Sympathy grandfather poem
The Confirmed Hoax Fallacy
2024.06.09 22:38 TempusCarpe The Confirmed Hoax Fallacy
 | The Confirmed Hoax Fallacy An Old Argument Raises Its Ignorant Head Yet Again TEMPORAL RECON JUN 8 submitted by TempusCarpe to JohnTitor [link] [comments] I was recently invited to write an essay by someone who I respect greatly in their own personal search for truth. He asked that, while an update to Conviction of a Time Traveler is not necessarily in the offing, he did wonder if I might be amenable to a friendly reminder of the evidence provided in COATT nearly a decade ago now. What spurred his request was that he had noticed recently that several people online had been echoing the ‘confirmed hoax’ trope when discussions would might around to the John Titor series of posts which occurred online back in 2000/2001. His noticing of this false argument was nothing new; I had also noticed it crop up from time to time over the last 20 years. I hold the ‘confirmed hoax’ argument in special and particular disdain. Why? Primarily because evidence exists and was provided in Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2009 that Titor was legitimate and, ironically enough, was read by many of the so-called experts espousing the ‘confirmed hoax’ lie. So when these fake experts tell you that the Titor story was a ‘confirmed hoax,’ they are lying to you. Conviction of a Time Traveler provided new and original evidence that has never, to date, been debunked since its publication; a full 14 years. The evidence provided (which many of these lazy forum participants are aware of) pointed to one, inexorable and inescapable conclusion: Titor was legit. But this evidence, while never disproven, is always ignored. Why is that? We’ll put a pin in that… Pledge your support Ironically, not only has the evidence documented in Conviction of a Time Traveler never been debunked, but it has also even been plagiarized by lazy authors who can’t be bothered to do original research or, lacking the intellectual horsepower necessary to do even that, fail to provide appropriate attribution to their source material. So what of this, ‘Confirmed Hoax’ claim? Is it true? HAS the John Titor episode actually been ‘confirmed’ as a hoax? When someone in a position of pretend authority declares from their cardboard pedestal that the John Titor story is a ‘Confirmed Hoax,’ have you ever noticed they never provide the person who did the confirming? “Confirmed hoax?” ‘Confirmed’ by whom, pray tell? When the term ‘Confirmed Hoax’ is used, what imagery comes to mind? I dare say it implies that some sort of shadowy group of learned scholars sat around a big wooden table, carefully assessed and addressed the claims. All the evidence and counter-arguments were carefully measured while hidden away in some stone castle somewhere until a white puff of smoke curls over its stone-tiled rooftops, declaring to the world once and for all, “Our confirmation is complete. John Titor was a hoax!” Bullshit. Here’s the dirty little secret of the ‘Confirmed Hoax’ statements: they are actually shorthand for, “I don’t have the intellectual capacity to argue in favor or against, so in order to come off like some sort of authority and maintain my fake position of authority, I’ll just take the safest position and simply declare that the Titor story is a hoax, that it was ‘confirmed’ and let’s please just move on to some other topic.” ‘Confirmed Hoax,’ is a coward’s gambit, a bet, that there won’t be anyone to come along to rock the boat and topple these posers off their flimsy stage of pretend authority. This was the environment I walked into when I first published Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2010, and apparently, it hasn’t changed in 15 years. When I first posted on Paranormalis (IIRC) announcing that I had written a book that documented the evidence in favor of Titor’s veracity, the then-reigning Titor authority (‘Darby’) haughtily pronounced, “Present your evidence and we’ll discuss it.” Share It was in that moment that I chose a path that nobody before me had ever embarked upon. I said, “No.” Nobody had ever said ‘no’ before. There are pages and pages of forum posts by people before me who discovered some of the same bits and pieces that I discovered that pointed to Titor’s truth. And they were excited to show what they had discovered! And, owing to their excitement, and unfortunately, their naivete, they excitedly shared their evidence, wrongfully believing that the forums’ leadership was interested in getting to the bottom of the Titor episode. Little did they suspect that ‘Darby’ and others were acting as gatekeepers of truth, whose sole purpose was to establish and maintain a lid on the narrative that was the John Titor episode. He, and his ilk gaslighted and bullied these poor naifs into silence by using their fake authority to debunk and explain away the very real evidence they had discovered. That is, until COATT was published. Unfortunately for these enemies of Truth, the internet is forever. In my research leading up to the publication of Conviction of a Time Traveler, I had the benefit of not only studying Titor’s posts, but also all the follow-on discussions after their departure. I reviewed literally years of online forum content and, as I did so, I made a very curious observation: in all the years of discussion after Titor departed, not one piece of evidence ever (ever) caused ‘Darby’ or any of the other fake authorities to question their ‘it’s a hoax!’ position. They NEVER saw a piece of evidence that they didn’t dismiss, mock, ignore or explain away with contortions of logic that would make Wetzel’s Pretzels blush. This is in stark contrast to how someone who was truly in search of truth would act. If ‘Darby’ and the others truly were curious, isn’t this a little odd? Really? Not ONE piece of evidence ever caused ‘Darby’ to pause and say, “hmm, that’s interesting…” Not once, ever. And there are years of forum posts to confirm this. So, when Darby commanded from his perch of fake authority that I ‘present my evidence so that we might discuss it’ I laughed in his face [paraphrasing], “No. A real discussion of the evidence hasn’t occurred here for years, and I do not recognize your so-called position as some sort of ‘expert’ on the Titor story. LITERALLY EVERYTHING there is to learn, or study, is published in the Titor posts for all to read. You hold no special knowledge, no special position, no special nothing. I do not submit to your fake authority. You want to learn about Titor, read the book.” Or words to that effect, anyway… In the end, the evidence provided in COATT was so unassailable and the argument so solid that ‘Darby’ and his ilk suddenly became more and more quiet as they slowly realized I wasn’t going to wilt under their “authoritay.” Eventually, they slinked away with their rhetorical tails tucked. But this was not the end of the story! Because ‘time travel’ had become quite the pet interest of mine (owing to the further evidence I discovered after publication), that I continued to post online in various discussion forums. I even wrote numerous essays on a variety of topics, all spurred on by the ‘time travel’ question and all its implications. Fast Forward Fast forwarding to today, we’re back at the ‘confirmed hoax’ argument again. What was once offered up (“HOAX!”) by Darby and others, is now cold soup served by the latest crop of fake authorities. And what happens when fake authority utters the ‘Confirmed Hoax’ discussion-brake? The same thing that happened a decade ago: the earnest neophyte shrugs their shoulders secure in the false belief that others smarter than they have studied the topic and arrived at some irrefutable conclusion; no further discussion necessary (or allowed). They have no idea just how close they came to uncovering something truly fantastic, had they only relied on their own judgment instead of the know-nothing proclamations of others. Pledge your support Which brings me to why I wrote COATT in the first place. Instead of simply doing my research and arriving at my own (private) conclusion, I realized that too many people were believing fake authority and ignoring Titor’s warnings about our future. Once I realized that Titor was legitimate (caveated, of course), how could I NOT share my findings? The stakes were simply too high. IF what Titor said were true 24 years ago, that the world was heading for an upending change in the status quo, and that many people would die as a result of it, how could I remain silent and not inform others that his warnings were something to be listened to? Perhaps people with ears to hear might take heed and make the appropriate preparations. I know I did. But, as my friend has informed me, it appears that the fake experts have reared their ugly and useless heads once again telling us that there is ‘nothing to the Titor story’ and that it is a “confirmed hoax.” THIS was the reason that I was recently asked to provide my evidence once again. And THIS is the reason this essay is dragging on. These pretenders to authority are like roaches; as soon as the exterminator leaves, they come out of the woodwork intent on dismantling the Truth once again. God’s work never ends, it seems, even with a 99% success rate… So, now that we’ve got all THAT out of the way, and as a sort of transition, I’d like to bring you up to speed on what I’ve been up to since I published Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2010. To be perfectly frank, after COATT’s publication, I thought I was done with the Titor story; I had said my piece and was perfectly willing to move on with my life and prepare for the event that causes the change in the status quo. But the annoying fact was that the Titor story itself didn’t end with the cessation of Titor’s posts in 2001. As new evidence appeared in the months and years following publication, like dog shit on my shoe that I can’t scrape off, I could never cleanly cleave myself from the Titor story. Not that I wanted to, mind you, it is a fascinating topic, regardless of your opinion. But what surprised me the most was that new evidence continued to appear, year after year. And, as more evidence appeared, my curiosity was consistently kept piqued and on alert. Trust me, it is exhausting. To give you a sense of what I discovered, I can tell you that your experts are wrong and that ‘time travel’ is neither novel nor unusual; we are very literally awash in ‘time travelers.’ My research suggests that ‘time machines’ have been present in our past going as far back as 850AD. But I digress. Share Suffice it to say that the Titor rabbit hole is but one example of a massively large group of programs from an unknown number of organizations from across time. The ‘time travel’ question runs much deeper (and much farther back in time) and crosses over into more (so-called) esoteric topics than anyone gives it credit for. As I said, it’s exhausting. My whole point here is that, even after I published in 2009, my curiosity in the topic (and its implications of yet larger vistas) did not wane. And, because of this continued and unabating curiosity, I discovered yet more evidence, crafted more theories and came to more conclusions. A philosopher once described the acquisition of new information as an ever-expanding circle surrounding the man; a horizon where known and unknown meet where new answers only beget new questions which push the circle farther and farther out. This has been my experience over the last 15 years re the Titor narrative and the larger ‘time travel’ question. How could it be otherwise? Unfortunately for you, you are being convinced by fools that the Titor episode is a ‘Confirmed Hoax.’ You haven’t even made the leap to the possibility that ‘time travel’ is even possible. How can you explore the implications of ‘time travel’ when you can’t even consider its reality, a fundamental starting point? I have a very strong (ehem) conviction that our collective naïveté on the subject will be violently revoked in the very near ‘future.’ The Two Camps, The Two Mistakes During my research, I observed that within the Titor commentariat there are two basic camps: the Debunkers and the True Believers. The Debunking camp will provide any contortion of logic to maintain the ‘Titor was a hoax’ narrative. The True Believers, on the other hand, will believe any contortion of logic that maintains their belief in The Gospel of John. What if I told you both camps were wrong? Now, the debunking camp will tell you that Titor must be a hoax because his predictions didn’t come true. Oh, well…his predictions didn’t come true? I guess we’re done then? Obviously, his whole purpose for posting was to make predictions like some Magic Eight Ball, right? And if those don’t pan out, well, ‘CONFIRMED HOAX!’ Get the Book On the other side of that coin, the True Believers out there, who never saw a confirmation bias they didn’t love, will tell you that Titor’s predictions didn’t come true because he changed the future. This of course is a recipe for explaining away literally any detracting evidence thus making Titor true no matter any evidence to the contrary. Let’s take the True Believers first: The concept of Divergence, while a handy explanation, does not/cannot explain all differences in histories away. In fact, were what Titor said was true (remember, we are True Believers for the moment and are taking Titor’s words as gospel) he absolutely must take measures to minimize divergence as much as possible and NOT allow it to span wildly. Otherwise, the entire power of the ‘time machine’ is rendered moot. I accept that Divergence is likely a real measurement necessary for the efficient execution of ‘time travel’ missions, but it should, by no means, be the magic skeleton key to explain away every question. In fact, while divergence is very likely a real ‘thing’ or artifact or measurement of difference between world lines, the Truth is that divergence must absolutely be kept to a minimum to make any practical use of the gravity engine sitting in the back seat of your old blue Geo Metro. So, no. Divergence cannot be the handy tool we need to contort ourselves into believing, as much as we might like to. Now for the debunkers: The debunkers have a variety of options available to them to argue that Titor was a ‘confirmed hoax.’ Regardless, these arguments typically boil down to two primary classes: He has special training or knowledge, and/or He’s just a lucky guesser. Unfortunately for the debunkers (and those who listen to them), these explanations make a very serious error: that predictions are a relevant metric to judge Titor’s truth at all. They are not. Serious question: Why should a ‘time traveler’ be subject to the same metrics that a psychic is to determine if his claims of ‘time travel’ are true? The point here is that you can’t compare a horse to a whale and complain that the horse can’t swim. They are two completely different animals, and the same goes for ‘time travelers’ and psychics or tarot readers or any other domain whose reputation is dependent on the true-ness of the information they provide. Comparing Titor’s predictions to actual, experienced history is also an imperfect and inappropriate metric if one is to objectively assess Titor from a blank slate starting point. This points to a much deeper insight into the true purpose of the Titor posts, but that’s for a different day. So, because of both these problems, any real researcher worth their salt would have to find some other way to determine the truth/falsity of the Titor narrative. Remember, when first approaching the Titor question as an objective investigator, Titor is both equally a hoax and legitimate. Imagine Schrodinger’s cat meets Columbo… I’ll give you this observation for free, just to get your juices flowing: Did you notice that absolutely none of John’s predictions (event + date) came true, but all his statements concerning conditions about our future did? Don’t you find this interesting? Or hadn’t you noticed, too blinded by the bright and shiny, attention-grabbing predictions of nuclear war? But I am getting ahead of myself; we still haven’t provided the evidence that it’s simply more likely that Titor was an actual time traveler than some ‘hoaxer genius.’ And so we finally get to the whole point of this essay in the first place, a reminder and summary of the evidence first provided in Conviction of a Time Traveler all the way back in those halcyon days of 2010:
– J. Titor, Nov 7, 2000
-J. Titor
– J. Titor, Nov 15, 2000
– J. Titor, Feb 15, 2001
-J. Titor, Feb 21, 2001
-J. Titor, Feb 25, 2001
-J. Titor, Feb 25, 2001
He predicts an optical measurement system for atomic clocks. He predicts the new system measures oscillation and not some other aspect. He predicts this new system increases measurement precision and not some other aspect. “The C206 uses 6 cesium clocks but they use an optical system to check the oscillation frequency. This makes the worldline divergence confidence much higher.” – J. Titor, Nov 7, 2000
But, the middle question, ‘…what is Ginger…’ did not violate either of those two questions so he acquiesced and answered it. He answered by saying, “It looks like a sort of motorized scooter. What do you think IT is?” – J. Titor, Jan 29, 2001 This answer immediately got my attention because, in 2000 when the question was asked, the answer was truly unknown, thus Mr. Kolesnik’s question. However, in 2009 when I was first looking into the Titor narrative, I knew what Ginger was because I remembered it. Hindsight truly was 20/20. As a bit of background, during 1999 (the exact timing escapes me), a ‘viral’ marketing campaign was underway by an inventor named Dean Kamen. While never revealing what this new product was, the billboards merely asked, “What is IT?” or “What is Ginger?” That was all they said. It is obvious now, and was obvious even then, that Kamen was attempting to create a buzz for his new invention. Fair enough. It also explains why it was asked of Titor in 2000. Kamen’s ad campaign was working! People were truly wondering. Now understand, the hype (and I use that term specifically) surrounding the Ginger ad campaign was fairly strong. Kamen predicted that his invention would reinvent how people moved about cities; it would cause their utter redesign and how they were laid out and organized. Big claims, to be sure. So strong in fact that Kamen was able to land a spot on Good Morning America where he finally revealed what his invention was. In December of 2001, and live on the air, Kamen, with Katie Couric, revealed Ginger to the world. Ginger was none other than the Segway. And what did Titor say it was? “A type of motorized scooter” And Stella says there’s nothing more to learn… Get the Book Titor’s absolute spot-on declaration of what Kamen’s invention was nearly a year before it was unveiled hit me right between the eyes. Eight years later, I already knew that Ginger was the Segway because I remembered the event. Here was a maniac on the internet claiming to be a ‘time traveler’ and he correctly ‘guessed’ what Ginger was a mere 2 ½ hours after it was asked and 11 months before it was officially unveiled? It was Titor’s statement here that caused me to look deeper (much deeper, in fact) into the Titor narrative and, after exhaustive research and extensive supporting evidence, I concluded that Titor was in fact, legitimate. Now here’s the truly interesting part of this piece of the Titor saga: you can’t find this statement about Ginger online anywhere anymore. It has been scrubbed from online sources everywhere. Now, when I first discovered the Titor story, I saw that there appeared to be a couple different versions of the posts and I just, by chance, found a version of the posts with the Ginger reference in it. I saw that some versions had the Ginger reference, and some did not. At the time, I did not know how to understand this. But I do now. Revisiting Old Theories As I mentioned before, hindsight is 20/20, and that is especially true when discussing ‘time travel’ and ‘time travelers.’ So, it seems oddly appropriate to provide a few examples of updated information that only revealed themselves with the fullness of time after publication. ‘leader’ In Conviction of a Time Traveler, I found the following quote especially interesting: “The President or “leader” in 2005 I believe tried desperately to be the next Lincoln and hold the country together but many of their policies drove a larger wedge into the Bill of Rights. The President in 2009 was interested only in keeping his/her power base.”
Of course, here we are 24 years after Titor’s statement and 12 years after I wrote COATT, and I have now come to a different conclusion about the quotation marks around the word ‘leader’. I now surmise that Titor was referring to Biden and not Obama when he wrote that. Because I personally didn’t have a ‘time machine’ at the time, I never could have expected the dementia patient currently ‘in’ the White House and supposedly ‘leading’ the country. For anyone watching, it is patently obvious that Mr. Biden isn’t ‘leading’ anything. So, in the context of this and our current national situation, those quotation marks sure make a hell of a lot more sense now, don’t you think? This reassessment obviously puts a giant bullseye on the 2024-2025 time period for what Titor commented upon in 2000. So, yes. I have reassessed this particular conclusion since publishing Conviction of a Time Traveler due to the slow passage of time and its equally slow revelation of Truth. Gates Another interesting comment by Titor had to do with Bill Gates. Recall that in 2000/2001, Bill Gates was ‘merely’ the CEO of Microsoft. He was among the richest men in the world and many news stories of the time commented upon this fact. Almost kind of like Elon Musk’s notoriety in both scope and scale. So, as such, a forum participant named ‘Joe’ asked Titor for any information regarding Bill Gates’ future. Titor’s response? “This I do know but I won’t discuss.” -J. Titor, Feb 23, 2001 An interesting, if not completely unhelpful, answer. Wouldn’t you say? Considering we now know how Gates has morphed from Tech Titan selling mediocre products to Farmland baron, GMO mosquito breeder and mRNA advocate and (alleged) mass murderer in India and elsewhere in the third world, Titor’s statement that he does know about Gates’ future rings true. In fact, what was also a bit interesting was when someone later pressed him on any information regarding Gates’ future. To which he responded, Just curious, why is he of such interest? -J Titor, Mar 5, 2001 Considering what we know now about Gates and his predilections (his ‘wife’ deserted him upon revelation of his visits to Epstein Island), I’m willing to bet that John was naturally curious as to why Gates, of all people, was of such interest to the forum participants that they would ask twice about him. Coincidence? Or did Titor suspect a mole from a different program in the forum? Who knows. His curiosity about their curiosity in Gates is interesting, nothing more. Conclusion And there you have (some of) it. A summary of some of the evidence documented in Conviction of a Time Traveler written nearly 15 years ago. The evidence contained in that small book has never been debunked or disproven. It has been plagiarized by some and ignored by others. If you were unaware of COATT and are a regular participant in the online discussions about ‘time travel,’ you should ask yourself why the ‘leadership’ on those forums never mention COATT. Curious, don’t you think? The reason I wrote COATT in the first place was because, after I had done my own research to satiate my own personal curiosity, I realized that some people online were downplaying his posts’ importance in the hopes that they could dissuade people from believing in Titor and the possibility of ‘time travel.’ I saw this dishonesty and decided to fight back against it by merely providing the information I discovered. From my point of view, Titor was warning us about a very severe time in our future that would upend the status quo and was to be a highly dangerous one. Taken at face value (always a good starting point), Titor’s warnings merited being taken seriously. Had the naysayer’s deceit been left unanswered, how many of you would have failed to prepare for what is just around the corner? You have prepared, haven’t you? And yes, as is readily obvious to many, those hard times are right around the corner. Looking at Titor’s statements 24 years later and simply looking around at the state of America and the world, do his statements seem so outlandish now? John’s ‘final’ words to the forum in March of 2001 ring eerily prescient now: Bring a gas can with you when the car dies on the side of the road. -J. Titor, Mar 23, 2001 It is my sincerest hope that my small book project (and the essays that followed) spurred you to think twice about the world we live in and take the necessary actions you feel you should to keep you and your family safe for the world’s awakening and rebirth. As Ever, Temporal Recon Share As Ever |
2024.06.09 22:12 Juthatan It’s crazy how one person can fuck up so many people
This is more a rant than anything. My mom and I use to have a terrible relationship but things are getting better, since I moved out a couple years ago our relationship has improved.
My mom use to have bad anger issues, she still can have some bad anger issues but I mean since leaving it is something I can go away from. She is in therapy and her therapist mentioned her having anxiety which makes sense as both I do and her mom, and it makes sense that is likely part of her anger issues.
I moving out and understanding my mom’s life has allowed me to give my mom more sympathy. I don’t want to live with her again but I do understand where things come from and feel sorry for how things ended up for her.
My mom came to Canada as a baby, her parents are from Portugal with very little education and very religious. My grandfather was an abusive POS. He was an alcholic and a huge asshole and the more I learn about him the more I understand my mom’s life.
He fucked me over by sexually assaulting me as a kid, and when I was 10 he went to jail for attempting to hit my grandmother, but I also learned he once tried to beat my mom because she was playing volleyball in school, which is a “man’s sport”. Apparently after my grandmother had a hysterectomy he pushed her down the stairs because she “wasn’t a women anymore” and her scar reopened. He treated my family like shit. My uncle has paranoid schizophrenia and a lot of it is due to trauma.
I don’t think anything my mom did to me as a kid was justified, but I have more sympathy since knowing more about her life. He fucked up my grandmothers life, my uncles life, my moms life and mine and I wonder if things would’ve been different if he wasn’t a POS
submitted by Juthatan to narcissisticparents [link] [comments]
My mom use to have bad anger issues, she still can have some bad anger issues but I mean since leaving it is something I can go away from. She is in therapy and her therapist mentioned her having anxiety which makes sense as both I do and her mom, and it makes sense that is likely part of her anger issues.
I moving out and understanding my mom’s life has allowed me to give my mom more sympathy. I don’t want to live with her again but I do understand where things come from and feel sorry for how things ended up for her.
My mom came to Canada as a baby, her parents are from Portugal with very little education and very religious. My grandfather was an abusive POS. He was an alcholic and a huge asshole and the more I learn about him the more I understand my mom’s life.
He fucked me over by sexually assaulting me as a kid, and when I was 10 he went to jail for attempting to hit my grandmother, but I also learned he once tried to beat my mom because she was playing volleyball in school, which is a “man’s sport”. Apparently after my grandmother had a hysterectomy he pushed her down the stairs because she “wasn’t a women anymore” and her scar reopened. He treated my family like shit. My uncle has paranoid schizophrenia and a lot of it is due to trauma.
I don’t think anything my mom did to me as a kid was justified, but I have more sympathy since knowing more about her life. He fucked up my grandmothers life, my uncles life, my moms life and mine and I wonder if things would’ve been different if he wasn’t a POS
2024.06.09 19:16 Low-Organization1563 I (27M) ,Need Advice and Suggestions regarding my gf breaking up
Hi All, I am M(27), I am currently in Banglore and my girl ( 24 ) is in Allahabad, We were in a long-distance relationship
We had been dating for last 9 months and it was going great as well but in January end my family members started looking for a girl for me in an AM setup and I used to refuse every girl as I wanted to marry her and she was also kinda ready but never told me directly. Initially, my girl only initiated the idea of getting married as my Family members had started looking for someone and they were quite active. She told me she wanted to marry me and asked me to talk to my parents first as my parents are a bit strict about these things .
During Holi time we had a fight and it got sorted as well, After Holi, she went to her Mausi's Home for a couple of weeks with her Mummy, And she shared about me with her mausi in the hope that once the time comes she will help her to convince her family specially her mummy and papa about me as we both are from different castes ( She is OBC & I am ST ) .
I also shared about her with My Family members (Bhaiya, Didi, Jija & Bhabhi ) except Papa & Mummy ( as their thinking is still a bit old about all these especially Papa ), as they will understand and help to convince Papa, Mummy for our weddings.
But Once she came from Mausis Home She started behaving differently and things started turning bad , she starts ignoring me my texts and call I had to convince her then she told me that Mausi is saying your papa won't agree for all these and all , Intially the girl only said to me that caste won't be an issue at her home , everyone one is chill and multiple people have gone through Love Marriage setup and also she said if you are such a good guy earning enough and from a Tier-1 Enginnering college , then it would be easy to convince her family not an issue , After listening to all these , then I only got into a relationship with her then only I became serious as I never wanted anything short term or anything.
But after coming from Mausis home, after every 2 days, she was getting changed her behavior and all and she starts ignoring me and every day saying breakup again and again.
I used to do a lot of things her, I am Literally in love with her, This is the first time I fell for someone before that I was focused on my career and family responsibilities so I always avoided dating anyone. Once our family got stable then only I started dating so basically last year only I started dating and she is my first Love, She had a relationship in past for 3 or 4 years.
She was trying to break up with me again and again and I was convincing her again and again
Last month she broke up with me and cut me off fully, The Last time I cried in front of anyone was when I was in class 3 or 4th after that I never cried in front of anyone, even my grandfather whom I loved so much when he died ( I was in class 10th ), I didn't cry, I stopped my tears coming down, now after all these years I cried for her I cried in front of her on phone multiple times to not leave me alone, I was shattered, I was crying all night alone in my room no one was there to tell me or stop me, I live here in Banglore alone in a flat with my flatmates, I was in my room for 3 days straight, didn't drink water for 2 days and hadn't food for straight 3 days, I was shaking and shivering and I was getting sudden panic attacks and sudden burst of emotions, I never cried this much in my life, I was getting suicidal. after 3 or 4 days I got up and went to her hometown to convince her.
Reaching Allahabad was also painful, I wasn't getting any direct flight to Allahabad so booked for Varanasi flight from there took a bus to Allahabad and stayed there for 2 days to convince her. It was such a harsh weather that I puked multiple times in Allahabad in such a hot and sunny weather, as a person who hadn't had food for 3 or 4 days it was hard for me.
I gave her a handwritten note and a flower bouquet we had dinner and she got convinced as well and that night I accompanied her to home and I was happy, but deep down I was afraid, as again coming to Allahabad when you are not mentally and stable and a bit ill as well and you hadn't had food, sleep and all and coming all alone In hope that I will convince her, I even didn't know how to find her as she had blocked me and whether she will reply me on insta or not ? But I was happy that she was okay after meeting me and she was happy and things will be okay, next day I gave her chocolates that I had bought specially for her during my trip to Bali and we talked and had lunch together and things were fine I had plan to go on Monday but since I was not feeling well so I left on Sunday only and left for my Hometown ( Varanasi ) instead of going to banglore .
But after few days she again started behaving the same and within few days it was again came back to normal and 3 days before I came back to banlgore , she totally ignored me like I never existed at all because of that I lost my senses like I couldn't believe and had an minor accident as well because while riding the bike I was so in grief that I couldnt' control my self on a highway I almost had a near to death experience , nothing happened to me just got a minor injury nothing . I stayed for 10 days at home that time , and in last 3 days she totally cut me off and I was shattered and since I am home I couldn't cry as well 24*7 everyone used to be with me only as I was home after a long time ..
I thought before going to banglore Ill go and meet her once again but I had one important project going on so I had to leave for banglore, I was holding my tears for so long that the day I again came back , the moment I sat in the cab for my flat I started crying in the cab I was crying for straight 1.5 hours while way back to my flat , this is also a kind of first time for me crying in front of a random guy . this time I couldn't control my self I cried like a baby in front the driver , I was trying hard to hold my tears and hiding my face, the cab guy understood and he was also behaving like he is not seeing me. once I reached home I cried and cried whole night , I called here msged her she didn't picked my call didn't reply .
So for 7 days I didn't call or text her I was trying my best to be first a stable person , one day one of my friend , she said , jab itna mehant kiye hi ho to ek bar last time try kar hi lo, So I tried again and called her msgd her and but rat ko bat huyi us din to but she was same like earlier stone cold and , she is saying she lost interest in me , ab wo vibes nahi aati we are different and all , also why should I settle for less If I can get better ( her mausi's world I guess ) , she saying mummy bol rahi this kuch Acche riste hai don't worry and all and blah blah , and she in past while breaking up time also said once I was trying and I thinks its not working anymore .
that day I got devasted more, as earlier I thought because of family pressure and caste issue she is backing but this time I got her different side , I still couldn't believe I thought these are her Mummy or Mausi's word not her because the girl whom I know cannot do all these to me she is open minded and a good person and she was the one who iniated the idea for marriage and opening up to our family.
that time meri didi ka ek bat mujhe yad aaya , Didi ne mujhse bola that, ki tum usse pyar karte ho aur Shaadi karna chahte ho , kya wo bhi tumse pyaar karti hai na ?
that night again I cried and again started getting headache and panic attacks and started shivering and again suicidal thoughts started coming.
Now last week one of my friends she told me about one new caffe in Banglore to try out , so we went and we did shopping together , while coming from there she was forcing me hard to go to her flat and was saying she is alone at her place her flatmate she is not there and she was trying hard to convince me for watching Netflix series together and she was breaking the touch barrier again and again I can sense what she was implying so I kept denying not in mood and all so that I can go to my place.
so I came back to my place, and became emotional and sad as I never ever even thought of touching a girl other than her , Since the day I meet her It became so different for me, I lost interest in every girl except her I stopped talking to all other girls from my circle so that she never feel insecure and also I lost interest as well, She is the only girl whom I can think of spending my life or anything . So next day I again tried to contact her , maine call ya msg nahi kiya hota but I coudln't control this time, I cannot think of another girl anymore except her.
I wanted to talk to her , msged her in morning on Whatsapp did some texting but we couldn't talk on phone as she was busy , then again I tried to call in afternoon but no luck then again in evening and again at night time , this time I also lost my patience and maine bhi bhala bura keh diya aur gusse me as a slang gali nikal gaya ( gali uske liye nahi that wo as a slang hi nikla tha ) within a seconds we cut the call she blocked me again and I texted her use bhala bura bola and all usne bola, aaj tumne gali dekar dikha diya and I am proud of my decision and all I also said you used me to get over your ex. and blah blah some random things like you were depressed I helped you overcome this and I also don't want jo har 2 din me palat jata ho apni bat se.
the line that she said na ki, I am proud of my decision , it hurt me , sari rat yahi line meri dimag me chalta raha, I am a overthinker guy, so ye thoda jyad hi hurt kar gaya. Agle din subah maine use snapchat me msg kiya ki mere sath kuch hua tha I felt bad I thought only you would understand isliye tumko ping kiya tha convince karne nahi aaya tha. and sorry for my kal ke behaviour ke liye. bye take care. its been a week and she hasn't read that msg and and I guess unfriend bhi kar diya hai ( waise snapachat usi ke wajah se hi install kiya tha warna I hate snap )
In Past I used to write shayari and poems for her and used to tel her the lines that I used to write for her. I also used practice her favourite songs and used to sing and record and send her. In past she used to to say to me you are a perfect package, anyone would be lucky to have you , she used to say tum gym bhi jate ho , daru waru, ciggrete wagairah kuch nahi karte ho ghumne phirne ka shauk hai family responsibilities handle karte ha , itna kamane ke bad bhi attitude nahi hai , tumse aadha kamane wale ladke bhi udane lagte hai , tum perfect ho and all she used to be very happy with me , rat bhar bat karna and other plannings and everything , I was happy being single but once she came to my life I became more focussed, I still cannot belive she got changed yahi sab sochta hu to lagta hai ki ek bar phir try karu.. I love her.
Now today while talking to my sister she again asked me about her, I told her ki Didi aisa kuch nahi hai bhool jao , Did bolne lagi ki Papa mummy ko humlog mana lenge bas tum ready ho to bata do. maine saf mana to kar diya
but after that I got emotional, I thought I will write a letter and post it and will try to convince again I wrote a long 5 page letter lying right now on my bed but I don't know what to do. Please help me what should I do ?
submitted by Low-Organization1563 to RelationshipIndia [link] [comments]
We had been dating for last 9 months and it was going great as well but in January end my family members started looking for a girl for me in an AM setup and I used to refuse every girl as I wanted to marry her and she was also kinda ready but never told me directly. Initially, my girl only initiated the idea of getting married as my Family members had started looking for someone and they were quite active. She told me she wanted to marry me and asked me to talk to my parents first as my parents are a bit strict about these things .
During Holi time we had a fight and it got sorted as well, After Holi, she went to her Mausi's Home for a couple of weeks with her Mummy, And she shared about me with her mausi in the hope that once the time comes she will help her to convince her family specially her mummy and papa about me as we both are from different castes ( She is OBC & I am ST ) .
I also shared about her with My Family members (Bhaiya, Didi, Jija & Bhabhi ) except Papa & Mummy ( as their thinking is still a bit old about all these especially Papa ), as they will understand and help to convince Papa, Mummy for our weddings.
But Once she came from Mausis Home She started behaving differently and things started turning bad , she starts ignoring me my texts and call I had to convince her then she told me that Mausi is saying your papa won't agree for all these and all , Intially the girl only said to me that caste won't be an issue at her home , everyone one is chill and multiple people have gone through Love Marriage setup and also she said if you are such a good guy earning enough and from a Tier-1 Enginnering college , then it would be easy to convince her family not an issue , After listening to all these , then I only got into a relationship with her then only I became serious as I never wanted anything short term or anything.
But after coming from Mausis home, after every 2 days, she was getting changed her behavior and all and she starts ignoring me and every day saying breakup again and again.
I used to do a lot of things her, I am Literally in love with her, This is the first time I fell for someone before that I was focused on my career and family responsibilities so I always avoided dating anyone. Once our family got stable then only I started dating so basically last year only I started dating and she is my first Love, She had a relationship in past for 3 or 4 years.
She was trying to break up with me again and again and I was convincing her again and again
Last month she broke up with me and cut me off fully, The Last time I cried in front of anyone was when I was in class 3 or 4th after that I never cried in front of anyone, even my grandfather whom I loved so much when he died ( I was in class 10th ), I didn't cry, I stopped my tears coming down, now after all these years I cried for her I cried in front of her on phone multiple times to not leave me alone, I was shattered, I was crying all night alone in my room no one was there to tell me or stop me, I live here in Banglore alone in a flat with my flatmates, I was in my room for 3 days straight, didn't drink water for 2 days and hadn't food for straight 3 days, I was shaking and shivering and I was getting sudden panic attacks and sudden burst of emotions, I never cried this much in my life, I was getting suicidal. after 3 or 4 days I got up and went to her hometown to convince her.
Reaching Allahabad was also painful, I wasn't getting any direct flight to Allahabad so booked for Varanasi flight from there took a bus to Allahabad and stayed there for 2 days to convince her. It was such a harsh weather that I puked multiple times in Allahabad in such a hot and sunny weather, as a person who hadn't had food for 3 or 4 days it was hard for me.
I gave her a handwritten note and a flower bouquet we had dinner and she got convinced as well and that night I accompanied her to home and I was happy, but deep down I was afraid, as again coming to Allahabad when you are not mentally and stable and a bit ill as well and you hadn't had food, sleep and all and coming all alone In hope that I will convince her, I even didn't know how to find her as she had blocked me and whether she will reply me on insta or not ? But I was happy that she was okay after meeting me and she was happy and things will be okay, next day I gave her chocolates that I had bought specially for her during my trip to Bali and we talked and had lunch together and things were fine I had plan to go on Monday but since I was not feeling well so I left on Sunday only and left for my Hometown ( Varanasi ) instead of going to banglore .
But after few days she again started behaving the same and within few days it was again came back to normal and 3 days before I came back to banlgore , she totally ignored me like I never existed at all because of that I lost my senses like I couldn't believe and had an minor accident as well because while riding the bike I was so in grief that I couldnt' control my self on a highway I almost had a near to death experience , nothing happened to me just got a minor injury nothing . I stayed for 10 days at home that time , and in last 3 days she totally cut me off and I was shattered and since I am home I couldn't cry as well 24*7 everyone used to be with me only as I was home after a long time ..
I thought before going to banglore Ill go and meet her once again but I had one important project going on so I had to leave for banglore, I was holding my tears for so long that the day I again came back , the moment I sat in the cab for my flat I started crying in the cab I was crying for straight 1.5 hours while way back to my flat , this is also a kind of first time for me crying in front of a random guy . this time I couldn't control my self I cried like a baby in front the driver , I was trying hard to hold my tears and hiding my face, the cab guy understood and he was also behaving like he is not seeing me. once I reached home I cried and cried whole night , I called here msged her she didn't picked my call didn't reply .
So for 7 days I didn't call or text her I was trying my best to be first a stable person , one day one of my friend , she said , jab itna mehant kiye hi ho to ek bar last time try kar hi lo, So I tried again and called her msgd her and but rat ko bat huyi us din to but she was same like earlier stone cold and , she is saying she lost interest in me , ab wo vibes nahi aati we are different and all , also why should I settle for less If I can get better ( her mausi's world I guess ) , she saying mummy bol rahi this kuch Acche riste hai don't worry and all and blah blah , and she in past while breaking up time also said once I was trying and I thinks its not working anymore .
that day I got devasted more, as earlier I thought because of family pressure and caste issue she is backing but this time I got her different side , I still couldn't believe I thought these are her Mummy or Mausi's word not her because the girl whom I know cannot do all these to me she is open minded and a good person and she was the one who iniated the idea for marriage and opening up to our family.
that time meri didi ka ek bat mujhe yad aaya , Didi ne mujhse bola that, ki tum usse pyar karte ho aur Shaadi karna chahte ho , kya wo bhi tumse pyaar karti hai na ?
that night again I cried and again started getting headache and panic attacks and started shivering and again suicidal thoughts started coming.
