2,403
• Mortgage balance $355,176 at 2.5% interest
• San Diego HOA fees: $240
• New Mexico mortgage (includes taxes and insurance): $2,279
• Mortgage balance $260,283 at 7.1% interest: I will refinance in the next few months
• HELOC: $803
• HELOC balance: $114,477 at 7.49% interest

Monthly Expenses

• Car insurance: $138
• Student loans: $58
• Donation to Bali Animal Welfare Association: $20
• Ad hoc donations: I budget about $100
• Electricity: $30
• Gas: $58
• Water: $70. This will likely increase this month, as I have planted a vegetable garden.
• Internet: $75
• Cell phone (Mint Mobile): $25
• Car wash membership: $21. I'll likely cancel this next month.
• Spotify: $11
• Netflix: $15
• HBO: $16. I'll cancel this after I watch "Zone of Interest".
• NYTimes: $25
• Local newspaper: $20
• Pet savings: $200 to "kitty for my kitty" account
• Travel savings: $200

Monday
Before I start work, a landscaper drops by to take a look at my yard. I'm gathering quotes and ideas, and I show him around.
My last work meeting ends at 2:00p. I can tell my dog is bored, because he's been trying to play with the cat. "She'll never play with you," I tell him. Once my work is done, I feed my cat her "half dinner" so she doesn't feel deprived, and I take my dog for a hike in the Sandia mountains on a pine shaded trail. I've been going to this open space area weekly, and today I pay for for an annual pass ($30) so I don't have to deal with dollar bills in little envelopes. The weather is perfect. My trail running shoes are old and I need a new pair, as well as hiking boots for my trek to Havasupai Falls later this year.
On the way home, I stop at a tractor supply store to see if they have the grass cutting sheers that I need. Because they don't, I'm going to order them online.
For dinner, I make potato poblano quesadillas have a glass of wine, and have mint chocolate malt balls for dessert. The cat receives her second half dinner. I purchase hiking boots, trail running shoes, and snow boots (which I wish I'd had in January) for $152. I want a fancy cart for my garden hose, and it is on sale, but I decide to make do with my old garden hose for now and keep looking on Facebook Marketplace. I buy the grass sheers and two window alarms for $52.
Daily total: park pass $30, boots (3 pairs) $152, home and garden supplies $52
Tuesday
Today is hot and sunny day. My meeting schedule is light, and I have time to get to the bottom of both my to do list and my inbox. Breakfast is a smoothie with homemade yogurt, bananas, cherries and spinach. I do some nosework practice with my dog. He is learning to stick his nose in a box containing a mix of essential oils (birch, clove). We do group nosework classes, and I hope that having a job will build his confidence and reduce his reactivity.
The landscaper arrives, this time with his architect, and we talk about ideas--a rock river, low-water plants, a drip irrigation system, a Crape Myrtle tree in my courtyard, fig and peach trees in the back yard.
After work, I take my dog to Tingley beach, a series of ponds. We walk the trails by the Rio Grande. It's hot, and he dips his paws in the river. To his surpise, he's immediately in water up to his chest. He is so excited by this event that he zoomies me up the trail. It's the most thrilling thing to happen to him today! After a few miles of walking, we drive home, with a stop at the car wash (included in my car wash membership). I water my vegetable garden. The tomatoes look happy, and the basil is coming up, but the cucumbers are struggling and the strawberries look burnt.
I go to Costco to pick up my prescription sunglasses ($55 after insurance, paid for previously with my HSA account). I also buy a bottle of rose ($17) and get gas ($33). Every time I get gas in New Mexico, I think "$20 in my pocket," as compared to California prices.
Dinner is a simple Caesar salad. I make salt and pepper skillet croutons and have a Pacifico with a slice of lemon.
Daily total: Gas $33, wine $17
Wednesday
I have a long and interesting anti-trust training at work, followed by client meetings. Lunch is homemade roasted poblano enchiladas. I realized that I have been eating Amy's enchiladas a few times a week, and, on Sunday, I approximated the recipe using the ingredients on the box. I think I got pretty close! I made 9 servings, which I froze. While delicious, I'm not sure if it is worth it from a frugal standpoint, as I saved $30 or 50% over the cost of the frozen dinners--not super impressive for an afternoon of work.
In the afternoon, my dog and I have a dog training session (prepaid $1,000 for 6 sessions). Our trainer has great credentials and loves huskies. The sessions are super expensive, but they will be worth it if he can learn to meet new friends in the house without fear. Training is going very, very slowly. The trainer tries to move closer to him while keeping under the reactive threshold, desensitizing him to her presence. Today, we only make it as far as the courtyard.
After training, I go to watch "Civil War" with a friend. Because he bought tickets last time, I buy two tickets ($21). A weird tradition in ABQ is to buy a pickle at the movies, and I get a kosher dill ($3). I brought a flask with an old fashioned made from my favorite aged rum, Zacapa 23, and chocolate bitters, and he brings Tequila Rose. It's juvenile, I know, but fun.
Still shellshocked after the movie, I drop into pet store and buy a clicker for nosework. At $11, it's ridiculously expensive for a plastic piece, and in retrospect, I'll probably return it. I would have had better sense if my brain wasn't stuck in the movie world of the American dystopia. I buy a few groceries--lettuce, coconut water, pesto, crackers, mozzeralla and a small container of Greek yogurt to use as starter ($24). Dinner is grilled cheese sandwiches with tomatoes and basil and a glass of red wine.
Daily total: Movie tickets $21, pickle $3, dog clicker $11, groceries $24
Thursday
While I make my coffee, I heat up milk for yogurt to 160 degrees and put it on the back of the stove, well away from my pup, who loves dairy. Today my work schedule is jam-packed. After work, I take my dog for a 3 mile walk in an open space area around several farms. Back at home, I have 15 minutes before I leave for hot yoga. It's enough time to finish making the yogurt. The milk has cooled to 100 degrees. I stir in a spoonful of plain Greek yogurt and divide the mixture in three quart size jars, which I have pre-warmed with hot water. I leave the jars along with a Nalgene of hot water in a small cooler and let the bacteria do their work.
After my very hot yoga class (prepaid $30 for 30 days), I stop by Whole Foods and buy a green chile beef burger, mangos, coconut water, cherries, cucumbers, milk, some Amy's dinners and a Reisling ($50).
Daily total: Groceries: $50
Friday
The homemade yogurt is thick and creamy. I refill the hot water bottle and leave it for another 8 hours to increase the acidity. While I try to practice "Focus Fridays," I somehow have 6 meetings on my calendar. I'll be leaving for the country's largest powpow, the Gathering of Nations, in the afternoon, and I know my dog needs some exercise before I go. We walk around the neighborhood, and then I take him to Petco for some mental stimulation. I buy cat treats, smoked rib bones and a $4 clicker. I return the $11 clicker ($8 total).
Before I leave, I tape a rib bone in box for him to demolish. He's so good at this that he has the bone out of the box before I'm out of the door. I text a friend who is already at the event, and she says they are strict about unopened water bottles. I stop at a gas station and buy a bottle of water, and on a whim, a lottery ticket. $3. The ticket price for the Gathering of Nations is $30 and parking is $20.
I miss the horse parade, but the entry of dancers is like nothing I've ever seen: 1,000 dancers in regalia dancing to 17 drum circles, led by an eagle staff. Not only are 500+ tribes from across the US and Canada in attendance, but there are also Native Hawaiians and Maori attendees, among other First Nations. Outside of the coliseum, it's cool to see people in full regalia with ankle bells, walking around the grounds, ordering hot dogs and ice cream . I have an Indian Taco (taco fixings on fry bread) for the first time and cherry pie ($18). I also get a funnel cake for $19, which seems super expensive. There's a market with Native-made handicrafts, and and I buy a pair Quahog clam shell earrings for $20. It's one of coolest events I've ever been to: a celebration of Native American cultures where all are welcome.
Daily total: Pets: $8, Gathering of Nations entry and parking: $50, Food: $40, Earrings: $20
Saturday
I take my dog to the open space area for a long walk before I leave for a nosework competition in rural New Mexico. I've never been to one, but my nosework teacher is serving as a judge, and, when I expressed interest, she volunteered me. It turns out that volunteering is a great way to observe. I'm assisting in a "detective" indoooutdoor competition, where dogs have to find 10 hidden scents within 9 minutes. It's clear to me that so much depends on communication between the guardian and the dog.
From my field guide to New Mexico eating and drinking, I learn that there is a brewery hidden in this town, and I belly up to the bar. I try a few beers and bring home a six pack of cherry wheat beer for $11. At home, it has started to rain. Dinner is green chile stew, which I made previously. While classic green chile stew contains pork, I used a a small ribeye instead, and double up on the vegetables. I pair it with jalepeno cornbread (not homemade).
We do "Saturday nights at the movies" at home. I can't bring myself to watch a Holocaust movie, so I curl up and watch "Juliet, Naked" with my dog.
Daily total: Beer: $11
Sunday
I wake up with a scratchy throat. I was going to attend the University of New Mexico powwow that is scheduled as less commercialized counter program to the Gathering of Nations, but I text my friend to say I'm going to lie low instead and rest.
I do an hour of online yoga and 20 minutes of physical therapy from Kaia, an app that I can access from my health plan. I love it--the at home therapy has helped me avoid yet another round of in-person physical therapy. I keep my dog in place on his cot as I do this. As recommended by his trainer, I'm emphasizing self-calming behavior. I know he needs some attention, so we do some nosework practice and I brush his coat. Then, I take him to one of his favorite place, the UNM campus with a duck pond. We walk around, and I reward him for self control--for example, seeing another dog and not reacting--with very small bits of cheese.
At the nearby Frontier restaurant, I order a beef enchilada plate with green chile stew, a soda and a dozen tortillas to go for $19. It's the restaurant where I had my first meal in ABQ, after 14 hours of driving, and it turned out to be a winner!
Back at home, I open Reddit to write my money diary. A request in freemeal catches my eye, and I send a fellow redditor cat litter, cat food and cat treats for $39. In the gift message, I say "From my kitty to your kitties," although I know my cat would never give away salmon treats.
Daily total: Lunch: $19; Donation: $39
All expenses by Category (Total $481)

• Food + Drink: $164
• Fun / Entertainment: $101
• Home + Health: $52
• Clothes + Beauty: $172
• Transport: $33
• Donations: $39
• Pets: $19

Reflections
This was a heavier spend week for me, particularly in Fun / Entertainment and Food + Drink, mostly due to the Gathering of Nations event. This was a slice of life money diary and it's accurate to my place in life--new to New Mexico and spending a significant amount of money for real estate, home items, and pet-related items.

Mike Tindall given a 'high position' in the Invictus Games - Prince Harry is 'FURIOUS!' (gbnews.com)
(Sorry, I can't get it to make an archive version for me. If anyone else wants to try, I would be very grateful.)
Quote: Speaking to Isabel Webster and Eamonn Holmes this morning (29th) Levin said: "Mike Tindall, who is the husband of Zara, the King's niece, has been given a high position to do something about the Invictus Games. "I think Harry is absolutely furious about this. It has been announced, but very quietly.
Mike Tindall, the husband of King Charles' niece Zara, has been appointed as a patron of the game event according to Angela Levin.
​

Intro: "Now I know that sounds bad..." *Star-Lord gunshots\*
Now before you say, NO WAY did this evil ass guy make love with someone...let me remind you, this is the franchise where the bad guys do the deed (or adopt), and more often than not, they have kids that are rivals to MCs.
Silver is Giovanni's son, N is Ghetsis's Adopted Son, Gladion is Lusamine's son, and Bede is Chairman's adopted kid. Even if not OFFICIALLY considered rivals, Arven was Sada/Turo's son, and Penny was Rose's biological niece.
And if you look at that... Kieran and Carmine are the newest rivals... they live in the middle of nowhere with their grandparents, who strangely don't mention anything about their mom or dad. In fact, the only mention of what looks to be the kid's parents is a picture of Carmine's room and what looks like her mom.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1hsglwaz4o6c1.jpeg
Pokemon love this type of thing, and wouldn't it make all sense to assume that they would do this again?
With new fan-favorite characters Kieran and Carmine, joining the fan-favorite Family of Pokemon only makes sense.
Harmonia's designs and why Kieran and Carmine fit so well with them.
The Harmonia family is easily the most popular and fleshed out in all Pokemon while also at the same time looking very bizarre on paper with their designs:
N looks like a hippie
Ghetsis looks like a noble man
N's sisters look like Goddesses
Shadow Triad look like Naruto OCs
Like you can put Kieran and Carmine in their family, as Ghetsis's biological kids and they would fit in so perfectly it's funny, their family is just a whole mess of designs...it kinda works lmao.
Kieran and Carmine are just two school kids with weird hair...just like nearly everyone in this god damn family.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fbw2-and-sv-theory-ghetsis-is-kieran-and-carmines-dad-credit-v0-9g0u2us6jroc1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dfc2ece01e2aa1d243aa132f3e576d0b87cfb86dc
Like I bet you Ghetsis's backup plan if N show betrayed him (which did happen lol) was to raise one of the two children that were chilling in kitakami or whatever, to replace N.
Like that god damn Omni Man Quote:
"I can always start again. Make another kid."
That is such a scumbag thing to do, but that I totally expect from someone like Ghetsis.
How it fit into the story of BW(and 2) and how a recton could work to make this canon:
Like Ghetsis did go missing after the events of BW1 before the Shadow Triad captured Kyurem for him, what if he went back to Kitakami and that's why Shadow Triad tell Hilbert/Hilda he went "far away" since he literally did.
He might have tried to take newly born Kieran and the toddler Carmine away, and the mom tried to stop him, and she ended up dead.
And then Kieran's Gramps entacted revenge... beating the living shit out Ghetsis to the point where bro was limping around before escaping, perhaps the Shadow Triad save him and then inform him about Kyurem.
What this can do for the story already...
Not only does this explain the cane that Ghetsis has (besides it's pokeball jamming thing), but why the Sibling's grandfather was so worried about the siblings lashing out since he fears they might turn out like his dad.
Which is why he is less strict on Carmine and Kieran when they get angry/frustrated with each other or people.
Remember that one scene where Grandpa got mad at Carmine for yelling at Kieran, and then Carmine said, "I didn't hit him!" and then he just sighs and gets back on task. Like stuff like that.
Fixes two plot holes, Ghetsis old manness despite being jacked and Kitakami Grandpa being a bad parent when scolding his two grandkids.

(Caution: Long Post)
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is without doubt and still is to this day one of the most influential, powerful, and iconic figures in American history due to his steadfast and nonviolent commitment in the fight for Civil Rights, Equality, and Justice during Jim Crow Segregation in the United States. The highlight of his career as an activist came in 1963 in which he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in front of Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. in which he envisioned a nation in which his children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. This resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to be passed. Even after his assassination in 1968, his legacy inspired many similar Civil Rights Movements around the world.
Today, Martin Luther King, Jr. is hailed by both sides of the American political sphere as a beacon of hope on how to fight for justice and equality for all during turbulent times. But it's the Conservatives who constantly claim that they truly support him and follow his dream, especially in modern times and they've expressed it in a rather whitewashed and partisan fashion. The most obvious being their use of his "I Have a Dream" speech by quoting the one line that has often been cherry-picked and misinterpreted quite a lot in which they judge people not by skin but by their character. The main reason they do this is to give them the appearance that they are colorblind as their way of opposing racism. And in doing so, they consistently criticize Liberals of trying to divide the country into special interest groups and promote favoritism. As a result, they always claim that Dr. King is a Republican, let alone would've been one in this era given his views, along with the fact that he was a Christian. His niece, Alveda King even emphasized it herself.
Some of the ways that Conservatives try to supposedly live up to Dr. King's "colorblind" dream is by opposing supposed "Wokeness", Critical Race Theory, and the practice of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion everywhere. They also express it by opposing Affirmative Action and the use of racial quotas when it comes to applying for schools, universities, and jobs because they believe it causes Reverse Discrimination. In terms of nonviolence, Conservatives express their disapproval of the Black Lives Matter movement. On the basis of Christianity, Conservatives believe that Dr. King supported a fixed moral code as indicated in his Letters from Birmingham Jail since he led with love and not racial hatred by changing the lives of people and not the laws itself, along with the notion of self-sufficiency. Seeing all this, it seems like Conservatives are really desperate to prove how much America has progressed in this post-racial world in order to debunk accusations that it isn't a racist country and that's why they always prop up Dr. King by claiming that they follow his dream and will continue to do so. Well.....up until now.
During this year's Martin Luther King Day, a string of prominent Conservative activists and organizations suddenly turned on him. Starting off with Charlie Kirk of the youth Conservative movement Turning Point USA, who launched a blistering anti-MLK campaign in which he supposedly dispelled the alleged myths surrounding his popularity. He accused Dr. King of being a "bad person" and that his "sainthood will cause Black voters to realize it's being used against them to suppress the individual." He even went further by stating that "we made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s" accusing it as "a way to get rid of the First Amendment". A while ago, the organization marketed the Conservative image of Dr. King when they sold $55 T-Shirts with his name as well as stickers of him with the words "Let Freedom Ring". Kirk was later joined by the Daily Wire's Matt Walsh who accused him of being a "communist". In fact, he railed against Dr. King a few years ago by accusing him of being a Womanizer, Adulterer, Plagiarizer, etc. Coming after Walsh was Human Events editor, conspiracy theorist, and fellow Turning Point USA alumna Jack Posobiec, who labeled Dr. King "a God of the Left" and stating that "the real legacy of the 1960s was enshrining Racial Discrimination and Race Consciousness into the Federal Bureaucracy." And finally, a popular Conservative Twitter account called "EndWokeness" called Dr. King "a Racial Marxist" because he "did not support a Colorblind Meritocracy" after it cited his quote on Wealth Distribution. What's even worse is that even non-White Conservatives hate him. Two examples include a commentator named Vince Everett Ellison and former football player and sports columnist, Jason Whitlock. The latest editions to the lineup of Black Guilt Conservatives, they railed against Dr. King and the passing of the Civil Rights by stating that they worsened the Black community by drifting them away from God into "Democratic Dependency". They even accused him of the same crimes as Walsh did.
With the sudden change in tone and emphasis from the Right against Dr. King, you have to ask yourself why they're doing this and what caused them to believe this way. And this is not an extremist fringe of the Right that some would expect to hear from. All of these are Mainstream Right-Wing Figures who have direct lineage to the GOP, including the current presidential nominee, Donald Trump. That's as Establishment you can get. Their remarks have been criticized by a lot of people from both sides and surprisingly by some Black Conservatives. One of them was Pastor Darrell Scott, a former faith advisor of Trump, who these days, is one of a few Black Conservatives who has been calling out other Black Conservatives for tearing down their own race in order to elevate their status among others, a very notorious habit of them. He criticized Kirk for inspiring a Hitler youth. Another was Kimberly Klacik, who in 2020, gained viral for her campaign video stating that Black Lives don't matter to Democrats when she was running for Maryland's 7th Congressional District following the death of civil rights leader, Elijah Cummings, who was the incumbent. She criticized Kirk for his remarks stating that his rhetoric will prevent Blacks from voting Republican. Even with that said, there have been instances in which Conservatives themselves have questioned the Civil Rights Act and many of them have been pretty negative. If you check out other Conservative websites and especially here on Reddit, many of their criticisms echo the same sentiments as those Pundits stating that it was unconstitutional and that in infringed on the First Amendment, particularly the Notion of Freedom of Association.
That being said, there is some silver lining to this. Now, that they exposed themselves for what they really of think Dr. King, I think it's time for them to admit that they never really liked him in the first place, let alone understood who he really was and what he really stood for. In fact, they never really liked him at all. All they did was whitewash him and cherry-pick his ideas and speech for own Partisan Agenda. Dr. King constantly talked about the notion of Black Pride and campaigned about the need for Reparations. He also supported Affirmative Action stating in 1965 that "a Society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro. Dr. King realized that our society was created in a way that managed to disadvantage the many for the benefit the few, and that America's Racial Hierarchy was connected to its Class Hierarchy. He also had political beliefs that manifested through both Racial Reconciliation and Concrete Policy Changes that could help restructure and benefit a divided and unequal nation. This is the reason why he referred to himself as a Democratic Socialist as he wanted a "Radical Redistribution of Economic and Political Power". In fact, he argued that true Equality can only be achieved, not just through legal rights, but through an equal distribution of resources. This is evident when he said “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.” This is the exact vision that Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders believed in. After all, he did participate in the March on Washington in 1963. In regards to Police Brutality, while Dr. King opposed violent protest, he did acknowledge that a riot is the language of the Unheard and that it came from a place of Desperation. In fact, in his "I Have a Dream" Speech, he stated that Blacks could "never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the Victim of the Unspeakable Horrors of Police Brutality." After all, he was hounded by the FBI, was called a Communist, broke the law in protest of race-based Segregation and Violence, was thrown in jail, advocated Protests and Sit-Ins, opposed White Rule of Society, and was assassinated for his Race and his views on Race. Regarding the quote about the Content of Character from said speech, Dr. King's daughter, Bernice King stated that using solely that quote diminishes the purpose of the entire speech because her father's dream and work included "eradicating Racism, not ignoring it."
If anything, this goes to show that is Dr. King were around today, he would be heavily criticized for being Woke, politically correct, a Communist, a Race Hustler, and a member of the Radical Left. And we all know that the Right hates those ideologies passionately. But here's the thing, he never considered himself a Democrat, let alone a Republican. He was an Independent as he felt that both parties are the same. And reducing his legacy to a single quote diminishes the gains that he fought for and believed in. This especially goes to a lot of Conservatives out there who claim to follow his lead using that quote because they interpret them in a way that benefits them today than how he meant them back then. For you to claim that he didn't care about Skin Color is like saying Susan B. Anthony didn't care about Gender. And to those Conservatives who now hate him, including Black, I hope you're OK with people getting treated unfairly, including your own. Who knew being seen as an Equal is a Negative in your eyes.