Now last week one of my friends she told me about one new caffe in Banglore to try out , so we went and we did shopping together , while coming from there she was forcing me hard to go to her flat and was saying she is alone at her place her flatmate she is not there and she was trying hard to convince me for watching Netflix series together and she was breaking the touch barrier again and again I can sense what she was implying so I kept denying not in mood and all so that I can go to my place.
so I came back to my place, and became emotional and sad as I never ever even thought of touching a girl other than her , Since the day I meet her It became so different for me, I lost interest in every girl except her I stopped talking to all other girls from my circle so that she never feel insecure and also I lost interest as well, She is the only girl whom I can think of spending my life or anything . So next day I again tried to contact her , maine call ya msg nahi kiya hota but I coudln't control this time, I cannot think of another girl anymore except her.
I wanted to talk to her , msged her in morning on Whatsapp did some texting but we couldn't talk on phone as she was busy , then again I tried to call in afternoon but no luck then again in evening and again at night time , this time I also lost my patience and maine bhi bhala bura keh diya aur gusse me as a slang gali nikal gaya ( gali uske liye nahi that wo as a slang hi nikla tha ) within a seconds we cut the call she blocked me again and I texted her use bhala bura bola and all usne bola, aaj tumne gali dekar dikha diya and I am proud of my decision and all I also said you used me to get over your ex. and blah blah some random things like you were depressed I helped you overcome this and I also don't want jo har 2 din me palat jata ho apni bat se.
the line that she said na ki, I am proud of my decision , it hurt me , sari rat yahi line meri dimag me chalta raha, I am a overthinker guy, so ye thoda jyad hi hurt kar gaya. Agle din subah maine use snapchat me msg kiya ki mere sath kuch hua tha I felt bad I thought only you would understand isliye tumko ping kiya tha convince karne nahi aaya tha. and sorry for my kal ke behaviour ke liye. bye take care. its been a week and she hasn't read that msg and and I guess unfriend bhi kar diya hai ( waise snapachat usi ke wajah se hi install kiya tha warna I hate snap )
In Past I used to write shayari and poems for her and used to tel her the lines that I used to write for her. I also used practice her favourite songs and used to sing and record and send her. In past she used to to say to me you are a perfect package, anyone would be lucky to have you , she used to say tum gym bhi jate ho , daru waru, ciggrete wagairah kuch nahi karte ho ghumne phirne ka shauk hai family responsibilities handle karte ha , itna kamane ke bad bhi attitude nahi hai , tumse aadha kamane wale ladke bhi udane lagte hai , tum perfect ho and all she used to be very happy with me , rat bhar bat karna and other plannings and everything , I was happy being single but once she came to my life I became more focussed, I still cannot belive she got changed yahi sab sochta hu to lagta hai ki ek bar phir try karu.. I love her.
Now today while talking to my sister she again asked me about her, I told her ki Didi aisa kuch nahi hai bhool jao , Did bolne lagi ki Papa mummy ko humlog mana lenge bas tum ready ho to bata do. maine saf mana to kar diya
but after that I got emotional, I thought I will write a letter and post it and will try to convince again I wrote a long 5 page letter lying right now on my bed but I don't know what to do. Please help me what should I do ?
2024.06.09 16:24 moomunequita Venting/Advice
TRIGGER WARNING- SA, etc.
It's a very very long story and there's more that I could go on about but- My parents had me young, mom (19), bio dad (21). They separated when I was around 3 or 4 y/o and that's when my dad (19) (that later adopted me) came into my life. When he went to adopt me at about 7 y/o, before sibling 1 was born, they needed bio dad to release his rights; he agreed on one condition from my mom, 'Don't talk to my family anymore, I will handle it'. So he signed, with the additional agreement that he would not have to pay child support, dad adopted me. I ended up with 1 little sibling and I wanted nothing to do with bio dad at this point, he was already out of my life since the adoption. At around 12 years old, my parents started their divorce, moms second divorce. This divorce was completely different. At first, I hated my (adopted) dad but then again, he used to work 3 jobs to support us, only had 1 day off and used it as a "cleaning day" (which I later appreciated as an adult because I had SEVERE allergies, but in the moment I was just like wtf man fr?) From 13 y/o to about 15 y/o my moms at the time bf was sexually abusing me, forcing me to "cuddle" on the couch, he would pretend to fall asleep (in 5 seconds) and touch my non existent boobs and coochie while grinding his boner against my butt until he had enough. I would lay there silently crying until he actually fell asleep, slowly crawl away, and be up the whole rest of the school night, in shock, crying, cutting myself, and writing very depressing poems. He would break open the bathroom door while I was bathing and would try to peep at me in the tub. I'd cover myself under the bubble bath for HOURS until I had no bubbles and the water was cold. I then tried hurting myself even worse but sibling walked in on me. I broke down and thought if I do this, this dude is going to go for my sibling so I'll just take whatever it is to protect them. So I did. I dealt with all the things plus him walking in on me SERVERAL times in my bedroom each time after I'd have a bath/shower (no lock on the door). This guy also apparently would hit, strangle, and rape my mom. I came to find out that he had a record too, he and his brother abducted a 17 y/o or 18 y/o girl, took her to a trap house, raped her in a bathroom with a pole-blood in the tub, sink, toilet, floor, etc. He also was busted because he put a garbage bag over another man's head and lit it on fire-because the man was black. (Dude ended up being dishonorably discharged later on btw) Eventually, she got rid of him, dated a bit, and settled with a new bf, my now step dad of over 10 years. At this point, I was 16 y/o, had a GREAT relationship with (adopted) dad (not so much my mom), and became curious about my bio dad-where I came from, family customs/traditions, similarities/differences, interests, the other half of who I am. I found him on social media, reached out but didn't get a response for 2-3 weeks. Shortly after us chatting, I went to see him (adopted dad and sibling 1 came with). I had 2 more siblings from bio dad, they were a decade or so younger than me, and sibling 3 didn't resemble me much but did with sibling 2 BUT sibling 2 looked so much like me at that age, weird. A short time later, there was a family event by bio dad, I was invited but had no way to get there (about a 6 hour drive from where I was at the time) so his sistemy aunt said she'd take me. She picked me up and I was to spend the night at her house (with my 2 cousins) then we would travel in the morning. I was so excited because I vaguely remember cousin 1 from childhood, apparently we were super close growing up together, I was eager to reconnect and bond with my cousins. When spending the night, cousin 2 went to sleep early (a bit younger than cousin 1 and I), so cousin 1 and I were talking for hours, it was great being able to reconnect/re-establish our relationship...until he kissed me, threw himself on me, tried getting me to touch him as he started to touch me. I said stop wtf what are you doing we are FIRST cousins!! He chuckled and said "We are but we're not" ... "wtf are you talking about?" ... "I'm not supposed to say but your dad had a DNA test done during tour parents divorce and told all of us your mom cheated on him, you're not ACTUALLY his acoording to the test" ... so at this point, I'm disgusted, have so many questions, confused, am in a house of 'family' that I don't know/don't believe that I am family-I went to sleep. Next day we traveled to see bio dad and after the event I asked him and step mom about it and also mentioned that because of this cousin 1 tried "xyz". Bio dad's response to the DNA-"Your mother had the DNA test done and it said I was not your bio father, she probably lied/gave me a fake test so I would stay out of your life." I went to my mom and questioned her, she said "Absolutely not, you know your (adopted) father and I don't talk so you can even ask him to verify that I'm not lying. I have no idea about anything that has to do with a DNA test, we never had one as he (bio das) was my first and we got married then I was prengant with you about 3-4 months after getting married." I asked (adopted) dad and his story lined up perfectly with my mom's. So bio dad lied to me and his entire side of the family to save face. He lied to all of them because his agreement of giving up his rights to me and not having to pay child support would not have been supported by his side of the family so he told them I wasn't his and supposedly provided a (fake) test so they'd get off his back about it. My grandfather from him said he saw the test-but there was no test! Beyond fucked up man...but whatever. I still wanted a connection. I wanted to leave the bullshit in the past and move forward right? So, fast forward a bit, I was in a 3 year (3 out of 3.5 year) relationship with a TRUE P.O.S. bf that was physically, mentally, emotionally, and verbally abusive. We lived together for 3 years out of our 3.5 year relationship. He was addicted to porn, would call me a bitch every single day amoung other things, ended up raping me and thought it was funny, would hit, kick, choke me (not in the good way), and push me off the bed but then say "You think I want to be like this?! You think I want to do this to you?! Hurt you?! You're making me do it, it's your fault because you have issues." I wasn't "allowed" to talk to my guy friends because they're guys (and I didn't have many girl friends at all), especially my best guy friend that I grew up with and had known since 3 y/o. Bf would isolate me from my families even. At work, I only would talk to my guy friends/male co-workers if bf wasn't there otherwise he would ignore me the whole shift and be brutal when we got home (yeah, we also worked together for a bit over 3 years). I then found out that bf went on the dark web and watched a man kidnap someone, rape her, murder her, and proceed to rape her corpse...my bf was getting off on it! He even said he went back on the next night to do it again but site was blocked. FUCKING PSYCHOTIC. I could go on and on about his craziness. I was his 3rd virgin btw and at work we had a "work daughter" (was so close to that girl, she was 3 years younger than me, 5 years younger than bf and I used to go to her (when bf didnt have same shift as me) crying and telling her everything that would happen with him, so she knew all the shit he did). I was scared he was going to kill me one day, I was scared to stay, scared to leave, all the stupid things and all I wanted was consistent love. We did end up breaking up a few months after I turned 21, he ended up dating our work daughter and took her virginity too! He also did all the shit to her as he did to me! I felt bad for her at first but then thought no you dumb fuck, you knew EVERYTHING you were getting into smh. Anyway, I went to a family event for bio dad, bf was working, they wanted to meet him; we set up lunch for the following day. Bio dad said he was going to give bf the "talk" yk...with the shot gun type of talk. I said I don't feel comfortable with that because firstly, it's not his place, I have my dad (adopted), secondly, bio dad even agreed that we more so have a friend relationship at this point, and third, I've already been with bf for 3 years so it's not appropriate. He got REALLY salty the morning of the meet. We were coordinating plans and everything when he said along the lines, "We haven't seen you in person for almost 2 years now yet you always have time to go out...etc.etc." I responded, "The two times that you have seen me post that I was out, I was across the street from work. I went there for about 2 hours both times with bf and co-workers. I cannot drive 6-8 hours to you and 6-8 hours back in the same day. I work two full time jobs and am going to college online full-time. I'm sorry that I'm making you feel this way or that I've been distant but I try talking and seeing you all (on Skype and such) as much as I can. I don't know what else you want me to do or say at this point. That's why I'm excited for this meet up today. You also could have put in the effort to come out this way these last two years to visit me as well, but again, I'm sorry. I hope you all aren't mad at me, I'm really trying here." He then tells me "I'm going to have to cancel lunch today. I don't think meeting today is a good idea. Now I'm going to have to tell your (LITTLE) siblings that you don't want to see them today since you never have time for us and have basically disappeared from our lives these last 2 years." Aaaaand that's when I ✨️lost✨️ my shit and popped off 🙃 "ME?! I'm the one that disappeared?!?! How fucking dare you say that. How fucking dare you try to do that to them and me. YOU disappeared from MY life at 4 years old, LIED to the entire family (they still questioned if I'm "there's" or not, even had received the comment "Even though you're not ours, your ours because we've known you since a baby" and only 1 of bio dad's parents is still somewhat in touch with me to this day btw) I didn't see YOU for 12 YEARS of my life! I reached out to YOU, I have been the only one making an effort to keep the line of communication open and going and even after all of that plus my explaining that I work TWO full-time jobs plus full-time school, you still have the nerve and audacity to make me the bad guy and say I'm the one not trying here?! YOU are going to continue to LIE and tell MY siblings that I don't want to see them when that couldn't be further from the truth?! I'm going to tell you this ONCE, YOU blew your first chance of staying in my life when I was a child, now you're blowing it a SECOND time with me as an adult; there WILL NOT be a third time. I WILL NOT subject myself to this nor do I need your added stress. I WILL NOT allow you to do this to me EVER again. If my siblings or even step mom (or that side of the family) want to be in contact with me-I will gladly accept that but YOU are DEAD to me. Don't talk to me, don't contact me, I want NOTHING to do with YOU anymore, sperm donor." ... no response ...every couple of years after that I got a "happy birthday" or "merry christmas" here and there but I never responded. It's been a few years with no interaction from him. I just miss my siblings. I got so attached to them and I miss them, I tried staying in contact through video chats but they were still fairly young at that point so it was difficult plus having him or step mom in the background sometimes was awkward. They're now getting a bit older, sibling 2 is turning 18, sibling 3 will be 16. We have each other on social media but don't talk and very very VERY rarely interact with likes on posts. I'm afraid to make the first move, I don't want to push anything, I don't know what bio dad has been feeding into their brains about me, etc. My relationship with them will NEVER be as close as with my almost 21 y/o sibling 1 from (adopted) dad, which I can accept, I absolutely love my sibling 1 that I grew up with like nothing and no one else; I practically raised him tbh. But I do think about the other 2 siblings, I miss them, I just don't know if I should respect unspoken boundaries or make the first move? What do you think? And lmk if you want more of these batshit crazy stories that I've went through (tbh I'm probably going to post another seeking advice on another subject). ✌🏻
submitted by moomunequita to Advice [link] [comments]
It's a very very long story and there's more that I could go on about but- My parents had me young, mom (19), bio dad (21). They separated when I was around 3 or 4 y/o and that's when my dad (19) (that later adopted me) came into my life. When he went to adopt me at about 7 y/o, before sibling 1 was born, they needed bio dad to release his rights; he agreed on one condition from my mom, 'Don't talk to my family anymore, I will handle it'. So he signed, with the additional agreement that he would not have to pay child support, dad adopted me. I ended up with 1 little sibling and I wanted nothing to do with bio dad at this point, he was already out of my life since the adoption. At around 12 years old, my parents started their divorce, moms second divorce. This divorce was completely different. At first, I hated my (adopted) dad but then again, he used to work 3 jobs to support us, only had 1 day off and used it as a "cleaning day" (which I later appreciated as an adult because I had SEVERE allergies, but in the moment I was just like wtf man fr?) From 13 y/o to about 15 y/o my moms at the time bf was sexually abusing me, forcing me to "cuddle" on the couch, he would pretend to fall asleep (in 5 seconds) and touch my non existent boobs and coochie while grinding his boner against my butt until he had enough. I would lay there silently crying until he actually fell asleep, slowly crawl away, and be up the whole rest of the school night, in shock, crying, cutting myself, and writing very depressing poems. He would break open the bathroom door while I was bathing and would try to peep at me in the tub. I'd cover myself under the bubble bath for HOURS until I had no bubbles and the water was cold. I then tried hurting myself even worse but sibling walked in on me. I broke down and thought if I do this, this dude is going to go for my sibling so I'll just take whatever it is to protect them. So I did. I dealt with all the things plus him walking in on me SERVERAL times in my bedroom each time after I'd have a bath/shower (no lock on the door). This guy also apparently would hit, strangle, and rape my mom. I came to find out that he had a record too, he and his brother abducted a 17 y/o or 18 y/o girl, took her to a trap house, raped her in a bathroom with a pole-blood in the tub, sink, toilet, floor, etc. He also was busted because he put a garbage bag over another man's head and lit it on fire-because the man was black. (Dude ended up being dishonorably discharged later on btw) Eventually, she got rid of him, dated a bit, and settled with a new bf, my now step dad of over 10 years. At this point, I was 16 y/o, had a GREAT relationship with (adopted) dad (not so much my mom), and became curious about my bio dad-where I came from, family customs/traditions, similarities/differences, interests, the other half of who I am. I found him on social media, reached out but didn't get a response for 2-3 weeks. Shortly after us chatting, I went to see him (adopted dad and sibling 1 came with). I had 2 more siblings from bio dad, they were a decade or so younger than me, and sibling 3 didn't resemble me much but did with sibling 2 BUT sibling 2 looked so much like me at that age, weird. A short time later, there was a family event by bio dad, I was invited but had no way to get there (about a 6 hour drive from where I was at the time) so his sistemy aunt said she'd take me. She picked me up and I was to spend the night at her house (with my 2 cousins) then we would travel in the morning. I was so excited because I vaguely remember cousin 1 from childhood, apparently we were super close growing up together, I was eager to reconnect and bond with my cousins. When spending the night, cousin 2 went to sleep early (a bit younger than cousin 1 and I), so cousin 1 and I were talking for hours, it was great being able to reconnect/re-establish our relationship...until he kissed me, threw himself on me, tried getting me to touch him as he started to touch me. I said stop wtf what are you doing we are FIRST cousins!! He chuckled and said "We are but we're not" ... "wtf are you talking about?" ... "I'm not supposed to say but your dad had a DNA test done during tour parents divorce and told all of us your mom cheated on him, you're not ACTUALLY his acoording to the test" ... so at this point, I'm disgusted, have so many questions, confused, am in a house of 'family' that I don't know/don't believe that I am family-I went to sleep. Next day we traveled to see bio dad and after the event I asked him and step mom about it and also mentioned that because of this cousin 1 tried "xyz". Bio dad's response to the DNA-"Your mother had the DNA test done and it said I was not your bio father, she probably lied/gave me a fake test so I would stay out of your life." I went to my mom and questioned her, she said "Absolutely not, you know your (adopted) father and I don't talk so you can even ask him to verify that I'm not lying. I have no idea about anything that has to do with a DNA test, we never had one as he (bio das) was my first and we got married then I was prengant with you about 3-4 months after getting married." I asked (adopted) dad and his story lined up perfectly with my mom's. So bio dad lied to me and his entire side of the family to save face. He lied to all of them because his agreement of giving up his rights to me and not having to pay child support would not have been supported by his side of the family so he told them I wasn't his and supposedly provided a (fake) test so they'd get off his back about it. My grandfather from him said he saw the test-but there was no test! Beyond fucked up man...but whatever. I still wanted a connection. I wanted to leave the bullshit in the past and move forward right? So, fast forward a bit, I was in a 3 year (3 out of 3.5 year) relationship with a TRUE P.O.S. bf that was physically, mentally, emotionally, and verbally abusive. We lived together for 3 years out of our 3.5 year relationship. He was addicted to porn, would call me a bitch every single day amoung other things, ended up raping me and thought it was funny, would hit, kick, choke me (not in the good way), and push me off the bed but then say "You think I want to be like this?! You think I want to do this to you?! Hurt you?! You're making me do it, it's your fault because you have issues." I wasn't "allowed" to talk to my guy friends because they're guys (and I didn't have many girl friends at all), especially my best guy friend that I grew up with and had known since 3 y/o. Bf would isolate me from my families even. At work, I only would talk to my guy friends/male co-workers if bf wasn't there otherwise he would ignore me the whole shift and be brutal when we got home (yeah, we also worked together for a bit over 3 years). I then found out that bf went on the dark web and watched a man kidnap someone, rape her, murder her, and proceed to rape her corpse...my bf was getting off on it! He even said he went back on the next night to do it again but site was blocked. FUCKING PSYCHOTIC. I could go on and on about his craziness. I was his 3rd virgin btw and at work we had a "work daughter" (was so close to that girl, she was 3 years younger than me, 5 years younger than bf and I used to go to her (when bf didnt have same shift as me) crying and telling her everything that would happen with him, so she knew all the shit he did). I was scared he was going to kill me one day, I was scared to stay, scared to leave, all the stupid things and all I wanted was consistent love. We did end up breaking up a few months after I turned 21, he ended up dating our work daughter and took her virginity too! He also did all the shit to her as he did to me! I felt bad for her at first but then thought no you dumb fuck, you knew EVERYTHING you were getting into smh. Anyway, I went to a family event for bio dad, bf was working, they wanted to meet him; we set up lunch for the following day. Bio dad said he was going to give bf the "talk" yk...with the shot gun type of talk. I said I don't feel comfortable with that because firstly, it's not his place, I have my dad (adopted), secondly, bio dad even agreed that we more so have a friend relationship at this point, and third, I've already been with bf for 3 years so it's not appropriate. He got REALLY salty the morning of the meet. We were coordinating plans and everything when he said along the lines, "We haven't seen you in person for almost 2 years now yet you always have time to go out...etc.etc." I responded, "The two times that you have seen me post that I was out, I was across the street from work. I went there for about 2 hours both times with bf and co-workers. I cannot drive 6-8 hours to you and 6-8 hours back in the same day. I work two full time jobs and am going to college online full-time. I'm sorry that I'm making you feel this way or that I've been distant but I try talking and seeing you all (on Skype and such) as much as I can. I don't know what else you want me to do or say at this point. That's why I'm excited for this meet up today. You also could have put in the effort to come out this way these last two years to visit me as well, but again, I'm sorry. I hope you all aren't mad at me, I'm really trying here." He then tells me "I'm going to have to cancel lunch today. I don't think meeting today is a good idea. Now I'm going to have to tell your (LITTLE) siblings that you don't want to see them today since you never have time for us and have basically disappeared from our lives these last 2 years." Aaaaand that's when I ✨️lost✨️ my shit and popped off 🙃 "ME?! I'm the one that disappeared?!?! How fucking dare you say that. How fucking dare you try to do that to them and me. YOU disappeared from MY life at 4 years old, LIED to the entire family (they still questioned if I'm "there's" or not, even had received the comment "Even though you're not ours, your ours because we've known you since a baby" and only 1 of bio dad's parents is still somewhat in touch with me to this day btw) I didn't see YOU for 12 YEARS of my life! I reached out to YOU, I have been the only one making an effort to keep the line of communication open and going and even after all of that plus my explaining that I work TWO full-time jobs plus full-time school, you still have the nerve and audacity to make me the bad guy and say I'm the one not trying here?! YOU are going to continue to LIE and tell MY siblings that I don't want to see them when that couldn't be further from the truth?! I'm going to tell you this ONCE, YOU blew your first chance of staying in my life when I was a child, now you're blowing it a SECOND time with me as an adult; there WILL NOT be a third time. I WILL NOT subject myself to this nor do I need your added stress. I WILL NOT allow you to do this to me EVER again. If my siblings or even step mom (or that side of the family) want to be in contact with me-I will gladly accept that but YOU are DEAD to me. Don't talk to me, don't contact me, I want NOTHING to do with YOU anymore, sperm donor." ... no response ...every couple of years after that I got a "happy birthday" or "merry christmas" here and there but I never responded. It's been a few years with no interaction from him. I just miss my siblings. I got so attached to them and I miss them, I tried staying in contact through video chats but they were still fairly young at that point so it was difficult plus having him or step mom in the background sometimes was awkward. They're now getting a bit older, sibling 2 is turning 18, sibling 3 will be 16. We have each other on social media but don't talk and very very VERY rarely interact with likes on posts. I'm afraid to make the first move, I don't want to push anything, I don't know what bio dad has been feeding into their brains about me, etc. My relationship with them will NEVER be as close as with my almost 21 y/o sibling 1 from (adopted) dad, which I can accept, I absolutely love my sibling 1 that I grew up with like nothing and no one else; I practically raised him tbh. But I do think about the other 2 siblings, I miss them, I just don't know if I should respect unspoken boundaries or make the first move? What do you think? And lmk if you want more of these batshit crazy stories that I've went through (tbh I'm probably going to post another seeking advice on another subject). ✌🏻
2024.06.09 16:22 moomunequita AITA/Venting/Advice?
TRIGGER WARNING- SA, etc.
It's a very very long story and there's more that I could go on about but- My parents had me young, mom (19), bio dad (21). They separated when I was around 3 or 4 y/o and that's when my dad (19) (that later adopted me) came into my life. When he went to adopt me at about 7 y/o, before sibling 1 was born, they needed bio dad to release his rights; he agreed on one condition from my mom, 'Don't talk to my family anymore, I will handle it'. So he signed, with the additional agreement that he would not have to pay child support, dad adopted me. I ended up with 1 little sibling and I wanted nothing to do with bio dad at this point, he was already out of my life since the adoption. At around 12 years old, my parents started their divorce, moms second divorce. This divorce was completely different. At first, I hated my (adopted) dad but then again, he used to work 3 jobs to support us, only had 1 day off and used it as a "cleaning day" (which I later appreciated as an adult because I had SEVERE allergies, but in the moment I was just like wtf man fr?) From 13 y/o to about 15 y/o my moms at the time bf was sexually abusing me, forcing me to "cuddle" on the couch, he would pretend to fall asleep (in 5 seconds) and touch my non existent boobs and coochie while grinding his boner against my butt until he had enough. I would lay there silently crying until he actually fell asleep, slowly crawl away, and be up the whole rest of the school night, in shock, crying, cutting myself, and writing very depressing poems. He would break open the bathroom door while I was bathing and would try to peep at me in the tub. I'd cover myself under the bubble bath for HOURS until I had no bubbles and the water was cold. I then tried hurting myself even worse but sibling walked in on me. I broke down and thought if I do this, this dude is going to go for my sibling so I'll just take whatever it is to protect them. So I did. I dealt with all the things plus him walking in on me SERVERAL times in my bedroom each time after I'd have a bath/shower (no lock on the door). This guy also apparently would hit, strangle, and rape my mom. I came to find out that he had a record too, he and his brother abducted a 17 y/o or 18 y/o girl, took her to a trap house, raped her in a bathroom with a pole-blood in the tub, sink, toilet, floor, etc. He also was busted because he put a garbage bag over another man's head and lit it on fire-because the man was black. (Dude ended up being dishonorably discharged later on btw) Eventually, she got rid of him, dated a bit, and settled with a new bf, my now step dad of over 10 years. At this point, I was 16 y/o, had a GREAT relationship with (adopted) dad (not so much my mom), and became curious about my bio dad-where I came from, family customs/traditions, similarities/differences, interests, the other half of who I am. I found him on social media, reached out but didn't get a response for 2-3 weeks. Shortly after us chatting, I went to see him (adopted dad and sibling 1 came with). I had 2 more siblings from bio dad, they were a decade or so younger than me, and sibling 3 didn't resemble me much but did with sibling 2 BUT sibling 2 looked so much like me at that age, weird. A short time later, there was a family event by bio dad, I was invited but had no way to get there (about a 6 hour drive from where I was at the time) so his sistemy aunt said she'd take me. She picked me up and I was to spend the night at her house (with my 2 cousins) then we would travel in the morning. I was so excited because I vaguely remember cousin 1 from childhood, apparently we were super close growing up together, I was eager to reconnect and bond with my cousins. When spending the night, cousin 2 went to sleep early (a bit younger than cousin 1 and I), so cousin 1 and I were talking for hours, it was great being able to reconnect/re-establish our relationship...until he kissed me, threw himself on me, tried getting me to touch him as he started to touch me. I said stop wtf what are you doing we are FIRST cousins!! He chuckled and said "We are but we're not" ... "wtf are you talking about?" ... "I'm not supposed to say but your dad had a DNA test done during tour parents divorce and told all of us your mom cheated on him, you're not ACTUALLY his acoording to the test" ... so at this point, I'm disgusted, have so many questions, confused, am in a house of 'family' that I don't know/don't believe that I am family-I went to sleep. Next day we traveled to see bio dad and after the event I asked him and step mom about it and also mentioned that because of this cousin 1 tried "xyz". Bio dad's response to the DNA-"Your mother had the DNA test done and it said I was not your bio father, she probably lied/gave me a fake test so I would stay out of your life." I went to my mom and questioned her, she said "Absolutely not, you know your (adopted) father and I don't talk so you can even ask him to verify that I'm not lying. I have no idea about anything that has to do with a DNA test, we never had one as he (bio das) was my first and we got married then I was prengant with you about 3-4 months after getting married." I asked (adopted) dad and his story lined up perfectly with my mom's. So bio dad lied to me and his entire side of the family to save face. He lied to all of them because his agreement of giving up his rights to me and not having to pay child support would not have been supported by his side of the family so he told them I wasn't his and supposedly provided a (fake) test so they'd get off his back about it. My grandfather from him said he saw the test-but there was no test! Beyond fucked up man...but whatever. I still wanted a connection. I wanted to leave the bullshit in the past and move forward right? So, fast forward a bit, I was in a 3 year (3 out of 3.5 year) relationship with a TRUE P.O.S. bf that was physically, mentally, emotionally, and verbally abusive. We lived together for 3 years out of our 3.5 year relationship. He was addicted to porn, would call me a bitch every single day amoung other things, ended up raping me and thought it was funny, would hit, kick, choke me (not in the good way), and push me off the bed but then say "You think I want to be like this?! You think I want to do this to you?! Hurt you?! You're making me do it, it's your fault because you have issues." I wasn't "allowed" to talk to my guy friends because they're guys (and I didn't have many girl friends at all), especially my best guy friend that I grew up with and had known since 3 y/o. Bf would isolate me from my families even. At work, I only would talk to my guy friends/male co-workers if bf wasn't there otherwise he would ignore me the whole shift and be brutal when we got home (yeah, we also worked together for a bit over 3 years). I then found out that bf went on the dark web and watched a man kidnap someone, rape her, murder her, and proceed to rape her corpse...my bf was getting off on it! He even said he went back on the next night to do it again but site was blocked. FUCKING PSYCHOTIC. I could go on and on about his craziness. I was his 3rd virgin btw and at work we had a "work daughter" (was so close to that girl, she was 3 years younger than me, 5 years younger than bf and I used to go to her (when bf didnt have same shift as me) crying and telling her everything that would happen with him, so she knew all the shit he did). I was scared he was going to kill me one day, I was scared to stay, scared to leave, all the stupid things and all I wanted was consistent love. We did end up breaking up a few months after I turned 21, he ended up dating our work daughter and took her virginity too! He also did all the shit to her as he did to me! I felt bad for her at first but then thought no you dumb fuck, you knew EVERYTHING you were getting into smh. Anyway, I went to a family event for bio dad, bf was working, they wanted to meet him; we set up lunch for the following day. Bio dad said he was going to give bf the "talk" yk...with the shot gun type of talk. I said I don't feel comfortable with that because firstly, it's not his place, I have my dad (adopted), secondly, bio dad even agreed that we more so have a friend relationship at this point, and third, I've already been with bf for 3 years so it's not appropriate. He got REALLY salty the morning of the meet. We were coordinating plans and everything when he said along the lines, "We haven't seen you in person for almost 2 years now yet you always have time to go out...etc.etc." I responded, "The two times that you have seen me post that I was out, I was across the street from work. I went there for about 2 hours both times with bf and co-workers. I cannot drive 6-8 hours to you and 6-8 hours back in the same day. I work two full time jobs and am going to college online full-time. I'm sorry that I'm making you feel this way or that I've been distant but I try talking and seeing you all (on Skype and such) as much as I can. I don't know what else you want me to do or say at this point. That's why I'm excited for this meet up today. You also could have put in the effort to come out this way these last two years to visit me as well, but again, I'm sorry. I hope you all aren't mad at me, I'm really trying here." He then tells me "I'm going to have to cancel lunch today. I don't think meeting today is a good idea. Now I'm going to have to tell your (LITTLE) siblings that you don't want to see them today since you never have time for us and have basically disappeared from our lives these last 2 years." Aaaaand that's when I ✨️lost✨️ my shit and popped off 🙃 "ME?! I'm the one that disappeared?!?! How fucking dare you say that. How fucking dare you try to do that to them and me. YOU disappeared from MY life at 4 years old, LIED to the entire family (they still questioned if I'm "there's" or not, even had received the comment "Even though you're not ours, your ours because we've known you since a baby" and only 1 of bio dad's parents is still somewhat in touch with me to this day btw) I didn't see YOU for 12 YEARS of my life! I reached out to YOU, I have been the only one making an effort to keep the line of communication open and going and even after all of that plus my explaining that I work TWO full-time jobs plus full-time school, you still have the nerve and audacity to make me the bad guy and say I'm the one not trying here?! YOU are going to continue to LIE and tell MY siblings that I don't want to see them when that couldn't be further from the truth?! I'm going to tell you this ONCE, YOU blew your first chance of staying in my life when I was a child, now you're blowing it a SECOND time with me as an adult; there WILL NOT be a third time. I WILL NOT subject myself to this nor do I need your added stress. I WILL NOT allow you to do this to me EVER again. If my siblings or even step mom (or that side of the family) want to be in contact with me-I will gladly accept that but YOU are DEAD to me. Don't talk to me, don't contact me, I want NOTHING to do with YOU anymore, sperm donor." ... no response ...every couple of years after that I got a "happy birthday" or "merry christmas" here and there but I never responded. It's been a few years with no interaction from him. I just miss my siblings. I got so attached to them and I miss them, I tried staying in contact through video chats but they were still fairly young at that point so it was difficult plus having him or step mom in the background sometimes was awkward. They're now getting a bit older, sibling 2 is turning 18, sibling 3 will be 16. We have each other on social media but don't talk and very very VERY rarely interact with likes on posts. I'm afraid to make the first move, I don't want to push anything, I don't know what bio dad has been feeding into their brains about me, etc. My relationship with them will NEVER be as close as with my almost 21 y/o sibling 1 from (adopted) dad, which I can accept, I absolutely love my sibling 1 that I grew up with like nothing and no one else; I practically raised him tbh. But I do think about the other 2 siblings, I miss them, I just don't know if I should respect unspoken boundaries or make the first move? What do you think? And lmk if you want more of these batshit crazy stories that I've went through (tbh I'm probably going to post another seeking advice on another subject). ✌🏻
submitted by moomunequita to AITAH [link] [comments]
It's a very very long story and there's more that I could go on about but- My parents had me young, mom (19), bio dad (21). They separated when I was around 3 or 4 y/o and that's when my dad (19) (that later adopted me) came into my life. When he went to adopt me at about 7 y/o, before sibling 1 was born, they needed bio dad to release his rights; he agreed on one condition from my mom, 'Don't talk to my family anymore, I will handle it'. So he signed, with the additional agreement that he would not have to pay child support, dad adopted me. I ended up with 1 little sibling and I wanted nothing to do with bio dad at this point, he was already out of my life since the adoption. At around 12 years old, my parents started their divorce, moms second divorce. This divorce was completely different. At first, I hated my (adopted) dad but then again, he used to work 3 jobs to support us, only had 1 day off and used it as a "cleaning day" (which I later appreciated as an adult because I had SEVERE allergies, but in the moment I was just like wtf man fr?) From 13 y/o to about 15 y/o my moms at the time bf was sexually abusing me, forcing me to "cuddle" on the couch, he would pretend to fall asleep (in 5 seconds) and touch my non existent boobs and coochie while grinding his boner against my butt until he had enough. I would lay there silently crying until he actually fell asleep, slowly crawl away, and be up the whole rest of the school night, in shock, crying, cutting myself, and writing very depressing poems. He would break open the bathroom door while I was bathing and would try to peep at me in the tub. I'd cover myself under the bubble bath for HOURS until I had no bubbles and the water was cold. I then tried hurting myself even worse but sibling walked in on me. I broke down and thought if I do this, this dude is going to go for my sibling so I'll just take whatever it is to protect them. So I did. I dealt with all the things plus him walking in on me SERVERAL times in my bedroom each time after I'd have a bath/shower (no lock on the door). This guy also apparently would hit, strangle, and rape my mom. I came to find out that he had a record too, he and his brother abducted a 17 y/o or 18 y/o girl, took her to a trap house, raped her in a bathroom with a pole-blood in the tub, sink, toilet, floor, etc. He also was busted because he put a garbage bag over another man's head and lit it on fire-because the man was black. (Dude ended up being dishonorably discharged later on btw) Eventually, she got rid of him, dated a bit, and settled with a new bf, my now step dad of over 10 years. At this point, I was 16 y/o, had a GREAT relationship with (adopted) dad (not so much my mom), and became curious about my bio dad-where I came from, family customs/traditions, similarities/differences, interests, the other half of who I am. I found him on social media, reached out but didn't get a response for 2-3 weeks. Shortly after us chatting, I went to see him (adopted dad and sibling 1 came with). I had 2 more siblings from bio dad, they were a decade or so younger than me, and sibling 3 didn't resemble me much but did with sibling 2 BUT sibling 2 looked so much like me at that age, weird. A short time later, there was a family event by bio dad, I was invited but had no way to get there (about a 6 hour drive from where I was at the time) so his sistemy aunt said she'd take me. She picked me up and I was to spend the night at her house (with my 2 cousins) then we would travel in the morning. I was so excited because I vaguely remember cousin 1 from childhood, apparently we were super close growing up together, I was eager to reconnect and bond with my cousins. When spending the night, cousin 2 went to sleep early (a bit younger than cousin 1 and I), so cousin 1 and I were talking for hours, it was great being able to reconnect/re-establish our relationship...until he kissed me, threw himself on me, tried getting me to touch him as he started to touch me. I said stop wtf what are you doing we are FIRST cousins!! He chuckled and said "We are but we're not" ... "wtf are you talking about?" ... "I'm not supposed to say but your dad had a DNA test done during tour parents divorce and told all of us your mom cheated on him, you're not ACTUALLY his acoording to the test" ... so at this point, I'm disgusted, have so many questions, confused, am in a house of 'family' that I don't know/don't believe that I am family-I went to sleep. Next day we traveled to see bio dad and after the event I asked him and step mom about it and also mentioned that because of this cousin 1 tried "xyz". Bio dad's response to the DNA-"Your mother had the DNA test done and it said I was not your bio father, she probably lied/gave me a fake test so I would stay out of your life." I went to my mom and questioned her, she said "Absolutely not, you know your (adopted) father and I don't talk so you can even ask him to verify that I'm not lying. I have no idea about anything that has to do with a DNA test, we never had one as he (bio das) was my first and we got married then I was prengant with you about 3-4 months after getting married." I asked (adopted) dad and his story lined up perfectly with my mom's. So bio dad lied to me and his entire side of the family to save face. He lied to all of them because his agreement of giving up his rights to me and not having to pay child support would not have been supported by his side of the family so he told them I wasn't his and supposedly provided a (fake) test so they'd get off his back about it. My grandfather from him said he saw the test-but there was no test! Beyond fucked up man...but whatever. I still wanted a connection. I wanted to leave the bullshit in the past and move forward right? So, fast forward a bit, I was in a 3 year (3 out of 3.5 year) relationship with a TRUE P.O.S. bf that was physically, mentally, emotionally, and verbally abusive. We lived together for 3 years out of our 3.5 year relationship. He was addicted to porn, would call me a bitch every single day amoung other things, ended up raping me and thought it was funny, would hit, kick, choke me (not in the good way), and push me off the bed but then say "You think I want to be like this?! You think I want to do this to you?! Hurt you?! You're making me do it, it's your fault because you have issues." I wasn't "allowed" to talk to my guy friends because they're guys (and I didn't have many girl friends at all), especially my best guy friend that I grew up with and had known since 3 y/o. Bf would isolate me from my families even. At work, I only would talk to my guy friends/male co-workers if bf wasn't there otherwise he would ignore me the whole shift and be brutal when we got home (yeah, we also worked together for a bit over 3 years). I then found out that bf went on the dark web and watched a man kidnap someone, rape her, murder her, and proceed to rape her corpse...my bf was getting off on it! He even said he went back on the next night to do it again but site was blocked. FUCKING PSYCHOTIC. I could go on and on about his craziness. I was his 3rd virgin btw and at work we had a "work daughter" (was so close to that girl, she was 3 years younger than me, 5 years younger than bf and I used to go to her (when bf didnt have same shift as me) crying and telling her everything that would happen with him, so she knew all the shit he did). I was scared he was going to kill me one day, I was scared to stay, scared to leave, all the stupid things and all I wanted was consistent love. We did end up breaking up a few months after I turned 21, he ended up dating our work daughter and took her virginity too! He also did all the shit to her as he did to me! I felt bad for her at first but then thought no you dumb fuck, you knew EVERYTHING you were getting into smh. Anyway, I went to a family event for bio dad, bf was working, they wanted to meet him; we set up lunch for the following day. Bio dad said he was going to give bf the "talk" yk...with the shot gun type of talk. I said I don't feel comfortable with that because firstly, it's not his place, I have my dad (adopted), secondly, bio dad even agreed that we more so have a friend relationship at this point, and third, I've already been with bf for 3 years so it's not appropriate. He got REALLY salty the morning of the meet. We were coordinating plans and everything when he said along the lines, "We haven't seen you in person for almost 2 years now yet you always have time to go out...etc.etc." I responded, "The two times that you have seen me post that I was out, I was across the street from work. I went there for about 2 hours both times with bf and co-workers. I cannot drive 6-8 hours to you and 6-8 hours back in the same day. I work two full time jobs and am going to college online full-time. I'm sorry that I'm making you feel this way or that I've been distant but I try talking and seeing you all (on Skype and such) as much as I can. I don't know what else you want me to do or say at this point. That's why I'm excited for this meet up today. You also could have put in the effort to come out this way these last two years to visit me as well, but again, I'm sorry. I hope you all aren't mad at me, I'm really trying here." He then tells me "I'm going to have to cancel lunch today. I don't think meeting today is a good idea. Now I'm going to have to tell your (LITTLE) siblings that you don't want to see them today since you never have time for us and have basically disappeared from our lives these last 2 years." Aaaaand that's when I ✨️lost✨️ my shit and popped off 🙃 "ME?! I'm the one that disappeared?!?! How fucking dare you say that. How fucking dare you try to do that to them and me. YOU disappeared from MY life at 4 years old, LIED to the entire family (they still questioned if I'm "there's" or not, even had received the comment "Even though you're not ours, your ours because we've known you since a baby" and only 1 of bio dad's parents is still somewhat in touch with me to this day btw) I didn't see YOU for 12 YEARS of my life! I reached out to YOU, I have been the only one making an effort to keep the line of communication open and going and even after all of that plus my explaining that I work TWO full-time jobs plus full-time school, you still have the nerve and audacity to make me the bad guy and say I'm the one not trying here?! YOU are going to continue to LIE and tell MY siblings that I don't want to see them when that couldn't be further from the truth?! I'm going to tell you this ONCE, YOU blew your first chance of staying in my life when I was a child, now you're blowing it a SECOND time with me as an adult; there WILL NOT be a third time. I WILL NOT subject myself to this nor do I need your added stress. I WILL NOT allow you to do this to me EVER again. If my siblings or even step mom (or that side of the family) want to be in contact with me-I will gladly accept that but YOU are DEAD to me. Don't talk to me, don't contact me, I want NOTHING to do with YOU anymore, sperm donor." ... no response ...every couple of years after that I got a "happy birthday" or "merry christmas" here and there but I never responded. It's been a few years with no interaction from him. I just miss my siblings. I got so attached to them and I miss them, I tried staying in contact through video chats but they were still fairly young at that point so it was difficult plus having him or step mom in the background sometimes was awkward. They're now getting a bit older, sibling 2 is turning 18, sibling 3 will be 16. We have each other on social media but don't talk and very very VERY rarely interact with likes on posts. I'm afraid to make the first move, I don't want to push anything, I don't know what bio dad has been feeding into their brains about me, etc. My relationship with them will NEVER be as close as with my almost 21 y/o sibling 1 from (adopted) dad, which I can accept, I absolutely love my sibling 1 that I grew up with like nothing and no one else; I practically raised him tbh. But I do think about the other 2 siblings, I miss them, I just don't know if I should respect unspoken boundaries or make the first move? What do you think? And lmk if you want more of these batshit crazy stories that I've went through (tbh I'm probably going to post another seeking advice on another subject). ✌🏻
2024.06.09 15:01 ibid-11962 Worldbuilding and Touring [Post Murtagh Christopher Paolini Q&A Wrap Up #10]
As discussed in the first post, this is my ongoing compilation of the remaining questions Christopher has answered online between August 1st 2023 and April 30th 2024 which I've not already covered in other compilations.