Starting with some backstory. Growing up I lived across the street from my grandma with my mom and sister, and then later with my stepdad and half brother. When I was 20 I moved in with my boyfriend, and we lived together for the next 5ish years. We broke up, and he owned the house that we lived in so I had to find somewhere new to live. I wanted to live close to my family and ended up finding a house literally one minute away from them. I've lived in my house now for 6 years.
In January of this year, my grandma was diagnosed with AML. She opted not to treat it, and it took its course and she passed away last month. My sister and niece have lived with her for a few years now. My grandma's house was not paid off, she still owed about $44k on a HELOC. My sister cannot hold down a job, and has always lived there rent-free, and can't afford to pay for the house or anything really. After my grandma was diagnosed, I decided that because her house has sentimental value and mine doesn't, I would sell my house and move into hers. This was a huge load off of my mom, who was afraid she'd be stuck with two house payments. My brother still lives at home with her and my stepdad, and there isn't room for my sister and niece to live with them.
One issue is that over 3 years ago, a predatory solar company came to my grandma's door, and convinced her to sign a 25-year loan for solar panels. They made promises to her, like the panels would pay for themselves and her electric bill would go down to practically nothing. She didn't talk to us about it until after she had already signed the contract, and it was too late to back out. The panels have not done what they promised her, and they haven't been reporting for years, which put her in breach of a contract she also signed with SRECTrade. Recently I've read over her contracts, there's no way she would have understood basically any of what's in there at 82 years old, when I don't even understand it at 31.
That's our first issue. The solar company is now bankrupt and no longer in business. The credit union that gave her the loan for the panels is wanting us to take it over. They put a lien on the equipment, which is attached to the property, so if we ever want to sell the house, we probably won't be able to. It sounds like they could potentially even foreclose on the house. We can't afford an extra $200 something a month, and we didn't sign the contract for the panels so we don't want them. Before my grandma passed, we did a Transfer on Death for her house, so it went into my mom's name and we were able to avoid probate. But now, we have this fear looming over us that even if we keep paying the HELOC, this other credit union could potentially foreclose on the house if we don't pay for the panels.
The next issue is, recently we had been noticing water in my grandma's basement. There was a shower on top of the drain in the floor, so we took that apart and were basically able to determine it was sewage backing up. We called a plumbing company, they came and jetted it and ran a camera through and found that there are major issues with the sewer line under her backyard. They quoted us $8k to excavate and fix it. We probably should've waited and got other quotes but they made it sound like if they left and came back later it would be way more. So we said yes. They came a few days later (just two days ago actually), and started digging. Once they got down there, they found that it's way worse than they thought, and it's basically all the pipes leading out to the main that are messed up. They gave us a few options. A) we have them keep the ground open and come back to dig and fix the rest, which would be an additional $12k, B) they finish the part they were original fixing and put the dirt back and we decide later on, in which case it would be an additional $19k instead, or C) they finish what they were fixing and put the dirt back and we do nothing at all but in a couple years or sooner it will have issues again, and at that point it would potentially cost an additional $30k. On top of the $8k we're already paying. I hate making do or die decisions like that. Honestly to me it feels shady when people say "you have to make this decision now or you'll pay way more later on". So we went with the $12k option. So $20k total for this one issue.
My grandma did have life insurance. It turned out to be $8k less than what she had written down because one policy was newer and hadn't matured yet. Still, there's probably close to $30k in life insurance. Between funeral expenses and other expenses related to getting her house cleaned out and ready for me to move in, a good chunk of it is already gone. We haven't gotten one of them yet, worth about $14k. But once we get that it's less than $20k that we'll have left of all of her insurance. But the plan was to keep as much as possible in an account to help pay the bills relating to her house, because now without a rent-paying roommate, it would really stretch me thin to have to pay everything myself. So now we're not really going to have that option anymore.
Now what I thought was good news, my realtor had a client she thought my house might work for, and he wanted to come look at it before I put it on the market. Originally I wasn't going to put it on the market until the end of April. But I agreed to him looking at it, and he made an offer same day, for $2k more than what I was asking. As long as it appraises high enough and everything else goes smoothly, I should make about $25k from the sale. We wanted it to move somewhat quickly on both ends, so we agreed on a closing date toward the end of May. I thought I could do it. The plan was to clean out my grandma's house, including pulling up the carpets and getting new ones put in (she had a cat before that peed a lot, so no way was I moving in with those carpets), and then I'd start moving my stuff over room by room instead of having to pack all of my stuff. But my grandma was somewhat of a hoarder, so there is a ton of stuff to go through. We got a dumpster and have it pretty full at this point, and we do have all the carpets pulled out and I have an appointment to have the rooms measured on Saturday to then hopefully get the installation scheduled soon. But there is so much furniture to get out of there, and all the little stuff that's on all of the furniture that we have to decide between keeping and donating/throwing out. It's just becoming way more time-consuming than I thought it would be, and I don't know how it's going to be possible to have the house move-in ready, and then all my stuff moved in, by the time I have to close on my house.
The hardest thing is not knowing if we're doing all this for nothing. If we don't pay for these solar panels and they end up foreclosing on the house, and my house is sold, I have nowhere to live. Sure I could find an apartment to rent. But then this whole thing was pointless, and I should've just stayed where I was and we should've let my grandma's house go from the beginning. For the sewer line repair, I did tell my mom that I'd put some of the profit from selling my house toward that. But I'm also just so frustrated that I'm finally going to have this nice chunk of money and it's probably going to go so fast because of these things.
It really just feels like everything's crashing down. My mom cries all the time now. This wasn't supposed to happen. My grandma wasn't supposed to die yet. Yes, she was 85, she lived a good, long life. But the cancer came out of nowhere, and it took her so fast, we didn't even have time to breathe. And now with all of this, how are we ever going to breathe again? How do I finish cleaning out her house and move all my stuff in, in less than a month now? How do we not worry that the solar panels are gonna just fuck everything up and end up costing us everything? I know things could be worse. But everything is just so overwhelming right now, I don't know what to do. What do you do when you have a thousand things to do and all you want to do is just stop?

The thread from ZealousidealSmile950 got me thinking a bit, and then started countering OP in the comments which led me down an odd line of thought. I tend to think of the lore as a story and not so much a list of item descriptions and in game dialogue quotes. No shade to you all that are that organized.
So bare with me and allow me to tell you all a short story. The story of a time before the Golden Order.
Long before the Golden Order was established, there was another order. One forgotten to time, or perhaps sundered to obscure certain events. The events I mention occurred long ago during the order of the ancient times of The Crucible. We know precious little about this order. We know about Farum Azula, the beastmen society, and Placidusax the Elden Lord of this order. We don't know who the vessel for this order was and that's who this story is about.
Our story is about a young Empyrean girl. We don't know her name at this age, but we know she had at least one sibling named Marika. This young Empyrean would ascend alongside Marika and become known as the Goddess of Death: The Gloam-Eyed Queen. She lived a wicked life by all accounts. She created, raised, and commanded the Godskins. She sent them far and wide to rid the lands between of the very gods who had influence over the order in which she grew up, and seized order for herself. Thus becoming the vessel for the Elden Ring and a vassal to The Greater Will.
As the vines of time grow, so does envy among her subordinates. One such subordinate is her sister, Marika. Marika never agreed with her sister's choices and couldn't stand living under her order any longer, but she was powerless alone as just a mere Empyrean. So, she began plotting against her sister and planned to seize order for herself.
Marika's plan would involve sending her shadow Maliketh to strike down The Gloam-Eyed Queen. Marika would spend years upon years laying the foundations and preparing everything for Maliketh to execute her plan. Finally on one ill-fated night, Maliketh killed The Gloam-Eyed Queen. Marika is just around the corner and quickly and seizes the Elden Ring. She quickly removes the Rune of Death and give it to Maliketh, saying "run as far as you can and guard this with your life." Maliketh, without a thought, heeds her command and without a doubt will complete his quest.
Marika sits next to her sister's corpse holding the Elden Ring. Marika's mind is running with thoughts of the consequences of her actions. Placidusax isn't going to just let this go and neither are the other dragons. As the series of events begins to set in, Marika hears something. She glances at her sister's lifeless body and notices movement. She then hears a child's first breath as it begins to cry. Marika is in shock as she investigates, only to find a newborn baby. Her niece, Melina.
Marika snaps out of daze and immediately heads back to Leyndell. Upon her return she realizes she must hide the evidence, and at once commands her best to sunder the Lands of Shadow and hide it from the world at large.
Quick Bits:

• 1) The Lands of Shadow is home of Marika, and potentially The Gloam-Eyed Queen.
• 2) The Lands of Shadow is sundered and hidden.
• 3) Messmer is in the Lands of Shadow.
• 4) Melina is adopted.
• 5) The Lands Between Erdtree is a fraud, trying to make up for the real one being sundered.
• 6) Let's talk about Godwyn, The Prince of Death.

Implications:

• 1) If Empyreans follow a blood line The Gloam-Eyed Queen and Marika are 100% related.
• 2) Perhaps this act also affect memories relating to or originating from the Lands of Shadow. If this is the case, this could explain Melina's trouble remembering her true purpose. (See Implication 5 for further elaboration)
• 3) He is the son of The Gloam-Eyed Queen and by extension brother of Melina.
• 4) If this is this is the case this would explain how she knows she has a mother that gave her a purpose she can't remember, as well as explain how she was inside the Erdtree.
• 5) If The Gloam-Eyed Queen was the vessel of the Elden Ring, and if this took place in the Lands of Shadow, then the "shadow" tree is the real Erdtree. Could also explain the end of the Age of Plenty. Along with sundering and affecting memories, Marika had to have the illusory Erdtree created. Furthermore Marika could have shattered the Elden Ring for more than one reason. One being Godwyn. The other could be that Radagon was getting close to the truth and this is how she could prevent that.
• 6) Godwyn, or what was Godwyn, is the current God of Death. Until he dies a true death, Destined Death will forever be corrupted.