As always, questions are sorted by topic, and each Q&A is annotated with a bracketed source number. Links to every source used and to the other parts of this compilation will be provided in a comment below.
The previous post focused specifically on inspirations and other media. This installment will focus on Worldbuilding and Touring, how Christopher constructs his worlds, and how he goes about promoting them on tours. The topics aren't actually linked, but they both fill up around half a post and so are being joined here. The next and final post will focus on miscellaneous questions about the real world.
submitted by ibid-11962 to Eragon [link] [comments]
As always, questions are sorted by topic, and each Q&A is annotated with a bracketed source number. Links to every source used and to the other parts of this compilation will be provided in a comment below.
The previous post focused specifically on inspirations and other media. This installment will focus on Worldbuilding and Touring, how Christopher constructs his worlds, and how he goes about promoting them on tours. The topics aren't actually linked, but they both fill up around half a post and so are being joined here. The next and final post will focus on miscellaneous questions about the real world.
Worldbuilding
Creating Magic SystemsDid you have a research process when you were writing the Inheritance Cycle? I put a fair bit of thought into the story itself of the Inheritance Cycle, and then some general stuff as to the society and just kind of where things were in the world before writing it. I put a medium amount of thought into the magic system before I started writing, and then as I wrote the implications of it became much more apparent to me, and I really sort of dove deep into it. In retrospect, were I to create a fantasy world from scratch now, I would really put a lot of attention into that magic system and the society beforehand, just to have a good feel for that before I even start chapter one. I would put more restrictions on the magic too. I think the more restrictions, the more interesting, even the more realistic in some ways. [3]Creating Religions
If I were designing a magic system from scratch nowadays I would put way more restrictions on it because I find that the limitations are useful, I don't want the characters getting overpowered, but also just from a storytelling standpoint, incantations, rituals, spells, prayers, potions, all of those mechanical things are just kind of interesting and of course they give lots of opportunities for things to go wrong if you don't follow the correct steps. So I think if I were designing magic from scratch right now I'd put a lot of restrictions and rituals associated with it. So costs, more costs. [25]
What kind of hacks do you have to developing a magic system? Once I have a general idea of the setting, whether science fiction or fantasy, the first question I ask myself is how does it diverge from physics as we know it? Because that is a fundamental question that's going to determine what is possible in this world. It might determine what's possible with warfare, with politics, with industry, manufacturing, travel times, it could affect everything depending on what type of divergence you have. In the World of Eragon, the divergence is that living creatures have the ability to directly manipulate energy using their minds. The reason for that is kind of handwavy, although I have an explanation for it, but that is the divergence and then I tried to be as consistent and physically possible with it at every step of the way past that. When people play games you always get people who are looking how to exploit it. "What's the most I can get out of this game? What's the most I can do?" That's basic human nature. Science is a speedrunning nature I think. So the same sort of thing. You assume that if magic existed there's going to be someone sitting in their basement who's absolutely obsessive about it and is going to figure out every single advantage that that divergence gives them. And you have to be realistic and work that into your world and say "Well people aren't stupid. They are going to figure this out and use it in this way, and what are the implications, socially, physically, and everything else?" Once I have that then you can think about society and culture and everything else, but that basic physical difference from our reality is just to me fundamentally important to understand before I even begin to write. [25]
With standalones you're not dealing with continuity or what rule did you break or things like that. That's interesting, because I would say that writing a sequel for me is faster than writing a standalone. At least for me, the more I know the characters and the world, the faster, like I don't have to do the groundwork of creating a magic system, creating a society, creating the gods and the history. All that's done for me, so I can just slip into it like slipping on an old glove. [33]
A socio-political religion in your world helps drive characters or stories or die-hard fanatic characters forward. How do you go about developing those? Have the courage to let your characters actually believe the things that they are supposed to believe. If you look back historically people really did truly believe these different religions and different systems. Too often I think with modern stories we have people only giving lip service to the supposed belief and instead having very modern attitudes toward it which perhaps doesn't always work. That's understandable if you want a character to be relatable to a modern reader, but there are so many examples of interesting belief systems throughout the world. To me that's something fascinating to write about. But the main thing is just accept that when people truly believe something they're genuine about it and then you can follow that from a logical and storytelling standpoint. What I'd also say is, if you're writing about something that is very different from your own belief system, assuming it's not like completely evil, to try to approach it with a sense of charity. With the understanding that everyone is searching for meaning and understanding. I've always had a soft spot for the old television show Babylon 5, because although I don't believe that the creator J. Michael Straczynski is religious, he writes all of his characters with great sympathy and understanding, he's never cynical about it, and he's not putting up straw man arguments or criticizing any of the characters. He's like "They're searching for meaning. They're struggling with the great questions as we all do, and each one is trying to solve those questions in their own way." And I always really appreciated that he wasn't being cynical about it or really shallow. [25]Creating Languages
Did you think of the ancient language, not just as a mechanic, but also as a parable of our own language? I was thinking about how language itself feels like magic to me. You can write a story, you can convey information. Language in many ways is our greatest tool and makes us human along with, I would argue, our hands, our ability to manipulate objects and use actual tools. But one without the other wouldn't really work and wouldn't allow us to be a technological species. We could have language with no ability to handle tools, and then we wouldn't be what we are now. But I find language fascinating and I find the function of language incredibly interesting. And there is this idea in the real world going back to the beginning of time, that to name something is to understand it, and gives you a certain amount of power over it, whether that's a person or a physical object. And the ancient language is just taking that idea seriously. And I'm not the first author or tradition to do that, but is it a parallel? Is it a metaphor? I don't know if I'd go that far, but it definitely ties into the use of language and my ideas about it. What's crazy to me is there is a theoretical arrangement of words right now that would give us a massive breakthrough in science and physics. There's a theoretical arrangement of words that were I to write it or anyone else would influence how people think about the next presidential election to such a degree that it might actually changed the election. These are all theoretically possible and you can think of many many other things that you could do with language. We just lack the knowledge of what those arrangement of words are, and so we're constantly clawing our way toward new knowledge and new uses of language. [19]Creating Maps
The languages that you were playing around with in The Inheritance cycle, they were Germanic, Anglo Saxon based? The ancient language, the magical language, is based very strongly on Old Norse, which of course is Germanic or related to Old High German. The Dwarven language was invented pretty much from scratch although it is an agglutinative language like German is. And then the other languages have not appeared very much in the series. They're just little scraps here and there. To be clear, I am not a linguist, and I have not devoted the time and energy to developing these in a formal or rigorous way, the way that Tolkien did. Tolken was a linguist and that was his forte. I got far enough down that path while working on the Inheritance Cycle that I really began to appreciate how every word has a history and that history is inexorably tied to the history of the land. It's often said that Tolkien created Middle-earth just to explain his languages, as a setting for the languages. Which isn't entirely true, but there is truth to that. That's what I was encountering and I was realizing that I could spend 20 years, 10 years, just working on the languages and building this out. It might have been a worthwhile venture, but the tradeoff would have been no more books published during that time. I want to tell a story. [28]
What I would do these days, or what I did with other languages, is come up with a couple of words that sort of had a general feel that I liked and then extrapolating from those invented words, figuring out what consonants and vowels and clusters thereof that I wanted. Come up with some more sample words based off that and then start working out some grammar. Grammar is probably my weakest spot since at the time I wasn't really aware of non-English grammar systems and I've put some more attention in that since then. [34]
The language and culture that you describe in the books seem very real. How do you start inventing a language? You shamelessly steal from Germanic mythology and Scandinavian mythology, just like Tolkien did. But I'm no linguist, I did my best, I have a copy of the Nibelungen up on my shelf along with the Eddas, and I based one of my languages on Old Norse, which gave it a nice sound and feel. So the main thing is picking things that make sense for your world and then trying to be internally consistent. [2]
At what point in your writing process do you start creating the map? I've created the maps at different times in different books. At first I thought I didn't need a map because I thought that a good book should be perfectly understandable without a map. You shouldn't need to rely on anything outside of the text in order to enjoy it. And I still think that's generally true, but a map can add a lot. So for Eragon, I did it partway through the book. If I were to do a stand-alone fantasy novel, I would definitely want to work out the maps and stuff before writing it. [12]Creating Dragons
The map for Eragon, the original black and white map, I did about halfway or a third of the way into Eragon. My idea was, and I still kind of believe this, that a well-written book shouldn't need a map in order to understand the story. You should be able to keep your bearings just based off the text. What I ran into though was that I was getting lost in the world myself with the amount of places and things after a certain point. And so I drew a map. [34]
For me I think if you're creating something in the real world obviously that gives you certain constraints and certain advantages but if you're starting with something from scratch, I find creating a map right up front is really helpful because your story is not going to visit every square inch on your map so by filling in those other details on the map you're going to get more story ideas and also ideas for potential conflicts, travel distances. It all feeds into the realism of the story as well as potentially future stories. It's fun stuff. The downside is you could spend your whole life worldbuilding. There's a there's a book from World War Two called Islandia, and the guy just spent his whole life creating this island and its culture to the point of working out the actual layers of geography of stone in the island. I've never actually read the book, I don't know if it's any good, but I know it was fairly popular when it came out. [25]
What hacks do you have for for creating geography and points of interest within your world? When I was creating the map for Alagaësia I actually used a old National Geographic Atlas and traced over various coastlines and then distorted them and pasted on top of each other in order to get sort of a natural feeling coastline. Please don't compare the island of Vroengard to the outline of Greece. Please don't do that. And then you have Robin Hobb who just turned Alaska upside down for her map which I always love because I've lived in Alaska twice. I think she told me that she never actually expected the book to get published, but then she got stuck with that because everything was tied to the geography that she started with. [25]
I think that a good map ought to have lots of points of interest, and the tricky bit is, without getting so detailed that it becomes cluttered. You see that sometimes with real world maps, like atlases and stuff, where there's a ton of place names, city names, river names, road names. All of which are useful and necessary, but it can actually visually get in the way of the art, perhaps the artistic effect that you would want a fantasy map to have in a book or a movie or even a game. [12]
There are world generators that you can just click through. It's really easy nowadays with technology to build worlds just by snapping your fingers. Even with those tools, if you have the time and inclination, I think there is some benefit to redrawing or painting the maps in your own style. I don't know about you, I love seeing when the maps are from the author themselves. I remember Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams. Tad did all the maps himself, and I love that. Even if it's imperfect or a little amateurish it just gives it a really nice feel. I love Tolkien's original art for the same reason. [25]
You are the creator of your own world. Do you feel that you have follow certain canons of fantasy worlds, for example, dragons have four legs and wyverns have two? Or do you feel that you can practically do whatever you want because it's fantasy and you create everything? Yes and no. No because I have already established rules and traditions and precedence in The World of Eragon, so I have to be consistent with that. But if I were writing a new fantasy, I would not feel beholden to any tradition. If I wanted to write a world where the dragons have three legs or feathers or something like that then I would feel free to do that. That's the great thing about speculative fiction is it gives you the freedom to write and create whatever you want to. The thing is when you have a genre where anything is possible it actually reveals the limitations of your imagination. And there are very few authors, myself included, who really make full use of that. But at the same time, limitations can make your fiction more interesting. I think it's important to pick some limitations and that will help actually improve the quality of your work. [7]
Why did you decide to have your dragons have a saddle? I was around horses growing up. And the thought of actually physically being on a creature with very hard scales was rather terrifying if thought about in a practical sense. And so it just seemed to me that there had to be some protection. [33]
When you're writing fantasy and you include dragons, especially a dragon rider fantasy, depending on how many there are there, it's actually quite a difficult thing to not solve all your problems with dragons. I think the solution to that is you focus on the problems that dragons present, which balances out the advantages. And of course people are smart, whether we're talking about humans or elves or dwarves or any other invented species. If dragons were real, you'd come up with counters to them, whether it's a bunch of giant ballistae on your walls, or building domed fortresses, or building underground. You would come up with solutions and it would negate those advantages. And that's always my issue with writing fiction with dragons in the real world. If it's a slightly more modern, then you have to ask, well, why isn't everything different in history? Like if dragons were a constant part of our world, architecture would be different, warfare would be different, politics would be different. Well, no, politics would be the same. What am I saying? [30]
I'm sure all of us have seen the fantasy paintings of like a knight in armor with a lance on a horse facing off against a dragon. Now, to be fair, a lance moving at a decent speed at a horse galloping will have enough kinetic energy behind it to punch through just about anything. It could do a lot of damage. But any decent sized dragon would move so fast and be so strong, you wouldn't have a chance with a lance. You'd need a giant crossbow. That'd be your only choice. The size of a dragon, intelligence of a dragon. Until you get to projectile weapons, you have no chance. [30]
We all know what any creature gets when they bond with a dragon. They get a dragon. But why would a dragon create that bond? Why would they do it? Is it the bond, is it their nature? I think for me, having other species bond with the dragons was essentially a way to keep the dragons from getting wiped out. Because dragons are such a huge threat. If you imagine in the real world, we don't suffer giant predators to be constantly predating and disrupting our world. We remove that threat. Especially if there's magic involved, the ability to remove that threat gets even bigger. So in a way I viewed the bond between rider and dragon as essentially self preservation for the dragons, if not the other species as well. Without some sort of symbiotic relationship, coexistence becomes very, very difficult. That, or the dragons have to be smart enough to just essentially remove themselves from the world and live off in the far off places. But that gets really difficult when you start considering how much they need to eat. I remember reading the Live Ship Trader series and I remember the end of that spoiler alert where it's become clear that true dragons have returned now. And it really was kind of an oh crap moment because you start thinking about what that actually means for there to be dragons in the world again. It's kind of like Reign of Fire. [30]
Promoting The Books
Touring HazardsHow did you do on your book tour? It was a lot. It was a lot. I did 50 days of touring last year between Fractal Noise and Murtagh. Obviously the majority of that was for Murtagh. And of course I had a couple other trips in there as well. I went to New York Comic Con. I had one or two personal trips. So there was a lot of travel last year. My goal is to not have as much travel this year. In general, the book tours were awesome, great crowds for the Fractalverse, enormous crowds for World of Eragon/Murtagh. I don't normally talk about this stuff, but since we're past it, it doesn't matter. I started touring for Murtagh November 6th and then got home for good on December 16th. But there's always a risk of getting sick while you're traveling. And I did pretty well in the US leg of things. And then over in Europe between the jet lag and not sleeping- I had a really amazing dinner, one of my publishers took me out to a three star Michelin restaurant. The problem was the dinner started at 8pm and didn't finish till midnight. And there were two or three desserts, and the last dessert was full of coffee, and I didn't realize it. Absolutely full of coffee. And I did not get to sleep until like four in the morning. And I only had three hours of sleep that night. So I think I got sick the day after as a result. I got so sick on the European tour that at one of my stops I had to call paramedics to my hotel room at 2 a.m. because I couldn't breathe. Ended up with bronchitis for the first time in my life. But I'll have you know, I did every event. I didn't miss a single event. I managed to do all my presentations and made it through in one piece. I've never, never backed down from doing an event, even while bleeding. Can you tell us a little bit about the time that you were bleeding in an event? Well, I was in Europe. I was touring for Inheritance, I'd already toured North America, and then I started in Europe, went to UK, and then I went to Australia and New Zealand. But first country was Germany, and I think I did Munich and Cologne, and then I ended in Berlin. And in Berlin, they had me in this wonderful theater that's like over 100 years old, which is very rare in the city, considering all the bombing during the war. And I'm backstage, which meant down in the basement of this theater. And there's like 500 people out waiting for me to make an appearance and there's someone introducing me and they say my name and everyone starts clapping. And of course you want to get on stage before the applause dies down. And the way you got onto stage in this theater was through a set of stairs. And it really wasn't even steps. It was almost like a ladder and it was wood. And the steps were so old that they were basically hollowed out from all the people that have gone up and down it over the years. So I'm scrambling up this and about halfway up, my right foot slipped off the edge of one of the steps because it was hollowed out and full speed, full strength, full weight, I slammed my shin into the edge of one of the steps, stumbled forward two more steps and did it a second time. But momentum, adrenaline, I keep going, I get up on stage, I waved to everyone. And fortunately for me, because I was speaking to a foreign audience, they had me sitting at a table with a translator and a presenter. So I got to sit down and the table kind of hit everything from view. And I start the presentation, start the event. And after about, I don't know, five minutes, I'm thinking to myself, okay, I've banged my shin before. We've all banged our shins before, but this really bleepin' hurt. So I looked under the table and the whole front of my jean leg on my shin is soaked with blood. There is blood dripping onto the floor and my sock is soaked with blood. So I poked my translator, the presenter next to me that I was doing a couple of events with, and I said, "Hey, look at this". And he glances under and his face just goes white. And I'm colorblind and I saw his face go white. And he said, "Do we need to call an ambulance?" And I'm like, "No, no, we're going to do this." So I did an hour-long presentation. And then I got up and managed to quickly limp over to a signing table. And no one really noticed that I wasn't feeling so hot. And I got behind the signing table, and I signed books for 400 or 500 people. And the funny thing is, I was traveling with this foreign rights agent publicist for Random House named Jocelyn, who was just an absolute beast of a woman. I love her to death. You have to understand, she did a European book tour with me while eight months pregnant. The woman was and is just very impressive. But she grew up on a farm. German family in the US, grew up on a farm. So I showed her my leg when I was sitting down to sign and she just looked at me and she said, "You need to go to the hospital?" I said, "Nope". She said, "I knew you were country. Good man." Slapped me on the back. So I finished signing and then I went back to the hotel and I had to get into a tub of water to soak my jeans off because the blood had dried and glued them to my shin. And the problem was I had a dent all the way down to the bone. And I really should have gone to a hospital because, sorry for the gory details, but what happens is when you get a dent like that, you lose the fat under the skin between the skin and the bone and it doesn't come back unless you get an injection to help it puff out and heal. And I didn't do that because I was on tour, there was no time. So the next day I had to fly to pretty sure it was Barcelona for the St. George Book Festival, which is a walking festival. So you have to walk from bookstore to bookstore in the city and do signings. But that was a bit rough. That actually took over a year to heal properly. I still have that dent. Stuff happens. I've heard some crazy stories with other authors. I'd rather it's my blood, not the fan's blood. [32]Touring Difficulties
We've got blood and sweat, any tears from tour? On occasion. The biggest one is just being away from home. And if anything is a bit off for whatever reason, you can't just pop home and hold someone or do this or do that. It's just difficult to be that far away from home for so long. [32]Meeting Fans around the World
If you're not familiar with book tours, the way it often works is that you fly to a city, you get to your hotel room, you have a little bit of time to freshen up, maybe get some food and then you go to the bookstore and you do your event. And it has to be after people get off from work, so it tends to be a later evening event. If you have a large number of people show up, that means that that time spent talking and signing pushes fairly late in the evening. You go back, you get dinner, and if you're a semi-introvert like so many authors tend to be, you need some time to decompress, which means you probably stay up a little too late reading or writing. And then in the morning, you got to go get another airplane flight and go to the new city. All of which is fine, but going to the airport, doing those flights, with the time it takes to go through an airport these days, it means that the schedule has very little time in it. When I toured for Fractal Noise, the publisher one of the days had me fly from Tampa to Portland and I still had to do an event that day. Which I agreed to. It was my own fault because they had everything on the East Coast and I said, "Well, what about the West Coast? You know, I have readers on the West Coast. They need to get a chance to get a signed book." It was my own fault. But that can get rough when you're doing it for weeks on end at a certain point. You just can't recover. A day off? What's that? But it's a good problem to have. That people want to see you and want to read your books. It's an awesome career to have. [1]
I'm also a big fan of coffee naps. So I will drink a cup of coffee, usually my second cup of coffee, and then I'll go take a nap, and I will nap for about 30 minutes, because after 30 minutes the coffee wakes me up. And I find that 15 to 30 minutes is the perfect length of a nap for me, and if I go past that, I need to sleep for about three hours, because otherwise I get into the middle of a REM cycle, and if I wake up in the middle of a REM cycle, I'm just like groggy and drugged, and I feel worse than if I hadn't napped at all. And then of course, if you're on book tour, the way I have been for a while, you gain the ability to just close your eyes at any point and take a 10 minute nap 15 minute nap anywhere, and it at least helps you stay upright. [19]
You just got back from the U.S. leg of your book tour — who’s making up the crowd? The readership is broad and probably older than it was back in the day. There are still a lot of 8-year-olds, but now there are grandparents, too. I’ve even met some kids who’ve been named after the characters, which is pretty amazing. Because people have been reading the series for so long, I tend to get a mix of incredibly detailed, hyper-focused, deep-dive questions about some of the lore, but also some more general ones about Eragon’s name. [16]Appearance
I'm sure you hear personal stories all the time especially at your readings and your your appearances. It must be lovely, and I guess overwhelming to connect with your fans. That's a good way of putting it: lovely and overwhelming. Everyone has their own personal history with these books. I have people showing up who named their children after the characters, or who've gotten tattoos. Oh my goodness, what's the one you get? Multiple Saphiras, Aryas, Rorans, a couple of Eragons. As a writer, you want people to read your stories, enjoy them, be affected by them. If they're affected so strongly they name their children after your characters, you feel pretty good about it. [28]
Are your European fans different from your American fans? I actually haven't met any children here who are named after characters from my books. That seems to be an American phenomenon. The language barrier sometimes makes it a little more difficult to talk to European fans. But the love for Eragon is just as strong in Europe as it is in the US. This is not your first time on tour in Europe. Is there something you're missing here? I actually noticed that hotels in Europe usually don't have ironing boards or irons. This is standard equipment in America. [24]
My great-grandmother was from Sicily and then my grandfather was from Bologna. I just found out recently that my grandfather as a child was tutored by Fellini's wife. [7]
My grandfather was the stereotype of an elderly Italian gentleman. He had a mustache, he cooked spaghetti and he made the most amazing red sauce for the spaghetti. He used too much profanity. He was quite the character. [35]
Amsterdam is a beautiful city, but if I had grown up here I would probably still have written fantasy, but it would probably have influenced the type of fantasy I write. [23]
I was just in Stockholm on book tour for my latest book. And I've sold a really large number of books, proportionally in Sweden, and I'd never been there before. And I was kind of curious what their thoughts and feelings were on it, given the fact that I have shamelessly pillaged, Anglo-Saxon Scandinavian mythology for my own work. And they said native Swedish authors don't write using their own mythology, they go into the more literary veins and they import and translate other authors who are writing about Scandinavian mythology and they enjoy it immensely, but it doesn't seem to be a homegrown thing for them, which is rather odd, I think. [30]
Old Norse is not so far from German, do you speak a little bit of German? I understand a fair bit. When I've done presentations in Germany, I've had children ask me questions in German, and I can sometimes understand the entire question without translation, but I only speak a few words. [Host 2]: Let's try it. Can you ask the next question in German? Of course. Oh dear. [speaking quickly] Herr Paolini, wie viel von ihrer Vision für die ganze Serie hat sich mit der Zeit verändert? Hat es sich überhaupt verändert? Denn wenn man sich die frühen Werke anguckt, erkennt man, dass sehr viele Sachen aus den frühen Werken in den späteren wieder auftauchen. So dass es eigentlich unmöglich sein kann, dass sie das nicht von Anfang an komplett geplant haben? Translation please. That was not fair. But funny. Yeah, I was just asking, when you started writing the book, and it became not just one book, it became a whole world, it became a series, and I don't want to spoil anything, but if you read the first books and you read the later books, stuff comes up again, and it seems like you actually knew where it was going when you started writing, which is again insane because you were 15. Is that something you just got lucky, or did you really plan for a whole series when you started writing the first one? I planned because I tried writing some stories before Eragon, and I never got past the first five or ten pages because I didn't have a story. I would only have an inciting incident, like a young man finds a dragon egg in the forest. Well, fun, awesome, but that's not a story. So Eragon and the series as it was, was a writing exercise for myself to see if I could outline, plot, and then write at least the first book of a series. So yes, if you read the first book, Eragon, there's actually a scene, a dream sequence in the first book. And it is the very last scene of the last book. And I did that specifically so that I could point to it and say to my readers, "See, I knew what I was doing." But of course, it isn't the last book now. [2]
Before he finished signing them all he asked if I read Fractal Noise, I said yes. He then asked how I liked it. I said I liked To Sleep far more. And to be fair I did. But I could've been a little more less brunt about it. All in all I'm sorry Paolini. I hope you see this. Dude -- No need to apologize! I was the one who put you on the spot. I was just curious about Fractal Noise as it's pretty different from what I normally write. That said, I'm a big boy, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest if someone prefers one book over another. [R]
Have you been on TikTok? How do you find it? I have an account that my assistants post content on for me because I don't have the time and I don't want it on my phone, but it has been a really useful way to connect with readers, and I had a lot of people who came up during my book tour end of last year, who said that they found out about the events I was doing from the posts on TikTok. [33]
Outside of the tour, did you do anything to personally celebrate the release of Murtagh? No. Not to sound blase, but this isn't my first book I've released. Going on the tour is the celebration. Getting to meet the fans. It's an enormous expenditure of energy, time, effort, and it's very joyous and touching and meaningful for me. And I think for a lot of the readers. So that's the celebration. My team and I, we all kind of take a moment to pat ourselves on the back every time a book comes out and then it's back to the grind a bit. Also, I got to celebrate my 40th birthday while on book tour, and I got to celebrate it with my editor, my publicist, my former publicist who's been with me since the beginning. So that was really nice. [32]
Being an author is like the best kind of semi-celebrity, because nine times out of ten, no one knows who you are, you can live a nice quiet life, and then you get to go out and meet people who like your work. And that's a real treat. I grew the beard partly to keep people from recognizing me. But then I've had it for so long that it doesn't work anymore. And I got tired of shaving. But the problem is the beard takes so much time and effort to take care of it, it doesn't save me any time. [1]Signing Books
Did your hat end up getting fixed post-tour? Yup. Fixed it myself with a rivet. [T]
Any advice on how to wear a pirate's hat without it being weird? It's very simple. There's one ingredient. You wear it with confidence. That's all. [36]
People people don't maybe don't realize what an endurance race it is, especially when when books are this big and successful. Like the amount. I once did 9,280 books in an afternoon and a half at a warehouse. I had nine people helping. I stood. I find that if I stand, I don't use my wrist. I can isolate the arm. And I just had someone shove it under me, someone pull it out for me, and everyone else was boxing, unboxing and flapping. But it hurt. It really hurt. I dropped my first name this past year. For the first time in a 20 year career, I finally dropped my first name. Did you feel defeated? Yes. But I have kids now and I just could not afford the time and the strain on my body. I actually got two typewriters. I got really bad inflammation in my right thumb from all the signing and I find that typewriters alleviated that. Also heavier like mechanical keyboards seem to help. So I know like Robin Hobb has suffered some severe problems with her hands with the amount of typing she's done over the years. So yeah, it is an occupational hazard. [33]
I have to say, signing 30,000 sheets is SIGNIFICANTLY harder than mining or placing 30k blocks in #Minecraft. Lol. [T]
Do you have a PO Box or something? I’d pay shipping both ways to have you sign my books. P.O. box is listed on paolini.net. Just include return shipping, please. :D Alternatively, you can arrange signed copies through Conley's Books & Music in Livingston, MT. [R]
If I send a book to a P.O. Box and pay for shipping there and back, would you sign it? Yup. Address is on paolini.net [T]
2024.06.09 12:21 V_for_Violette Her response to my boundary…
 | I told my mother that I did not appreciate the sad mother meme and accompanying sad sack bid for sympathy ‘poem’ that she sent. I said I could not see any reason for her to send me that other than to make me feel guilty. FYI - my mother never calls me 🤷♀️ This was her response… guess I’m not getting an apology then 😅 submitted by V_for_Violette to raisedbyborderlines [link] [comments] |
2024.06.09 11:22 bolanabc Recognition/ Translation of poem
 | Hello! I'd be extremely grateful if someone can help with recognition and translation of this poem. The surrounding information I have is that it was hand-written around the 1920s by my great-grandfather who was settled near Mansa district, Punjab, India. submitted by bolanabc to punjabi [link] [comments] I haven't been able to get a word-by-word translation of the poem because of it being theth punjabi. Also, I don't think this was an original composition since he didn't have any literary pursuits or ambitions that we know of. Any leads to where this can be from? https://preview.redd.it/pbpumly4ki5d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a55b263bd7fc436dfaa895d63e31dcab1116caa9 |
2024.06.09 03:38 Zestyclose-Farmer628 AITA( sorry for my English this is not my native language)
For telling my grandfather that I will not sympathize with him Background for a long time my grandfather smoked and drink a lot. Last year’s he has been diagnosed with cancer. At first he denied it and kept drinking heavily even though the doctor recommended him to stop drinking. But since the last two months the cancer got worse ( because he kept drinking) and since then he has been trying to get some sympathy. All other members of my family sympathize with him except me because since I can remember he is always trying to get everybody attention on him and at the end of most of the family dinner he would drink so much he would get aggressive towards me and the children and passed out on the couch. Last night I was over at my parents house when my grandpa tried again to get my sympathy in front of everyone. So I told him that he would never get my sympathy because he got cancer because he drank a lot of alcohol and that we tried multiple times over the years to get him to stop and he never did, then when he got cancer he denied and worsened his condition so I don’t know why he would want sympathy when he did this all by himself. Later my parents said that I was an a**hole for saying this in front of everyone. So aita
submitted by Zestyclose-Farmer628 to AmItheAsshole [link] [comments]
2024.06.09 03:00 CassieEisenman Vulnerable/covert ngrandmother
So I made a comment on a previous post earlier today and I decided to expound on what I said here, to give some background.
Here's the text of the comment:
People pleasing. I was raised by a woman with extreme BD and unresolved trauma, as well as a teenage pregnancy. As a result, she didn't age mentally past 15. As a young kid who looked up to her and wanted her approval, I was constantly walking on eggshells around her volatile emotions. Unlike the more obvious malignant narcissist types, shes more of a covert/vulnerable narcissist (I forgot the exact name of it just now). So she sees herself as a constant martyr and always needs sympathy and constant validation. Ever since I was a toddler she called me her "best friend", said things like "you're the only one I can trust" and would be extremely possessive. Basically I had no right to bodily autonomy, my own space, or even my own time. She saw everything I did (something as simple as wanting to play outside by myself instead of with her) as a rejection of her and would punish me by not speaking to me for days on end or raging at me with basically no provocation whatsoever. She would be happy and hugging you one minute and then right after would start throwing dishes and claiming you're mistreating her because you didn't laugh at one of her jokes or weren't smiling for a minute. I tried so hard to constantly conceal my emotions/fake them, do whatever she wants, or basically become the parent to her as an 8 year old and act as her therapist all the time, just to keep her calm and hopefully gain her acceptance. Except no amount of it was ever enough for her. She'd get upset and rage at you for not talking enough to her, but even if you talk to her and validate her loneliness for hours on end, she'll just demand more and more and still accuse you of being selfish for having even a little time to yourself. Ever since then, Ive had terrible coping mechanisms of constantly trying to mediate everyone's emotions, always being aware of everyone's emotional states, and never asking anyone for help yet constantly offering up all my time and effort to help anyone else because I'm scared to be a burden. I've been having to teach myself to start enforcing boundaries with people, and learning to value myself enough to know that I don't need to be the fixer to everyone's problems and that it's okay to have my own needs too or to need help sometimes. I'm often so afraid to set boundaries with people because I'm afraid they'll leave if I do or tell me I'm being "unreasonable". Learning to say no and learning to respect yourself is one of the most important things to learn that few people actually know how to do.
Before I say anything, I'll preface by saying that my grandmother is only about 50 years old. She had my mom at 15, so when I talk about the way she is, people usually hear grandmother and assume she has dementia, but the reality is she's always been this way, and is still relatively young.