TLDR: Marika and GEQ are related. GEQ preceded Marika. Marika had her snuffed by Maliketh and sealed the Rune of Death away. Marika finds Melina. Takes her back to Leyndell, and has her people hide the Lands of Shadow to hide the evidence. This leaves Messmer, Melina's brother, behind where he is probably pissed about his mother being killed and being locked away. Dragon war happens because Placidusax found out. Yadda yadda yadda, we're about to go to the Lands of Shadow where we know Marika is from and ascended to godhood.

This post is Part 4 out of 6 as to why Gary Mathias of the Yuba County Five is innocent. READ PART 1, 2, AND 3 IF YOU HAVE NOT YET; THIS POST WILL NOT MAKE SENSE TO YOU IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE PREIOUS PARTS.
This post is a deep deep dive into Gary Mathias, who has been considered an endangered missing person since his mysterious disappearance along with four of his friends on February 24, 1978. (Note: this is a very long post, you have been warned. I have spilt my post into various sections. If you want, you can just look at certain sections; however, to understand my position fully it would be preferable that you read the entire post, and then go on to read Part 5 and part 6.)
(Note: I will call the Yuba county five "The Boys", not out of disrespect but because that is what their families used to and still do call them).

Did Gary Purposely Lead the Other Four Men to Their Deaths? (Also Addressing Other Accusations Made against him):

Now, the 2019 Sacramento Bee article that I mentioned way earlier in this 6-part post suggested that Gary Mathias was maliciously involved in the deaths of his friends, aka he's the murderer. That 2019 Bee article put out some "information" that allegedly supported this theory. This information has been repeated many times in YouTube videos, in website articles, and in Reddit and YouTube comments. Most of this information is either false or has no context to it, and I'm here to clear all of that nonsense up:
Gary's dream
A woman by the name of Janet Enzerra claimed that she was a very good acquaintance to Gary Mathias. She stated that Gary was a very violent man, who hated women and children, who apparently beat up several men badly, and who kept telling her of this dream he was apparently having that involved him and other men "disappearing." Janet Enzerra's character testimony did not fit with anyone else who knew Gary, and her accusations against him were totally off base and had no evidence to support it. Her story is questionable because of this as well as due to the fact that she does not give a time for when he was apparently having this dream. Was it right before he disappeared? Was it while he still was unmedicated? Janet Enzerra does not say. When the police decided to press harder on her to say anything more of Gary, she couldn't answer their questions. Why? Because, in reality, she barely knew him at all. Gary did not talk her. It appears that she made the whole story up. Why would she do that and slander against a missing person? I honestly have no idea. Maybe she just wanted some attention or she's one of those kinds of gossipers that start rumors that have no basis to them at all. To say the least, her testimony should not be regarded as factual.
Furthermore, even assuming that Gary was having this dream (which he wasn't), I don't see how it proves malicious intent in the disappearance. 1) he has paranoia based schizophrenia. Obviously, having this mental illness includes sometimes being paranoid. Considering this, Gary was probably paranoid about losing his friends. 2) Gary cares so much about the Boys and they were his sole purpose/safety that he couldn’t bear to lose them. This feeds into the paranoia of potentially losing them.
The Basketball Coach's Testimony
Many people cite what the Gateway Gator's basketball coach allegedly stated of Gary Mathias back in 1978, which was: "he was spacey" and that he felt that "he [Gary] could flip out at any time." However, a case expert and author, Drew Beeson, actually interviewed the basketball coach quite recently (in 2024). The coach was asked during the interview if he ever recalled seeing Gary Mathias acting as if he could freak out at any minute or go haywire or have some sort of emotional outburst at any time and the coach said "No." The coach stated that he never saw Gary have any outburst of any kind or felt that he would. He also said that he never saw Gary push somebody, punch somebody, or get violent with anybody. So what's strange is that why did he say that stuff about Gary in the case files? Drew Beeson (and me as well) believes that it is very possible that the quotes he supposedly said about Gary back in 1978 in the case files were falsely or mistakenly attributed to him.
Gary Whiteley's Testimony
The 2019 Sacramento Bee article also used the character testimony of Gary Whiteley, who was Gary's sister Sharon's ex husband at the time of Gary's disappearance, to slander against Gary Mathias. Whiteley stated that "drugs addled Gary's brain" and that Gary was violent and was only borderline stable as long as he took his meds. A couple of months before Gary disappeared, Sharon divorced Whiteley, and the divorce was ... to say the least, messy. Many people are reluctant to say this, but I frankly don't care, so I'm going to say it, Gary Whiteley was the Bully of the town. He was known as "the Town Bully." Whiteley was a very very very (this cannot be understated) bad criminal. Whiteley was many things: an arsonist, a robber, a drug dealer, a stalker, and an assaulter. He had a gang of four or five guys; those were his cronies. (You can look at his criminal record if you want, all of this stuff is there). He was very abusive toward his wife, Sharon, and when she finally divorced him, Whiteley firebombed her car. He was extremely volatile against the Mathias family and stalked/beat up/ robbed Gary a lot. Whiteley also later then firebombed Gary's mom's car. Basically all of the families now believe, after doing independent research, that he could potentially be involved in The Boys' disappearance. Well, my point here is not to prove that Whiteley is guilty nor am I trying to incriminate him, but to show that none of Whiteley's testimony made against Gary Mathias should be regarded as factual.
Were/Are the Families Suspicious of Gary?
Initially, no. There is no evidence that the parents were suspicious of Gary. All parents of the five suspected foul play from a third party. As Melba Madruga (Jack Maruga's mom) stated: “Things aren’t right. Why would they leave the car to go die? There’s no sense to that theory. But we can’t figure out anything that works out right. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it...there was some force that made ‘em go up there. They wouldn’t have fled off in the wood like a bunch of quail. We know good and well that somebody made them do it. We can’t visualize someone getting the upper hand on those five men, but we know it must have been.” Imogene Weiher (Ted Weiher's mom) stated: “Jack Madruga would never have driven his car up there. They wouldn’t have gone up there, got scared and just ran off. We know there’s more to it than what’s been said. These kinds of boys each had their own mental disability, they followed a straight pattern. They wouldn’t have gone out of their way like that unless somebody enticed them up there.”
The police who have claimed that the parents have told them personally that they were suspicious of Gary have no evidence to back up such a claim (as they are not in the case files) and are likely just feeding into the propaganda/stereotype that a schizophrenic person is going to become violent at a moment's notice and can somehow cause all of this. The police are also making a scapegoat so that people feel less sorry for Gary despite that fact that the police actually failed to find him.
A few family members later started getting suspicious of Gary as the years went by with no answers and no body. Obviously, anyone who grieves looks for a scapegoat (I obviously mean no offence to the families, I'm just saying it's human nature) and the easiest scapegoat is Gary because he is still missing. The Weiher family was, at first, a proponent of the "Gary Mathias did it" theory and a few members (not all) of the Madruga family were of that opinion as well. The Huet family, however, never once believed that Gary was involved in the disappearance, and I don't know about the Sterlings as Bill Sterling's family has refused to talk about the disappearance after 1978. However, I know that at the time of this writing, none of the families really believe that he was involved in the disappearance anymore and they all believe that a third party was involved. As Dallas Weiher Jr, Ted Weiher's nephew, stated in a recent interview: “I think the boys were running out of fear. They may have been threatened and told their families would be hurt if they didn’t do what they were told. They were simple minded in a lot of ways.”
Were the Other Four Boys Afraid of Gary?
I've seen this "fact" get thrown about a lot - that apparently the other four Boys were scared of Gary. The truth is no, they were not. It doesn't make any sense. Jack Madruga would never let anyone he did not like into his car. The five of them did a lot of things together and frequently went out of town to watch basketball games together. If they were scared of Gary and did not like him, they knew how to speak their minds and would not be hanging out with him. Only one family member claims this, and it's not supported by any of the other family members of The Boys.
Was Gary a Misogynist?
Thanks to the lies of Janet Enzerra, many people falsely believe that Gary Mathias hated women. I've seen a lot of people in Youtube comments write stupid stuff like they don't feel bad for what happened to Gary because he was a misogynist. This information is false. As Gary's niece stated, "he absolutely loved women and children." Gary, in fact, was dating his high school girlfriend Lisa before he disappeared and his relationship with her, from what I've gathered, was a good one. Gary had no inappropriate encounters with women for the two or three years before his disappearance, and he was respectful. Gary's niece stated that Gary's own mother "was his best friend."
Could Gary Have Purposely Led to Their Deaths?
Gary was not dressed for the weather of the Plumas when he disappeared. He was wearing a light jacket, short sleeves, jeans, and tennis shoes. If he was planning something bad, you would think he would have been more prepared for it, wouldn't you? Gary was also not carrying a weapon of any kind when he disappeared. All that he had in his pockets were his little notes of positivity and 10 to 15 dollars. Many people constantly downplay how excited Gary was for his basketball tournament on Saturday, February 25. The Gateway gators won all of their other games and The Boys were waiting to play for their tournament on the 25th for weeks and they would talk about it very often. Gary kept bugging his mom nonstop for days, saying to her: "We got a big game Saturday. Don't you let me oversleep." Gary laid out his basketball uniform on his bed before he left to go see the game in Chico with the others, in anticipation for the next day. When they discovered that their son did not return home, Gary's parents were panicked as they knew that he wanted to play in that tournament more than anything and would not have missed it for the world.
There Is No Evidence That Gary Hurt His Friends
If Gary wanted to kill his friends or whatever, then why didn't he do all of this stuff sooner? He had a lot of opportunities. Why the night before a big game that he was very excited about? When Jack Madruga's Montego was found up in the Plumas, there was no signs of foul play. The interior of the car was in pristine condition and so was the outside of the car, which investigators thought was peculiar. If Gary was acting violent toward his friends or somehow did a hostile takeover of the car, the car would not have been found in such good condition. Furthermore, if Gary was beginning to act violent, how could he, a slender, not that tall guy, overpower four grown and very strong men, two of whom were taller than he was? Also, if Gary was planning on this disappearance, why did he not take any of their money? When his four friends' bodies were found, they all still had their wallets with cash in it. Why didn't Gary steal Jack's car? None of the bodies were really found with signs of blunt force trauma. Ted Weiher's body, which was the most intact, definitely had no signs of foul play and his body was swaddle in sheets in a way he could not do it himself, and many investigators at the time (and now) believed that Gary did that. If Gary was this violent schizo as many people believe, then how was Ted able to live for so long in those trailers (Ted was found with a full beard even though he was clean shaven when he disappeared)? This further shows that Gary Mathias had no motive to kill his friends as well as did not maliciously lead them to their deaths.
Did Gary's Family refused to Go on the Show Unsolved Mysteries?
There has been a rumor that Gary's family refused to go on the show Unsolved Mysteries, and as a result, Unsolved Mysteries never aired an episode on the Yuba County Five. This rumor has been spreading around a lot and a lot of people act as if it's super suspicious if Gary's family refused to go on the show "Unsolved Mysteries." Well, it's not true. Tammie Mathias, Gary's sister, has stated that their family was not even aware that Unsolved Mysteries wanted to make an episode on the Yuba County Five, and she says that the show never bothered to contact them. Tammie also states that they liked Unsolved Mysteries and that her mom would have most definitely liked renewed interest for her son's disappearance to potentially find answers. Also, even if the Mathias family refused to cooperate, I don't know why that's viewed as suspicious. A huge tragedy happened and they don't want to talk about it. Saying stuff like that is just very callous. Bill Sterling's family has refused to do any interview at all since 1978. Why don't people view that as suspicious also, hmm?
Did Gary Know the Witness Joseph Schons or His Disabled Daughter?
Joseph Schons was a 55 year old man who claimed that he saw The Boys up in the Plumas on February 24th, and to answer the question, no. The police tried to find a potential connection between the two, and did a very thorough search. There was no connection. I have seen a theory put out that maybe Joseph Schons caused the Boys to disappear as revenge for what Gary did to his disabled daughter, like possibly assaulted her, and that he could have known her through Gateway, or that Gary went up to the mountain for a drug deal with Schons, but none of that is true, so, people, stop spreading those kinds of unsubstantiated (and frankly stupid) rumors. Schon's daughter, in fact, was interviewed a few years back and she stated that she did not know any of The Boys. Schons's son also stated that neither his dad or any of his family knew any of The Boys.
Stay Tuned for Part 5.
(All of my sources that I used to obtain all of this information is in Part 6 of my 6-part series.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuba_County_Five
https://allthatsinteresting.com/yuba-county-five
https://www.reddit.com/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/hv6t8p/in_1975_the_gateway_center_for_the_handicapped_in/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-24/yuba-county-five-missing-persons-case/103472558