So because of financial reasons, my parents and I lived with my grandparents for a couple years after I was born. My ngrandmother, due to being age regressed, bonded with me and got attached to me quickly as a toddler. I also enjoyed being around her more than my parents because she's very hyperactive, especially when she's manic. (She would wake me up at 2 or 3 in the morning to go to the beach at night). As a young child, I didn't really understand what was happening or process all of the ways she was psychologically and emotionally abusive, and I definitely didn't see all the ways it affected me, I just focused on when times were good. When my mom was growing up, she was much worse: physically abusive, and when her rage was triggered, she would be extremely unpredictable. Since then, she's had years of therapy and had been medicated, but unfortunately she had not gotten as much better as my parents had thought. So ever since we moved out from their house, I was allowed to spend every summer and December with my grandparents. My grandfather is also a narcissist, but a more overt one. He's a complete chauvinist, patronizing, can never be wrong, and believes he "runs the household". If he ever laid a hand on me, my parents would have killed him, so he was always on his best behavior around me, but he's never accepted me for being gay, and hes always tried to "make me more of a man" by giving me guns on my birthdays or bringing me to gubshows and the shooting range as a kid. My grandmother on the other hand was more likeable in my eyes, and her narcissistic tendencies have always been less obvious because she paints herself as always being the victim, helpless, and always "helps" others but it's always to serve herself and her self image. She has no boundaries and doesn't respect anyone else's and always needs to be the center of attention. At one point her therapist told her he thinks she has Munchausens Syndrome, and she's been known to fake injuries or even injure herself on purpose in order to get sympathy. She goes from doctor to doctor trying to convince them she has various chronic illnesses but coincidentally when the doctor has treated it, it magically comes back or it turns out it was something else all along. Several doctors have called her out when they discovered there was medically nothing wrong with her or when they found evidence of her taking certain medications to get desired symptoms via side effects from the medications.
She'll usually act extremely passive aggressive by stomping about, slamming doors and cabinets, or cleaning aggressively (sometimes other people's houses and kitchens) and uses this as an excuse to snoop or pick fights with other people over supposedly not helping her out enough even though she'll clean when everyone else is asleep or when everyone else is busy. I stopped going to see her when I was 11, and went no contact for awhile. She recently had a traumatic brain injury in an accident and can't remember very much from the past few years (she doesn't remember going no contact) and no matter how many times my mother and I try to tell her that neither of our childhoods with her were good, it just doesn't click for her. Now I'm 18 years old and it's been 7 years since she's last seen me in person. We used to talk on the phone, but eventually she started demanding to talk more and more and would get upset when I'd be in school and couldn't talk on the phone. She'd call me every single day and talk for 8 hours at a time, and whenever I'd try to set a boundary or even try to ask for space or explain to her that I have my own things to do and my own life, she'd try to guilt trip me, gaslight me into thinking I'm being unreasonable or selfish, and if that didn't work, she'd get angry and would try to punish me by refusing to talk to me for days and would try to make me be the one to go running back to her and apologize to her. Since I'd of course never do that anymore, she'd just magically forget the whole thing happened and go back to calling me every day. Eventually I phased out calling her and eventually went to unofficial no contact, though she'd still message me or call me out of the blue trying to make me feel bad for not talking to her enough.
Fast forward some years, and a few weeks ago was my highschool graduation. She came up to visit for the graduation ceremony as is generally expected of family, even though we dreaded her arrival of course. The whole week she was here, I was pleasant and cordial with her, even though I would catch her staring at me and smiling all the time out of the corner of my eye, and felt creeped out. I would still smile back. Her, my mom, and I would spend some time together going out shopping or going out to eat, but shes incredibly draining to be around for the aforementioned reasons. Aside from her emotional abuse and manipulation, she just acts without any regard to anyone else or their feelings. I figured everything was going well until the last night. My mom and I said we were going up to bed, and so did my grandmother. We had made plans to all go out to lunch together before we would drop her off at the airport to go back home.
I decided to stay up a bit to play on my computer in my office (which is right next to my bedroom). At around 2 AM, she started sending me cryptic text messages saying "I can't imagine how you think they way youve been treating me is okay", and then tried to call me on my phone twice, right after. (She was downstairs the whole time btw). Then a few minutes later, she turned on all the lights upstairs, walked up the stairs to my office door, and knocked on it. I opened and she said "I need to talk to you." And I said it's 2 am and if it's that urgent we can talk in the morning. She then said she has to pack in the morning (she had already packed 2 days prior) for the airport and that she wouldn't have time. And I said that I was about to go to bed, so if it's that important we can talk about it over lunch before she leaves and then she claims I had been sleeping all day (I actually hadnt slept for 24 hours due to stress and running errands with her and my mom for the whole day. When we got back home at around 3 pm, I slept until 8 pm, so for about 5 hours.) I reiterated that I'm going to bed and we can talk about it tomorrow, and then she just started saying that I've been mistreating her because I've been cold to her this whole time. (By this point, I've walked over to my bedroom and she's standing in the doorway as I'm holding my bedroom door halfway open). I told her that the last time she saw me I was 11, and now I'm 18, and that I've grown up and act different. I had also explained to her that I'm autistic (so is my mom) and that we communicate differently. I've been polite, but if she was expecting me to spend every moment with her like I did when I was 6, of course she's going to be disappointed. She started raising her voice and said "LOOK HOW YOU'RE SPEAKING TO ME, CAN YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELF?" I calmly told her to please turn out all the lights and go to bed because that's what I'm doing. She then punched the lightswitch and ran downstairs. I shut and locked the door just in case, and turned out the lights like I was going to sleep. Over the next hour (this is now at 3am) I heard her knock on my door again twice and then try to open the door twice as well. I could hear her pacing downstairs, so I started moving heavy objects behind my bedroom door just in case. At this time, I started texting my mom's phone (she leaves her phone downstairs, not in her bedroom, so I knew she wouldn't see the messages now, but she would when she woke up in the morning). My grandmother then texted me that she would find a Lyft to the airport and she said "your tone told me everything I need to know" and "this level of anxiety is dangerous for my health". I had gone to sleep, but when I woke up, my mom had read my texts and went upstairs to sleep outside my bedroom door in case my grandmother tried to get into my room again. She filled me in on the rest of the story in the morning. Apparently my grandmother called a Lyft but fell asleep before they arrived. My dad woke up and she told him she changed her flight, so he tried to get her out of the house and to the airport on time but she was running late, so he got her a ticket for a later flight. When I woke up, she was still downstairs, hiding from my mom and I, since I guess she assumed correctly that she knew all that had happened. My dad ended up taking her to the airport and apparently she had forgotten everything about last night. She sounded incoherent and nothing she was saying was making sense. When they got to the airport, she could barely walk in a straight line and kept wandering off. By the time she got to her gate, she called my mom, and it seemed like she genuinely forgot everything that happened. She cheerfully said she would try to find us a good deal on flights for us to fly out to them and visit them (my grandparents) and said goodbye. She's back to no contact for the foreseeable future.
submitted by CassieEisenman to raisedbynarcissists [link] [comments]
Here's the text of the comment:
People pleasing. I was raised by a woman with extreme BD and unresolved trauma, as well as a teenage pregnancy. As a result, she didn't age mentally past 15. As a young kid who looked up to her and wanted her approval, I was constantly walking on eggshells around her volatile emotions. Unlike the more obvious malignant narcissist types, shes more of a covert/vulnerable narcissist (I forgot the exact name of it just now). So she sees herself as a constant martyr and always needs sympathy and constant validation. Ever since I was a toddler she called me her "best friend", said things like "you're the only one I can trust" and would be extremely possessive. Basically I had no right to bodily autonomy, my own space, or even my own time. She saw everything I did (something as simple as wanting to play outside by myself instead of with her) as a rejection of her and would punish me by not speaking to me for days on end or raging at me with basically no provocation whatsoever. She would be happy and hugging you one minute and then right after would start throwing dishes and claiming you're mistreating her because you didn't laugh at one of her jokes or weren't smiling for a minute. I tried so hard to constantly conceal my emotions/fake them, do whatever she wants, or basically become the parent to her as an 8 year old and act as her therapist all the time, just to keep her calm and hopefully gain her acceptance. Except no amount of it was ever enough for her. She'd get upset and rage at you for not talking enough to her, but even if you talk to her and validate her loneliness for hours on end, she'll just demand more and more and still accuse you of being selfish for having even a little time to yourself. Ever since then, Ive had terrible coping mechanisms of constantly trying to mediate everyone's emotions, always being aware of everyone's emotional states, and never asking anyone for help yet constantly offering up all my time and effort to help anyone else because I'm scared to be a burden. I've been having to teach myself to start enforcing boundaries with people, and learning to value myself enough to know that I don't need to be the fixer to everyone's problems and that it's okay to have my own needs too or to need help sometimes. I'm often so afraid to set boundaries with people because I'm afraid they'll leave if I do or tell me I'm being "unreasonable". Learning to say no and learning to respect yourself is one of the most important things to learn that few people actually know how to do.
Before I say anything, I'll preface by saying that my grandmother is only about 50 years old. She had my mom at 15, so when I talk about the way she is, people usually hear grandmother and assume she has dementia, but the reality is she's always been this way, and is still relatively young.
So because of financial reasons, my parents and I lived with my grandparents for a couple years after I was born. My ngrandmother, due to being age regressed, bonded with me and got attached to me quickly as a toddler. I also enjoyed being around her more than my parents because she's very hyperactive, especially when she's manic. (She would wake me up at 2 or 3 in the morning to go to the beach at night). As a young child, I didn't really understand what was happening or process all of the ways she was psychologically and emotionally abusive, and I definitely didn't see all the ways it affected me, I just focused on when times were good. When my mom was growing up, she was much worse: physically abusive, and when her rage was triggered, she would be extremely unpredictable. Since then, she's had years of therapy and had been medicated, but unfortunately she had not gotten as much better as my parents had thought. So ever since we moved out from their house, I was allowed to spend every summer and December with my grandparents. My grandfather is also a narcissist, but a more overt one. He's a complete chauvinist, patronizing, can never be wrong, and believes he "runs the household". If he ever laid a hand on me, my parents would have killed him, so he was always on his best behavior around me, but he's never accepted me for being gay, and hes always tried to "make me more of a man" by giving me guns on my birthdays or bringing me to gubshows and the shooting range as a kid. My grandmother on the other hand was more likeable in my eyes, and her narcissistic tendencies have always been less obvious because she paints herself as always being the victim, helpless, and always "helps" others but it's always to serve herself and her self image. She has no boundaries and doesn't respect anyone else's and always needs to be the center of attention. At one point her therapist told her he thinks she has Munchausens Syndrome, and she's been known to fake injuries or even injure herself on purpose in order to get sympathy. She goes from doctor to doctor trying to convince them she has various chronic illnesses but coincidentally when the doctor has treated it, it magically comes back or it turns out it was something else all along. Several doctors have called her out when they discovered there was medically nothing wrong with her or when they found evidence of her taking certain medications to get desired symptoms via side effects from the medications.
She'll usually act extremely passive aggressive by stomping about, slamming doors and cabinets, or cleaning aggressively (sometimes other people's houses and kitchens) and uses this as an excuse to snoop or pick fights with other people over supposedly not helping her out enough even though she'll clean when everyone else is asleep or when everyone else is busy. I stopped going to see her when I was 11, and went no contact for awhile. She recently had a traumatic brain injury in an accident and can't remember very much from the past few years (she doesn't remember going no contact) and no matter how many times my mother and I try to tell her that neither of our childhoods with her were good, it just doesn't click for her. Now I'm 18 years old and it's been 7 years since she's last seen me in person. We used to talk on the phone, but eventually she started demanding to talk more and more and would get upset when I'd be in school and couldn't talk on the phone. She'd call me every single day and talk for 8 hours at a time, and whenever I'd try to set a boundary or even try to ask for space or explain to her that I have my own things to do and my own life, she'd try to guilt trip me, gaslight me into thinking I'm being unreasonable or selfish, and if that didn't work, she'd get angry and would try to punish me by refusing to talk to me for days and would try to make me be the one to go running back to her and apologize to her. Since I'd of course never do that anymore, she'd just magically forget the whole thing happened and go back to calling me every day. Eventually I phased out calling her and eventually went to unofficial no contact, though she'd still message me or call me out of the blue trying to make me feel bad for not talking to her enough.
Fast forward some years, and a few weeks ago was my highschool graduation. She came up to visit for the graduation ceremony as is generally expected of family, even though we dreaded her arrival of course. The whole week she was here, I was pleasant and cordial with her, even though I would catch her staring at me and smiling all the time out of the corner of my eye, and felt creeped out. I would still smile back. Her, my mom, and I would spend some time together going out shopping or going out to eat, but shes incredibly draining to be around for the aforementioned reasons. Aside from her emotional abuse and manipulation, she just acts without any regard to anyone else or their feelings. I figured everything was going well until the last night. My mom and I said we were going up to bed, and so did my grandmother. We had made plans to all go out to lunch together before we would drop her off at the airport to go back home.
I decided to stay up a bit to play on my computer in my office (which is right next to my bedroom). At around 2 AM, she started sending me cryptic text messages saying "I can't imagine how you think they way youve been treating me is okay", and then tried to call me on my phone twice, right after. (She was downstairs the whole time btw). Then a few minutes later, she turned on all the lights upstairs, walked up the stairs to my office door, and knocked on it. I opened and she said "I need to talk to you." And I said it's 2 am and if it's that urgent we can talk in the morning. She then said she has to pack in the morning (she had already packed 2 days prior) for the airport and that she wouldn't have time. And I said that I was about to go to bed, so if it's that important we can talk about it over lunch before she leaves and then she claims I had been sleeping all day (I actually hadnt slept for 24 hours due to stress and running errands with her and my mom for the whole day. When we got back home at around 3 pm, I slept until 8 pm, so for about 5 hours.) I reiterated that I'm going to bed and we can talk about it tomorrow, and then she just started saying that I've been mistreating her because I've been cold to her this whole time. (By this point, I've walked over to my bedroom and she's standing in the doorway as I'm holding my bedroom door halfway open). I told her that the last time she saw me I was 11, and now I'm 18, and that I've grown up and act different. I had also explained to her that I'm autistic (so is my mom) and that we communicate differently. I've been polite, but if she was expecting me to spend every moment with her like I did when I was 6, of course she's going to be disappointed. She started raising her voice and said "LOOK HOW YOU'RE SPEAKING TO ME, CAN YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELF?" I calmly told her to please turn out all the lights and go to bed because that's what I'm doing. She then punched the lightswitch and ran downstairs. I shut and locked the door just in case, and turned out the lights like I was going to sleep. Over the next hour (this is now at 3am) I heard her knock on my door again twice and then try to open the door twice as well. I could hear her pacing downstairs, so I started moving heavy objects behind my bedroom door just in case. At this time, I started texting my mom's phone (she leaves her phone downstairs, not in her bedroom, so I knew she wouldn't see the messages now, but she would when she woke up in the morning). My grandmother then texted me that she would find a Lyft to the airport and she said "your tone told me everything I need to know" and "this level of anxiety is dangerous for my health". I had gone to sleep, but when I woke up, my mom had read my texts and went upstairs to sleep outside my bedroom door in case my grandmother tried to get into my room again. She filled me in on the rest of the story in the morning. Apparently my grandmother called a Lyft but fell asleep before they arrived. My dad woke up and she told him she changed her flight, so he tried to get her out of the house and to the airport on time but she was running late, so he got her a ticket for a later flight. When I woke up, she was still downstairs, hiding from my mom and I, since I guess she assumed correctly that she knew all that had happened. My dad ended up taking her to the airport and apparently she had forgotten everything about last night. She sounded incoherent and nothing she was saying was making sense. When they got to the airport, she could barely walk in a straight line and kept wandering off. By the time she got to her gate, she called my mom, and it seemed like she genuinely forgot everything that happened. She cheerfully said she would try to find us a good deal on flights for us to fly out to them and visit them (my grandparents) and said goodbye. She's back to no contact for the foreseeable future.
2024.06.08 09:04 Dofra_445 An anthology of Pahari Poems in various styles, dialects and themes, found in my late Grandfather's library
 | submitted by Dofra_445 to HimachalPradesh [link] [comments] |
2024.06.08 04:53 Skywalkfarms AITA for not giving my convict father $50k of inheritance
Aita? So my grandfather is dying and I’m his poa and his trustee and his sole beneficiary. Now he’s actually on his last days…it’s rough…my grandma my grandpas ex wife and mother of my father wants me to write my father a check for $50k upon the death of my grandfather. My dad is 40. 4th time in federal prison. He is in the worst prison in the us. FLORENCE. My whole life he told me when he got out he’d do better and it was bs every time. My grandma is worried that when he gets out he will be 60 years old and she doesn’t want him to work. I just hate that she’s babying a grown man that totally screwed of his responsibility of taking care of 2 kids. I love him to death and I want to take care of him when he gets out but not being guilt tripped into writing him a check for 50k. I have 2 kids myself and beat my families cycle of shitty dads. I don’t have any sympathy for him in that department. AITA???
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2024.06.08 00:51 EthicsOnReddit Excerpts From The Life Of Imam Jawad A.S
Condolences, peace, and blessings be upon this blessed Imam A.S.
Sunni Scholars Opinions on Imam Jawad A.S
Narrators of traditions have reported that he would offer two rak’as (units of prayer), in each of which he would recite the sura of al-Fatiha (1) and the sura of al-Ikhlaas (112) seventy times.4
He would offer a lot of worship in the month of Rajab. Ar-Rayyan bin as-Salt said, “When Abu Ja’far the second was in Baghdad, he fasted on the middle and the twenty-seventh of Rajab and all his servants fasted with him. He ordered us to offer a prayer that was twelve rak’as.
In each rak’a we had to recite the sura of al-Fatiha and another sura, and when we finished the prayer, we recited the suras of al-Fatiha, al-Ikhlass, al-Falaq (113) and an-Naas (114) four times each, and la ilaha illallahu wallahu akbar, subhanallah wel hamdulillah, wa la hawla wa la quwwata illabillah al-aliy al-adheem5 four times.” 6
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) said, “In Rajab there is a night that is better than all that the sun rises on: it is the night of the twenty- seventh.” He mentioned a special prayer to be offered that night.7
Then, he went out from the gate of al-Hannatin and left. In 219 AH I saw him bid farewell to the House in the night. He kissed the Yemeni Corner and the Black Rock in every turn. In the seventh turn, he went to the rear of the Kaaba near the Yemeni Corner and on the rectangular rock. He removed the dress from his abdomen, kissed the Rock and rubbed on it. He went to the Temple, offered prayer behind it and then he left and did not come back to the House. He stayed at the rear of the Kaaba (al-Multazam) as much as the period of the circumambulation of some of our companions who circumambulated seven or eight turns...”8
Ali bin Mahziyar narrated, ‘I saw Abu Ja'far the second (a.s) in the night of ziyarah (visit) make the circumambulation of women and offer prayer behind the Temple (of Abraham). Then, he entered the well of Zamzam and ladled some water with the bucket. He drank some and pour some over some of his body…one of our companions told me that he had seen him (Imam al-Jawad) in the next year do the same thing.’9
This detailed description of narrators is because the actions of the imams are from the Sunna that the Shia follow in their worship.
From among his supplications is this one: “O You Who has no like or an example, You are Allah; there is no god but You. There is no creator save You. You annihilate the creatures and You remain. You are patient with whoever disobeys You. In forgiveness is Your satisfaction…”10
Once, Muhammad bin al-Fudhayl had written to him asking to teach him a supplication. Imam al-Jawad (a.s) wrote to him, “In the morning and in the evening you say: ‘Allah, Allah is my Lord, the Beneficent, the Merciful. I do not associate with Him anything’ and if you add to this more, it will be good for you. You supplicate Allah with this supplication to satisfy your need because it is for everything by the will of Allah the Almighty and Allah does whatever He likes.”11
The supplications of the infallible imams show the essence of sincerity and obedience to Allah. They had devoted themselves to Allah and His love had been impressed in their feelings and emotions and so they were wholeheartedly devoted when supplicated Him.
Imam Ali (a.s), the pioneer of the great justice in the earth, during his caliphate wore the coarsest clothes and ate the coarsest foods. He did not take any gold or silver for himself, did not collect wealth or build houses. In the light of this shining conduct all the pure imams walked. They all were ascetic in this life and they turned away from its pleasures.
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) was in the prime of youth when al-Ma'moon gave him abundant monies about one million dirhams besides the legal dues that came to him from the Shia who believed in his imamate and the entailed endowments in Qum and other places, but he did not spend anything of those monies on his private affairs. He spent them on the poor and the needy.
Al-Husayn al-Mukari saw Imam al-Jawad (a.s) in Baghdad while being surrounded by honoring and glorifying by the official and public milieus. He thought with himself that Imam al-Jawad (a.s) would not go back to his homeland in Yathrib and he would reside in Baghdad where he lived at ease and luxury. Imam al-Jawad (a.s) knew Husayn’s intention and so he went near him and said, ‘O Husayn, the bread of barley and the ground salt in the sanctum (Medina) of my grandfather the messenger of Allah is more beloved to me than what you see me in…’12
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) did not like the means of luxury and ease the state had given to him. He was like his fathers who had divorced the worldly life and turned towards Allah thinking of nothing other than Him.
The man said, ‘No, I do not.’
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) took the man with him and went to the small village where the bondmaid was there. He took the man to a house and ordered him to come in. The man refused to go into the house because he did not know whose house it was. Imam al-Jawad (a.s) had just bought the house recently. Imam al-Jawad (a.s) insisted on the man to come in. They both came into the house and when they saw the bondmaid, Imam al-Jawad (a.s) asked the man, ‘Do you know her?’
The man said, ‘Yes, I do!’
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) said to him, ‘She, the house with all its furniture, the garden and its yield are yours. You can live with the bondmaid.’ The man’s heart was filled with delight and he was confused how to thank Imam al-Jawad (a.s).14
These are some of the plentiful news historians have mentioned about the generosity of Imam al-Jawad (a.s). Narrators and historians say that the generosity of Imam al-Jawad (a.s) and his charity had included even the animals.
Muhammad bin al-Waleed al-Kirmani narrated, ‘One day, I had a meal with Abu Ja'far the second (a.s). When I finished eating and the dishes were lifted, the servant went to pick the crumbs that were on the ground. Abu Ja'far (a.s) said to him, ‘Leave whatever there is in the desert even if it is a leg of a sheep and pick whatever on the ground inside the house!’15 Imam al-Jawad (a.s) ordered his servant to leave the food that was in the desert for birds and beasts.
Ahmed bin Zakariyya as-Saydalani narrated that a man from bani16 Hanifa from Sajistan had said, “I accompanied Abu Ja'far in the year when he went to perform the hajj at the beginning of the rule of al- Mu’tassim.17 I said to him when we were at the meal, ‘May I die for you! Our wali believes in you and loves you. On me there is a land tax to his diwan. If you please, may I die for you, to write to him to be kind to me.’ He said, ‘I do not know him.’ I said, ‘May I die for you! He is one of your lovers and followers and your letter to him will benefit me.”
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) responded to him and wrote this letter: “The bearer of my letter has mentioned the good beliefs of you. You will not be rewarded for your deeds except those which you do correctly. Do good to your brothers and know that Allah the Almighty will ask you about everything even to the weight of an atom and a grain of mustard…’
When the man went back to Sajistan, he found that the wali al-Husayn bin Abdullah an-Naysaboori, who knew about the letter that Imam al-Jawad (a.s) had sent to him, had come to receive him from two leagues before he would arrive. The wali took the letter and kissed it. He considered that as an honor to him. He asked the man about his need and the man told him.
He said to the man, ‘Do not give me any tax as long as I am in my position’ Then he asked him about his family and children to know their number and then he gave them presents. The man did not pay the tax as long as the wali was alive, besides that the wali did not stop his gifts to him. All that was due to the blessing and kindness of Imam al-Jawad (a.s).18
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) felt pain and replied to him by this letter: “May Allah hasten your victory over him, who has wronged you, and save you from his burden (troubles). Be certain that the help of Allah will come soon inshallah and the good afterlife will be yours…and praise Allah too much’19
He often comforted afflicted and distressed people. Once, he sent a letter to a man, who had been afflicted by the death of his son. He said in the letter: “In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. You mentioned your distress of losing your son and mentioned that he was the most beloved one among your children to you. Thus, Allah the Almighty takes from children and other than children the purest one that a family has, so that the reward of the afflicted ones is increased. May Allah increase your reward, comfort you and strengthen your heart, He is Mighty, Powerful. May Allah give you a descendant soon and I hope that He has done so inshallah…’20 This emotional letter showed the extent of the sympathy of Imam al-Jawad (a.s) with people and his comfort to them in their joys and sorrows.
A man of the Shia wrote to Imam al-Jawad (a.s) complaining to him the pain and the sorrow that occupied him after the death of his son and the imam replied to him in a letter of comfort saying: “Have you not known that Allah the Almighty chooses from the properties and the children of a believer the most precious ones to reward him in return?”21
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) participated with people in their joys and distresses, comforted them in their misfortunes and disasters and helped the poor and the week. By this benevolence and charity Imam al-Jawad (a.s) had occupied the hearts and the feelings and made people love him and be sincere to him in the full sense of the word.
These were some of the values and ideals of Imam al-Jawad (a.s) that had raised him to the highest position like his fathers who had made the springs of knowledge and wisdom overflow everywhere in the earth and raised the torch of guidance and faith.
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) was one of the most wonderful examples of virtue and perfection in the earth. People had never seen at his time an equal to him in knowledge, piety, devotedness and religiousness. He was unique in his virtues and morals which were the secret of his imamate.
The Islamic circles admired Imam al-Jawad (a.s) and wondered at his talents and intellectual and scientific abilities which were infinite. These talents and abilities have confirmed the faith and certainty of the Shia and their belief that the imam must be the most aware, most knowledgeable, most virtuous and most pious of the people of his time.
Glory be to Allah and He is far above to have anything or any associate with him. Allah has existed where there is no creation and then He created them to be the means between Him and His creatures to beseech and worship Him by them. They are his mention and He Who is mentioned by the mention is Allah the One and Only God Who has existed since no beginning.
The meanings of His attributes have existed and the meaning of them is Allah that separating and uniting do not befit him. It is a divisible thing that separates and unites and it is not possible to say that Allah is united nor is he many or few but He is the God in His essence and whatever other than the One is indivisible and Allah is the One that is indivisible. He is not thought to be many or few, much or little. Every indivisible thing is thought to be many or few and is a creature that has a creator.
Your saying that Allah has power over all things means that nothing at all fails Him. He is not said to be unable but all other than Him are unable. Also your saying that He is aware means that you deny ignorance from Him and ascribe ignorance to all other than Him. If Allah annihilates things, He annihilates graphs and spellings. He does not end and still exists Who has still been aware.’
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) discussed the essence of monotheism and said every attribute of Allah did not require muchness or littleness. No change takes place in His attributes and no divisibility in His essence. His attribute are His very essence.
The asker was astonished at the vast knowledge of Imam al-Jawad (a.s) on these complicated issues and he kept on asking him, ‘How is our Lord called All-hearing?’
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) said, ‘Nothing that is perceived by ears is unperceivable by Him though we do not describe Him of having the sensible hearing in the head. Also we call Him as All-Seeing because nothing that is seen by eyes is invisible to him such as colors, men and other things though we do not describe him of having eyes.
We call Him “Gentle” because He knows everything about gentle (tiny) things such as insects and things tinier than insects. He knows the position of their organs, reason, lust, copulation, sympathy with their descendants, communication with each other, and carrying food to their offspring in mountains, valleys and deserts. We know that their creator is gentle without manner because manner is for fashioned creatures.
Our Lord is called Mighty not for the might of violence available in creatures. If His might is the might of violence, He will be compared and there will be a possibility of increase, and that which undergoes increase is possible to undergo decrease, and that which is deficient is not God, and that which is not God is unable but our Lord is Exalted, High. He has no like, no opposite, no equal, no manner, no end and no dangers. It is prohibited for hearts to compare Him, for minds to limit Him, and for consciences to fashion Him. He is far above the aspects of His creatures and the features of His people, and exalted be He in high exaltation above that.’25
Imam al-Jawad (a.s), in these studies, proved that he was one of the great philosophers and theologians in Islam. We ask: in which school Imam al-Jawad (a.s) had studied philosophy and theology until he became one of the pillars of this art? He answered with accurate answers that great philosophers and thinkers were unable to answer like them. There is no justification for that except what the Shia believe in that Allah has granted him knowledge and virtue and given him judgment while yet young.
Imagination does not get to Allah the Almighty in His essence and attributes because imagination perceives possible things and not the Necessary Being.
a. forbidding from hastiness in dealing with matters before they become clear because it leads to regret and loss
b. Forbidding from living with wishes because it makes one hard-hearted and away from Allah
c. Urging on being merciful to the weak and charitable to the needy because it is the key to the mercy of Allah
a. Avoiding hastiness because it causes man many problems and distresses. One of the poets says,
‘A slow one may achieve some of his needs
and hasty one may miss his aim.’
b. Consulting with others on the affairs and avoiding despotism because man often mistakes
c. Relying on Allah when determining to do something and avoiding hesitation for it causes worry and upset to man’s mentality and personality
a. The heresies that are ascribed to religion distort its truth and harm its spiritual and intellectual essence.
b. Greediness degrades the dignity of man and takes him to dark abysses in the ignorant corners of this life.
c. If a ruler is good, his people will be good and developed spiritually, socially, intellectually and economically.
d. Supplication to Allah discharges misfortunes and disasters.
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Sunni Scholars Opinions on Imam Jawad A.S
1. Ath-Thahabi
Ath-Thahabi has said, “Muhammad (al-Jawad) was surnamed al- Jawad (the generous), al-Qani’ (the satisfied) and al-Murtadha (been satisfied with) and he was one of the chiefs of the Prophet’s family…he was described as being generous; therefore, he was surnamed al-Jawad….”352. Ibn Taymiya
He has said, “Muhammad bin Ali al-Jawad was one of the notables of the Hashemites. He was famous of his generosity, and, therefore, he was called al-Jawad.”363. As-Safadi
As-Safadi has said, “Muhammad (al-Jawad) was surnamed al-Jawad, al-Qani’ and al-Murtadha. He was one of the chiefs of the Prophet’s family…he was described as being generous; therefore, he was surnamed al-Jawad...”374. Ibn Al-Jawzi
As-Sibt bin al-Jawzi has said, “Muhammad al-Jawad followed the footsteps of his father in knowledge, piety and generosity.”385 . Mahmood Bin Wuhayb
Sheikh Mahmood bin Wuhayb has said, “Muhammad al-Jawad inherited the knowledge and virtue of his father, and he was the loftiest amongst his brothers in position and perfection.”396. Az-Zarkali
Khayruddeen az-Zarkali has said, “Muhammad bin ar-Ridha’ bin Musa al-Kadhim, at-Talibi, al-Hashimi, al-Qurashi, Abu Ja’far, surnamed al-Jawad, the ninth of the twelve imams of the Shia, was exalted like his ancestors, intelligent, eloquent, quick-witted...’407. Kamaludden
Sheikh Kamaluddeen Muhammad bin Talha has said, ‘As for the virtues of Abu Ja’far al-Jawad, they did not last long for the Divine Fate had determined that he would stay in this world for a little while and leave for his Lord soon; so his stay was brief and his days were short.’418 . Ali Bin Eesa Al-Arbali
He has said, ‘Al-Jawad was in all cases generous (jawad)…he exceeded all people in the purity of his lineage and birth and sat on the top of glory. No one had ever approached his rank or his glory. He was exalted in position. His high position was above stars and his rank was above all ranks. When a delegation saw a fire, they said: it must be his fire.42 No fire was predominant over his fire. Exalted was he towards highness. Glory and honor felt proud of him. Mastership found its meaning in him. He was far from every vice and close to every virtue. Nobilities diffused from his sides and glory dripped from him. News of generosity were narrated about him, his progeny and his fathers. Blessed is he who strives to be loyal to him, and woe unto him who tries to be his opponent. When the loots of glory and loftiness are divided, the purest of them will be his, and when the backs of honor are mounted, the highest of them will be his. He matches the rain in generosity and the lion in courage and zeal and defeats conducts with his good conduct.’43His Worship
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) was the truest worshipper who performed worships at his time, the most reverent to Allah and the sincerest in obeying Him, like all the pure imams from his fathers had been before him and had devoted their lives to Allah and done all that might take them closer to Allah. The forms of his worships were as follows:His Offering Recommended Worships (Nafila)
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) used to offer a lot of recommended worships (nawafil).Narrators of traditions have reported that he would offer two rak’as (units of prayer), in each of which he would recite the sura of al-Fatiha (1) and the sura of al-Ikhlaas (112) seventy times.4
He would offer a lot of worship in the month of Rajab. Ar-Rayyan bin as-Salt said, “When Abu Ja’far the second was in Baghdad, he fasted on the middle and the twenty-seventh of Rajab and all his servants fasted with him. He ordered us to offer a prayer that was twelve rak’as.
In each rak’a we had to recite the sura of al-Fatiha and another sura, and when we finished the prayer, we recited the suras of al-Fatiha, al-Ikhlass, al-Falaq (113) and an-Naas (114) four times each, and la ilaha illallahu wallahu akbar, subhanallah wel hamdulillah, wa la hawla wa la quwwata illabillah al-aliy al-adheem5 four times.” 6
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) said, “In Rajab there is a night that is better than all that the sun rises on: it is the night of the twenty- seventh.” He mentioned a special prayer to be offered that night.7
His Hajj
Imam Abu Ja'far al-Jawad (a.s) performed the hajj many times. Al-Hasan bin Ali al-Kufi narrated some of Imam al-Jawad’s worships during the hajj. He said, “I saw Abu Ja'far the second (a.s) in 215 (or 225) AH bid farewell to the House (the Kaaba)…he circumambulated the House and kissed the Yemeni Corner in every turn. In the seventh turn, he kissed the corner and the Black Rock and rubbed his hand (over the Rock) and then rubbed his face with his hand. Then, he came to the Temple (of Abraham) and offered a prayer of two rak’as behind it. He went to the rear of the Kaaba, removed his dress from his abdomen and stayed long supplicating Allah.Then, he went out from the gate of al-Hannatin and left. In 219 AH I saw him bid farewell to the House in the night. He kissed the Yemeni Corner and the Black Rock in every turn. In the seventh turn, he went to the rear of the Kaaba near the Yemeni Corner and on the rectangular rock. He removed the dress from his abdomen, kissed the Rock and rubbed on it. He went to the Temple, offered prayer behind it and then he left and did not come back to the House. He stayed at the rear of the Kaaba (al-Multazam) as much as the period of the circumambulation of some of our companions who circumambulated seven or eight turns...”8
Ali bin Mahziyar narrated, ‘I saw Abu Ja'far the second (a.s) in the night of ziyarah (visit) make the circumambulation of women and offer prayer behind the Temple (of Abraham). Then, he entered the well of Zamzam and ladled some water with the bucket. He drank some and pour some over some of his body…one of our companions told me that he had seen him (Imam al-Jawad) in the next year do the same thing.’9
This detailed description of narrators is because the actions of the imams are from the Sunna that the Shia follow in their worship.
His Supplications
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) had many supplications showing the extent of his devotedness to Allah the Almighty.From among his supplications is this one: “O You Who has no like or an example, You are Allah; there is no god but You. There is no creator save You. You annihilate the creatures and You remain. You are patient with whoever disobeys You. In forgiveness is Your satisfaction…”10
Once, Muhammad bin al-Fudhayl had written to him asking to teach him a supplication. Imam al-Jawad (a.s) wrote to him, “In the morning and in the evening you say: ‘Allah, Allah is my Lord, the Beneficent, the Merciful. I do not associate with Him anything’ and if you add to this more, it will be good for you. You supplicate Allah with this supplication to satisfy your need because it is for everything by the will of Allah the Almighty and Allah does whatever He likes.”11
The supplications of the infallible imams show the essence of sincerity and obedience to Allah. They had devoted themselves to Allah and His love had been impressed in their feelings and emotions and so they were wholeheartedly devoted when supplicated Him.
His Asceticism
Being ascetic in this life was one of the most prominent morals of the pure imams of Ahlul Bayt (a.s). They turned away from the pleasures of this life and did all that might take them closer to Allah.Imam Ali (a.s), the pioneer of the great justice in the earth, during his caliphate wore the coarsest clothes and ate the coarsest foods. He did not take any gold or silver for himself, did not collect wealth or build houses. In the light of this shining conduct all the pure imams walked. They all were ascetic in this life and they turned away from its pleasures.
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) was in the prime of youth when al-Ma'moon gave him abundant monies about one million dirhams besides the legal dues that came to him from the Shia who believed in his imamate and the entailed endowments in Qum and other places, but he did not spend anything of those monies on his private affairs. He spent them on the poor and the needy.
Al-Husayn al-Mukari saw Imam al-Jawad (a.s) in Baghdad while being surrounded by honoring and glorifying by the official and public milieus. He thought with himself that Imam al-Jawad (a.s) would not go back to his homeland in Yathrib and he would reside in Baghdad where he lived at ease and luxury. Imam al-Jawad (a.s) knew Husayn’s intention and so he went near him and said, ‘O Husayn, the bread of barley and the ground salt in the sanctum (Medina) of my grandfather the messenger of Allah is more beloved to me than what you see me in…’12
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) did not like the means of luxury and ease the state had given to him. He was like his fathers who had divorced the worldly life and turned towards Allah thinking of nothing other than Him.
His Generosity
Imam Abu Ja'far (a.s) was one of the most generous and open- handed people. He was called al-Jawad (the generous) because of his excessive generosity, open-handedness, charitableness and kindness to people. Historians mentioned many scenes of his generosity.- One year, Ahmed bin Hadeed and some of his companions set out to perform the hajj. On their way, some robbers attacked them and robbed all the monies and luggage they had. When they arrived in Yathrib, Ahmed bin Hadeed went to Imam al-Jawad (a.s) and told him about what had happened to him and to his companions. Imam al-Jawad (a.s) gave him some clothes and a sum of money to be distributed among his companions. This sum of money was as much as that which had been robbed from them.13 Imam al-Jawad (a.s) had saved them from their distress and recompensed them for what had been taken from them.
- Al-Utbi narrated that one of the Alawids loved a bondmaid in Yathrib and he could not pay her price. He told Imam al-Jawad (a.s) of that. Imam al-Jawad (a.s) asked him about her keeper and he told who he was. Some days later, the Alawid man asked about the bondmaid and it was said to him that she had been sold. He asked who the buyer was and the answer was “we do not know”. Imam al- Jawad (a.s) had bought the bondmaid secretly. The Alawid man was so upset and distressed. He hurried to Imam al-Jawad (a.s) crying out, ‘The bondmaid was sold.’