Colonel Mountjoy had an appointment in India that kept him there permanently. Consequently he was constrained to send his two daughters to England when they were quite children. His wife had died of cholera at Madras. The girls were Letice and Betty. There was a year's difference in their ages, but they were extraordinarily alike, so much so that they might have been supposed to be twins. Letice was given up to the charge of Miss Mountjoy, her father's sister, and Betty to that of Lady Lacy, her maternal aunt. Their father would have preferred that his daughters should have been together, but there were difficulties in the way; neither of the ladies was inclined to be burdened with both, and if both had been placed with one the other might have regarded and resented this as a slight. As the children grew up their likeness in feature became more close, but they diverged exceedingly in expression. A sullenness, an unhappy look, a towering fire of resentment characterised that of Letice, whereas the face of Betty was open and gay. This difference was due to the difference in their bringing up. Lady Lacy, who had a small house in North Devon, was a kindly, intellectual, and broad-minded old lady, of sweet disposition but a decided will. She saw a good deal of society, and did her best to train Betty to be an educated and liberal-minded woman of culture and graceful manners. She did not send her to school, but had her taught at home; and on the excuse that her eyes were weak by artificial light she made the girl read to her in the evenings, and always read books that were standard and calculated to increase her knowledge and to develop her understanding. Lady Lacy detested all shams, and under her influence Betty grew up to be thoroughly straightforward, healthy-minded, and true. On the other hand, Miss Mountjoy was, as Letice called her, a Killjoy. She had herself been reared in the midst of the Clapham sect; had become rigid in all her ideas, narrow in all her sympathies, and a bundle of prejudices. The present generation of young people know nothing of the system of repression that was exercised in that of their fathers and mothers. Now the tendency is wholly in the other direction, and too greatly so. It is possibly due to a revulsion of feeling against a training that is looked back upon with a shudder. To that narrow school there existed but two categories of men and women, the Christians and the Worldlings, and those who pertained to it arrogated to themselves the former title. The Judgment had already begun with the severance of the sheep from the goats, and the saints who judged the world had their Jerusalem at Clapham. In that school the works of the great masters of English literature, Shakespeare, Pope, Scott, Byron, were taboo; no work of imagination was tolerated save the Apocalypse, and that was degraded into a polemic by such scribblers as Elliot and Cumming. No entertainments, not even the oratorios of Handel, were tolerated; they savoured of the world. The nearest approach to excitement was found in a missionary meeting. The Chinese contract the feet of their daughters, but those English Claphamites cramped the minds of their children. The Venetians made use of an iron prison, with gradually contracting walls, that finally crushed the life out of the captive. But these elect Christians put their sons and daughters into a school that squeezed their energies and their intelligences to death. Dickens caricatured such people in Mrs. Jellyby and Mr. Chadband; but he sketched them only in their external aspect, and left untouched their private action in distorting young minds, maiming their wills, damping down all youthful buoyancy. But the result did not answer the expectations of those who adopted this system with the young. Some daughters, indeed, of weaker wills were permanently stunted and shaped on the approved model, but nearly all the sons, and most of the daughters, on obtaining their freedom, broke away into utter frivolity and dissipation, or, if they retained any religious impressions, galloped through the Church of England, performing strange antics on the way, and plunged into the arms of Rome. Such was the system to which the high-spirited, strong-willed Letice was subjected, and from which was no escape. The consequence was that Letice tossed and bit at her chains, and that there ensued frequent outbreaks of resentment against her aunt. "Oh, Aunt Hannah! I want something to read." After some demur, and disdainful rejection of more serious works, she was allowed Milton. Then she said, "Oh! I do love Comus." "Comus!" gasped Miss Mountjoy. "And L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, they are not bad." "My child. These were the compositions of the immortal bard before his eyes were opened." "I thought, aunt, that he had dictated the Paradise Lost and Regained after he was blind." "I refer to the eyes of his soul," said the old lady sternly. "I want a story-book." "There is the Dairyman's Daughter." "I have read it, and hate it." "I fear, Leticia, that you are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity." Unhappily the sisters very rarely met one another. It was but occasionally that Lady Lacy and Betty came to town, and when they did, Miss Mountjoy put as many difficulties as she could in the way of their associating together. On one such visit to London, Lady Lacy called and asked if she might take Letice with herself to the theatre. Miss Mountjoy shivered with horror, reared herself, and expressed her opinion of stage-plays and those who went to see them in strong and uncomplimentary terms. As she had the custody of Letice, she would by no persuasion be induced to allow her to imperil her soul by going to such a wicked place. Lady Lacy was fain to withdraw in some dismay and much regret. Poor Letice, who had heard this offer made, had flashed into sudden brightness and a tremor of joy; when it was refused, she burst into a flood of tears and an ecstasy of rage. She ran up to her room, and took and tore to pieces a volume of Clayton's Sermons, scattered the leaves over the floor, and stamped upon them. "Letice," said Miss Mountjoy, when she saw the devastation, "you are a child of wrath." "Why mayn't I go where there is something pretty to see? Why may I not hear good music? Why must I be kept forever in the Doleful Dumps?" "Because all these things are of the world, worldly." "If God hates all that is fair and beautiful, why did He create the peacock, the humming-bird, and the bird of paradise, instead of filling the world with barn-door fowls?" "You have a carnal mind. You will never go to heaven." "Lucky I—if the saints there do nothing but hold missionary meetings to convert one another. Pray what else can they do?" "They are engaged in the worship of God." "I don't know what that means. All I am acquainted with is the worship of the congregation. At Salem Chapel the minister faces it, mouths at it, gesticulates to it, harangues, flatters, fawns at it, and, indeed, prays at it. If that be all, heaven must be a deadly dull hole." Miss Mountjoy reared herself, she became livid with wrath. "You wicked girl." "Aunt," said Letice, intent on further incensing her, "I do wish you would let me go—just for once—to a Catholic church to see what the worship of God is." "I would rather see you dead at my feet!" exclaimed the incensed lady, and stalked, rigid as a poker, out of the room. Thus the unhappy girl grew up to woman's estate, her heart seething with rebellion. And then a terrible thing occurred. She caught scarlet fever, which took an unfavourable turn, and her life was despaired of. Miss Mountjoy was not one to conceal from the girl that her days were few, and her future condition hopeless. Letice fought against the idea of dying so young. "Oh, aunt! I won't die! I can't die! I have seen nothing of the pomps and vanities. I want to just taste them, and know what they are like. Oh! save me, make the doctor give me something to revive me. I want the pomps and vanities, oh! so much. I will not, I cannot die!" But her will, her struggle, availed nothing, and she passed away into the Great Unseen. Miss Mountjoy wrote a formal letter to her brother, who had now become a general, to inform him of the lamented decease of his eldest daughter. It was not a comforting letter. It dwelt unnecessarily on the faults of Letice, it expressed no hopes as to her happiness in the world to which she had passed. There had been no signs of resignation at the last; no turning from the world with its pomps and vanities to better things, only a vain longing after what she could not have; a bitter resentment against Providence for having denied them to her; and a steeling of her heart against good and pious influences. A year had passed. Lady Lacy had come to town along with her niece. A dear friend had placed her house at her disposal. She had herself gone to Dresden with her daughters to finish them off in music and German. Lady Lacy was very glad of the occasion, for Betty was now of an age to be brought out. There was to be a great ball at the house of the Countess of Belgrove, unto whom Lady Lacy was related, and at the ball Betty was to make her début. The girl was in a condition of boundless excitement. A beautiful ball-dress of white satin, trimmed with rich Valenciennes lace, was laid over her chair for her to wear. Neat little white satin shoes stood on the floor, quite new, for her feet. In a flower-glass stood a red camellia that was destined to adorn her hair, and on the dressing-table, in a morocco case, was a pearl necklace that had belonged to her mother. The maid did her hair, but the camellia, which was to be the only point of colour about her, except her rosy lips and flushed cheeks—that camellia was not to be put into her hair till the last minute. The maid offered to help her to dress. "No, thank you, Martha; I can do that perfectly well myself. I am accustomed to use my own hands, and I can take my own time about it." "But really, miss, I think you should allow me." "Indeed, indeed, no. There is plenty of time, and I shall go leisurely to work. When the carriage comes just tap at the door and tell me, and I will rejoin my aunt." When the maid was gone, Betty locked her door. She lighted the candles beside the cheval-glass, and looked at herself in the mirror and laughed. For the first time, with glad surprise and innocent pleasure, she realised how pretty she was. And pretty she was indeed, with her pleasant face, honest eyes, finely arched brows, and twinkling smile that produced dimples in her cheeks. "There is plenty of time," she said. "I shan't take a hundred years in dressing now that my hair is done." She yawned. A great heaviness had come over her. "I really think I shall have a nap first. I am dead sleepy now, and forty winks will set me up for the night." Then she laid herself upon the bed. A numbing, over-powering lethargy weighed on her, and almost at once she sank into a dreamless sleep. So unconscious was she that she did not hear Martha's tap at the door nor the roll of the carriage as it took her aunt away. She woke with a start. It was full day. For some moments she did not realise this fact, nor that she was still dressed in the gown in which she had lain down the previous evening. She rose in dismay. She had slept so soundly that she had missed the ball. She rang her bell and unlocked the door. "What, miss, up already?" asked the maid, coming in with a tray on which were tea and bread and butter. "Yes, Martha. Oh! what will aunt say? I have slept so long and like a log, and never went to the ball. Why did you not call me?" "Please, miss, you have forgotten. You went to the ball last night." "No; I did not. I overslept myself." The maid smiled. "If I may be so bold as to say so, I think, Miss Betty, you are dreaming still." "No; I did not go." The maid took up the satin dress. It was crumpled, the lace was a little torn, and the train showed unmistakable signs of having been drawn over a floor. She then held up the shoes. They had been worn, and well worn, as if danced in all night. "Look here, miss; here is your programme! Why, deary me! you must have had a lot of dancing. It is quite full." Betty looked at the programme with dazed eyes; then at the camellia. It had lost some of its petals, and these had not fallen on the toilet-cover. Where were they? What was the meaning of this? "Martha, bring me my hot water, and leave me alone." Betty was sorely perplexed. There were evidences that her dress had been worn. The pearl necklace was in the case, but not as she had left it—outside. She bathed her head in cold water. She racked her brain. She could not recall the smallest particular of the ball. She perused the programme. A light colour came into her cheek as she recognised the initials "C. F.," those of Captain Charles Fontanel, of whom of late she had seen a good deal. Other characters expressed nothing to her mind. "How very strange!" she said; "and I was lying on the bed in the dress I had on yesterday evening. I cannot explain it." Twenty minutes later, Betty went downstairs and entered the breakfast-room. Lady Lacy was there. She went up to her aunt and kissed her. "I am so sorry that I overslept myself," she said. "I was like one of the Seven Sleepers." "My dear, I should not have minded if you had not come down till midday. After a first ball you must be tired." "I meant—last night." "How, last night?" "I mean when I went to dress." "Oh, you were punctual enough. When I was ready you were already in the hall." The bewilderment of the girl grew apace. "I am sure," said her aunt, "you enjoyed yourself. But you gave the lion's share of the dances to Captain Fontanel. If this had been at Exeter, it would have caused talk; but here you are known only to a few; however, Lady Belgrove observed it." "I hope you are not very tired, auntie darling," said Betty, to change slightly the theme that perplexed her. "Nothing to speak of. I like to go to a ball; it recalls my old dancing days. But I thought you looked white and fagged all the evening. Perhaps it was excitement." As soon as breakfast was concluded, Betty escaped to her room. A fear was oppressing her. The only explanation of the mystery was that she had been to the dance in her sleep. She was a somnambulist. What had she said and done when unconscious? What a dreadful thing it would have been had she woke up in the middle of a dance! She must have dressed herself, gone to Lady Belgrove's, danced all night, returned, taken off her dress, put on her afternoon tea-gown, lain down and concluded her sleep—all in one long tract of unconsciousness. "By the way," said her aunt next day, "I have taken tickets for Carmen, at Her Majesty's. You would like to go?" "Oh, delighted, aunt. I know some of the music—of course, the Toreador song; but I have never heard the whole opera. It will be delightful." "And you are not too tired to go?" "No—ten thousand times, no—I shall love to see it." "What dress will you go in?" "I think my black, and put a rose in my hair." "That will do very well. The black becomes you. I think you could not do better." Betty was highly delighted. She had been to plays, never to a real opera. In the evening, dinner was early, unnecessarily early, and Betty knew that it would not take her long to dress, so she went into the little conservatory and seated herself there. The scent of the heliotropes was strong. Betty called them cherry-pie. She had got the libretto, and she looked it over; but as she looked, her eyes closed, and without being aware that she was going to sleep, in a moment she was completely unconscious. She woke, feeling stiff and cold. "Goodness!" said she, "I hope I am not late. Why—what is that light?" The glimmer of dawn shone in at the conservatory windows. Much astonished, she left it. The hall, the staircase were dark. She groped her way to her room, and switched on the electric light. Before her lay her black-and-white muslin dress on the bed; on the table were her white twelve-button gloves folded about her fan. She took them up, and below them, somewhat crumpled, lay the play-bill, scented. "How very unaccountable this is," she said; and removing the dress, seated herself on the bed and thought. "Why did they turn out the lights?" she asked herself, then sprang to her feet, switched off the electric current, and saw that actually the morning light was entering the room. She resumed her seat; put her hands to her brow. "It cannot—it cannot be that this dreadful thing has happened again." Presently she heard the servants stirring. She hastily undressed and retired between the sheets, but not to sleep. Her mind worked. She was seriously alarmed. At the usual time Martha arrived with tea. "Awake, Miss Betty!" she said. "I hope you had a nice evening. I dare say it was beautiful." "But," began the girl, then checked herself, and said— "Is my aunt getting up? Is she very tired?" "Oh, miss, my lady is a wonderful person; she never seems to tire. She is always down at the same time." Betty dressed, but her mind was in a turmoil. On one thing she was resolved. She must see a doctor. But she would not frighten her aunt, she would keep the matter close from her. When she came into the breakfast-room, Lady Lacy said— "I thought Maas's voice was superb, but I did not so much care for the Carmen. What did you think, dear?" "Aunt," said Betty, anxious to change the topic, "would you mind my seeing a doctor? I don't think I am quite well." "Not well! Why what is the matter with you?" "I have such dead fits of drowsiness." "My dearest, is that to be wondered at with this racketing about; balls and theatres—very other than the quiet life at home? But I will admit that you struck me as looking very pale last night. You shall certainly see Dr. Groves." When the medical man arrived, Betty intimated that she wished to speak with him alone, and he was shown with her into the morning-room. "Oh, Dr. Groves," she said nervously, "it is such a strange thing I have to say. I believe I walk in my sleep." "You have eaten something that disagreed with you." "But it lasted so long." "How do you mean? Have you long been subject to it?" "Dear, no. I never had any signs of it before I came to London this season." "And how were you roused? How did you become aware of it?" "I was not roused at all; the fact is I went asleep to Lady Belgrove's ball, and danced there and came back, and woke up in the morning without knowing I had been." "What!" "And then, last night, I went in my sleep to Her Majesty's and heard Carmen; but I woke up in the conservatory here at early dawn, and I remember nothing about it."This is a very extraordinary story. Are you sure you went to the ball and to the opera?" "Quite sure. My dress had been used on both occasions, and my shoes and fan and gloves as well." "Did you go with Lady Lacy?" "Oh, yes. I was with her all the time. But I remember nothing about it." "I must speak to her ladyship." "Please, please do not. It would frighten her; and I do not wish her to suspect anything, except that I am a little out of sorts. She gets nervous about me." Dr. Groves mused for some while, then he said: "I cannot see that this is at all a case of somnambulism." "What is it, then?" "Lapse of memory. Have you ever suffered from that previously?" "Nothing to speak of. Of course I do not always remember everything. I do not always recollect commissions given to me, unless I write them down. And I cannot say that I remember all the novels I have read, or what was the menu at dinner yesterday." "That is quite a different matter. What I refer to is spaces of blank in your memory. How often has this occurred?" "Twice." "And quite recently?" "Yes, I never knew anything of the kind before." "I think that the sooner you return to the country the better. It is possible that the strain