The man said, ‘No, I do not.’
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) took the man with him and went to the small village where the bondmaid was there. He took the man to a house and ordered him to come in. The man refused to go into the house because he did not know whose house it was. Imam al-Jawad (a.s) had just bought the house recently. Imam al-Jawad (a.s) insisted on the man to come in. They both came into the house and when they saw the bondmaid, Imam al-Jawad (a.s) asked the man, ‘Do you know her?’
The man said, ‘Yes, I do!’
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) said to him, ‘She, the house with all its furniture, the garden and its yield are yours. You can live with the bondmaid.’ The man’s heart was filled with delight and he was confused how to thank Imam al-Jawad (a.s).14
These are some of the plentiful news historians have mentioned about the generosity of Imam al-Jawad (a.s). Narrators and historians say that the generosity of Imam al-Jawad (a.s) and his charity had included even the animals.
Muhammad bin al-Waleed al-Kirmani narrated, ‘One day, I had a meal with Abu Ja'far the second (a.s). When I finished eating and the dishes were lifted, the servant went to pick the crumbs that were on the ground. Abu Ja'far (a.s) said to him, ‘Leave whatever there is in the desert even if it is a leg of a sheep and pick whatever on the ground inside the house!’15 Imam al-Jawad (a.s) ordered his servant to leave the food that was in the desert for birds and beasts.
Doing Good To People
Being benevolent and merciful to people was another prominent quality of Imam al-Jawad (a.s). Historians mentioned many stories on his benevolence which we mention some here:Ahmed bin Zakariyya as-Saydalani narrated that a man from bani16 Hanifa from Sajistan had said, “I accompanied Abu Ja'far in the year when he went to perform the hajj at the beginning of the rule of al- Mu’tassim.17 I said to him when we were at the meal, ‘May I die for you! Our wali believes in you and loves you. On me there is a land tax to his diwan. If you please, may I die for you, to write to him to be kind to me.’ He said, ‘I do not know him.’ I said, ‘May I die for you! He is one of your lovers and followers and your letter to him will benefit me.”
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) responded to him and wrote this letter: “The bearer of my letter has mentioned the good beliefs of you. You will not be rewarded for your deeds except those which you do correctly. Do good to your brothers and know that Allah the Almighty will ask you about everything even to the weight of an atom and a grain of mustard…’
When the man went back to Sajistan, he found that the wali al-Husayn bin Abdullah an-Naysaboori, who knew about the letter that Imam al-Jawad (a.s) had sent to him, had come to receive him from two leagues before he would arrive. The wali took the letter and kissed it. He considered that as an honor to him. He asked the man about his need and the man told him.
He said to the man, ‘Do not give me any tax as long as I am in my position’ Then he asked him about his family and children to know their number and then he gave them presents. The man did not pay the tax as long as the wali was alive, besides that the wali did not stop his gifts to him. All that was due to the blessing and kindness of Imam al-Jawad (a.s).18
His Comforting The People
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) comforted people in their joys and sorrows. Historians said that Ibrahim bin Muhammad al-Hamadani had received a grievance from the wali and he wrote to Imam al-Jawad (a.s) telling him about what had happened to him.Imam al-Jawad (a.s) felt pain and replied to him by this letter: “May Allah hasten your victory over him, who has wronged you, and save you from his burden (troubles). Be certain that the help of Allah will come soon inshallah and the good afterlife will be yours…and praise Allah too much’19
He often comforted afflicted and distressed people. Once, he sent a letter to a man, who had been afflicted by the death of his son. He said in the letter: “In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. You mentioned your distress of losing your son and mentioned that he was the most beloved one among your children to you. Thus, Allah the Almighty takes from children and other than children the purest one that a family has, so that the reward of the afflicted ones is increased. May Allah increase your reward, comfort you and strengthen your heart, He is Mighty, Powerful. May Allah give you a descendant soon and I hope that He has done so inshallah…’20 This emotional letter showed the extent of the sympathy of Imam al-Jawad (a.s) with people and his comfort to them in their joys and sorrows.
A man of the Shia wrote to Imam al-Jawad (a.s) complaining to him the pain and the sorrow that occupied him after the death of his son and the imam replied to him in a letter of comfort saying: “Have you not known that Allah the Almighty chooses from the properties and the children of a believer the most precious ones to reward him in return?”21
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) participated with people in their joys and distresses, comforted them in their misfortunes and disasters and helped the poor and the week. By this benevolence and charity Imam al-Jawad (a.s) had occupied the hearts and the feelings and made people love him and be sincere to him in the full sense of the word.
These were some of the values and ideals of Imam al-Jawad (a.s) that had raised him to the highest position like his fathers who had made the springs of knowledge and wisdom overflow everywhere in the earth and raised the torch of guidance and faith.
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) was one of the most wonderful examples of virtue and perfection in the earth. People had never seen at his time an equal to him in knowledge, piety, devotedness and religiousness. He was unique in his virtues and morals which were the secret of his imamate.
The Islamic circles admired Imam al-Jawad (a.s) and wondered at his talents and intellectual and scientific abilities which were infinite. These talents and abilities have confirmed the faith and certainty of the Shia and their belief that the imam must be the most aware, most knowledgeable, most virtuous and most pious of the people of his time.
Monotheism
At the time of Imam al-Jawad (a.s) many suspicions and illusions about monotheism had been raised by the spiteful enemies of Islam to shake the faith inside the hearts of Muslims and make them doubt about the beliefs of their great religion. Imam al-Jawad (a.s) had refuted many of those suspicions and accusations. Here are some examples on that:- Some philosophers and theologians came to Imam al-Jawad (a.s) and the following question was put forth: “Tell me about the Exalted Lord, He has names and attributes in His book. Are these names and attributes (equal) Him?’
Glory be to Allah and He is far above to have anything or any associate with him. Allah has existed where there is no creation and then He created them to be the means between Him and His creatures to beseech and worship Him by them. They are his mention and He Who is mentioned by the mention is Allah the One and Only God Who has existed since no beginning.
The meanings of His attributes have existed and the meaning of them is Allah that separating and uniting do not befit him. It is a divisible thing that separates and unites and it is not possible to say that Allah is united nor is he many or few but He is the God in His essence and whatever other than the One is indivisible and Allah is the One that is indivisible. He is not thought to be many or few, much or little. Every indivisible thing is thought to be many or few and is a creature that has a creator.
Your saying that Allah has power over all things means that nothing at all fails Him. He is not said to be unable but all other than Him are unable. Also your saying that He is aware means that you deny ignorance from Him and ascribe ignorance to all other than Him. If Allah annihilates things, He annihilates graphs and spellings. He does not end and still exists Who has still been aware.’
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) discussed the essence of monotheism and said every attribute of Allah did not require muchness or littleness. No change takes place in His attributes and no divisibility in His essence. His attribute are His very essence.
The asker was astonished at the vast knowledge of Imam al-Jawad (a.s) on these complicated issues and he kept on asking him, ‘How is our Lord called All-hearing?’
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) said, ‘Nothing that is perceived by ears is unperceivable by Him though we do not describe Him of having the sensible hearing in the head. Also we call Him as All-Seeing because nothing that is seen by eyes is invisible to him such as colors, men and other things though we do not describe him of having eyes.
We call Him “Gentle” because He knows everything about gentle (tiny) things such as insects and things tinier than insects. He knows the position of their organs, reason, lust, copulation, sympathy with their descendants, communication with each other, and carrying food to their offspring in mountains, valleys and deserts. We know that their creator is gentle without manner because manner is for fashioned creatures.
Our Lord is called Mighty not for the might of violence available in creatures. If His might is the might of violence, He will be compared and there will be a possibility of increase, and that which undergoes increase is possible to undergo decrease, and that which is deficient is not God, and that which is not God is unable but our Lord is Exalted, High. He has no like, no opposite, no equal, no manner, no end and no dangers. It is prohibited for hearts to compare Him, for minds to limit Him, and for consciences to fashion Him. He is far above the aspects of His creatures and the features of His people, and exalted be He in high exaltation above that.’25
Imam al-Jawad (a.s), in these studies, proved that he was one of the great philosophers and theologians in Islam. We ask: in which school Imam al-Jawad (a.s) had studied philosophy and theology until he became one of the pillars of this art? He answered with accurate answers that great philosophers and thinkers were unable to answer like them. There is no justification for that except what the Shia believe in that Allah has granted him knowledge and virtue and given him judgment while yet young.
- Muhammad bin Eesa asked Imam Abu Ja'far (a.s) about monotheism saying, ‘I imagine something…’
Imagination does not get to Allah the Almighty in His essence and attributes because imagination perceives possible things and not the Necessary Being.
- Al-Husayn bin Sa’eed said, ‘Once, Abu Ja'far the second (a.s) was asked: is it possible to say that Allah is a thing?’
- Abu Hashim al-Ja’fari asked Imam al-Jawad (a.s) about this Qur’anic verse (Vision comprehends Him not, and He comprehends (all) vision)28 and Imam al-Jawad (a.s) said, ‘O Abu Hashim, the imagination of hearts is more accurate than the sight of eyes. You may perceive with your imagination Sind29 and India and other countries that you have not visited although you do not perceive them with your eyes. The imagination of hearts does not perceive Him, then how about the sight of eyes?’30
- Abu Hashim al-Ja’fari asked Imam Abu Ja'far al-Jawad (a.s), ‘What is the meaning of the One?’
What A Believer Needs
Imam al-Jawad (a.s) talked about that which a believer needed in this life by saying, ‘A believer needs a success from Allah, an adviser from inside himself and accepting (the advices of) those who advises him.’102Wonderful Maxims And Arts
Imam Abu Ja'far al-Jawad (a.s) has a collection of wonderful words which are considered as one of the mines of the Islamic heritage and the wonderful intellectual treasures in Islam. They have the origins of wisdom, the bases of morals and the extract of experiments.- He says, ‘Do not anticipate matters before their time that you may regret. Do not live just with wishes that your hearts may be hard. Be merciful to the weak and ask for mercy from Allah by being merciful yourselves!’
a. forbidding from hastiness in dealing with matters before they become clear because it leads to regret and loss
b. Forbidding from living with wishes because it makes one hard-hearted and away from Allah
c. Urging on being merciful to the weak and charitable to the needy because it is the key to the mercy of Allah
- He says, ‘Three things take one to the contentedness of Allah; asking Allah for forgiveness often and always, being lenient and giving charity. And there are three things that whoever has, will not regret; avoiding hastiness, consulting with others and relying on Allah when determining something.’
a. Avoiding hastiness because it causes man many problems and distresses. One of the poets says,
‘A slow one may achieve some of his needs
and hasty one may miss his aim.’
b. Consulting with others on the affairs and avoiding despotism because man often mistakes
c. Relying on Allah when determining to do something and avoiding hesitation for it causes worry and upset to man’s mentality and personality
- He says, ‘How will he, whom Allah secures, be lost and how will he, whom Allah pursues, be safe?’
- He says, ‘The day of justice on the oppressor is severer than the day of injustice on the oppressed.’
- He says, ‘Nothing destroys religion like heresies do. Nothing degrades gravity like greediness does. By the ruler the subjects become good and by supplication misfortunes are discharged.’
a. The heresies that are ascribed to religion distort its truth and harm its spiritual and intellectual essence.
b. Greediness degrades the dignity of man and takes him to dark abysses in the ignorant corners of this life.
c. If a ruler is good, his people will be good and developed spiritually, socially, intellectually and economically.
d. Supplication to Allah discharges misfortunes and disasters.
- He says, ‘Know that piety is honor, knowledge is a treasure and silence is a light.’
2024.06.07 02:46 StridentNegativity Mom Just Turned a Conversation about My Dad's Abuse (and Her Neglect) into a Discussion about My Anger
I talked to my mom today about a fight I had with my dad when I was 11. He told me he didn't care if I became a prostitute and if he found me dead in a ditch among a slew of other hateful things that (blessedly) escape my memory.
Again, I was 11 years old.
He didn't apologize for this and instead opted to buy me videogames and ice cream the next day - and then got mad at me again when I wouldn't play nice. This song and dance had always worked decently before for him, so why not now?
I remember very vividly the conversation I had with my mom within the next few days. We were in the garage, and she had just opened the door to let the dogs out. Just like my dad, she had her tried-and-true method of dealing with these inconvenient moments - to tell me that my dad "just got like that sometimes" and that "he didn't mean it" and that he really loved me no matter what he said.
She only ever confronted my dad about his anger once, and I think only to make him feel ashamed. He threw a book so hard across the room that it knocked out two of my baby teeth when I was 4. It was an accident, but he had done it in a rage. She forced him to tell the doctors how it had happened, supposedly. Naturally, I doubt he told the whole truth, but she is very proud of herself for this supposed victory.
But what else could anyone expect of her? This is the same woman who stayed with my dad after he forced his son to walk home after he stepped in glass, who whipped him so hard that he was bedridden for two weeks, who whipped him a different time in front of his friends for the added sadism.
Anyway, this same woman, when I told her about the fight again, expressed disbelief because she at first didn't remember it - one of the worst day's of her daughter's life, the tipping point for a suicidal ideation that spans two fucking decades.
And then, uncomfortable perhaps with how this made her feel or because she yearned to make the problem about herself, immediately compared it to my own bouts of anger - these bouts of rage where I rage against myself and talk about how much I hate myself and want to die. It makes her feel afraid, so of course it's in the same league as telling your child that you don't care if they die. The same exact league as telling that child that their feelings don't matter.
She has once again soundly demonstrated her ineptitude as a parent, her failure to ever own her role in the pain and mental illness of her children. Her sister, who suffered physical and verbal abuse at the hands of my grandfather, also earns no sympathy from my mom. My aunt had it coming because she was too strong-willed. She wonders today still why my dad, who was abused in a multitude of ways in his family, is the way he is.
I ask myself how somebody could be that blind to it all, but then I realize that it's because of selective attention, selective memories, and selective empathy. She doesn't want to understand and perhaps never will.
submitted by StridentNegativity to CPTSDFightMode [link] [comments]
Again, I was 11 years old.
He didn't apologize for this and instead opted to buy me videogames and ice cream the next day - and then got mad at me again when I wouldn't play nice. This song and dance had always worked decently before for him, so why not now?
I remember very vividly the conversation I had with my mom within the next few days. We were in the garage, and she had just opened the door to let the dogs out. Just like my dad, she had her tried-and-true method of dealing with these inconvenient moments - to tell me that my dad "just got like that sometimes" and that "he didn't mean it" and that he really loved me no matter what he said.
She only ever confronted my dad about his anger once, and I think only to make him feel ashamed. He threw a book so hard across the room that it knocked out two of my baby teeth when I was 4. It was an accident, but he had done it in a rage. She forced him to tell the doctors how it had happened, supposedly. Naturally, I doubt he told the whole truth, but she is very proud of herself for this supposed victory.
But what else could anyone expect of her? This is the same woman who stayed with my dad after he forced his son to walk home after he stepped in glass, who whipped him so hard that he was bedridden for two weeks, who whipped him a different time in front of his friends for the added sadism.
Anyway, this same woman, when I told her about the fight again, expressed disbelief because she at first didn't remember it - one of the worst day's of her daughter's life, the tipping point for a suicidal ideation that spans two fucking decades.
And then, uncomfortable perhaps with how this made her feel or because she yearned to make the problem about herself, immediately compared it to my own bouts of anger - these bouts of rage where I rage against myself and talk about how much I hate myself and want to die. It makes her feel afraid, so of course it's in the same league as telling your child that you don't care if they die. The same exact league as telling that child that their feelings don't matter.
She has once again soundly demonstrated her ineptitude as a parent, her failure to ever own her role in the pain and mental illness of her children. Her sister, who suffered physical and verbal abuse at the hands of my grandfather, also earns no sympathy from my mom. My aunt had it coming because she was too strong-willed. She wonders today still why my dad, who was abused in a multitude of ways in his family, is the way he is.
I ask myself how somebody could be that blind to it all, but then I realize that it's because of selective attention, selective memories, and selective empathy. She doesn't want to understand and perhaps never will.
2024.06.06 07:12 DrTardis1963 Dialogue with the unconscious
So, for quite some time I've had this ability to sort of "let myself go" and playfully embody characters, voices, concepts, ideas. Almost like letting them channel through me. I most readily do this in the shower, but can also do it while in a particularly energetic state, in my room alone, with loud music on, getting up and dancing, letting my body just do whatever without conscious input or interference. I often get my best ideas for poetry, writing, philosophy, ethics and more in these states.
I belive I was sexually abused around 2010, (though I have no explicit memories of the abuse), but in hindsight examining the symptoms I expressed around that time, which I didn't pay any mind to at that age, nor connected, they all fit the bill. Bedwetting, nightmares, fear of bathrooms / showers, anger outbursts, frequent feelings of a coldness spreading through out my body, not eating around others at school, bowel issues, and more. One very significant thing is that from grade 2 in 2010, all the way until the end of grade 7 of high school in 2015, I would pretend to be The Doctor, (childhood hero and favourite TV show) I always KNEW I was pretending, but I would never break character infront of my peers. It was fun. It got me through school, but I knew it was time to hang it up after a meeting with the senior staff and parents at the end of 2015. I also recognised an OCD ritual in hidsight during a session with my therapist. I used to buy a hotdog from the school canteen every thursday or friday (when we'd have lunches), then I'd throw the hotdog in the bin and head out to the yard at lunch.
One time my grade 3 teacher even held me in the classroom at lunch and tried to force me to eat the hotdog. She even got a plate out of the cupboard and cut it up, and said I would sit there until I ate it. I remained willfully defiant for the whole period, sitting there, waiting her out, until eventually she had to drop the situation and return to her 'default state' as students started returning to the classroom after lunch. I belive that our subconsciouses were interacting to bring about a symbolic scenario for the purposes of an increase in consciousness perhaps? (I don't believe she was aware of why she did that, nor was I aware of why I bought a hotdog every lunch and threw it in the bin, among many other things)
Anyway, the reason I write this post is because during a session in the shower where I let myself begin to ramble and say whatever, do whatever, often writing on the glass in the steam, I inadvertently wrote and spoke the words "Werten Das Kreig, Liebe Das Verboten" (Starting by writing Werten), and then it continued.
I had caught a minute or so of a video earlier today that talked about Jungs theory that Hitler was possessed by Wotan, and I was introspecting a little bit on the similarities between him and myself, both having a consciously stated and believed desire for goodness, whereas with him it ended in disaster, and Peterson has theorised that something within him aimed exactly for that. I also reflected on how he seemed to genuinely wrestle against anti-semitism at the start of Mein Kampf (I haven't finished the book, only read about one or two chapters), and slowly descended into hatred and resent of the Jews. My personal philosophy prevents me from resenting anyone for their current self or actions, because I understand that everything anyone does wrong is simply a consequence of cause to effect + unconsciousness. As Jung himself said "Much of the evil in this world is due to the fact that Man is hoplessly unconscious." I believe, and act out, the spirit of Christian forgiveness. "Forgive them father for they know not what they do." I also believe, and have coined this phrase "Evil deserves redemption, not damnation."
Essentially, I think of it like this. If you put a child in a car, they do not know how to drive the car, maintain it, or where to go, such it is almost inevitable that they will hit someone, damage the car, end up lost, or fail to properly maintain it. I apply this analogy to the human being. We are born without knowledge of how to maintain our bodies, how to fully control them, or where to go. Whatever is outside your awareness is outside your control. You can only change that which you can see, and grasp. (literally or metaphorically)
Thus I believe all criminality should be considered a developmental disorder. People are not equipped with self consciousness, nor enough knowledge to derive morality. The Christian claim to absolute morality comes as a consequence of Gods omniscience. Only if you knew the TOTAL impact of every possible action, could you calculate the ideal path. You must compare ALL paths, to select the ideal. (even then, you must still have standards by which to compare paths)
Anyway, the point is, and why I write this post "Werten Das Kreig, Liebe das verboten" as I found out from googling translates to "Value the war, love the forbidden."
Is this a call to redeem the forbidden, the devil, the unconscious by illuminating it and embracing the struggle? Or is this a manifestation of some deep, hidden, terrible agenda at work within me?
I have come to believe that evil is not a force within itself, but like darkness, merely the absence of light, or good.
If you give someone knowledge (true experience) of evil and of good, and the power to pursue one or the other, they will always pick good. The choice for evil either comes from a lack of experience of good, (which by definition is better than evil), or a lack of control / will (or the impression that you have that lack)
Therefor I believe the solution to ALL evil, is simply to forgive, and to educate. I believe mistakes are not obstacles to success, but infact the very ingredients.
Along the same line, I wrote this poem /piece yesterday, simmilarly chanelling and embodying a spirit other than my own.
"If you would master anything, if would find any talent, you must first be content to do something abysmally for hours and hours.I weep a little for the person you used to be. When you were a child you knew this. You confronted mistakes with Love and Faith. You knew they were the ingredient of success, the stone on which to build your church, but as time has gone on, you've forgotten that.You used to take trembling steps into the unknown, only to fall and collapse and giggle and try again, but now, now you tremble even at the thought of taking a step. What happened? Who taught you to stop confronting the unknown? Who told you that you lacked potential, and power, and capacity for change?Let these lessons be unlearned. You were once a tiny egg, no larger than the full stop at the end of this sentence. Look at you now! You all have the most remarkable capacity for change. You were one invisible to the eye, a microscopic spec of dust in the womb of your mother, and now, you are a grown human, who has come so far.You were once a tiny seed in the ground, and now you are a maturing oak. But you file away at your own branches... you rip up your leaves...Here... Look in this mirror. You are beautiful. You are glorious. You give oxygen to this world. And I Love you more than you will ever know. I Love you.. I forgive you for all you've ever done. Please keep going. Please keep chasing your dreams. They are beautiful, they are bold, they are Lovely. The intricacies of your soul I can barely comprehend. One day you will stand tall, dream in arms, a loving embrace. One day you will fall into a restful slumber, awake and alive.You just have to take one trembling step forward, and fall, and laugh, and get back up again. Walk into the arms of your mother and father, and you will know your power."
I am looking for guidance. Am I deluding and deceiving myself, or am I truly on the right path? I will sooner sacrifice my current ideas, theories and practices, than remain loyal to them and have their consequences fully manifest if the consequences are Hell.
It might be added also, that I don't believe we can make a claim that pain, death and suffering are bad, because we do not see on a large enough timescale to back such a claim. We do not even realise that what we call death is but a THEORY of death. It is a theory that at the expiration of the body the conscious being also ceases to exist.
I have heard atheists many a time challenge God's goodness by asking "Bone cancer in children, what's that about?" my reflexive response is to suggest "Re-incarnated pedophile?"
I think on the whole, we remain loyal to our narrow conceptions, and proclaim to know right and wrong more than a being which calculates and guides an entire journey invovling trillions of atoms and billions of years, and as such, whatever response we generate to a situation, even purely from an information theory perspective, is exceedningly unlikely to be THE correct one, if such a thing exists, or atleast, unlikely to lean toward correct, rather than incorrect.
It should also be noted I've written an extensive collection of anti-war poetry, often judging the soldier, and exalting the Doctor, for one brings life and the other brings death, but also with sympathy to the soldier as a victim of propaganda, and a whore for the military industrial complex. I have said, "Young men go to war for they do not yet know the value of life." and quoted John Schumans song, "God help me, I was only nineteen."
I think, on the whole, the message to Love the forbidden, is a message to redeem it through Love, Mercy, Grace and Forgiveness, not to revel and join it.
But I'd like some external feedback to keep me honest and grounded.
submitted by DrTardis1963 to Jung [link] [comments]
I belive I was sexually abused around 2010, (though I have no explicit memories of the abuse), but in hindsight examining the symptoms I expressed around that time, which I didn't pay any mind to at that age, nor connected, they all fit the bill. Bedwetting, nightmares, fear of bathrooms / showers, anger outbursts, frequent feelings of a coldness spreading through out my body, not eating around others at school, bowel issues, and more. One very significant thing is that from grade 2 in 2010, all the way until the end of grade 7 of high school in 2015, I would pretend to be The Doctor, (childhood hero and favourite TV show) I always KNEW I was pretending, but I would never break character infront of my peers. It was fun. It got me through school, but I knew it was time to hang it up after a meeting with the senior staff and parents at the end of 2015. I also recognised an OCD ritual in hidsight during a session with my therapist. I used to buy a hotdog from the school canteen every thursday or friday (when we'd have lunches), then I'd throw the hotdog in the bin and head out to the yard at lunch.
One time my grade 3 teacher even held me in the classroom at lunch and tried to force me to eat the hotdog. She even got a plate out of the cupboard and cut it up, and said I would sit there until I ate it. I remained willfully defiant for the whole period, sitting there, waiting her out, until eventually she had to drop the situation and return to her 'default state' as students started returning to the classroom after lunch. I belive that our subconsciouses were interacting to bring about a symbolic scenario for the purposes of an increase in consciousness perhaps? (I don't believe she was aware of why she did that, nor was I aware of why I bought a hotdog every lunch and threw it in the bin, among many other things)
Anyway, the reason I write this post is because during a session in the shower where I let myself begin to ramble and say whatever, do whatever, often writing on the glass in the steam, I inadvertently wrote and spoke the words "Werten Das Kreig, Liebe Das Verboten" (Starting by writing Werten), and then it continued.
I had caught a minute or so of a video earlier today that talked about Jungs theory that Hitler was possessed by Wotan, and I was introspecting a little bit on the similarities between him and myself, both having a consciously stated and believed desire for goodness, whereas with him it ended in disaster, and Peterson has theorised that something within him aimed exactly for that. I also reflected on how he seemed to genuinely wrestle against anti-semitism at the start of Mein Kampf (I haven't finished the book, only read about one or two chapters), and slowly descended into hatred and resent of the Jews. My personal philosophy prevents me from resenting anyone for their current self or actions, because I understand that everything anyone does wrong is simply a consequence of cause to effect + unconsciousness. As Jung himself said "Much of the evil in this world is due to the fact that Man is hoplessly unconscious." I believe, and act out, the spirit of Christian forgiveness. "Forgive them father for they know not what they do." I also believe, and have coined this phrase "Evil deserves redemption, not damnation."
Essentially, I think of it like this. If you put a child in a car, they do not know how to drive the car, maintain it, or where to go, such it is almost inevitable that they will hit someone, damage the car, end up lost, or fail to properly maintain it. I apply this analogy to the human being. We are born without knowledge of how to maintain our bodies, how to fully control them, or where to go. Whatever is outside your awareness is outside your control. You can only change that which you can see, and grasp. (literally or metaphorically)
Thus I believe all criminality should be considered a developmental disorder. People are not equipped with self consciousness, nor enough knowledge to derive morality. The Christian claim to absolute morality comes as a consequence of Gods omniscience. Only if you knew the TOTAL impact of every possible action, could you calculate the ideal path. You must compare ALL paths, to select the ideal. (even then, you must still have standards by which to compare paths)
Anyway, the point is, and why I write this post "Werten Das Kreig, Liebe das verboten" as I found out from googling translates to "Value the war, love the forbidden."
Is this a call to redeem the forbidden, the devil, the unconscious by illuminating it and embracing the struggle? Or is this a manifestation of some deep, hidden, terrible agenda at work within me?
I have come to believe that evil is not a force within itself, but like darkness, merely the absence of light, or good.
If you give someone knowledge (true experience) of evil and of good, and the power to pursue one or the other, they will always pick good. The choice for evil either comes from a lack of experience of good, (which by definition is better than evil), or a lack of control / will (or the impression that you have that lack)
Therefor I believe the solution to ALL evil, is simply to forgive, and to educate. I believe mistakes are not obstacles to success, but infact the very ingredients.
Along the same line, I wrote this poem /piece yesterday, simmilarly chanelling and embodying a spirit other than my own.
"If you would master anything, if would find any talent, you must first be content to do something abysmally for hours and hours.I weep a little for the person you used to be. When you were a child you knew this. You confronted mistakes with Love and Faith. You knew they were the ingredient of success, the stone on which to build your church, but as time has gone on, you've forgotten that.You used to take trembling steps into the unknown, only to fall and collapse and giggle and try again, but now, now you tremble even at the thought of taking a step. What happened? Who taught you to stop confronting the unknown? Who told you that you lacked potential, and power, and capacity for change?Let these lessons be unlearned. You were once a tiny egg, no larger than the full stop at the end of this sentence. Look at you now! You all have the most remarkable capacity for change. You were one invisible to the eye, a microscopic spec of dust in the womb of your mother, and now, you are a grown human, who has come so far.You were once a tiny seed in the ground, and now you are a maturing oak. But you file away at your own branches... you rip up your leaves...Here... Look in this mirror. You are beautiful. You are glorious. You give oxygen to this world. And I Love you more than you will ever know. I Love you.. I forgive you for all you've ever done. Please keep going. Please keep chasing your dreams. They are beautiful, they are bold, they are Lovely. The intricacies of your soul I can barely comprehend. One day you will stand tall, dream in arms, a loving embrace. One day you will fall into a restful slumber, awake and alive.You just have to take one trembling step forward, and fall, and laugh, and get back up again. Walk into the arms of your mother and father, and you will know your power."
I am looking for guidance. Am I deluding and deceiving myself, or am I truly on the right path? I will sooner sacrifice my current ideas, theories and practices, than remain loyal to them and have their consequences fully manifest if the consequences are Hell.
It might be added also, that I don't believe we can make a claim that pain, death and suffering are bad, because we do not see on a large enough timescale to back such a claim. We do not even realise that what we call death is but a THEORY of death. It is a theory that at the expiration of the body the conscious being also ceases to exist.
I have heard atheists many a time challenge God's goodness by asking "Bone cancer in children, what's that about?" my reflexive response is to suggest "Re-incarnated pedophile?"
I think on the whole, we remain loyal to our narrow conceptions, and proclaim to know right and wrong more than a being which calculates and guides an entire journey invovling trillions of atoms and billions of years, and as such, whatever response we generate to a situation, even purely from an information theory perspective, is exceedningly unlikely to be THE correct one, if such a thing exists, or atleast, unlikely to lean toward correct, rather than incorrect.
It should also be noted I've written an extensive collection of anti-war poetry, often judging the soldier, and exalting the Doctor, for one brings life and the other brings death, but also with sympathy to the soldier as a victim of propaganda, and a whore for the military industrial complex. I have said, "Young men go to war for they do not yet know the value of life." and quoted John Schumans song, "God help me, I was only nineteen."
I think, on the whole, the message to Love the forbidden, is a message to redeem it through Love, Mercy, Grace and Forgiveness, not to revel and join it.
But I'd like some external feedback to keep me honest and grounded.
2024.06.06 01:04 Yillick A Cool Guide to Bad Faith Argumentative Tactics
 | submitted by Yillick to coolguides [link] [comments] |
2024.06.05 11:40 Normodox The Forgotten History of the Term "Palestine"
Some think of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute as a clash of nationalisms. Others stress religious antagonism, while others yet see an East-West power struggle. But it is roundly agreed upon that a key element of the conflict is land. That land, for many years by many people, was called Palestine.
Yet few people—including Middle East policy makers, journalists, historians and even lexicographers—know much about the history of the name “Palestine,” or what territory it has at one time or another encompassed.
The ancient Romans pinned the name on the Land of Israel. In 135 CE, after stamping out the province of Judea’s second insurrection, the Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina—that is, “Palestinian Syria.” They did so resentfully, as a punishment, to obliterate the link between the Jews (in Hebrew, Y’hudim and in Latin Judaei) and the province (the Hebrew name of which was Y’hudah). “Palaestina” referred to the Philistines, whose home base had been on the Mediterranean coast.
It is widely thought, as reflected in my 1976 New College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, that the term Palestine refers only to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Countless books and maps say that Israel, in conquering the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War, took control of “all of Palestine.” But that is not correct.
The term “Palestine” was used for millennia without a precise geographic definition. That’s not uncommon—think of “Transcaucasus” or “Midwest.” No precise definition existed for Palestine because none was required. Since the Roman era, the name lacked political significance. No nation ever had that name.
The term was meaningful to Christians as synonymous with the Holy Land. It was meaningful to Jews as synonymous with Eretz Yisrael, which is Hebrew for the Land of Israel. As noted by the Palestinian scholar Muhammad Y. Muslih in The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism, Arabic speakers sometimes used the Arabic words for “Holy Land,” but never coined a uniquely Arabic name for the territory; Filastin is the Arabic pronunciation of the Roman terminology. “Palestine was also referred to as Surya al-Janubiyya (Southern Syria), because it was part of geographical Syria,” wrote Muslih. In the pre-World War I-era, scholars also sometimes said Palestine was the region just south of Syria.
Since biblical times, Palestine was understood to span the Jordan River. It was common to call the one bank Western Palestine and the other Eastern Palestine, as evidenced by such works as Edward Robinson, et al., Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions (1856); Charles Warren, Underground Jerusalem (1876); Frederick Jones Bliss, The Development of Palestine Exploration (1906); and Ellsworth Huntington, Palestine and Its Transformation (1911). The Israelite tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Menasseh, the Bible said, all held land east of the Jordan River. Before World War I, no books described that river as Palestine’s eastern boundary.
Eastern Palestine was also known as Transjordan, meaning “across the Jordan.” In other words, the Jordan River did not bound Palestine; it bisected it. Referring to the Jordan Valley in his book Sinai and Palestine (1863), the Oxford University scholar Arthur Penrhyn Stanley said, “It is around and along this deep fissure that the hills of western and eastern Palestine spring up.”
The terminology of Western and Eastern Palestine appeared universally in 19th- and early 20th-century literature. In George Adam Smith’s influential study, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, Book II is entitled “Western Palestine” and Book III “Eastern Palestine.” The famous works of Britain’s Palestine Exploration Fund—the first coauthored by H.H. Kitchener, later Field-Marshal Earl Kitchener, when he was but a lieutenant—were titled The Survey of Western Palestine and The Survey of Eastern Palestine.
No one in the pre-World War I period ever needed to specify how far eastward Eastern Palestine extended. As the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica stated, “The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine; but it is practically im¬pos¬sible to say where the latter ends and the Arabian desert begins.”
“Palestine” applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman empire. In that empire, it was divided among several provinces and governates and never composed an administrative unit.
During the Great War of 1914-1918, the Ottoman empire, which included Palestine, fought alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary against the Allies. That made the Holy Land enemy territory from the British perspective, and Britain took the lead in conquering it. When the war ended, the victorious Allies divided the formerly Ottoman Near East into new political units. In April 1920, they assigned to France the mandate to govern Syria, including Lebanon. They assigned two mandates to Britain, one for Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and one for Palestine. Borders for the three territories were not yet defined.
How did British Mandate Palestine get its borders? The line in the north emerged from Anglo-French negotiations in 1923. The one in the south was fixed by treaties in the mid-1920s between Britain and the new nation of Saudi Arabia. The border between Mandate Palestine and Mandate Mesopotamia was of little immediate importance, given that it was in the middle of an uninhabited desert and Britain controlled both sides. That line was finally fixed through an exchange of letters in 1932.
What particularly interests us here is how Britain handled Eastern Palestine. The short answer is that it remained under the British Mandate for Palestine until 1946, when it became the independent kingdom of Transjordan, later renamed Jordan. Western Palestine remained under the Mandate until May 1948.
The longer answer requires us to go back to World War I.
In November 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, a promise to help create in Palestine a Jewish national home. The promise, motivated by a combination of strategic and moral considerations, was controversial, including within the government.
As Britain (with a small bit of help from French forces) was conquering Palestine and Syria, its military commander, General Edmund Allenby, chose to view Eastern and Western Palestine as distinct areas. A practical man, he had no interest in Jewish nationalism, nor any sympathy for it. In 1918, he combined Transjordan and inland Syria into a military occupation zone that Britain allowed the Arabian Emir Faysal to administer from Damascus. Allenby assigned Palestine west of the Jordan to a different occupation zone, with its own military government based in Jerusalem.
Allenby hoped Faysal would reign over a Syrian kingdom that included Transjordan. That would give London influence over the whole area, as Faysal was understood to be Britain’s man. But French leaders were hostile to Faysal, and, when they took control of Damascus in July 1920, they ousted him. (Britain soon consoled Faysal with the kingship of Iraq.) British officials, not wanting France to control Transjordan, quickly made clear that Transjordan was not part of French Mandate Syria.
What, then, should be done with Transjordan? Britain’s high commissioner in Palestine had said it should be recognized as part of Palestine under his supervision. He stressed that it could help Western Palestine meet its future food, water, and electricity needs. Britain’s new foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, however, disagreed, primarily because of his concerns about the costs of administering Transjordan. At the same time, however, he saw Western and Eastern Palestine as a strategically valuable “land bridge” connecting British Egypt to British Mandate Mesopotamia. His dilemma was how to retain control of that “bridge” while limiting Britain’s responsibilities in Transjordan.
Curzon suggested that Transjordan might be given “some form of independent Arab Government.” One option, he said, was to recognize Transjordan as belonging to Palestine or Mesopotamia. Another was to divide Transjordan between those Mandates. And a third was to leave it “for future arrangement.” Curzon preferred to wait, “leaving the eastern boundary of Palestine . . . for subsequent definition when the situation as regards Arabia has developed further.”
In February 1921, Winston Churchill became secretary of state for the colonies and responsibility for the Middle East was transferred from Curzon to him. Churchill promptly devised a set of policies of huge importance and lasting effect. They created kingdoms and put men on thrones. They drew new maps. And, it can be argued, they partitioned Palestine for the first time between Arabs and Jews.
High on Churchill’s agenda was Eastern Palestine. Churchill shared Curzon’s view that an Arab administration of Transjordan could help keep down British expenditures. Churchill also agreed to maintain the ban on Zionist settlement east of the Jordan River—originally put in place by Britain’s military administration, which claimed to lack the resources necessary to protect Jews there.