of coming out and the change of entering into gay life in town has been too much for you. Take care and economise your pleasures. Do not attempt too much; and if anything of the sort happens again, send for me." "Then you won't mention this to my aunt?" "No, not this time. I will say that you have been a little over-wrought and must be spared too much excitement." "Thank you so much, Dr. Groves." Now it was that a new mystery came to confound Betty. She rang her bell. "Martha," said she, when her maid appeared, "where is that novel I had yesterday from the circulating library? I put it on the boudoir table." "I have not noticed it, miss." "Please look for it. I have hunted everywhere for it, and it cannot be found." "I will look in the parlour, miss, and the schoolroom." "I have not been into the schoolroom at all, and I know that it is not in the drawing-room." A search was instituted, but the book could not be found. On the morrow it was in the boudoir, where Betty had placed it on her return from Mudie's. "One of the maids took it," was her explanation. She did not much care for the book; perhaps that was due to her preoccupation, and not to any lack of stirring incident in the story. She sent it back and took out another. Next morning that also had disappeared. It now became customary, as surely as she drew a novel from the library, that it vanished clean away. Betty was greatly amazed. She could not read a novel she had brought home till a day or two later. She took to putting the book, so soon as it was in the house, into one of her drawers, or into a cupboard. But the result was the same. Finally, when she had locked the newly acquired volume in her desk, and it had disappeared thence also, her patience gave way. There must be one of the domestics with a ravenous appetite for fiction, which drove her to carry off a book of the sort whenever it came into the house, and even to tamper with a lock to obtain it. Betty had been most reluctant to speak of the matter to her aunt, but now she made to her a formal complaint. The servants were all questioned, and strongly protested their innocence. Not one of them had ventured to do such a thing as that with which they were charged. However, from this time forward the annoyance ceased, and Betty and Lady Lacy naturally concluded that this was the result of the stir that had been made. "Betty," said Lady Lacy, "what do you say to going to the new play at the Gaiety? I hear it very highly spoken of. Mrs. Fontanel has a box and has asked if we will join her." "I should love it," replied the girl; "we have been rather quiet of late." But her heart was oppressed with fear. She said to her maid: "Martha, will you dress me this evening—and—pray stay with me till my aunt is ready and calls for me?" "Yes, miss, I shall be pleased to do so." But the girl looked somewhat surprised at the latter part of the request. Betty thought well to explain: "I don't know what it is, but I feel somewhat out of spirits and nervous, and am afraid of being left alone, lest something should happen." "Happen, miss! If you are not feeling well, would it not be as well to stay at home?" "Oh, not for the world! I must go. I shall be all right so soon as I am in the carriage. It will pass off then." "Shall I get you a glass of sherry, or anything?" "No, no, it is not that. You remain with me and I shall be myself again." That evening Betty went to the theatre. There was no recurrence of the sleeping fit with its concomitants. Captain Fontanel was in the box, and made himself vastly agreeable. He had his seat by Betty, and talked to her not only between the acts, but also a good deal whilst the actors were on the stage. With this she could have dispensed. She was not such an habituée of the theatre as not to be intensely interested with what was enacted before her. Between two of the acts he said to her: "My mother is engaging Lady Lacy. She has a scheme in her head, but wants her consent to carry it out, to make it quite too charming. And I am deputed to get you to acquiesce." "What is it?" "We purpose having a boat and going to the Henley Regatta. Will you come?" "I should enjoy it above everything. I have never seen a regatta—that is to say, not one so famous, and not of this kind. There were regattas at Ilfracombe, but they were different." "Very well, then; the party shall consist only of my mother and sister and your two selves, and young Fulwell, who is dancing attendance on Jannet, and Putsey, who is a tame cat. I am sure my mother will persuade your aunt. What a lively old lady she is, and for her years how she does enjoy life!" "It will be a most happy conclusion to our stay in town," said Betty. "We are going back to auntie's little cottage in Devon in a few days; she wants to be at home for Good Friday and Easter Day." So it was settled. Lady Lacy had raised no objection, and now she and her niece had to consider what Betty should wear. Thin garments were out of the question; the weather was too cold, and it would be especially chilly on the river. Betty was still in slight mourning, so she chose a silver-grey cloth costume, with a black band about her waist, and a white straw hat, with a ribbon to match her gown. On the day of the regatta Betty said to herself; "How ignorant I am! Fancy my not knowing where Henley is! That it is on the Thames or Isis I really do not know, but I fancy on the former—yes, I am almost positive it is on the Thames. I have seen pictures in the Graphic and Illustrated of the race last year, and I know the river was represented as broad, and the Isis can only be an insignificant stream. I will run into the schoolroom and find a map of the environs of London and post myself up in the geography. One hates to look like a fool." Without a word to anyone, Betty found her way to the apartment given up to lessons when children were in the house. It lay at the back, down a passage. Since Lady Lacy had occupied the place, neither she nor Betty had been in it more than casually and rarely; and accordingly the servants had neglected to keep it clean. A good deal of dust lay about, and Betty, laughing, wrote her name in the fine powder on the school-table, then looked at her finger, found it black, and said, "Oh, bother! I forgot that the dust of London is smut." She went to the bookcase, and groped for a map of the Metropolis and the country round, but could not find one. Nor could she lay her hand on a gazetteer. "This must do," said she, drawing out a large, thick Johnston's Atlas, "if the scale be not too small to give Henley." She put the heavy volume on the table and opened it. England, she found, was in two parts, one map of the Northern, the second of the Southern division. She spread out the latter, placed her finger on the blue line of the Thames, and began to trace it up. Whilst her eyes were on it, searching the small print, they closed, and without being conscious that she was sleepy, her head bowed forward on the map, and she was breathing evenly, steeped in the most profound slumber. She woke slowly. Her consciousness returned to her little by little. She saw the atlas without understanding what it meant. She looked about her, and wondered how she could be in the schoolroom, and she then observed that darkness was closing in. Only then, suddenly, did she recall what had brought her where she was. Next, with a rush, upon her came the remembrance that she was due at the boat-race. She must again have overslept herself, for the evening had come on, and through the window she could see the glimmer of gaslights in the street. Was this to be accompanied by her former experiences? With throbbing heart she went into the passage. Then she noticed that the hall was lighted up, and she heard her aunt speaking, and the slam of the front door, and the maid say, "Shall I take off your wraps, my lady?" She stepped forth upon the landing and proceeded to descend, when—with a shock that sent the blood coursing to her heart, and that paralysed her movements—she saw herself ascending the stair in her silver-grey costume and straw hat. She clung to the banister, with convulsive grip, lest she should fall, and stared, without power to utter a sound, as she saw herself quietly mount, step by step, pass her, go beyond to her own room. For fully ten minutes she remained rooted to the spot, unable to stir even a finger. Her tongue was stiff, her muscles set, her heart ceased to beat. Then slowly her blood began again to circulate, her nerves to relax, power of movement returned. With a hoarse gasp she reeled from her place, and giddy, touching the banister every moment to prevent herself from falling, she crept downstairs. But when once in the hall, she had recovered flexibility. She ran towards the morning-room, whither Lady Lacy had gone to gather up the letters that had arrived by post during her absence. Betty stood looking at her, speechless. Her aunt raised her face from an envelope she was considering. "Why, Betty," said she, "how expeditiously you have changed your dress!" The girl could not speak, but fell unconscious on the floor. When she came to herself, she was aware of a strong smell of vinegar. She was lying on the sofa, and Martha was applying a moistened kerchief to her brow. Lady Lacy stood by, alarmed and anxious, with a bottle of smelling-salts in her hand. "Oh, aunt, I saw——" then she ceased. It would not do to tell of the apparition. She would not be believed. "My darling," said Lady Lacy, "you are overdone, and it was foolish of you tearing upstairs and scrambling into your morning-gown. I have sent for Groves. Are you able now to rise? Can you manage to reach your room?" "My room!" she shuddered. "Let me lie here a little longer. I cannot walk. Let me be here till the doctor comes." "Certainly, dearest. I thought you looked very unlike yourself all day at the regatta. If you had felt out of sorts you ought not to have gone." "Auntie! I was quite well in the morning." Presently the medical man arrived, and was shown in. Betty saw that Lady Lacy purposed staying through the interview. Accordingly she said nothing to Dr. Groves about what she had seen. "She is overdone," said he. "The sooner you move her down to Devonshire the better. Someone had better be in her room to-night." "Yes," said Lady Lacy; "I had thought of that and have given orders. Martha can make up her bed on the sofa in the adjoining dressing-room or boudoir." This was a relief to Betty, who dreaded a return to her room—her room into which her other self had gone. "I will call again in the morning," said the medical man; "keep her in bed to-morrow, at all events till I have seen her." When he left, Betty found herself able to ascend the stairs. She cast a frightened glance about her room. The straw hat, the grey dress were there. No one was in it. She was helped to bed, and although laid in it with her head among the pillows, she could not sleep. Racking thoughts tortured her. What was the signification of that encounter? What of her strange sleeps? What of those mysterious appearances of herself, where she had not been? The theory that she had walked in her sleep was untenable. How was she to solve the riddle? That she was going out of her mind was no explanation. Only towards morning did she doze off. When Dr. Groves came, about eleven o'clock, Betty made a point of speaking to him alone, which was what she greatly desired. She said to him: "Oh! it has been worse this last occasion, far worse than before. I do not walk in my sleep. Whilst I am buried in slumber, someone else takes my place." "Whom do you mean? Surely not one of the maids?" "Oh, no. I met her on the stairs last night, that is what made me faint." "Whom did you meet?" "Myself—my double." "Nonsense, Miss Mountjoy." "But it is a fact. I saw myself as clearly as I see you now. I was going down into the hall." "You saw yourself! You saw your own pleasant, pretty face in a looking-glass." "There is no looking-glass on the staircase. Besides, I was in my alpaca morning-gown, and my double had on my pearl-grey cloth costume, with my straw hat. She was mounting as I was descending." "Tell me the story." "I went yesterday—an hour or so before I had to dress—into the schoolroom. I am awfully ignorant, and I did want to see a map and find out where was Henley, because, you know, I was going to the boat-race. And I dropped off into one of those dreadful dead sleeps, with my head on the atlas. When I awoke it was evening, and the gas-lamps were lighted. I was frightened, and ran out to the landing and I heard them arrive, just come back from Henley, and as I was going down the stairs, I saw my double coming up, and we met face to face. She passed me by, and went on to my room—to this room. So you see this is proof pos that I am not a somnambulist." "I never said that you were. I never for a moment admitted the supposition. That, if you remember, was your own idea. What I said before is what I repeat now, that you suffer from failure of memory." "But that cannot be so, Dr. Groves." "Pray, why not?" "Because I saw my double, wearing my regatta costume." "I hold to my opinion, Miss Mountjoy. If you will listen to me I shall be able to offer a satisfactory explanation. Satisfactory, I mean, so far as to make your experiences intelligible to you. I do not at all imply that your condition is satisfactory." "Well, tell me. I cannot make heads or tails of this matter." "It is this, young lady. On several recent occasions you have suffered from lapses of memory. All recollection of what you did, where you went, what you said, has been clean wiped out. But on this last—it was somewhat different. The failure took place on your return, and you forgot everything that had happened since you were engaged in the schoolroom looking at the atlas." "Yes." "Then, on your arrival here, as Lady Lacy told me, you ran upstairs, and in a prodigious hurry changed your clothes and put on your——" "My alpaca." "Your alpaca, yes. Then, in descending to the hall, your memory came back, but was still entangled with flying reminiscences of what had taken place during the intervening period. Amongst other things——" "I remember no other things." "You recalled confusedly one thing only, that you had mounted the stairs in your—your——" "My pearl-grey cloth, with the straw hat and satin ribbon."Precisely. Whilst in your morning gown, into which you had scrambled, you recalled yourself in your regatta costume going upstairs to change. This fragmentary reminiscence presented itself before you as a vision. Actually you saw nothing. The impression on your brain of a scrap recollected appeared to you as if it had been an actual object depicted on the retina of your eye. Such things happen, and happen not infrequently. In cases of D. T.——" "But I haven't D. T. I don't drink." "I do not say that. If you will allow me to proceed. In cases of D. T. the patient fancies he sees rats, devils, all sorts of objects. They appear to him as obvious realities, he thinks that he sees them with his eyes. But he does not. These are mere pictures formed on the brain." "Then you hold that I really was at the boat-race?" "I am positive that you were." "And that I danced at Lady Belgrove's ball?" "Most assuredly." "And heard Carmen at Her Majesty's?" "I have not the remotest doubt that you did." Betty drew a long breath, and remained in consideration. Then she said very gravely: "I want you to tell me, Dr. Groves, quite truthfully, quite frankly—do not think that I shall be frightened whatever you say; I shall merely prepare for what may be—do you consider that I am going out of my mind?" "I have not the least occasion for supposing so." "That," said Betty, "would be the most terrible thing of all. If I thought that, I would say right out to my aunt that I wished at once to be sent to an asylum." "You may set your mind at rest on that score." "But loss of memory is bad, but better than the other. Will these fits of failure come on again?" "That is more than I can prognosticate; let us hope for the best. A complete change of scene, change of air, change of association——" "Not to leave auntie!" "No. I do not mean that, but to get away from London society. It may restore you to what you were. You never had those fits before?" "Never, never, till I came to town." "And when you have left town they may not recur." "I shall take precious good care not to revisit London if it is going to play these tricks with me." That day Captain Fontanel called, and was vastly concerned to hear that Betty was unwell. She was not looking herself, he said, at the boat-race. He feared that the cold on the river had been too much for her. But he did trust that he might be allowed to have a word with her before she returned to Devonshire. Although he did not see Betty, he had an hour's conversation with Lady Lacy, and he departed with a smile on his face. On the morrow he called again. Betty had so completely recovered that she was cheerful, and the pleasant colour had returned to her cheeks. She was in the drawing-room along with her aunt when he arrived. The captain offered his condolences, and expressed his satisfaction that her indisposition had been so quickly got over. "Oh!" said the girl, "I am as right as a trivet. It has all passed off. I need not have soaked in bed all yesterday, but that aunt would have it so. We are going down to our home to-morrow. Yesterday auntie was scared and thought she would have to postpone our return." Lady Lacy rose, made the excuse that she had the packing to attend to, and left the young people alone together. When the door was shut behind her, Captain Fontanel drew his chair close to that of the girl and said— "Betty, you do not know how happy I have felt since you accepted me. It was a hurried affair in the boat-house, but really, time was running short; as you were off so soon to Devonshire, I had to snatch at the occasion when there was no one by, so I seized old Time by the forelock, and you were so good as to say 'Yes.'" "I—I——" stammered Betty. "But as the thing was done in such haste, I came here to-day to renew my offer of myself, and to make sure of my happiness. You have had time to reflect, and I trust you do not repent." "Oh, you are so good and kind to me!" "Dearest Betty, what a thing to say! It is I—poor, wretched, good-for-naught—who have cause to speak such words to you. Put your hand into mine; it is a short courtship of a soldier, like that of Harry V. and the fair Maid of France. 'I love you: then if you urge me farther than to say, "Do you in faith?" I wear out my suit. Give me your answer; i' faith, do: and so clap hands and a bargain.' Am I quoting aright?" Shyly, hesitatingly, she extended her fingers, and he clasped them. Then, shrinking back and looking down, she said: "But I ought to tell you something first, something very serious, which may make you change your mind. I do not, in conscience, feel it right that you should commit yourself till you know." "It must be something very dreadful to make me do that." "It is dreadful. I am apt to be terribly forgetful." "Bless me! So am I. I have passed several of my acquaintances lately and have not recognised them, but that was because I was thinking of you. And I fear I have been very oblivious about my bills; and as to answering letters—good heavens! I am a shocking defaulter." "I do not mean that. I have lapses of memory. Why, I do not even remember——" He sealed her lips with a kiss. "You will not forget this, at any rate, Betty." "Oh, Charlie, no!" "Then consider this, Betty. Our engagement cannot be for long. I am ordered to Egypt, and I positively must take my dear little wife with me and show her the Pyramids. You would like to see them, would you not?" "I should love to." "And the Sphynx?" "Indeed I should." "And Pompey's Pillar?" "Oh, Charlie! I shall love above everything to see you every day."