Zionist leaders argued that Britain should not exclude Transjordan from the Jewish national home. In a communication to a senior British official, the U.S. Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis said that Palestine needed access to water resources in Transjordan for irrigation and power and also to Transjordan’s “fertile plains . . . for food and sustenance.” (Upon joining the Supreme Court in 1916, Brandeis had resigned his chairmanship of America’s principal Zionist organization, but he remained active in the Jewish national cause.)
The leader of the Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann, argued to Churchill that Transjordan, from earliest times, was “an integral and vital part of Palestine.” Its plains were the Holy Land’s “natural granary” and the climate was “invigorating.” The area was “scarcely inhabited and long derelict,” Weizmann said, and severing it from Palestine “would be scant satisfaction to Arab Nationalism, while it would go far to frustrate” Britain’s Jewish-national-home policy. “While Eastern Palestine may probably never have the same religious and historic significance as Western Palestine,” he wrote, “it may bulk much larger in the economic future of the Jewish National Home.”
Churchill knew that it might not be possible diplomatically to arrange a separate British mandate for Transjordan. His staff therefore proposed acknowledging the territory as part of Mandate Palestine—a decision comfortably within the time-honored common understanding that Palestine straddled the Jordan River.
The ban on Jewish settlement in Eastern Palestine, however, created a legal conundrum. How could Churchill maintain the ban when one of the chief duties of Britain, as Palestine’s mandatory power, was to encourage “close settlement by Jews on the land?” Churchill did not buy his staff’s argument that the Mandate, as then drafted, gave Britain the necessary authority. Amending the draft would be awkward, but Churchill feared a legal challenge. He sought help from lawyers. If it were “absolutely necessary” to change the Mandate to keep Transjordan out of the Jewish national home, he wrote, then he wanted the new authority couched in vague language: “to specify areas affected without referring in detail to proposed difference in treatment.”
The result was an artfully muddy amendment that was added to the Mandate as Article 25. It stated, “In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled . . . to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions.” The words were framed, a senior official explained, to enable Britain “to withhold indefinitely the application of those clauses of the mandate which related to the establishment of a National Home for the Jews.”
After the League of Nations eventually approved the Mandate in 1922, the British representative Arthur Balfour submitted to it a memorandum, citing Article 25, that listed all the clauses about Jews and said they were “not applicable” in Transjordan. Balfour told the League’s governing council that the memorandum’s object was “to withdraw from Trans-Jordan the special provisions which were intended to provide a national home for the Jews west of the Jordan.” France’s representative said he understood that Balfour’s memorandum “only aimed at maintaining in the area to the east of the Jordan the general regime of the Mandate for Palestine.” Balfour said he agreed.
On March 23, 1921, Churchill had traveled to Jerusalem to persuade Emir Abdullah, Faysal’s brother, to content himself, at least for the time being, with a position in Transjordan. Having decided that Transjordan “should be constituted an Arab province of Palestine under an Arab governor, responsible to the High Commissioner,” Churchill suggested that Abdullah take responsibility there for six months with British help. Abdullah agreed.
Nothing is so permanent as the provisional, the adage says. That six-month arrangement has not ended—it has been in operation for a century. It gave rise to the emirate of Transjordan, which existed under the Palestine Mandate until 1946 and then evolved into the kingdom of Transjordan, which changed its name in 1949 to the kingdom of Jordan, which exists to this day under the kingship of Abdullah’s great-grandson, Abdullah II.
Zionist leaders of all stripes were unhappy with the British government’s policy on Transjordan. Vladimir Jabotinsky would demand reversal of the territory’s exclusion from the Jewish national home, making a rallying cry of the slogan “Two banks to the Jordan—this is ours, and this too.” The words, which rhyme in Hebrew (Shtey gadot la-yarden—zu shelanu, zu gam ken) were from a poem by Jabotinsky that, put to music, became one of the anthems of his political movement’s youth organization.
Although the idea that the Jewish national home should include Eastern Palestine became associated mainly, if not exclusively, with the political right when Jabotinsky’s Zionist Revisionist movement adopted it as a tenet, in 1921 it was a consensus view among Zionists from right to left.
Some British officials likewise looked askance at the Transjordan policy. Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen of the Colonial Office said he “exploded” when he heard Churchill “had severed Transjordan from Palestine.” In his memoir, A Crackle of Thorns, Alec Kirkbride, a British military officer in Transjordan who became Britain’s first ambassador there, commented wryly that, after Britain chose to put Abdullah in charge, “In due course the remarkable discovery was made that the clauses of the mandate relating to the es¬tablish¬ment of a National Home for the Jews had never been intended to apply to mandated ter¬ritory east of the river.” Leopold Amery, a former colonial secretary and one of the drafters of the Balfour Declaration, criticized the Transjordan policy for “taking out of Pales¬tine the larger and better half, the half more suitable to large-scale colonization.” Years later—in a May 22, 1939 House of Commons debate—he described the decision as Palestine’s “first partition.”
In early 1921 Colonial Office officials mulled the question of terminology and proposed that “‘Palestine’ and ‘Eastern Palestine’ should be brought into use for the territories lying respectively to the west and east of the River Jordan.” Their recommendation was only partially adopted. Palestine became the term used for Western Palestine. But the territory east of the Jordan would commonly be called Transjordan.
The common use of “Transjordan” rather than “Eastern Palestine” had consequences. After the 1948-49 Israeli War of Independence, it allowed supporters of the Palestinian Arabs to describe them as “stateless.” After the 1967 Six-Day War, it allowed people to say plausibly, if inaccurately, that the Jews had taken control of all of Palestine, leaving none to the Arabs.
Numerous books—for example, Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006)—now contain maps that attach the labels “Palestine” or “Mandate Palestine” only to Palestine west of the Jordan. Writing that the Zionists “were ultimately able to take over the entire country,” Khalidi endorsed the common but ahistorical assertion that Palestine extended no further east than the Jordan River. By way of contrast, it is notable that another leading American scholar of Arab origin, Princeton University’s Philip K. Hitti, in his History of Syria: Including Lebanon and Palestine (1951), dealt accurately with this point of geography. After identifying Palestine as “the southern part of Syria,” Hitti wrote that Palestine was “amputated” from Syria, and then, “In 1921 Transjordan, with a biblical name but no real historical existence, was in turn amputated from Palestine and placed under the Emir Abdullah.”
Would the world now perceive the Arab-Israeli conflict differently if British officials had adopted that proposal from the Colonial Office to continue to use the term Eastern Palestine, rather than Transjordan? Would world politics be different if people generally understood that the kingdom of Jordan is in Eastern Palestine and Israel is in Western Palestine? Would the conflict have been different if no one had ever contended that the Palestinian Arabs are “stateless?”
Such questions have been excitedly debated over the years, including within Israel. Early in his political career, Ariel Sharon, who became Israeli prime minister in 2001, made famous the slogan “Jordan is Palestine,” using it to counter demands for Israeli territorial concessions to the Palestinians. Of the various arguments advanced in favor of such concessions, one was that Israel should agree to divide the land it controlled because the Arabs deserved a state in at least part of Palestine. Sharon’s answer was that an Arab state—Jordan—already existed in Palestine.
Sharon’s slogan became a hot button in Israeli politics because it sounded dismissive of concerns about how Israel should deal with the rights of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River. Anyone who heard it that way had good grounds to object. Those concerns are serious and the slogan is not at all the end of the story. But, as much as one might dislike its political implications, the simple statement that Jordan is Palestine is factual.
The distinguished Anglo-American historian Bernard Wasserstein clearly did not like the slogan’s political implications. Rejecting the view of Jabotinsky and Sharon that Palestine was partitioned in 1921 as a “myth,” he wrote, “In fact, what occurred [when Britain decided that Transjordan would be part of the Palestine Mandate, albeit outside the Jewish national home] was a huge addition to the territory of Palestine, not any subtraction.” He added, “Zionist disappointment at the loss of what they had never been promised and never possessed led to the idea that they had been somehow cheated out of their birthright. The legend persists.”
Wasserstein’s point is supported by the view of Allenby and his officers. When they spoke of “Palestine,” they generally meant only Western Palestine. From their perspective, Transjordan’s inclusion in the Palestine Mandate was an addition. But Jabotinsky and Sharon were not wrong. As is clear in any library of books of history and natural history from before the Great War—including, as we have seen, the massive British military surveys of the Palestine Exploration Fund and the widely-read work of the scholar George Adam Smith—“Palestine” had a western part and an eastern part that were separated by the Jordan River. From the viewpoint of the established experts in geography, declaring Transjordan out of the Jewish national home was a subtraction.
Wasserstein’s statement that Transjordan “had never been promised to the Zionists” is true in that it was never explicitly promised to anyone. Britain, however, did promise to help create a Jewish national home “in Palestine,” and all the parties involved understood that the boundaries remained to be specified.
For their part, Zionist leaders and top British officials understood that the word “Palestine” in the Balfour Declaration included Transjordan—in other words, that Eastern Palestine, or at least part of it, was included in the promise to the Zionists. That is clear from the Brandeis and Weizmann letters. It is evident from Amery’s remarks. And it is shown conclusively by Churchill’s agreement to accept Article 25. If the Balfour Declaration had been limited to west of the Jordan, Churchill would not have felt compelled to add in Article 25 to make the Mandate’s Jewish-home clauses inapplicable east of the Jordan.
Wasserstein is correct that the Zionists never “possessed” Transjordan, but it is unclear what that signifies. Jews in ancient times had lived east of the river, but Britain banned the Zionists from settling there.
To sum up: “Palestine” was long universally understood to include the land on both sides of the Jordan River. Eastern Palestine is now the kingdom of Jordan. Its eastern border was not finalized until after the League of Nations approved the Palestine Mandate. Maps of Mandate Palestine that include only Western Palestine are misleading because the emirate of Transjordan was part of Mandate Palestine, governed under Britain’s Jerusalem-based high commissioner for Palestine from 1921 until the emirate became an independent kingdom in 1946. Amery had a firm basis for saying that taking Transjordan out of the Jewish national home in 1921-1922 can properly be called Palestine’s “first partition.”
This examination of the term “Palestine” is not an argument about what Israel should or should not do to try to make peace with its Arab enemies. While it refutes the contention that there is only one state now in Palestine, it says nothing about whether Israel should be willing, in pursuit of peace, to relinquish control of various parts of Western Palestine.
The value of this history is not in how it relates to anyone’s preferences regarding the two-state solution or other ideas about peace. Its value inheres in its accuracy. A true account of history justifies itself.
The Forgotten History of the Term "Palestine" Hudson
submitted by Normodox to BeneiYisraelNews [link] [comments]
Yet few people—including Middle East policy makers, journalists, historians and even lexicographers—know much about the history of the name “Palestine,” or what territory it has at one time or another encompassed.
The ancient Romans pinned the name on the Land of Israel. In 135 CE, after stamping out the province of Judea’s second insurrection, the Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina—that is, “Palestinian Syria.” They did so resentfully, as a punishment, to obliterate the link between the Jews (in Hebrew, Y’hudim and in Latin Judaei) and the province (the Hebrew name of which was Y’hudah). “Palaestina” referred to the Philistines, whose home base had been on the Mediterranean coast.
It is widely thought, as reflected in my 1976 New College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, that the term Palestine refers only to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Countless books and maps say that Israel, in conquering the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War, took control of “all of Palestine.” But that is not correct.
The term “Palestine” was used for millennia without a precise geographic definition. That’s not uncommon—think of “Transcaucasus” or “Midwest.” No precise definition existed for Palestine because none was required. Since the Roman era, the name lacked political significance. No nation ever had that name.
The term was meaningful to Christians as synonymous with the Holy Land. It was meaningful to Jews as synonymous with Eretz Yisrael, which is Hebrew for the Land of Israel. As noted by the Palestinian scholar Muhammad Y. Muslih in The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism, Arabic speakers sometimes used the Arabic words for “Holy Land,” but never coined a uniquely Arabic name for the territory; Filastin is the Arabic pronunciation of the Roman terminology. “Palestine was also referred to as Surya al-Janubiyya (Southern Syria), because it was part of geographical Syria,” wrote Muslih. In the pre-World War I-era, scholars also sometimes said Palestine was the region just south of Syria.
Since biblical times, Palestine was understood to span the Jordan River. It was common to call the one bank Western Palestine and the other Eastern Palestine, as evidenced by such works as Edward Robinson, et al., Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions (1856); Charles Warren, Underground Jerusalem (1876); Frederick Jones Bliss, The Development of Palestine Exploration (1906); and Ellsworth Huntington, Palestine and Its Transformation (1911). The Israelite tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Menasseh, the Bible said, all held land east of the Jordan River. Before World War I, no books described that river as Palestine’s eastern boundary.
Eastern Palestine was also known as Transjordan, meaning “across the Jordan.” In other words, the Jordan River did not bound Palestine; it bisected it. Referring to the Jordan Valley in his book Sinai and Palestine (1863), the Oxford University scholar Arthur Penrhyn Stanley said, “It is around and along this deep fissure that the hills of western and eastern Palestine spring up.”
The terminology of Western and Eastern Palestine appeared universally in 19th- and early 20th-century literature. In George Adam Smith’s influential study, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, Book II is entitled “Western Palestine” and Book III “Eastern Palestine.” The famous works of Britain’s Palestine Exploration Fund—the first coauthored by H.H. Kitchener, later Field-Marshal Earl Kitchener, when he was but a lieutenant—were titled The Survey of Western Palestine and The Survey of Eastern Palestine.
No one in the pre-World War I period ever needed to specify how far eastward Eastern Palestine extended. As the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica stated, “The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine; but it is practically im¬pos¬sible to say where the latter ends and the Arabian desert begins.”
“Palestine” applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman empire. In that empire, it was divided among several provinces and governates and never composed an administrative unit.
During the Great War of 1914-1918, the Ottoman empire, which included Palestine, fought alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary against the Allies. That made the Holy Land enemy territory from the British perspective, and Britain took the lead in conquering it. When the war ended, the victorious Allies divided the formerly Ottoman Near East into new political units. In April 1920, they assigned to France the mandate to govern Syria, including Lebanon. They assigned two mandates to Britain, one for Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and one for Palestine. Borders for the three territories were not yet defined.
How did British Mandate Palestine get its borders? The line in the north emerged from Anglo-French negotiations in 1923. The one in the south was fixed by treaties in the mid-1920s between Britain and the new nation of Saudi Arabia. The border between Mandate Palestine and Mandate Mesopotamia was of little immediate importance, given that it was in the middle of an uninhabited desert and Britain controlled both sides. That line was finally fixed through an exchange of letters in 1932.
What particularly interests us here is how Britain handled Eastern Palestine. The short answer is that it remained under the British Mandate for Palestine until 1946, when it became the independent kingdom of Transjordan, later renamed Jordan. Western Palestine remained under the Mandate until May 1948.
The longer answer requires us to go back to World War I.
In November 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, a promise to help create in Palestine a Jewish national home. The promise, motivated by a combination of strategic and moral considerations, was controversial, including within the government.
As Britain (with a small bit of help from French forces) was conquering Palestine and Syria, its military commander, General Edmund Allenby, chose to view Eastern and Western Palestine as distinct areas. A practical man, he had no interest in Jewish nationalism, nor any sympathy for it. In 1918, he combined Transjordan and inland Syria into a military occupation zone that Britain allowed the Arabian Emir Faysal to administer from Damascus. Allenby assigned Palestine west of the Jordan to a different occupation zone, with its own military government based in Jerusalem.
Allenby hoped Faysal would reign over a Syrian kingdom that included Transjordan. That would give London influence over the whole area, as Faysal was understood to be Britain’s man. But French leaders were hostile to Faysal, and, when they took control of Damascus in July 1920, they ousted him. (Britain soon consoled Faysal with the kingship of Iraq.) British officials, not wanting France to control Transjordan, quickly made clear that Transjordan was not part of French Mandate Syria.
What, then, should be done with Transjordan? Britain’s high commissioner in Palestine had said it should be recognized as part of Palestine under his supervision. He stressed that it could help Western Palestine meet its future food, water, and electricity needs. Britain’s new foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, however, disagreed, primarily because of his concerns about the costs of administering Transjordan. At the same time, however, he saw Western and Eastern Palestine as a strategically valuable “land bridge” connecting British Egypt to British Mandate Mesopotamia. His dilemma was how to retain control of that “bridge” while limiting Britain’s responsibilities in Transjordan.
Curzon suggested that Transjordan might be given “some form of independent Arab Government.” One option, he said, was to recognize Transjordan as belonging to Palestine or Mesopotamia. Another was to divide Transjordan between those Mandates. And a third was to leave it “for future arrangement.” Curzon preferred to wait, “leaving the eastern boundary of Palestine . . . for subsequent definition when the situation as regards Arabia has developed further.”
In February 1921, Winston Churchill became secretary of state for the colonies and responsibility for the Middle East was transferred from Curzon to him. Churchill promptly devised a set of policies of huge importance and lasting effect. They created kingdoms and put men on thrones. They drew new maps. And, it can be argued, they partitioned Palestine for the first time between Arabs and Jews.
High on Churchill’s agenda was Eastern Palestine. Churchill shared Curzon’s view that an Arab administration of Transjordan could help keep down British expenditures. Churchill also agreed to maintain the ban on Zionist settlement east of the Jordan River—originally put in place by Britain’s military administration, which claimed to lack the resources necessary to protect Jews there.
Zionist leaders argued that Britain should not exclude Transjordan from the Jewish national home. In a communication to a senior British official, the U.S. Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis said that Palestine needed access to water resources in Transjordan for irrigation and power and also to Transjordan’s “fertile plains . . . for food and sustenance.” (Upon joining the Supreme Court in 1916, Brandeis had resigned his chairmanship of America’s principal Zionist organization, but he remained active in the Jewish national cause.)
The leader of the Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann, argued to Churchill that Transjordan, from earliest times, was “an integral and vital part of Palestine.” Its plains were the Holy Land’s “natural granary” and the climate was “invigorating.” The area was “scarcely inhabited and long derelict,” Weizmann said, and severing it from Palestine “would be scant satisfaction to Arab Nationalism, while it would go far to frustrate” Britain’s Jewish-national-home policy. “While Eastern Palestine may probably never have the same religious and historic significance as Western Palestine,” he wrote, “it may bulk much larger in the economic future of the Jewish National Home.”
Churchill knew that it might not be possible diplomatically to arrange a separate British mandate for Transjordan. His staff therefore proposed acknowledging the territory as part of Mandate Palestine—a decision comfortably within the time-honored common understanding that Palestine straddled the Jordan River.
The ban on Jewish settlement in Eastern Palestine, however, created a legal conundrum. How could Churchill maintain the ban when one of the chief duties of Britain, as Palestine’s mandatory power, was to encourage “close settlement by Jews on the land?” Churchill did not buy his staff’s argument that the Mandate, as then drafted, gave Britain the necessary authority. Amending the draft would be awkward, but Churchill feared a legal challenge. He sought help from lawyers. If it were “absolutely necessary” to change the Mandate to keep Transjordan out of the Jewish national home, he wrote, then he wanted the new authority couched in vague language: “to specify areas affected without referring in detail to proposed difference in treatment.”
The result was an artfully muddy amendment that was added to the Mandate as Article 25. It stated, “In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled . . . to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions.” The words were framed, a senior official explained, to enable Britain “to withhold indefinitely the application of those clauses of the mandate which related to the establishment of a National Home for the Jews.”
After the League of Nations eventually approved the Mandate in 1922, the British representative Arthur Balfour submitted to it a memorandum, citing Article 25, that listed all the clauses about Jews and said they were “not applicable” in Transjordan. Balfour told the League’s governing council that the memorandum’s object was “to withdraw from Trans-Jordan the special provisions which were intended to provide a national home for the Jews west of the Jordan.” France’s representative said he understood that Balfour’s memorandum “only aimed at maintaining in the area to the east of the Jordan the general regime of the Mandate for Palestine.” Balfour said he agreed.
On March 23, 1921, Churchill had traveled to Jerusalem to persuade Emir Abdullah, Faysal’s brother, to content himself, at least for the time being, with a position in Transjordan. Having decided that Transjordan “should be constituted an Arab province of Palestine under an Arab governor, responsible to the High Commissioner,” Churchill suggested that Abdullah take responsibility there for six months with British help. Abdullah agreed.
Nothing is so permanent as the provisional, the adage says. That six-month arrangement has not ended—it has been in operation for a century. It gave rise to the emirate of Transjordan, which existed under the Palestine Mandate until 1946 and then evolved into the kingdom of Transjordan, which changed its name in 1949 to the kingdom of Jordan, which exists to this day under the kingship of Abdullah’s great-grandson, Abdullah II.
Zionist leaders of all stripes were unhappy with the British government’s policy on Transjordan. Vladimir Jabotinsky would demand reversal of the territory’s exclusion from the Jewish national home, making a rallying cry of the slogan “Two banks to the Jordan—this is ours, and this too.” The words, which rhyme in Hebrew (Shtey gadot la-yarden—zu shelanu, zu gam ken) were from a poem by Jabotinsky that, put to music, became one of the anthems of his political movement’s youth organization.
Although the idea that the Jewish national home should include Eastern Palestine became associated mainly, if not exclusively, with the political right when Jabotinsky’s Zionist Revisionist movement adopted it as a tenet, in 1921 it was a consensus view among Zionists from right to left.
Some British officials likewise looked askance at the Transjordan policy. Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen of the Colonial Office said he “exploded” when he heard Churchill “had severed Transjordan from Palestine.” In his memoir, A Crackle of Thorns, Alec Kirkbride, a British military officer in Transjordan who became Britain’s first ambassador there, commented wryly that, after Britain chose to put Abdullah in charge, “In due course the remarkable discovery was made that the clauses of the mandate relating to the es¬tablish¬ment of a National Home for the Jews had never been intended to apply to mandated ter¬ritory east of the river.” Leopold Amery, a former colonial secretary and one of the drafters of the Balfour Declaration, criticized the Transjordan policy for “taking out of Pales¬tine the larger and better half, the half more suitable to large-scale colonization.” Years later—in a May 22, 1939 House of Commons debate—he described the decision as Palestine’s “first partition.”
In early 1921 Colonial Office officials mulled the question of terminology and proposed that “‘Palestine’ and ‘Eastern Palestine’ should be brought into use for the territories lying respectively to the west and east of the River Jordan.” Their recommendation was only partially adopted. Palestine became the term used for Western Palestine. But the territory east of the Jordan would commonly be called Transjordan.
The common use of “Transjordan” rather than “Eastern Palestine” had consequences. After the 1948-49 Israeli War of Independence, it allowed supporters of the Palestinian Arabs to describe them as “stateless.” After the 1967 Six-Day War, it allowed people to say plausibly, if inaccurately, that the Jews had taken control of all of Palestine, leaving none to the Arabs.
Numerous books—for example, Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006)—now contain maps that attach the labels “Palestine” or “Mandate Palestine” only to Palestine west of the Jordan. Writing that the Zionists “were ultimately able to take over the entire country,” Khalidi endorsed the common but ahistorical assertion that Palestine extended no further east than the Jordan River. By way of contrast, it is notable that another leading American scholar of Arab origin, Princeton University’s Philip K. Hitti, in his History of Syria: Including Lebanon and Palestine (1951), dealt accurately with this point of geography. After identifying Palestine as “the southern part of Syria,” Hitti wrote that Palestine was “amputated” from Syria, and then, “In 1921 Transjordan, with a biblical name but no real historical existence, was in turn amputated from Palestine and placed under the Emir Abdullah.”
Would the world now perceive the Arab-Israeli conflict differently if British officials had adopted that proposal from the Colonial Office to continue to use the term Eastern Palestine, rather than Transjordan? Would world politics be different if people generally understood that the kingdom of Jordan is in Eastern Palestine and Israel is in Western Palestine? Would the conflict have been different if no one had ever contended that the Palestinian Arabs are “stateless?”
Such questions have been excitedly debated over the years, including within Israel. Early in his political career, Ariel Sharon, who became Israeli prime minister in 2001, made famous the slogan “Jordan is Palestine,” using it to counter demands for Israeli territorial concessions to the Palestinians. Of the various arguments advanced in favor of such concessions, one was that Israel should agree to divide the land it controlled because the Arabs deserved a state in at least part of Palestine. Sharon’s answer was that an Arab state—Jordan—already existed in Palestine.
Sharon’s slogan became a hot button in Israeli politics because it sounded dismissive of concerns about how Israel should deal with the rights of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River. Anyone who heard it that way had good grounds to object. Those concerns are serious and the slogan is not at all the end of the story. But, as much as one might dislike its political implications, the simple statement that Jordan is Palestine is factual.
The distinguished Anglo-American historian Bernard Wasserstein clearly did not like the slogan’s political implications. Rejecting the view of Jabotinsky and Sharon that Palestine was partitioned in 1921 as a “myth,” he wrote, “In fact, what occurred [when Britain decided that Transjordan would be part of the Palestine Mandate, albeit outside the Jewish national home] was a huge addition to the territory of Palestine, not any subtraction.” He added, “Zionist disappointment at the loss of what they had never been promised and never possessed led to the idea that they had been somehow cheated out of their birthright. The legend persists.”
Wasserstein’s point is supported by the view of Allenby and his officers. When they spoke of “Palestine,” they generally meant only Western Palestine. From their perspective, Transjordan’s inclusion in the Palestine Mandate was an addition. But Jabotinsky and Sharon were not wrong. As is clear in any library of books of history and natural history from before the Great War—including, as we have seen, the massive British military surveys of the Palestine Exploration Fund and the widely-read work of the scholar George Adam Smith—“Palestine” had a western part and an eastern part that were separated by the Jordan River. From the viewpoint of the established experts in geography, declaring Transjordan out of the Jewish national home was a subtraction.
Wasserstein’s statement that Transjordan “had never been promised to the Zionists” is true in that it was never explicitly promised to anyone. Britain, however, did promise to help create a Jewish national home “in Palestine,” and all the parties involved understood that the boundaries remained to be specified.
For their part, Zionist leaders and top British officials understood that the word “Palestine” in the Balfour Declaration included Transjordan—in other words, that Eastern Palestine, or at least part of it, was included in the promise to the Zionists. That is clear from the Brandeis and Weizmann letters. It is evident from Amery’s remarks. And it is shown conclusively by Churchill’s agreement to accept Article 25. If the Balfour Declaration had been limited to west of the Jordan, Churchill would not have felt compelled to add in Article 25 to make the Mandate’s Jewish-home clauses inapplicable east of the Jordan.
Wasserstein is correct that the Zionists never “possessed” Transjordan, but it is unclear what that signifies. Jews in ancient times had lived east of the river, but Britain banned the Zionists from settling there.
To sum up: “Palestine” was long universally understood to include the land on both sides of the Jordan River. Eastern Palestine is now the kingdom of Jordan. Its eastern border was not finalized until after the League of Nations approved the Palestine Mandate. Maps of Mandate Palestine that include only Western Palestine are misleading because the emirate of Transjordan was part of Mandate Palestine, governed under Britain’s Jerusalem-based high commissioner for Palestine from 1921 until the emirate became an independent kingdom in 1946. Amery had a firm basis for saying that taking Transjordan out of the Jewish national home in 1921-1922 can properly be called Palestine’s “first partition.”
This examination of the term “Palestine” is not an argument about what Israel should or should not do to try to make peace with its Arab enemies. While it refutes the contention that there is only one state now in Palestine, it says nothing about whether Israel should be willing, in pursuit of peace, to relinquish control of various parts of Western Palestine.
The value of this history is not in how it relates to anyone’s preferences regarding the two-state solution or other ideas about peace. Its value inheres in its accuracy. A true account of history justifies itself.
The Forgotten History of the Term "Palestine" Hudson
2024.06.05 10:56 tangocduong189 SCRIPT SUMMARY “JOY OF LIFE”
Do you know that the novel “Joy of Life” by author Mao Ni has up to three million words? Therefore, it’s not simple to fully grasp its content. With the excitement that the second part of the “Joy of Life” series has recently brought, I have tried to summarize the main content of that novel.
Note 1: Spoiler alert! Below is a summary of the entire content of the novel “Joy of Life”.
Note 2: The summary from the novel will have many details similar to and different from the movie.
Although most of the advanced civilizations in the past have disappeared, there is still a military base left in the Arctic. The artificial intelligence in this base recognizes the situation of humanity and concludes that modern civilization is synonymous with extinction. Therefore, to prevent humans from self-destruction again, the artificial intelligence on one hand teaches humans the necessary skills to develop (writing, handicrafts…), on the other hand, it always controls their development progress. Artificial intelligence imparts knowledge to humans through humanoid combat robots called messengers.
In the journey of rewriting human history, the artificial intelligence at the military base in the Arctic is revered by people as the Divine Temple, considered as a kind of religious worship. In addition, artificial intelligence also studies the application of radioactive energy in the new human body by writing martial arts secrets and teaching them. What the new humans call “true energy” is the nuclear radiation energy in their bodies.
The laws set by artificial intelligence, or also the laws of the Divine Temple, include: Law 0 - The Divine Temple must protect the common interests of humanity from harm and three other laws are established based on this premise; Law 1 - The Divine Temple is not allowed to harm humans, is not allowed to stand still when humans are harmed; Law 2 - The Divine Temple must obey all commands of humans but is not allowed to violate the previous law; Law 3 - The Divine Temple must protect its own safety but is not allowed to violate the two previous laws.
At this time on the mainland, there are three countries: Nan Qing, the army is strong, but the culture is relatively backward; Northern Qi, advocates investment in culture but the aristocracy only cares about having fun so militarily always oppressed by Nan Qing; Dong Yi, a port city with a prosperous trade, a free country without a king but only a city lord.
Ye Qing Mei is a female doctor who transmigrated into the body of a little girl. Ye Qing Mei went to the Divine Temple, stole a machine gun, a few of the most powerful “true energy” secrets, and then ran away from the Divine Temple with Wu Zhu - the strongest robot. On the run, Wu Zhu often stayed behind to block the pursuers so that Ye Qing Mei could escape.
At the same time, the emperor of Northern Qi wanted to find the elixir of life, so he sent troops to the north to find the Divine Temple, led by Ku He (royal relatives) and Xiao’en. The group encountered many difficulties due to the polar weather and almost died, only Ku He and Xiao’en were lucky enough to reach the gate of the Divine Temple. However, no matter what they do, the modern technology here prevents them from entering. Just when they didn’t know what to do next, the Divine Temple opened and Ye Qing Mei appeared.
Ye Qing Mei gave the two a martial arts secret, however, according to her assessment, Ku He would be more suitable for training than Xiao’en. And just as predicted, even though they practiced together, Ku He progressed very quickly, after a while, he became a Great Grandmaster. Although they left the Divine Temple together with Ku He and Xiao’en, they separated along the way because Ye Qing Mei wanted to go back to pick up Wu Zhu.
Ye Qing Mei’s ambition is to promote the progress of humanity, help them develop technology and democracy, so she first chose to do business in Dong Yi. Ye Qing Mei hopes that through the development of industry and commerce, progress can be accelerated. However, she quickly realized that economic development only benefits the rich and powerful. Ye Qing Mei then thought that to change, she had to intervene in politics, so she brought Wu Zhu to Nan Qing, where the political situation was chaotic with angry people and a strong army.
During her time in Dong Yi, under a large tree, Ye Qing Mei met Fei Jie Si playing with ants. Fei Jie Si is just a fool, even though he is the son of the city lord of Dong Yi, he is hated by his own family, and the people laugh at him. However, Ye Qing Mei with modern thinking did not treat him differently. Ye Qing Mei gave the fool a swordsmanship secret. Based on the secret and his own understanding, Fei Jie Si became a master of swordsmanship with the title Sigu Sword. Sigu Sword used his swordsmanship to slaughter his entire family, avenging the bad treatment he had suffered in the past. His younger brother hid behind a pile of dry grass so luckily escaped, scared and fled to Nan Qing, later became the top assassin of the Overwatch Council with the name Ying Zi.
Sigu Sword got his personal revenge but because of that, he was hated by Ye Qing Mei. Ye Qing Mei and Wu Zhu left, Sigu Sword then quickly became a Great Grandmaster and accepted many disciples, turning Dong Yi into a place that is small but has the most Level 9 masters.
Ye Qing Mei and Wu Zhu came to Nan Qing, opened a shop, traded many things with the intelligence of modern people such as: glass, soap, diameter… made a lot of money. In Nan Qing, Ye Qing Mei made friends with three friends who were the son of the king of Nan Qing, eunuch Chen Ping Ping and the son of the wet nurse Fan Jian.
Ye Qing Mei wanted to take advantage of the king’s son to realize her ambition, so she used a machine gun to kill all the competitors for the throne, directly put the king, and then his son on the throne of Nan Qing. Ye Qing Mei used the gold and silver earned from the shop to help Emperor of Qing stabilize the throne. Established the Overwatch Council and appointed Chen Ping Ping as the director with the real idea to supervise the emperor and limit the power of the royal family.
Ye Qing Mei has a great ideal: everyone in the world is equal. However, Ye Qing Mei’s progressive thinking is very dangerous for the monarchy of Emperor of Qing. Emperor of Qing’s desire for power is much greater than his love for Ye Qing Mei. Emperor of Qing wants to unify the world and become the greatest emperor, turning Nan Qing into a dynasty that lasts forever. Therefore, Emperor of Qing decided that Ye Qing Mei must die.
However, Emperor of Qing could not directly act on Ye Qing Mei because there were still Chen Ping Ping, the director of the Overwatch Council; Fan Jian, the lang of the Ministry of Defense; and especially Wu Zhu with the ultimate martial arts. If Emperor of Qing directly killed Ye Qing Mei, Nan Qing would definitely be in great chaos. Therefore, at this time, the intention to act only stopped in Emperor of Qing’s thoughts.
Emperor of Qing was given a secret by Ye Qing Mei called Ba Dao Zhen Qi but the practice of this true energy method is very slow and to become a master, you have to break all the meridians in your body. Ye Qing Mei is not a martial artist so she knows nothing about how to practice Ba Dao Zhen Qi, however, Emperor of Qing thinks that Ye Qing Mei wants to hide the practice secret from him.
On one expedition, Emperor of Qing was possessed by fire because he didn’t know how to practice, accidentally causing all the meridians in his body to break. Chen Ping Ping led the black cavalry to march thousands of miles to rescue, unfortunately, he was injured and lost both legs, since then he had to sit in a wheelchair. As for Emperor of Qing, not only was he unharmed, but he unintentionally successfully practiced Ba Dao Zhen Qi, officially became a Great Grandmaster but held a grudge in his heart, thinking Ye Qing Mei wanted to harm him to be possessed by fire, self-reminded from now on can only believe in himself.
During the time Ye Qing Mei and Wu Zhu were in the capital of Nan Qing, the famous house owner in the capital, Ye Liu Yun, had many times come to challenge and ask for a fight with Wu Zhu, thereby opening up potential, becoming the fourth Great Grandmaster.
When Emperor of the Qing returned, he did not want to reveal his master identity, so he used Hong Si Xiang, a eunuch in the palace, as a screen. The essence of Ba Dao Zhen Qi is to store true energy in the body, Emperor of the Qing transmitted to Hong Si Xiang a large amount of true energy so that he could have the courage almost like a real Great Grandmaster.
For the people in the world, Nan Qing owns two Great Grandmasters, a strong army, becoming the first powerful country in the world. It’s just that Northern Qi and Dong Yi also have many great masters, Northern Qi has a vast territory, Dong Yi has a strong economy; the balance of power between the three countries was formed.
After a long time of trying, Ye Qing Mei felt that her efforts did not achieve any results, she was extremely disappointed and lonely. She knew she wouldn’t live much longer because she had made enemies with too many people. Ye Qing Mei then drugged Emperor of the Qing and became pregnant with a child, hoping to leave her mark on the world.
At this time, Emperor of the Qing was extremely jealous of Ye Qing Mei’s influence on the Overwatch Council and the Internal Warehouse - the agency controlling the trade of Nan Qing, thinking day and night about how to destroy her.
The Divine Temple was very annoyed with the progress made by Ye Qing Mei, which directly affected the purpose of manipulating civilization, but still could not deal with her due to the presence of Wu Zhu. Among the messengers of the Divine Temple, Wu Zhu is the strongest, although the other robots are only slightly weaker than him but the limited number makes Wu Zhu can destroy them bit by bit.
At the same time, a series of reforms by Ye Qing Mei in Nan Qing made the royal family and the aristocracy fearful. The Empress Dowager and the Queen only wanted to get rid of her quickly. The Grand Princess Li Yun Rui, Emperor of the Qing’s cousin, although always admiring Ye Qing Mei, was also extremely envious of the position of this fairy sister.
The climax of these hatreds, the factions joined hands to find a way to kill Ye Qing Mei. Emperor of the Qing contacted the Divine Temple through the messengers at Qing Temple, asking them to find a way to mislead Wu Zhu. At the same time, Emperor of the Qing also led the army to wage war with Northern Qi, forcing the director Chen Ping Ping to leave the capital to control intelligence information, forcing the lang of the Ministry of Defense, Fan Jian, to leave the capital to coordinate military supplies. And then, the wing of the Empress Dowager, the Queen will be the ones to act on Ye Qing Mei.
On the day Ye Qing Mei gave birth to the baby, the people of the Empress Dowager took the opportunity and killed her. Although Wu Zhu and Chen Ping Ping tried their best to quickly return to the capital, they could only save Ye Qing Mei’s son. Fearing the danger in the capital, Wu Zhu took her son to Danzhou and handed him over to Emperor of the Qing’s wet nurse, disguised under the identity of Fan Jian’s illegitimate child, named Fan Xian.
When Emperor of the Qing arrived at the capital, he and Chen Ping Ping killed all those who belonged to the Empress Dowager, the Queen’s faction who had participated in the assassination of Ye Qing Mei. This action of Emperor of the Qing both to disguise his role in this conspiracy, and to reduce the power of the harem, to take control of Nan Qing in his hands.