The story is long so I’m going to start with the question first:
If you have a 1st cousin; will that person’s uncle also be your 1st cousin?
Now for the story:
So I grew up without a biological father (and mostly without a mother too) as my grandmother raised me after being neglected a lot as a child. I had a stepfather who I found out wasn’t my biological father when I was 12 (though I always had my suspicions).
My mom told me that my biological father was a criminal and when she found out that she was pregnant she left the area (Americus GA) without telling him. When I was in college, I set out to find him by contacting police precincts and jails in the Americus area. I got no hits based on the name that my mother gave me to look for. I then hung up my search for him and lived my life. I got married, had kids, now grandkids, got divorced etc.
Fast forward to Christmas 2019. My grandmother unexpectedly passes away at the age of 94. A friend of mine got me a 23andme test as a gift because they knew about me never knowing who my father was. I take the test and immediately find a half brother on my father’s side. I am the first blood relative that he’s ever met as he was given up for adoption upon birth. We have formed a great bond over the past 4yrs.
The test also connected me with a 1st cousin on my father’s side. This was very promising because it essentially meant that one of her parents are siblings with my bio-dad. I reached out to her for years to no avail. I then go online to see if maybe I can find her on FB since not everyone looks on 23andme for messages. That’s when I discover that she’s mixed-race which eliminates her mom from being my potential aunt.
I reached out to her on fb for years also to no avail. At the beginning of this year I decide to try to use her as a base to find relatives around her. She is from the Midwest but her family lineage quickly goes back to Americus GA as well as NYC. Both of those are interesting because my mom is from Brooklyn and said that she met my bio-dad in Americus GA. I knew I was on the right path.
After sending numerous FB friend requests and messages, I get a lead from a friend of the namesake family to reach out to a certain member of that family because she organizes the family reunions in Americus. I do some internet searching and find her number and gave her a call. She answers. I explain. She gets it. I mentioned who the 1st cousin was and she immediately said that that person’s dad only had one sibling, a brother. And that he was born and raised in Brooklyn and now lives in the Bronx.
At this point, it’s all coming together for me. My mom probably met this other New Yorker in little ol Americus GA and they hit it off for a night. I look him up online and WOW. I can see my complexion. I can also see a little bit of my son’s face in him. My son saw a picture of him and saw it too.
Needless to say, this connection to the family member who organizes the family reunions was the key. She then told me that he (bio-dad) has 3 daughters and is going to be surprised to find out he’s got 2 sons. I look up the daughters and come to find out that the older two are almost the exact same age as me and my half brother.
I reach out to him (bio dad) and one of the older sisters. I couldn’t reach out to the other older sister because I was already blocked on fb by her. Strange, I know. I sent both bio-dad and bio-sis a long text explaining who I am and that I’m looking for my bio dad and that I know that my mom didn’t tell him about me and that there’s no bad feelings. I also sent bio-sis my social media links to prove I’m a real person as I’m also somewhat of an influencer on TikTok and IG. I hear nothing from either of them.
A week goes by and my fiance and I are heading out the door to see a movie when I get a call from an nyc number. I answer and it’s bio-dad’s current wife. She explained who she is and that he denies the idea of me because (and I quote) he “doesn’t remember my mom’s name” lol. She then grills me for 30 minutes like I’m some freak of nature. I keep my composure and eventually the conversation turns around to be more civil. That’s when I found out that current wife is just about the same age as me. I also find out that I have a sister who is 15.
Current-wife and I both agree that the best thing to do is for him to take a 23andme test. Weeks go by. He never calls or responds to the original text. I know he got it because it was blue. After about a month I get a text from current wife letting me know that he is going to take the test and for me to not contact him or any family once the results come in….so that he can process it.
2 months later and I have 0 results. I reach out to current wife and ask if he ever took the test. She lets me know that he did but that he had to send in a 2nd test because the first wasn’t done right. A few weeks after that, I get the notification.
It says that he’s a 1st cousin. And guess what, he immediately calls me for the first time, after the results come in. I don’t answer.
Here’s the thing: how can his niece ring as a 1st cousin to me as well as him? It doesn’t past the smell test. I feel like I’ve been stonewalled from the beginning and now I’m thinking he never took the test. Someone else in his family did just so that he can prove he’s “not the father”. The way this family has stonewalled me from the jump, you’d think they are some royal family or something. It makes zero sense to me.