Grand Prince Jing (Emperor of the Qing’s younger brother), Chen Ping Ping and Fan Jian all suspected that Ye Qing Mei’s death was related to Emperor of the Qing but they had no evidence or specific clues. In the following years, Emperor of the Qing still maintained the drama of mourning Ye Qing Mei by often going to Thai Binh’s private hospital where she lived, keeping her belongings and inventions, etc…
Grand Prince Jing firmly believed that the person who harmed Ye Qing Mei was Emperor of the Qing but he couldn’t do anything, so Grand Prince Jing pretended to be fascinated by the joy of plants and music, not caring about anything else.
After cooperating with Emperor of the Qing, the Divine Temple realized that a cunning person like Emperor of the Qing was very suitable for preventing the development of humanity, so from then on always supported him.
During the time Fan Xian was in Danzhou, Chen Ping Ping arranged for the poison-using master Fei Jie to be Fan Xian’s master, Wu Zhu gave Fan Xian the Ba Dao Zhen Qi secret and became his martial arts teacher. All this preparation is to wait for the opportunity to take revenge for Ye Qing Mei.
On the way back to the capital, Fan Xian was assassinated by the Grand Princess’s assassins but easily escaped.
Fan Jian’s daughter, Fan Ruo Ruo, who had lived in Danzhou for a while, greatly admired Fan Xian. The two often exchanged letters during the time apart. At the time Fan Xian returned to the capital, Ruo Ruo was a famous talented woman in the capital, a good friend of Grand Prince Jing’s prince Li Hong Cheng and the granddaughter of the Great Grandmaster Ye LiuYun named Ye Ling’er.
In the first duel with Fan Xian, Ye Ling’er was quickly defeated. She accepted Fan Xian as her master, and also showed him the technique of Liú Yún Sàn Shǒu of the Ye Family.
Fan Xian also persuaded Fan Si Zhe, the youngest son of Fan Jian, to open a bookstore with him to sell the novel Red Chamber, which he copied from the memory of the work Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin. Fan Xian, like Ye Qing Mei, is a modern transmigrator.
In his spare time, Fan Xian wandered to Qing Temple, accidentally met Emperor of the Qing and “Miss Chicken Thigh” Lin Wan’er. Fan Xian knew the face of his future wife, so every night he often brought chicken legs to meet Lin Wan’er, incidentally trying to cure her congenital tuberculosis.
Li Yun Rui is a very complicated woman. She fell in love with her cousin Emperor of the Qing but was not reciprocated, so she seduced Emperor of the Qing’s son to take revenge on him. On the surface, Li Yun Rui appears to support the Crown Prince but in fact works for the Second Prince.
Fan Xian is becoming more and more famous in the capital because of his extremely high level of literature, which is actually the poems he remembered in his previous life. The Grand Princess wanted to harm Fan Xian, so she asked the great literary master of Northern Qi named Zhuang Mo Han to frame Fan Xian for plagiarism, saying that Fan Xian was too young to write such profound poems.
But Fan Xian, while drunk, stood among the civil and military officials and read a series of 300 Tang poems that he memorized, proving that Zhuang Mo Han was just a slanderer.
Zhuang Mo Han later had to meet Fan Xian privately to apologize and reveal that the Grand Princess had forced him to frame Fan Xian in exchange for the freedom of Xiao’en, his younger brother, who was being held by Chen Ping Ping at the Overwatch Council.
Fan Xian is called by people as Thi Tien, the Grand Princess is defeated but still refuses to give up. She colluded with Northern Qi to arrest Yan Bing Yun, the leader of Nan Qing’s secret agent in Northern Qi, forcing Nan Qing to exchange Xiao’en.
Through Wu Zhu, Fan Xian knew that his mother had left a box but there was no key to open it. Therefore, Fan Xian and Wu Zhu secretly broke into the harem to steal the key from the Empress Dowager. From inside the box, they found Ye Qing Mei’s machine gun and a letter expressing her expectations for humanity.
Chen Ping Ping handed over the position of director of the Overwatch Council to Fan Xian. Emperor of the Qing ordered Fan Xian to lead Xiao’en and Si Li Li to Northern Qi in exchange for Yan Bing Yun.
This Si Li Li is actually a descendant of the royal family of Nan Qing, her grandfather is the one who was shot dead by Ye Qing Mei to seize the throne for Emperor of the Qing. She and her family ran to Northern Qi and finally were sent to Nan Qing as spies and were arrested. This time, she was exchanged with the status of a woman loved by the emperor of Northern Qi.
Before going to Northern Qi, Fan Xian established a bodyguard team under his command, headed by Wang Qi Nian, an outstanding talent of the Overwatch Council. At the same time, Fan Xian also met other disciples of Fei Jie at the Overwatch Council and got quite a lot of useful poisons.
After talking with Chen Ping Ping, Fan Xian confirmed his identity as Emperor of the Qing’s illegitimate son. Realizing the strangeness in Ye Qing Mei’s death, Fan Xian began to cultivate his strength.
On the way to Northern Qi, Fan Xian met Haitang Duo Duo, a disciple of the Great Grandmaster Ku He blocking the road. Duo Duo wanted to kill Xiao’en on the orders of her master because Ku He wanted to hide information about the Divine Temple.
Fan Xian’s martial arts were not as good as Duo Duo, so he tricked Duo Duo by pretending to use aphrodisiacs and then ran away.
After entering the capital of Northern Qi, Fan Xian realized that the little emperor of Northern Qi was a fan of the work “Red Chamber”. Fan Xian pledged to the emperor of Northern Qi that after returning, he would take control of the Palace Treasury and trade with Northern Qi.
Exchange Xiao’en and Si Li Li, Fan Xian has an additional loyal subordinate, Yan Bing Yun, under his command.
Fan Xian took the opportunity to cooperate with a general of Northern Qi named Shang Sang Hu to rescue Xiao’en from prison. Because the masters of Northern Qi blocked the road, when Fan Xian rescued Xiao’en, he was also dying near death. Before dying, Xiao’en revealed to Fan Xian about the origin of Ye Qing Mei and the location of the Divine Temple.
The Emperor of Northern Qi, Zhan Dou Dou, is the daughter of the former emperor, pretending to be a man to inherit the throne. Si Li Li is nominally the concubine of the emperor but in fact, along with Duo Duo, they are both spies under Zhan Dou Dou.
Fan Xian returned to Nan Qing, married Lin Wan’er and prepared to inherit the Palace Treasury from the hands of the Grand Princess. Because the business operations of the Palace Treasury are mainly located in the Jiangnan region, Fan Xian will have to move south to take over the work.
Before Fan Xian went south, there was a mysterious master in the capital who wanted to assassinate Emperor of the Qing. The assassin was none other than Ying Zi acting on the orders of Chen Ping Ping. At this time, Chen Ping Ping was determined to oppose Emperor of the Qing to avenge Ye Qing Mei, but did not want to implicate Fan Xian, so he ordered Ying Zi to attack Fan Xian as well.
Fan Xian took action to protect Emperor of the Qing, chasing Ying Zi. During the duel, Ba Dao Zhen Qi of Fan Xian erupted uncontrollably, causing him to be hit by a sword from Ying Zi. Although it did not affect his life, the true energy was injured and had to be recuperated for a while.
To reward Fan Xian for his meritorious service, Emperor of the Qing granted Fan Xian a bodyguard team. At this time, the Grand Princess always sent people to assassinate Fan Xian but were defeated by the bodyguards.
To ensure the safety of the family before leaving the capital again, Fan Xian calculated and arranged a few things. Fan Ruo Ruo at this time was about to marry the prince Li Hong Cheng, although the two were close friends, Ruo Ruo did not want to become a concubine, so Fan Xian arranged for her sister to go to Northern Qi to study medicine and rely on Duo Duo for protection. In addition, based on the smuggling plan with the Northern Qi court, Fan Xian also let Fan Si Zhe go to Northern Qi to take over the business.
Fan Xian went down to Jiangnan and was ordered to bring along the third prince, the son of Emperor of the Qing with Yi Guifei (cousin of Liu Ru Yu, the second wife of Fan Jian). The third prince is still young, forced to follow Fan Xian for training.
To supervise the business of the Palace Treasury with the Northern Qi court, the little emperor of Northern Qi sent Duo Duo to follow Fan Xian down to Jiangnan.
Ku He did not know why he knew that Fan Xian was the son of Ye Qing Mei, ordered Duo Duo to give Fan Xian the secret book Tian Yi Dao. Thanks to this secret, Fan Xian can reduce the negative effects of Ba Dao Zhen Qi. However, because he has not yet achieved a breakthrough in true energy like Emperor of the Qing, Fan Xian is still at the level above Level 9 masters.
In Jiangnan, Fan Xian took advantage of the support of some loyal servants of Ye Qing Mei, quickly resolved the problems of the Palace Treasury caused by the Grand Princess, and conveniently pulled the families here to his side.
Fan Xian asked Wang Shi San Lang to find and kill Yan Xiao Yi, the top-ranked assassin of the Grand Princess.
Before he could return to the capital of Nan Qing, Fan Xian’s convoy was attacked with military bows and arrows. Although Fan Xian and Duo Duo defeated all the assassins, their convoy suffered heavy losses. The two discovered that these assassins belonged to the Qin Family.
The Qin Family is a large family in Nan Qing, one of the forces that once participated in the conspiracy to assassinate Ye Qing Mei but luckily escaped the revenge of Chen Ping Ping. Currently, Chen Ping Ping has investigated the fingerprints of the Qin Family, they fear that their family will be eliminated by Chen Ping Ping and Emperor of the Qing, so they have cooperated with the Grand Princess and obeyed the order to hunt down Fan Xian.
However, the conspiracy to assassinate Fan Xian of the Qin Family in fact has the implicit promotion of Chen Ping Ping himself. He wanted to show Emperor of the Qing once again that Fan Xian was not related to the factions opposing the emperor, in order to keep him safe.
In the capital, Fan Xian, through many clues, investigated the fact that Grand Princess Li Yun Rui was actually pretending to betray the Crown Prince to follow the Second Prince, she had an incestuous relationship with the Crown Prince and always supported the Crown Prince.
Fan Xian cleverly arranged for Emperor of the Qing to know about this wrong relationship. Emperor of the Qing was angry and expelled the Grand Princess and the Crown Prince from the capital.
The Second Prince married Ye Ling’er, so in everyone’s eyes, the Ye Family belonged to the Second Prince’s wing.
While working at the Palace Treasury, Fan Xian discovered that the Quan Zhou Navy of Nan Qing, although controlled by the Qin Family, still had many people loyal to Ye Qing Mei.
Emperor of the Qing, who had been plotting for a long time, determined that it was time to set a trap to eliminate his enemies, arranged for Fan Xian to accompany him to visit Qing Temple at Da Dong Mountain (not Qing Temple near the capital).
Emperor of the Qing asked Fan Xian and the Overwatch Council to be responsible for his safety on the trip to Da Dong Mountain. Emperor of the Qing used himself as bait, making the Northern Qi court, Dong Yi city, Grand Prince Jing, the Second Prince, the Grand Princess, and the Qin Family all feel that this is the only opportunity to assassinate Emperor of the Qing. No one knows that Emperor of the Qing is a Great Grandmaster, they all think Hong Si Xiang is a Great Grandmaster.
The battle at Da Dong Mountain involved all three remaining masters: Ku He, Sigu Sword, and Ye LiuYun (on the surface, they stood on the side of the Second Prince, but in fact, they obeyed Emperor of the Qing’s orders).
Northern Qi’s army: Shang Sang Hu, a fierce general who wins every battle.
Nan Qing’s army: Ye Family (in fact, they all obey Emperor of the Qing’s orders), Qin Family, Yan Xiao Yi and 5000 soldiers outside the frontier, Quan Zhou Navy, Chen Ping Ping and some people from the Overwatch Council.
The formation protecting Emperor of the Qing: a group of bodyguards commanded by Wang Qi Nian, Fan Jian’s red-armored cavalry, Hong Si Xiang.
Most of the soldiers protecting Emperor of the Qing were quickly defeated by Yan Xiao Yi’s army and the presence of three Great Grandmasters. Wang Shi San Lang even fought with his own master because of his friendship with Fan Xian, of course, he lost but did not die.
In the end, only Ku He , Sigu Sword, and Ye LiuYun were left to confront Emperor of the Qing and Eunuch Hong. Hong Si Xiang was then defeated by the three Great Grandmasters.
Emperor of the Qing continued to play the weak drama. He ordered Fan Xian to take the emperor’s gun back to the capital to stabilize the country. Before Fan Xian left, he asked Wu Zhu to protect Emperor of the Qing and then jumped down the cliff to escape (he had practiced jumping down the cliff with Wu Zhu since he was a child).
Yan Xiao Yi thought that Emperor of the Qing would definitely die at the hands of the three Great Grandmasters, so he decided to hunt down Fan Xian. Fan Xian then defeated Yan Xiao Yi.
Da Dong Mountain is a place with a very special concentration of nuclear radiation. Normally, Wu Zhu often comes here to recover memory and health.
With the help of Wu Zhu, the situation at this time is two against three. This is also the confrontation of the five strongest people in the world.
In the middle of the duel, Ye LiuYun suddenly revealed his face to fight Ku He . Emperor of the Qing suddenly used Ba Khí to blow away half of Sigu Sword’s body and then broke all the meridians in Ku He ’s body. Emperor of the Qing finally officially revealed the face of a Great Grandmaster.
Ku He ran away, Sigu Sword was carried by his disciple Wang Shi San Lang to escape to Dong Yi city.
The result of the battle on Da Dong Mountain: Ku He and Sigu Sword were both seriously injured, just waiting to die; the forces of Chen Ping Ping and Fan Jian, the Overwatch Council and the red knights were almost completely destroyed; the Quan Zhou Navy only left those under Emperor of the Qing; all the forces opposing Emperor of the Qing have revealed their faces and there is no way back.
Due to the news from Da Dong Mountain being blocked, the Grand Princess, the Crown Prince, the Second Prince, the Qin Family all rose up in rebellion according to the plan. Originally, the Second Prince also had the Ye Family on his side, but the Ye Family originally only obeyed Emperor of the Qing’s orders. Fan Xian and the eldest prince led the army to defeat the rebel army. Finally, the news that Emperor of the Qing was still alive returned to the capital, the rebel army completely collapsed.
The Crown Prince, the Second Prince, the Grand Princess, the Qin Family, and Grand Prince Jing were all sentenced to death. Prince Li Hong Cheng was not involved because he was not in the capital. Ye Ling’er became a widow.
In the chaos, Fan Xian poisoned the Empress Dowager to avenge Ye Qing Mei.
Both Emperor of the Qing and Fan Xian suspected Chen Ping Ping’s role in the rebellion. Fan Xian advised Chen Ping Ping to stop but he continued to keep his distance from Fan Xian.
Although Emperor of the Qing had suspected Chen Ping Ping for a long time, in fact, he still did not want to kill this long-time close servant, so he only stripped Chen Ping Ping of his power by appointing Fan Xian as the director, Yan Bing Yun as the deputy of the Overwatch Council. Since then, Chen Ping Ping has also been very willing to play the role of a harmless old man in a wheelchair.
At this time, Sigu Sword was about to die, the neutral position of Dong Yi city was about to be gone, they could only accept to become a part of Nan Qing or Northern Qi. Both of these big countries sent people to Dong Yi to compete for ownership of the city. The envoy of Nan Qing is Fan Xian and Northern Qi is the little emperor himself to negotiate.
Before his death, Sigu Sword believed that with Fan Xian’s ability, he would soon discover that Emperor of the Qing was involved in the death of Ye Qing Mei. He instructed all his disciples to help Fan Xian and then died.
Dong Yi city surrendered to Nan Qing but in fact belonged to Fan Xian. Fan Xian then handed over Dong Yi to the eldest prince, who originally had half of the bloodline as a Dong Yi person. The eldest prince stationed troops in Dong Yi, in his heart he really admired Fan Xian.
While Fan Xian was in Dong Yi, Emperor of the Qing summoned Chen Ping Ping into the palace to inquire about his role in the incident at Da Dong Mountain. Knowing the matter, Wang Qi Nian used his light work to rush to Dong Yi to find Fan Xian for help.
Chen Ping Ping was not afraid, directly confronted Emperor of the Qing and questioned him about the death of Ye Qing Mei.
Emperor of the Qing wanted to kill Chen Ping Ping but did not expect that there were two machine guns in Chen Ping Ping’s wheelchair equipped by Ye Qing Mei herself. Emperor of the Qing was shot and seriously injured but after all, he was a Great Grandmaster, not easy to die like that.
After that, Chen Ping Ping was sentenced to death. Fan Xian returned just in time to hear Chen Ping Ping’s last words. He asked Fan Xian what Ye Qing Mei had left in her box. When Fan Xian said it was a gun, he laughed and said, “A gun? I have that too!” and then breathed his last.
Emperor of the Qing summoned Fan Ruo Ruo, who had studied medicine in Northern Qi, into the palace to treat the gunshot wound.
Emperor of the Qing witnessed Fan Xian crying in sorrow next to Chen Ping Ping’s body, he did not appreciate Fan Xian’s feelings for the old eunuch. Although Emperor of the Qing hoped that Chen Ping Ping’s death would not ruin the relationship between the two fathers and sons, he had to reconsider in front of this scene.
Fan Xian blamed Yan Bing Yun for not trying to protect Chen Ping Ping, but in fact, Chen Ping Ping himself had ordered Yan Bing Yun not to intervene.
The death of Chen Ping Ping made Fan Xian wake up. For a long time, he always avoided direct confrontation with Emperor of the Qing even though he still suspected that he had killed his mother. Emperor of the Qing is now very wary of Fan Xian and he has no way to defeat this powerful emperor.
Emperor of the Qing wanted Fan Ruo Ruo to marry He Zong Wei, a lowly and shameless official, but luckily, the prince Li Hong Cheng had returned to the capital. Every day, the crown prince held a sword in front of the Royal Medical Institute to prevent He Zong Wei from approaching Ruo Ruo.
To limit the influence of Fan Xian, Emperor of the Qing arranged for He Zong Wei to work under him. When Fan Xian knew that this man had bad intentions towards his sister, he quickly gave him a dose of poison.
Fan Xian knew that no matter how hard he tried, he was completely at a disadvantage to Emperor of the Qing in the political game, the longer the confrontation, the more his relatives and friends were implicated. Therefore, Fan Xian himself took a sword into the palace and confronted Emperor of the Qing.
At this time, Fan Xian had practiced martial arts from the books of Ba Dao Zhen Qi , Tian Yi Dao, Sigu Sword, and Liú Yún Sàn Shǒu, along with training with Wu Zhu. Accompanying him were the strongest Level 9 masters at that time such as Duo Duo, Wang Shi San Lang, etc…
Even so, when facing Emperor of the Qing, they had no chance at all. Fan Xian’s group quickly lost and had to flee the palace.
On the run, they were pursued by the Ye Family, many masters of Dong Yi city had to sacrifice to protect Fan Xian’s life. They were only lucky to escape thanks to the help of Yan Bing Yun and the Overwatch Council.
Fan Xian and his comrades who were seriously injured ran to Northern Qi. Emperor of the Qing was injured by a gunshot and had not yet healed, temporarily unable to implement the plan to annex the world.
Fan Xian decided to go to the Divine Temple to find Wu Zhu. Wu Zhu had previously wanted to return to the Divine Temple to retrieve his old memories.
Ye LiuYun and Fei Jie decided to sail out to sea, leaving Nan Qing, avoiding disputes. Fan Xian saw them off and then set off to find the Divine Temple.
Ku He died, the world now only has two Great Grandmasters, Emperor of the Qing and Wu Zhu.
Fan Xian, Duo Duo, and Wang Shi San Lang went north, after many days they finally saw the Divine Temple.
The three of them easily entered the Divine Temple without being prevented. Through the projection in the Divine Temple, they learned the story of the destruction and rebirth of the world.
They found some robots like Wu Zhu, but they were all out of energy. After many years of turmoil, perhaps the Divine Temple is about to collapse.
The three found Wu Zhu but he was manipulated by the Divine Temple. The Divine Temple believed that Fan Xian was like Ye Qing Mei, those who carry the “heavenly mandate” will promote the development of humanity and eventually cause extinction. The Divine Temple ordered Wu Zhu to kill Fan Xian.
The three were not opponents of Wu Zhu at all. While Wu Zhu was about to kill Fan Xian, Duo Duo and Wang Shi San Lang smashed the machinery in the Divine Temple, finally successfully destroying the artificial intelligence.
Wu Zhu woke up from control but didn’t remember anything. He only had faith in Fan Xian for no reason. The Divine Temple collapsed, Wu Zhu carried the seriously injured Fan Xian and the other two ran out. The four then returned to Nan Qing together.
While Fan Xian was recovering from his injuries, Wu Zhu gradually remembered the story of Ye Qing Mei. He decided to go into the palace alone to kill Emperor of the Qing.
Wu Zhu alone slaughtered all of Emperor of the Qing’s forbidden army, but by the time he faced him, Wu Zhu had lost a leg and no longer had an iron rod in his hand.
Emperor of the Qing looked at Wu Zhu’s wound and realized that his blood was gold.
However, the essence of Ba Dao Zhen Qi of Emperor of the Qing is the accumulation of true energy, so he is currently deficient. At this time, the two strongest people are both in a state of exhaustion and cannot finish each other with one blow.
Fan Ruo Ruo wanted to take the opportunity to use the machine gun that Wu Zhu had given her a long time ago to assassinate Emperor of the Qing, unfortunately, he had always been wary of her for a long time, so he quickly rushed to bend the gun.
Fan Xian and his comrades came to rescue but could not change anything.
Emperor of the Qing at this time thought that nothing could threaten him anymore, so he decided to explore the biggest mystery he had been curious about for a long time: what is behind Wu Zhu’s eye patch? He approached Wu Zhu and removed the black cloth on his face.
Behind Wu Zhu’s cloth, the eyes equipped with destructive laser technology, Emperor of the Qing was immediately destroyed.
Fan Xian and his family moved to Hangzhou to live. After the death of the four Great Grandmasters, Fan Xian gradually also became a Great Grandmaster, the leader of the first Level 9 masters in the world.
The new emperor of Nan Qing is the third prince, a good brother of Fan Xian.
Wang Shi San Lang became the new city lord of Dong Yi, a good brother of Fan Xian.
The emperor of Northern Qi loves Fan Xian.
Wu Zhu went to Da Dong Mountain to heal his wounds with the radioactive environment here, promising to return to Fan Xian soon.
Fan Ruo Ruo traveled around the world to practice medicine, Li Hong Cheng always followed her without leaving.
submitted by tangocduong189 to JoyofLife [link] [comments]
Note 1: Spoiler alert! Below is a summary of the entire content of the novel “Joy of Life”.
Note 2: The summary from the novel will have many details similar to and different from the movie.
- The events that happened before part 1 of the “Joy of Life”:
Although most of the advanced civilizations in the past have disappeared, there is still a military base left in the Arctic. The artificial intelligence in this base recognizes the situation of humanity and concludes that modern civilization is synonymous with extinction. Therefore, to prevent humans from self-destruction again, the artificial intelligence on one hand teaches humans the necessary skills to develop (writing, handicrafts…), on the other hand, it always controls their development progress. Artificial intelligence imparts knowledge to humans through humanoid combat robots called messengers.
In the journey of rewriting human history, the artificial intelligence at the military base in the Arctic is revered by people as the Divine Temple, considered as a kind of religious worship. In addition, artificial intelligence also studies the application of radioactive energy in the new human body by writing martial arts secrets and teaching them. What the new humans call “true energy” is the nuclear radiation energy in their bodies.
The laws set by artificial intelligence, or also the laws of the Divine Temple, include: Law 0 - The Divine Temple must protect the common interests of humanity from harm and three other laws are established based on this premise; Law 1 - The Divine Temple is not allowed to harm humans, is not allowed to stand still when humans are harmed; Law 2 - The Divine Temple must obey all commands of humans but is not allowed to violate the previous law; Law 3 - The Divine Temple must protect its own safety but is not allowed to violate the two previous laws.
At this time on the mainland, there are three countries: Nan Qing, the army is strong, but the culture is relatively backward; Northern Qi, advocates investment in culture but the aristocracy only cares about having fun so militarily always oppressed by Nan Qing; Dong Yi, a port city with a prosperous trade, a free country without a king but only a city lord.
Ye Qing Mei is a female doctor who transmigrated into the body of a little girl. Ye Qing Mei went to the Divine Temple, stole a machine gun, a few of the most powerful “true energy” secrets, and then ran away from the Divine Temple with Wu Zhu - the strongest robot. On the run, Wu Zhu often stayed behind to block the pursuers so that Ye Qing Mei could escape.
At the same time, the emperor of Northern Qi wanted to find the elixir of life, so he sent troops to the north to find the Divine Temple, led by Ku He (royal relatives) and Xiao’en. The group encountered many difficulties due to the polar weather and almost died, only Ku He and Xiao’en were lucky enough to reach the gate of the Divine Temple. However, no matter what they do, the modern technology here prevents them from entering. Just when they didn’t know what to do next, the Divine Temple opened and Ye Qing Mei appeared.
Ye Qing Mei gave the two a martial arts secret, however, according to her assessment, Ku He would be more suitable for training than Xiao’en. And just as predicted, even though they practiced together, Ku He progressed very quickly, after a while, he became a Great Grandmaster. Although they left the Divine Temple together with Ku He and Xiao’en, they separated along the way because Ye Qing Mei wanted to go back to pick up Wu Zhu.
Ye Qing Mei’s ambition is to promote the progress of humanity, help them develop technology and democracy, so she first chose to do business in Dong Yi. Ye Qing Mei hopes that through the development of industry and commerce, progress can be accelerated. However, she quickly realized that economic development only benefits the rich and powerful. Ye Qing Mei then thought that to change, she had to intervene in politics, so she brought Wu Zhu to Nan Qing, where the political situation was chaotic with angry people and a strong army.
During her time in Dong Yi, under a large tree, Ye Qing Mei met Fei Jie Si playing with ants. Fei Jie Si is just a fool, even though he is the son of the city lord of Dong Yi, he is hated by his own family, and the people laugh at him. However, Ye Qing Mei with modern thinking did not treat him differently. Ye Qing Mei gave the fool a swordsmanship secret. Based on the secret and his own understanding, Fei Jie Si became a master of swordsmanship with the title Sigu Sword. Sigu Sword used his swordsmanship to slaughter his entire family, avenging the bad treatment he had suffered in the past. His younger brother hid behind a pile of dry grass so luckily escaped, scared and fled to Nan Qing, later became the top assassin of the Overwatch Council with the name Ying Zi.
Sigu Sword got his personal revenge but because of that, he was hated by Ye Qing Mei. Ye Qing Mei and Wu Zhu left, Sigu Sword then quickly became a Great Grandmaster and accepted many disciples, turning Dong Yi into a place that is small but has the most Level 9 masters.
Ye Qing Mei and Wu Zhu came to Nan Qing, opened a shop, traded many things with the intelligence of modern people such as: glass, soap, diameter… made a lot of money. In Nan Qing, Ye Qing Mei made friends with three friends who were the son of the king of Nan Qing, eunuch Chen Ping Ping and the son of the wet nurse Fan Jian.
Ye Qing Mei wanted to take advantage of the king’s son to realize her ambition, so she used a machine gun to kill all the competitors for the throne, directly put the king, and then his son on the throne of Nan Qing. Ye Qing Mei used the gold and silver earned from the shop to help Emperor of Qing stabilize the throne. Established the Overwatch Council and appointed Chen Ping Ping as the director with the real idea to supervise the emperor and limit the power of the royal family.
Ye Qing Mei has a great ideal: everyone in the world is equal. However, Ye Qing Mei’s progressive thinking is very dangerous for the monarchy of Emperor of Qing. Emperor of Qing’s desire for power is much greater than his love for Ye Qing Mei. Emperor of Qing wants to unify the world and become the greatest emperor, turning Nan Qing into a dynasty that lasts forever. Therefore, Emperor of Qing decided that Ye Qing Mei must die.
However, Emperor of Qing could not directly act on Ye Qing Mei because there were still Chen Ping Ping, the director of the Overwatch Council; Fan Jian, the lang of the Ministry of Defense; and especially Wu Zhu with the ultimate martial arts. If Emperor of Qing directly killed Ye Qing Mei, Nan Qing would definitely be in great chaos. Therefore, at this time, the intention to act only stopped in Emperor of Qing’s thoughts.
Emperor of Qing was given a secret by Ye Qing Mei called Ba Dao Zhen Qi but the practice of this true energy method is very slow and to become a master, you have to break all the meridians in your body. Ye Qing Mei is not a martial artist so she knows nothing about how to practice Ba Dao Zhen Qi, however, Emperor of Qing thinks that Ye Qing Mei wants to hide the practice secret from him.
On one expedition, Emperor of Qing was possessed by fire because he didn’t know how to practice, accidentally causing all the meridians in his body to break. Chen Ping Ping led the black cavalry to march thousands of miles to rescue, unfortunately, he was injured and lost both legs, since then he had to sit in a wheelchair. As for Emperor of Qing, not only was he unharmed, but he unintentionally successfully practiced Ba Dao Zhen Qi, officially became a Great Grandmaster but held a grudge in his heart, thinking Ye Qing Mei wanted to harm him to be possessed by fire, self-reminded from now on can only believe in himself.
During the time Ye Qing Mei and Wu Zhu were in the capital of Nan Qing, the famous house owner in the capital, Ye Liu Yun, had many times come to challenge and ask for a fight with Wu Zhu, thereby opening up potential, becoming the fourth Great Grandmaster.
When Emperor of the Qing returned, he did not want to reveal his master identity, so he used Hong Si Xiang, a eunuch in the palace, as a screen. The essence of Ba Dao Zhen Qi is to store true energy in the body, Emperor of the Qing transmitted to Hong Si Xiang a large amount of true energy so that he could have the courage almost like a real Great Grandmaster.
For the people in the world, Nan Qing owns two Great Grandmasters, a strong army, becoming the first powerful country in the world. It’s just that Northern Qi and Dong Yi also have many great masters, Northern Qi has a vast territory, Dong Yi has a strong economy; the balance of power between the three countries was formed.
After a long time of trying, Ye Qing Mei felt that her efforts did not achieve any results, she was extremely disappointed and lonely. She knew she wouldn’t live much longer because she had made enemies with too many people. Ye Qing Mei then drugged Emperor of the Qing and became pregnant with a child, hoping to leave her mark on the world.
At this time, Emperor of the Qing was extremely jealous of Ye Qing Mei’s influence on the Overwatch Council and the Internal Warehouse - the agency controlling the trade of Nan Qing, thinking day and night about how to destroy her.
The Divine Temple was very annoyed with the progress made by Ye Qing Mei, which directly affected the purpose of manipulating civilization, but still could not deal with her due to the presence of Wu Zhu. Among the messengers of the Divine Temple, Wu Zhu is the strongest, although the other robots are only slightly weaker than him but the limited number makes Wu Zhu can destroy them bit by bit.
At the same time, a series of reforms by Ye Qing Mei in Nan Qing made the royal family and the aristocracy fearful. The Empress Dowager and the Queen only wanted to get rid of her quickly. The Grand Princess Li Yun Rui, Emperor of the Qing’s cousin, although always admiring Ye Qing Mei, was also extremely envious of the position of this fairy sister.
The climax of these hatreds, the factions joined hands to find a way to kill Ye Qing Mei. Emperor of the Qing contacted the Divine Temple through the messengers at Qing Temple, asking them to find a way to mislead Wu Zhu. At the same time, Emperor of the Qing also led the army to wage war with Northern Qi, forcing the director Chen Ping Ping to leave the capital to control intelligence information, forcing the lang of the Ministry of Defense, Fan Jian, to leave the capital to coordinate military supplies. And then, the wing of the Empress Dowager, the Queen will be the ones to act on Ye Qing Mei.
On the day Ye Qing Mei gave birth to the baby, the people of the Empress Dowager took the opportunity and killed her. Although Wu Zhu and Chen Ping Ping tried their best to quickly return to the capital, they could only save Ye Qing Mei’s son. Fearing the danger in the capital, Wu Zhu took her son to Danzhou and handed him over to Emperor of the Qing’s wet nurse, disguised under the identity of Fan Jian’s illegitimate child, named Fan Xian.
When Emperor of the Qing arrived at the capital, he and Chen Ping Ping killed all those who belonged to the Empress Dowager, the Queen’s faction who had participated in the assassination of Ye Qing Mei. This action of Emperor of the Qing both to disguise his role in this conspiracy, and to reduce the power of the harem, to take control of Nan Qing in his hands.
Grand Prince Jing (Emperor of the Qing’s younger brother), Chen Ping Ping and Fan Jian all suspected that Ye Qing Mei’s death was related to Emperor of the Qing but they had no evidence or specific clues. In the following years, Emperor of the Qing still maintained the drama of mourning Ye Qing Mei by often going to Thai Binh’s private hospital where she lived, keeping her belongings and inventions, etc…
Grand Prince Jing firmly believed that the person who harmed Ye Qing Mei was Emperor of the Qing but he couldn’t do anything, so Grand Prince Jing pretended to be fascinated by the joy of plants and music, not caring about anything else.
After cooperating with Emperor of the Qing, the Divine Temple realized that a cunning person like Emperor of the Qing was very suitable for preventing the development of humanity, so from then on always supported him.
During the time Fan Xian was in Danzhou, Chen Ping Ping arranged for the poison-using master Fei Jie to be Fan Xian’s master, Wu Zhu gave Fan Xian the Ba Dao Zhen Qi secret and became his martial arts teacher. All this preparation is to wait for the opportunity to take revenge for Ye Qing Mei.
- The events that occurred in part 1 and part 2 corresponding to the movie:
On the way back to the capital, Fan Xian was assassinated by the Grand Princess’s assassins but easily escaped.
Fan Jian’s daughter, Fan Ruo Ruo, who had lived in Danzhou for a while, greatly admired Fan Xian. The two often exchanged letters during the time apart. At the time Fan Xian returned to the capital, Ruo Ruo was a famous talented woman in the capital, a good friend of Grand Prince Jing’s prince Li Hong Cheng and the granddaughter of the Great Grandmaster Ye LiuYun named Ye Ling’er.
In the first duel with Fan Xian, Ye Ling’er was quickly defeated. She accepted Fan Xian as her master, and also showed him the technique of Liú Yún Sàn Shǒu of the Ye Family.
Fan Xian also persuaded Fan Si Zhe, the youngest son of Fan Jian, to open a bookstore with him to sell the novel Red Chamber, which he copied from the memory of the work Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin. Fan Xian, like Ye Qing Mei, is a modern transmigrator.
In his spare time, Fan Xian wandered to Qing Temple, accidentally met Emperor of the Qing and “Miss Chicken Thigh” Lin Wan’er. Fan Xian knew the face of his future wife, so every night he often brought chicken legs to meet Lin Wan’er, incidentally trying to cure her congenital tuberculosis.
Li Yun Rui is a very complicated woman. She fell in love with her cousin Emperor of the Qing but was not reciprocated, so she seduced Emperor of the Qing’s son to take revenge on him. On the surface, Li Yun Rui appears to support the Crown Prince but in fact works for the Second Prince.
Fan Xian is becoming more and more famous in the capital because of his extremely high level of literature, which is actually the poems he remembered in his previous life. The Grand Princess wanted to harm Fan Xian, so she asked the great literary master of Northern Qi named Zhuang Mo Han to frame Fan Xian for plagiarism, saying that Fan Xian was too young to write such profound poems.
But Fan Xian, while drunk, stood among the civil and military officials and read a series of 300 Tang poems that he memorized, proving that Zhuang Mo Han was just a slanderer.
Zhuang Mo Han later had to meet Fan Xian privately to apologize and reveal that the Grand Princess had forced him to frame Fan Xian in exchange for the freedom of Xiao’en, his younger brother, who was being held by Chen Ping Ping at the Overwatch Council.
Fan Xian is called by people as Thi Tien, the Grand Princess is defeated but still refuses to give up. She colluded with Northern Qi to arrest Yan Bing Yun, the leader of Nan Qing’s secret agent in Northern Qi, forcing Nan Qing to exchange Xiao’en.
Through Wu Zhu, Fan Xian knew that his mother had left a box but there was no key to open it. Therefore, Fan Xian and Wu Zhu secretly broke into the harem to steal the key from the Empress Dowager. From inside the box, they found Ye Qing Mei’s machine gun and a letter expressing her expectations for humanity.
Chen Ping Ping handed over the position of director of the Overwatch Council to Fan Xian. Emperor of the Qing ordered Fan Xian to lead Xiao’en and Si Li Li to Northern Qi in exchange for Yan Bing Yun.
This Si Li Li is actually a descendant of the royal family of Nan Qing, her grandfather is the one who was shot dead by Ye Qing Mei to seize the throne for Emperor of the Qing. She and her family ran to Northern Qi and finally were sent to Nan Qing as spies and were arrested. This time, she was exchanged with the status of a woman loved by the emperor of Northern Qi.
Before going to Northern Qi, Fan Xian established a bodyguard team under his command, headed by Wang Qi Nian, an outstanding talent of the Overwatch Council. At the same time, Fan Xian also met other disciples of Fei Jie at the Overwatch Council and got quite a lot of useful poisons.
After talking with Chen Ping Ping, Fan Xian confirmed his identity as Emperor of the Qing’s illegitimate son. Realizing the strangeness in Ye Qing Mei’s death, Fan Xian began to cultivate his strength.
On the way to Northern Qi, Fan Xian met Haitang Duo Duo, a disciple of the Great Grandmaster Ku He blocking the road. Duo Duo wanted to kill Xiao’en on the orders of her master because Ku He wanted to hide information about the Divine Temple.
Fan Xian’s martial arts were not as good as Duo Duo, so he tricked Duo Duo by pretending to use aphrodisiacs and then ran away.
After entering the capital of Northern Qi, Fan Xian realized that the little emperor of Northern Qi was a fan of the work “Red Chamber”. Fan Xian pledged to the emperor of Northern Qi that after returning, he would take control of the Palace Treasury and trade with Northern Qi.