The story is long so I’m going to start with the question to y’all first:
If you have a 1st cousin; will that person’s uncle also be your 1st cousin?
Now for the story: So I grew up without a biological father (and mostly without a mother too) as my grandmother raised me after being neglected a lot as a child. I had a stepfather who I found out wasn’t my biological father when I was 12 (though I always had my suspicions).
My mom told me that my biological father was a criminal and when she found out that she was pregnant she left the area (Americus GA) without telling him. When I was 20, I set out to find him by contacting police precincts and jails in the Americus area. I got no hits based on the name that my mother gave me to look for. I then hung up my search for him and lived my life. I got married, had kids, now grandkids, got divorced etc.
Fast forward to Christmas 2019. My grandmother unexpectedly passes away at the age of 94. A friend of mine got me a 23andme test as a gift because they knew about me never knowing who my father was. I take the test and immediately find a half brother on my father’s side. I am the first blood relative that he’s ever met as he was given up for adoption upon birth. We have formed a great bond over the past 4yrs.
The test also connected me with a 1st cousin on my father’s side. This was very promising because it essentially meant that one of her parents are siblings with my bio. I reached out to her for years to no avail. I then go online to see if maybe I can find her on FB since not everyone looks on 23andme for messages. That’s when I discover that she’s mixed-race which eliminates her mom from being my potential aunt.
I reached out to her on fb for years also to no avail. At the beginning of this year I decide to try to use her as a base to find relatives around her. She is from the Midwest but her family lineage quickly goes back to Americus GA as well as NYC. Both of those are interesting because my mom is from Brooklyn and said that she met my bio in Americus GA. I knew I was on the right path.
After sending numerous FB friend requests and messages, I get a lead from a friend of the family name to reach out to a certain member of that family name because she organizes the family reunions in Americus. I do some internet searching and find her number and gave her a call. She answers. I explain. She gets it. I mentioned who the 1st cousin was and she immediately said that that person’s dad only had 1 brother. And that he was born and raised in Brooklyn and now lives in the Bronx.
At this point, it’s all coming together for me. My mom probably met this other New Yorker in little ol Americus GA and they hit it off for a night. I look him up online and WOW. I can see my complexion. I can also see a little bit of my son’s face in him. My son saw a picture of him and saw it too.
Needless to say, this connection to the family member who organizes the family reunions was the key. She then told me that he (bio dad) has 3 daughters and is going to be surprised to find out he’s got 2 sons. I look up the daughters and come to find out that the older two are almost the exact same age as me and my half brother.
I reach out to him (bio dad) and one of the older sisters. I couldn’t reach out to the other older sister because I was already blocked on fb by her. Strange, I know. I sent both bio-dad and bio-sis a long text explaining who I am and that I’m looking for my bio dad and that I know that my mom didn’t tell him about me and that there’s no bad feelings. I also sent bio-sis my social media links to prove I’m a real person as I’m also somewhat of an influencer on TikTok and IG. I hear nothing from either of them.
A week goes by and my fiance and I are heading out the door to see a movie when I get a call from an nyc number. I answer and it’s bio-dad’s current wife. She explained who she is and that he denies the idea of me because (and I quote) he “doesn’t remember my mom’s name” lol. She then grills me for 30 minutes like I’m some freak of nature. I keep my composure and eventually the conversation turns around to be more civil. That’s when I found out that current wife is just about the same age as me. I also find out that I have a sister who is 15.
Current-wife and I both agree that the best thing to do is for him to take a 23andme test. Weeks go by. He never calls or responds to the text. I know he got it because it was blue. After about a month I get a text from current wife letting me know that he is going to take the test and for me to not contact him or any family once the results come in….so that he can process it.
2 months later and I have 0 results. I reach out to current wife and ask if he ever took the test. She lets me know that he did but that he had to send in a 2nd test because the first wasn’t done right. A few weeks after that, I get the notification.
It says that he’s a 1st cousin. And guess what, he immediately calls me for the first time, after the results come in. I don’t answer.
Here’s the thing: how can his niece ring as a 1st cousin to me as well as him? It doesn’t past the smell test. I feel like I’ve been stonewalled from the beginning and now I’m thinking he never took the test. Someone else in his family did just so that he can prove he’s “not the father”. The way this family has stonewalled me from the jump, you’d think they are some royal family or something. It makes zero sense to me.