Exchange Xiao’en and Si Li Li, Fan Xian has an additional loyal subordinate, Yan Bing Yun, under his command.
Fan Xian took the opportunity to cooperate with a general of Northern Qi named Shang Sang Hu to rescue Xiao’en from prison. Because the masters of Northern Qi blocked the road, when Fan Xian rescued Xiao’en, he was also dying near death. Before dying, Xiao’en revealed to Fan Xian about the origin of Ye Qing Mei and the location of the Divine Temple.
The Emperor of Northern Qi, Zhan Dou Dou, is the daughter of the former emperor, pretending to be a man to inherit the throne. Si Li Li is nominally the concubine of the emperor but in fact, along with Duo Duo, they are both spies under Zhan Dou Dou.
Fan Xian returned to Nan Qing, married Lin Wan’er and prepared to inherit the Palace Treasury from the hands of the Grand Princess. Because the business operations of the Palace Treasury are mainly located in the Jiangnan region, Fan Xian will have to move south to take over the work.
Before Fan Xian went south, there was a mysterious master in the capital who wanted to assassinate Emperor of the Qing. The assassin was none other than Ying Zi acting on the orders of Chen Ping Ping. At this time, Chen Ping Ping was determined to oppose Emperor of the Qing to avenge Ye Qing Mei, but did not want to implicate Fan Xian, so he ordered Ying Zi to attack Fan Xian as well.
Fan Xian took action to protect Emperor of the Qing, chasing Ying Zi. During the duel, Ba Dao Zhen Qi of Fan Xian erupted uncontrollably, causing him to be hit by a sword from Ying Zi. Although it did not affect his life, the true energy was injured and had to be recuperated for a while.
To reward Fan Xian for his meritorious service, Emperor of the Qing granted Fan Xian a bodyguard team. At this time, the Grand Princess always sent people to assassinate Fan Xian but were defeated by the bodyguards.
To ensure the safety of the family before leaving the capital again, Fan Xian calculated and arranged a few things. Fan Ruo Ruo at this time was about to marry the prince Li Hong Cheng, although the two were close friends, Ruo Ruo did not want to become a concubine, so Fan Xian arranged for her sister to go to Northern Qi to study medicine and rely on Duo Duo for protection. In addition, based on the smuggling plan with the Northern Qi court, Fan Xian also let Fan Si Zhe go to Northern Qi to take over the business.
Fan Xian went down to Jiangnan and was ordered to bring along the third prince, the son of Emperor of the Qing with Yi Guifei (cousin of Liu Ru Yu, the second wife of Fan Jian). The third prince is still young, forced to follow Fan Xian for training.
To supervise the business of the Palace Treasury with the Northern Qi court, the little emperor of Northern Qi sent Duo Duo to follow Fan Xian down to Jiangnan.
Ku He did not know why he knew that Fan Xian was the son of Ye Qing Mei, ordered Duo Duo to give Fan Xian the secret book Tian Yi Dao. Thanks to this secret, Fan Xian can reduce the negative effects of Ba Dao Zhen Qi. However, because he has not yet achieved a breakthrough in true energy like Emperor of the Qing, Fan Xian is still at the level above Level 9 masters.
In Jiangnan, Fan Xian took advantage of the support of some loyal servants of Ye Qing Mei, quickly resolved the problems of the Palace Treasury caused by the Grand Princess, and conveniently pulled the families here to his side.
- The events that have not been made into movie:
Fan Xian asked Wang Shi San Lang to find and kill Yan Xiao Yi, the top-ranked assassin of the Grand Princess.
Before he could return to the capital of Nan Qing, Fan Xian’s convoy was attacked with military bows and arrows. Although Fan Xian and Duo Duo defeated all the assassins, their convoy suffered heavy losses. The two discovered that these assassins belonged to the Qin Family.
The Qin Family is a large family in Nan Qing, one of the forces that once participated in the conspiracy to assassinate Ye Qing Mei but luckily escaped the revenge of Chen Ping Ping. Currently, Chen Ping Ping has investigated the fingerprints of the Qin Family, they fear that their family will be eliminated by Chen Ping Ping and Emperor of the Qing, so they have cooperated with the Grand Princess and obeyed the order to hunt down Fan Xian.
However, the conspiracy to assassinate Fan Xian of the Qin Family in fact has the implicit promotion of Chen Ping Ping himself. He wanted to show Emperor of the Qing once again that Fan Xian was not related to the factions opposing the emperor, in order to keep him safe.
In the capital, Fan Xian, through many clues, investigated the fact that Grand Princess Li Yun Rui was actually pretending to betray the Crown Prince to follow the Second Prince, she had an incestuous relationship with the Crown Prince and always supported the Crown Prince.
Fan Xian cleverly arranged for Emperor of the Qing to know about this wrong relationship. Emperor of the Qing was angry and expelled the Grand Princess and the Crown Prince from the capital.
The Second Prince married Ye Ling’er, so in everyone’s eyes, the Ye Family belonged to the Second Prince’s wing.
While working at the Palace Treasury, Fan Xian discovered that the Quan Zhou Navy of Nan Qing, although controlled by the Qin Family, still had many people loyal to Ye Qing Mei.
Emperor of the Qing, who had been plotting for a long time, determined that it was time to set a trap to eliminate his enemies, arranged for Fan Xian to accompany him to visit Qing Temple at Da Dong Mountain (not Qing Temple near the capital).
Emperor of the Qing asked Fan Xian and the Overwatch Council to be responsible for his safety on the trip to Da Dong Mountain. Emperor of the Qing used himself as bait, making the Northern Qi court, Dong Yi city, Grand Prince Jing, the Second Prince, the Grand Princess, and the Qin Family all feel that this is the only opportunity to assassinate Emperor of the Qing. No one knows that Emperor of the Qing is a Great Grandmaster, they all think Hong Si Xiang is a Great Grandmaster.
The battle at Da Dong Mountain involved all three remaining masters: Ku He, Sigu Sword, and Ye LiuYun (on the surface, they stood on the side of the Second Prince, but in fact, they obeyed Emperor of the Qing’s orders).
Northern Qi’s army: Shang Sang Hu, a fierce general who wins every battle.
Nan Qing’s army: Ye Family (in fact, they all obey Emperor of the Qing’s orders), Qin Family, Yan Xiao Yi and 5000 soldiers outside the frontier, Quan Zhou Navy, Chen Ping Ping and some people from the Overwatch Council.
The formation protecting Emperor of the Qing: a group of bodyguards commanded by Wang Qi Nian, Fan Jian’s red-armored cavalry, Hong Si Xiang.
Most of the soldiers protecting Emperor of the Qing were quickly defeated by Yan Xiao Yi’s army and the presence of three Great Grandmasters. Wang Shi San Lang even fought with his own master because of his friendship with Fan Xian, of course, he lost but did not die.
In the end, only Ku He , Sigu Sword, and Ye LiuYun were left to confront Emperor of the Qing and Eunuch Hong. Hong Si Xiang was then defeated by the three Great Grandmasters.
Emperor of the Qing continued to play the weak drama. He ordered Fan Xian to take the emperor’s gun back to the capital to stabilize the country. Before Fan Xian left, he asked Wu Zhu to protect Emperor of the Qing and then jumped down the cliff to escape (he had practiced jumping down the cliff with Wu Zhu since he was a child).
Yan Xiao Yi thought that Emperor of the Qing would definitely die at the hands of the three Great Grandmasters, so he decided to hunt down Fan Xian. Fan Xian then defeated Yan Xiao Yi.
Da Dong Mountain is a place with a very special concentration of nuclear radiation. Normally, Wu Zhu often comes here to recover memory and health.
With the help of Wu Zhu, the situation at this time is two against three. This is also the confrontation of the five strongest people in the world.
In the middle of the duel, Ye LiuYun suddenly revealed his face to fight Ku He . Emperor of the Qing suddenly used Ba Khí to blow away half of Sigu Sword’s body and then broke all the meridians in Ku He ’s body. Emperor of the Qing finally officially revealed the face of a Great Grandmaster.
Ku He ran away, Sigu Sword was carried by his disciple Wang Shi San Lang to escape to Dong Yi city.
The result of the battle on Da Dong Mountain: Ku He and Sigu Sword were both seriously injured, just waiting to die; the forces of Chen Ping Ping and Fan Jian, the Overwatch Council and the red knights were almost completely destroyed; the Quan Zhou Navy only left those under Emperor of the Qing; all the forces opposing Emperor of the Qing have revealed their faces and there is no way back.
Due to the news from Da Dong Mountain being blocked, the Grand Princess, the Crown Prince, the Second Prince, the Qin Family all rose up in rebellion according to the plan. Originally, the Second Prince also had the Ye Family on his side, but the Ye Family originally only obeyed Emperor of the Qing’s orders. Fan Xian and the eldest prince led the army to defeat the rebel army. Finally, the news that Emperor of the Qing was still alive returned to the capital, the rebel army completely collapsed.
The Crown Prince, the Second Prince, the Grand Princess, the Qin Family, and Grand Prince Jing were all sentenced to death. Prince Li Hong Cheng was not involved because he was not in the capital. Ye Ling’er became a widow.
In the chaos, Fan Xian poisoned the Empress Dowager to avenge Ye Qing Mei.
Both Emperor of the Qing and Fan Xian suspected Chen Ping Ping’s role in the rebellion. Fan Xian advised Chen Ping Ping to stop but he continued to keep his distance from Fan Xian.
Although Emperor of the Qing had suspected Chen Ping Ping for a long time, in fact, he still did not want to kill this long-time close servant, so he only stripped Chen Ping Ping of his power by appointing Fan Xian as the director, Yan Bing Yun as the deputy of the Overwatch Council. Since then, Chen Ping Ping has also been very willing to play the role of a harmless old man in a wheelchair.
At this time, Sigu Sword was about to die, the neutral position of Dong Yi city was about to be gone, they could only accept to become a part of Nan Qing or Northern Qi. Both of these big countries sent people to Dong Yi to compete for ownership of the city. The envoy of Nan Qing is Fan Xian and Northern Qi is the little emperor himself to negotiate.
Before his death, Sigu Sword believed that with Fan Xian’s ability, he would soon discover that Emperor of the Qing was involved in the death of Ye Qing Mei. He instructed all his disciples to help Fan Xian and then died.
Dong Yi city surrendered to Nan Qing but in fact belonged to Fan Xian. Fan Xian then handed over Dong Yi to the eldest prince, who originally had half of the bloodline as a Dong Yi person. The eldest prince stationed troops in Dong Yi, in his heart he really admired Fan Xian.
While Fan Xian was in Dong Yi, Emperor of the Qing summoned Chen Ping Ping into the palace to inquire about his role in the incident at Da Dong Mountain. Knowing the matter, Wang Qi Nian used his light work to rush to Dong Yi to find Fan Xian for help.
Chen Ping Ping was not afraid, directly confronted Emperor of the Qing and questioned him about the death of Ye Qing Mei.
Emperor of the Qing wanted to kill Chen Ping Ping but did not expect that there were two machine guns in Chen Ping Ping’s wheelchair equipped by Ye Qing Mei herself. Emperor of the Qing was shot and seriously injured but after all, he was a Great Grandmaster, not easy to die like that.
After that, Chen Ping Ping was sentenced to death. Fan Xian returned just in time to hear Chen Ping Ping’s last words. He asked Fan Xian what Ye Qing Mei had left in her box. When Fan Xian said it was a gun, he laughed and said, “A gun? I have that too!” and then breathed his last.
Emperor of the Qing summoned Fan Ruo Ruo, who had studied medicine in Northern Qi, into the palace to treat the gunshot wound.
Emperor of the Qing witnessed Fan Xian crying in sorrow next to Chen Ping Ping’s body, he did not appreciate Fan Xian’s feelings for the old eunuch. Although Emperor of the Qing hoped that Chen Ping Ping’s death would not ruin the relationship between the two fathers and sons, he had to reconsider in front of this scene.
Fan Xian blamed Yan Bing Yun for not trying to protect Chen Ping Ping, but in fact, Chen Ping Ping himself had ordered Yan Bing Yun not to intervene.
The death of Chen Ping Ping made Fan Xian wake up. For a long time, he always avoided direct confrontation with Emperor of the Qing even though he still suspected that he had killed his mother. Emperor of the Qing is now very wary of Fan Xian and he has no way to defeat this powerful emperor.
Emperor of the Qing wanted Fan Ruo Ruo to marry He Zong Wei, a lowly and shameless official, but luckily, the prince Li Hong Cheng had returned to the capital. Every day, the crown prince held a sword in front of the Royal Medical Institute to prevent He Zong Wei from approaching Ruo Ruo.
To limit the influence of Fan Xian, Emperor of the Qing arranged for He Zong Wei to work under him. When Fan Xian knew that this man had bad intentions towards his sister, he quickly gave him a dose of poison.
Fan Xian knew that no matter how hard he tried, he was completely at a disadvantage to Emperor of the Qing in the political game, the longer the confrontation, the more his relatives and friends were implicated. Therefore, Fan Xian himself took a sword into the palace and confronted Emperor of the Qing.
At this time, Fan Xian had practiced martial arts from the books of Ba Dao Zhen Qi , Tian Yi Dao, Sigu Sword, and Liú Yún Sàn Shǒu, along with training with Wu Zhu. Accompanying him were the strongest Level 9 masters at that time such as Duo Duo, Wang Shi San Lang, etc…
Even so, when facing Emperor of the Qing, they had no chance at all. Fan Xian’s group quickly lost and had to flee the palace.
On the run, they were pursued by the Ye Family, many masters of Dong Yi city had to sacrifice to protect Fan Xian’s life. They were only lucky to escape thanks to the help of Yan Bing Yun and the Overwatch Council.
Fan Xian and his comrades who were seriously injured ran to Northern Qi. Emperor of the Qing was injured by a gunshot and had not yet healed, temporarily unable to implement the plan to annex the world.
Fan Xian decided to go to the Divine Temple to find Wu Zhu. Wu Zhu had previously wanted to return to the Divine Temple to retrieve his old memories.
Ye LiuYun and Fei Jie decided to sail out to sea, leaving Nan Qing, avoiding disputes. Fan Xian saw them off and then set off to find the Divine Temple.
Ku He died, the world now only has two Great Grandmasters, Emperor of the Qing and Wu Zhu.
Fan Xian, Duo Duo, and Wang Shi San Lang went north, after many days they finally saw the Divine Temple.
The three of them easily entered the Divine Temple without being prevented. Through the projection in the Divine Temple, they learned the story of the destruction and rebirth of the world.
They found some robots like Wu Zhu, but they were all out of energy. After many years of turmoil, perhaps the Divine Temple is about to collapse.
The three found Wu Zhu but he was manipulated by the Divine Temple. The Divine Temple believed that Fan Xian was like Ye Qing Mei, those who carry the “heavenly mandate” will promote the development of humanity and eventually cause extinction. The Divine Temple ordered Wu Zhu to kill Fan Xian.
The three were not opponents of Wu Zhu at all. While Wu Zhu was about to kill Fan Xian, Duo Duo and Wang Shi San Lang smashed the machinery in the Divine Temple, finally successfully destroying the artificial intelligence.
Wu Zhu woke up from control but didn’t remember anything. He only had faith in Fan Xian for no reason. The Divine Temple collapsed, Wu Zhu carried the seriously injured Fan Xian and the other two ran out. The four then returned to Nan Qing together.
While Fan Xian was recovering from his injuries, Wu Zhu gradually remembered the story of Ye Qing Mei. He decided to go into the palace alone to kill Emperor of the Qing.
Wu Zhu alone slaughtered all of Emperor of the Qing’s forbidden army, but by the time he faced him, Wu Zhu had lost a leg and no longer had an iron rod in his hand.
Emperor of the Qing looked at Wu Zhu’s wound and realized that his blood was gold.
However, the essence of Ba Dao Zhen Qi of Emperor of the Qing is the accumulation of true energy, so he is currently deficient. At this time, the two strongest people are both in a state of exhaustion and cannot finish each other with one blow.
Fan Ruo Ruo wanted to take the opportunity to use the machine gun that Wu Zhu had given her a long time ago to assassinate Emperor of the Qing, unfortunately, he had always been wary of her for a long time, so he quickly rushed to bend the gun.
Fan Xian and his comrades came to rescue but could not change anything.
Emperor of the Qing at this time thought that nothing could threaten him anymore, so he decided to explore the biggest mystery he had been curious about for a long time: what is behind Wu Zhu’s eye patch? He approached Wu Zhu and removed the black cloth on his face.
Behind Wu Zhu’s cloth, the eyes equipped with destructive laser technology, Emperor of the Qing was immediately destroyed.
Fan Xian and his family moved to Hangzhou to live. After the death of the four Great Grandmasters, Fan Xian gradually also became a Great Grandmaster, the leader of the first Level 9 masters in the world.
The new emperor of Nan Qing is the third prince, a good brother of Fan Xian.
Wang Shi San Lang became the new city lord of Dong Yi, a good brother of Fan Xian.
The emperor of Northern Qi loves Fan Xian.
Wu Zhu went to Da Dong Mountain to heal his wounds with the radioactive environment here, promising to return to Fan Xian soon.
Fan Ruo Ruo traveled around the world to practice medicine, Li Hong Cheng always followed her without leaving.
2024.06.05 06:38 Junior_Insurance7773 [POEM] Sympathy, by Paul Laurence Dunbar
submitted by Junior_Insurance7773 to Poetry [link] [comments]
2024.06.05 04:30 Spirited-Crow-41 The Sugarless Sugarship
My husband refurbishes old phones he buys in thrift stores and ships them to his home country to sell. Just a hobby side hustle. I had the habit of looking through the old phones that hadn’t been wiped and came across a juicy Sugar Daddy/Baby saga that spanned across several months. The owner of the phone was an old man in mid-seventies named “Jim” and a 40 something woman named “Trish”. I don’t know where they met but Jim just counted his lucky stars that a woman so beautiful as Trish would give him the time of day. He was always writing poems and sonnets to her about her beauty and Trish would leave him on read. I’d see messages where he told her he was sorry he missed her, he came right away and stood outside and knocked for a few minutes before leaving the money order she asked for in her mailbox. Trish would supposedly come back hours later with a half assed excuse for why she had to run out at the last minute and missed him but thanks for the money. He’d send messages saying he knows how hard money is to come by for her because she was unemployed and then send her whatever amount she needed. He was always trying to see her but she always claimed she was so busy, or more often, she just wouldn’t respond. Trish had him paying utilities for her, he’d pay her rent. She even had him to pay her mother’s utility bill once or twice. He was always helpful and so hopeful of the next time he’d see her. Finally she couldn’t wiggle her way out of seeing him and had to answer the door one day when he came because he was getting angry that she never spent time with him. That visit was like going to Heaven for him. He wrote a whole paragraph about how beautiful her boobs were, I think she showed him but he definitely didn’t make it to third base. And he mentioned how he laughed inside at the shocked look on her teenaged daughter’s face when she saw her mom kissing him goodbye. Then he said “I wonder how shocked she would look if somebody flashed her with a big one”. Up until then, I’d been feeling sorry for him being used but my sympathy lessened when I glimpsed that dirty old man side of him. There was another instance where she had asked him to buy her daughter’s prom dress and sent pics of the teen in it. He rhapsodized about how beautiful and well figured the girl was so long that you’d have thought he wanted her more than he wanted Trish. He even went as far as to say something about he bets that her and her prom date will pull the car over and get busy. Ugh. More on that later. So anyway, that visit and peep show she gave him was enough fuel to keep him going for a while longer. I remember Trish texted him saying that they didn’t have food in the house and could he buy them some pizza? Of course he agreed to feed this poor woman, her mother, and her two young daughters. She immediately sent him an order to call in for two large specialty pizzas and two 2 liter sodas then asked him to also go to a separate restaurant and purchase wings for her mother. “Mom likes the hot ones” she said. That message was sent within seconds of him agreeing, she’d obviously already had it typed out and was just waiting to hit send. He bought all that, delivered it himself and ended up leaving it at the door because of course, Trish wasn’t home when he got there. All this time I’m thinking this guy must be rich to be paying her bills, her mom’s bills and his own. Then I looked through his pictures and saw that he worked as a greeter at Walmart. He could still have money though, some rich older people work after retirement just for recreation. But as I got further in the messages, I saw Jim’s house of cards was starting to shake. His credit cards started getting declined. Trish texted saying that whatever card of his she used got declined and asked if there was anything on the AmEx. Jim started to get a little snappish, probably working more and eating less. He mentioned that he was behind on his bills and had received a disconnect notice from the gas company. Trish started ignoring him again. Time went on with little to no communication. Just occasional requests and either a grant or deny response. There were text alerts from his credit card companies saying he was over his limit or flagging purchases for potential fraud. He texted Trish that he hated nosey people and that when he went to pay her bill at the tanning salon, the receptionist observed that he sure didn’t look like he tanned twice a week. And the teller at the bank made some comment about how fast he was spending and the places he was shopping. Trish didn’t give not one damn as long as he kept paying. She backed off for a while after he said he was getting broke, gave him time to rebuild then came asking for money to take her teen daughter and the daughter’s friends on a camping trip. I think he couldn’t afford it that time. Silence. A month or so later close to Christmas she abruptly texted with a screenshot of an American Girl doll in an online shopping cart, complete with accessories and captioned “Can you help me with this?” No hey, hello, how have you been, and a curt “Thanks” after he sent the money. One of the nosey people that Jim hated was his sister who had started to ask questions and he told her to mind her own business. Another was his daughter, perhaps tipped off by his sister that he was going broke. The adult daughter started asking what was happening to his money. One of his grandchildren was getting married in England and he was struggling with the money for the plane ticket. He told Trish all this. No response. He ended up going to the wedding, I guess his daughter paid for the flight. The last thing from him was him complaining about not hearing from her while he was in England and he said maybe he should just forget her. Left on read. Last message from Trish was “Merry Christmas and thanks for nothing!” because he didn’t respond after she asked for help buying Christmas gifts. No response from Jim. That was about 1-2 months before my husband bought the phone in the thrift store. I can only assume Jim is deceased now for his personal belongings to have ended up tossed in a donation box. That was the end of the wild read for me, my husband wiped the phone and sold it. I didn’t want it to end so I looked for them on Facebook. I found Jim’s profile, the profile picture of him was him hang gliding, trying to come off young and adventurous. He was a kind of nice looking man. The picture hadn’t been changed in years as is typical of old people. Then I found Trish. She was nice looking, a little hard around the edges, looking tired and cheap, still trying for a “come hither” look with bedroom eyes. And to me, she actually looked greedy. Maybe I got that from “knowing” her. Her daughters were very beautiful girls. I saw the pictures on the daughter’s profile of her in her prom dress that Trish got Jim to buy. I recognized it from the picture Trish sent him AND from the framed photo of her he had printed out on computer paper and put on an end table in his living room. Yikes . I don’t know why he took a picture of his living room, but to me it looked like the house could have been a single wide trailer. I could be wrong. I’ve checked in on/stalked their profiles occasionally throughout the years. One thing that’s creepy to me is the pictures Trish has of her daughters were borderline suggestible, almost advertising. I can only imagine the lessons she has schooled her girls in on how to get what you want from men. Maybe she learned it from her mom too seeing as how the old lady got in on him but her stuff too and paying her utilities. Every time I hear Rich Girl by Hall and Oates, I remember Trish although I know that’s not what the song is about. Fitting though when you look at it another way. Thanks for reading, I really only wanted someone else in the world the know the story.
submitted by Spirited-Crow-41 to stories [link] [comments]
2024.06.04 05:36 BubblyWin3865 how tf can you determine your feelings accurately
i posted this to relationship sub but it was prob too long to get any traction. it's prob too long here too but i'm kinda desperate as i already question myself today when last night i was so so so sure i needed to leave him. feels like i almost have two personalities and i need to stay in the angry mean one in order to actually leave. has that been anyone else's experience?? thanks if you do read.
i will try to keep this short but there is a lot at play.
my husband and i met when i was 18, we were each others first everythings. ten years married is fast approaching.
everything was bliss and relatively 'normal' for the first, idk, 3-4 years? it is hard to remember specifics anymore. i know that there were red flags which i ignored, because i was 'not like other girls' and wanted so desperately for him to find me cool. due to bullying i was kind of a woman-hating-woman. mostly these involved jealousy & possessive qualities.
our fights were never 'normal,' at least i don't think so, but this has been my only relationship and my parents have a very volatile marriage. they yelled a lot, cops were involved often, etc. he had an abusive father and grandfather if this info helps. didn't hit him but he saw his mom and gma beat up. so our fights were always pretty bad and though i don't remember specifics anymore, i know i would always be the one chasing him to make up.
early on i blamed a lot of his anger on his abusive past, bullying, etc. he was certainly depressed when we met, threatened suicide often tho i've kind of stopped believing that he ever was actually serious about it, altho i do worry if i left he might try it.
first 'big' fight was 2017 on vacation and almost ruined the vacation, he threatened to leave early etc. subsequently, every single vacation was tainted with a fight which would always be blamed on me and pointed out in future fights as evidence to how horrible i was. 'you ruined x and y, you ruin everything'
these didn't occur too frequently back then and i had WAY too much tolerance and acceptance for his behavior given the details i have shared about his past. i was one of the naive 'i can fix him with love' women back then.
i admit i am not nor was i ever perfect. these relationship issues are all ive been able to think about for months now and based on reading every single post i can find on this sub or others relating to similar issues, i think i am likely codependent, i know i am depressed/anxious (i was as an obese child as well, liquid prozac in my preteens), i am a pushover and a people-pleaser, and i know there are things i could have and should have handled better. i enabled a lot of his actions and wasnt clear on my boundaries/expectations. i have always been slow to anger, avoided confrontation, am shy and certainly not the type to 'put my foot down'.
after we had our first kid the fights really became more frequent and much worse. when i was pregnant, he was angry often. i had always dreamed of having a man be super attentive and nice etc during pregnancy and he overall was not. like me having insomnia would wake him up and instead of any sympathy i would receive anger, so instead of tossing and turning to get comfortable, i'd just stiffly lie awake next to him trying not to move. having appointments was always something that would ruin the entire day. he would always be upset leading up to them and the day would be ruined after. also, he would forget when they were coming so i would have to try and remind him, but reminding him would also upset him, because he didn't want to think about it - but if i ever waited until the day to remind him, god help me. our daughter was hospitalized days 2-4 of her life and though he was worried, he was more upset by the inconvenience that being in the hospital caused him.
i keep going on tangents, i apologize.
the fights ramped from just yelling and name-calling, etc to throwing things, punching walls, etc. he'd spill things purposefully and id be crying, running around cleaning things up, trying to prevent permanent damage. in a couple of particularly bad fights he has broken a cell phone, he has broken our daughter's desk and bookshelf, our $3000 sectional is destroyed because he would pour liquid and other disgusting things onto it while i was sobbing and begging him to stop. but we cant afford to replace it so we just have this disgusting reminder in our home. one time i was punished by him pouring an entire gallon of milk onto the floor, which he texted me a picture of to show that i'd have to clean it up before it soaked into the floor. this was because i had taken a test drive of a car we were considering during COVID and i did not ask the woman to wear a mask. (i was wearing one). and for 2 weeks after i was terrified one of us would get COVID and how i'd be punished for that.
3-5 times it escalated to him shoving me or holding his hands at my throat. which he has always claimed he only did because i 'laid hands on him' first. my infraction? i grabbed his arm mid-hurl to attempt to stop him from throwing a full soda can.
during a particularly horrid fight, after we had our 2nd child (who was an accident and another long story), i had a mental breakdown. and as he was humiliating me and yelling at me while i cried and begged him to stop and said i'd do anything, anything to make him feel better, i just ... woke up? he was saying choose me or the dog. i said i choose the dog, stood up and started packing. said i was done and divorcing him.
which was the first time i had ever ever said that or even really thought it, though i don't know how. even through all that shit i was still always reassuring him that i loved him and wanted to be with him, even though during our fights he'd say horrible things like how he hated me, i was the reason his life was miserable, (when in a good mood i 'saved him' and am 'too good' for him), was going to cheat on me to punish me, etc. no matter how bad he got i tried my absolute hardest to keep my insults inside. i did shockingly well for YEARS at repressing my anger and not saying anything damning. like one time i said 'you make me sick' in response to some horrible thing he said, and this was treated like the worst thing anyone could say. and despite the things he said to me, i GENUINELY felt awful and apologized over and over, i even wrote a long letter about it and the ways i would change and improve, thinking that would help our problems overall. he never read it lol.
after our fights, yeah he would usually apologize, but only if i had done it first and he would never stop the behaviors, and would always repeat insults ESPECIALLY if i told him they bothered me, like he'd compare me to my mom constantly or insult me with my maiden name (still does). in a few fights he referred to a secret 'list' of insults he could pony up if needed. in 2 instances i believe i was given a glimpse of the list, he hit on 2 things he knows i am very insecure about. and despite what i believe to be genuine apologies, i can't forget what he said, nor that this list exists? especially since he would continue to justify it with my actions prior to the insult if i brought it up today. and one of the actions was trying to leave him for being abusive.
well anyway, i threatened divorce and we had a days long argument, i couldn't leave due to some threats he made and i chickened out, finally we talked and he said he would never be physical with his anger again.
that was probably 2-3 years ago and he has only had 1-2 instances of breaking or throwing something out of anger since.
he has definitely changed and made efforts to manage his anger and help me more, but i am feeling like it is too little too late. he has said he would do 'anything' to save our marriage but still refuses any kind of therapy. during a few good long talks we've had, i brought up multiple other issues, but those issues kind of just got dropped after the talks as he focused on anger management, i guess. like i told him i'm done dealing with his insecurities and that i've done nothing to deserve a lack of trust - but the only change is now when he questions me, he will apologize while doing it. which just makes me feel guilty and unreasonable and like maybe it shouldnt bother me so much. like he just wants reassurance, what's so wrong with that?
but i am a deep well of resentment, bitterness, anger. i never used to be like this. i am depressed, i am anxious all the time. little things set me off like they used to him. it's like we've flipped the script. he acts like I'M abusive now. if we have a fight, it'll normally be as usual over some dumb little thing, but since i'm not scared of him in the same way i used to be, i'll try to stand up for myself. which will lead him to say things such as:
"your abuse has stopped but mine is still going on."
"i've changed, why can't you change?"
"your birth control and/or period is really making you crazy, let's get that changed." (have already changed twice).
"you're so angry all the time"
to be clear, it's only been about.. idk, 4-5 months since i most recently said i was leaving him - because he made an absolutely vile threat to me which i don't think i'll ever be able to forgive - all because we were fighting, because i felt he continued to invalidate my feelings and not understand his role in all of this. i have told him i am going to be angry for a good long while as it is the result of HIS years long behavior. i have repeatedly told him that he is not alone in hating the ugly angry thing i have become.
in good moments he will SAY he knows what he did was wrong and that there was no excuse, but as soon as we have another disagreement and i'm trying to talk through it in a somewhat healthy manner, he'll inevitably say something that makes it clear he does NOT understand his role, does NOT truly accept blame, and still thinks that his prior justifications for ABUSING me make him 'not as bad' as his dad/grandpa/'true' abusers. his mom/gma didn't leave THEIR abusers, so i can tell it seems almost laughable to him that i would even consider leaving. and, i know from past arguments, that in his opinion, i have done way worse. i can provide additional context if needed, but suffice it to say it was definitely nothing that warranted years of abuse as punishment, and IMO i went above and beyond to not only apologize for it, but to fix it.
he definitely controls his anger better, tho he now tends to sulk and act cold instead, so i can still tell when he is upset and i still have a visceral reaction to it, heart racing etc. and, just to be clear, he has overall been a great and attentive dad, he doesn't yell at them. we both have areas we could improve in that way, but i feel like HE is actively impeding my ability to be, as lame as the phrase sounds to me, 'my best self.' since i actively stew in resentment and rage mixed with guilt and sadness. i almost want to cry and/or fly into a rage when i see my kids love on him - and i do feel they love him more - because he is there more and he plays with them, tickles them etc whereas esp recently, i have no energy or motivation or will to do anything but just sit there. i do cook, clean etc. but our house is not at a state i'd like anyone else to see it, almost ever. and we are already kind of falling into the 'dad is fun, mom is strict' roles which i already hate. like he gives them candy and i'm the one who has to say no more.
yesterday my daughter drew a picture of mommy an daddy. and idk if it was purposeful or not, but the picture of mommy was drawn with a giant frown.
i know that i am losing my mind and i am near a breaking point, i am distracted at work constantly or crying, my work is important and i live in constant fear ill make a mistake, i used to read a book a week but i haven't finished one in months because i cannot focus on anything but these issues. and i waffle between feeling good when i think about leaving to feeling insanely sad and guilty because i still do manage to love him somehow, i don't want to lose my kids even part of the time, they obviously love him immensely and even when he goes out to the store or something they are asking for him (3 and 5), and i always wanted another kid and if i don't do it with him, i probably never will due to age. but dw i know it would be the epitome of foolishness to conceive with him rn.
our financial situation is currently not great, idk how i'd afford to do everything, we're in debt and it's hard to stay on top of payments. but it's not like he's bringing in anything (SAHD), so aside from paying for lawyers etc, in theory i'd be ok.
i am estranged from my family, i have no friends. i have no options for childcare, i work night shift and thinking about how i would even find someone to be with them overnight in the small town i live in is baffling, and then when i'm with them, when would i sleep? i love my job, i worked hard to get it and i really, really don't want to have to switch, there are no day shift positions available rn. and since i have no will, motivation, etc, most of the time it just feels easier to stay than to go. everything is in both our names, everything. idk if id have to pay alimony. and he has made threats before when i've been close to leaving as ive alluded to. idk if he would actually follow through on them but the idea paralyzes me into inaction. and there's always the potential of his suicide which would destroy me.
when i do manage to be in a good mood, i truly feel like i forget my prior resolve to leave and my anger, i see the man i fell in love with and i am filled with guilt for even considering leaving, i love my family and i love seeing them together, and in these moments it DOES feel like i could eventually forgive him, or even like i'm overreacting and it's silly to say i've been abused or to even consider that this man would have it in him. i still think about us growing old together, i won't list out his positive qualities but obviously they have kept me around this long. perhaps he will continue to improve and i should give him more time. when in a good mood it feels unfair to blame him for EVERYTHING, for every negative aspect of my mental state (the lack of will, motivation, the sadness, i constantly feel like i'm forgetting something, i hate myself, i truly can hardly look in the mirror, i overthink every single interaction i have with people, social anxiety at an all time high, etc). i know i need therapy. but arranging it, paying for it and opening up to a stranger are all things that overwhelm me, and i know he would have a problem with it also. my self esteem is at an all time low, it feels unfair to say it is due to the ONLY person who has ever made me feel beautiful/wanted/sexy, how can it be the same person?
and as you will see in my history, i have seriously contemplated undiagnosed mental health issues, definitely depression/anxiety and perhaps borderline, ADHD. i have not raised that with him.
i fear so much becoming my mother, who is very very bitter and mean and clearly hates my dad but is still with him (imo because there are inheritance issues at play). they are full of contempt and they are vindictive towards each other. when i am angry i can feel myself becoming that way and it makes me sick. and makes me wonder if he was right to always compare me to her.
i have always believed in marrying for life. so it feels almost like betraying myself also.
i think i need to go, but i don't know how, or when, or how to approach it, since he has demonstrably made positive changes. it will feel like blindsiding him and i feel insanely guilty even tho i know any sane person would tell me i've done far more than i should already. i love him and i always thought we'd spend our lives together. i sometimes fantasize about just being alone. i sometimes think how i want him to explode into a rage and throw shit again so i can point to it as crossing a line and have a 'concrete' reason to leave. i think i try to provoke him sometimes but i think he knows it and is careful. most of the time i'm either sickeningly angry, crying, or numb.
even writing this makes me feel stupid and childish and like im just looking for validation for 'my side' and being unfair and biased. i truly cannot accurately perceive reality anymore.
if anyone is still here, ty, idk specifically what i am looking for. snap some sense into me i guess? am i crazy, can this be salvaged? have any of you ultimatum'd your partner into individual therapy? i really think it might help him but idk if i'm crazy to even want to keep trying.
submitted by BubblyWin3865 to abusiverelationships [link] [comments]
i will try to keep this short but there is a lot at play.
my husband and i met when i was 18, we were each others first everythings. ten years married is fast approaching.
everything was bliss and relatively 'normal' for the first, idk, 3-4 years? it is hard to remember specifics anymore. i know that there were red flags which i ignored, because i was 'not like other girls' and wanted so desperately for him to find me cool. due to bullying i was kind of a woman-hating-woman. mostly these involved jealousy & possessive qualities.
our fights were never 'normal,' at least i don't think so, but this has been my only relationship and my parents have a very volatile marriage. they yelled a lot, cops were involved often, etc. he had an abusive father and grandfather if this info helps. didn't hit him but he saw his mom and gma beat up. so our fights were always pretty bad and though i don't remember specifics anymore, i know i would always be the one chasing him to make up.
early on i blamed a lot of his anger on his abusive past, bullying, etc. he was certainly depressed when we met, threatened suicide often tho i've kind of stopped believing that he ever was actually serious about it, altho i do worry if i left he might try it.
first 'big' fight was 2017 on vacation and almost ruined the vacation, he threatened to leave early etc. subsequently, every single vacation was tainted with a fight which would always be blamed on me and pointed out in future fights as evidence to how horrible i was. 'you ruined x and y, you ruin everything'
these didn't occur too frequently back then and i had WAY too much tolerance and acceptance for his behavior given the details i have shared about his past. i was one of the naive 'i can fix him with love' women back then.
i admit i am not nor was i ever perfect. these relationship issues are all ive been able to think about for months now and based on reading every single post i can find on this sub or others relating to similar issues, i think i am likely codependent, i know i am depressed/anxious (i was as an obese child as well, liquid prozac in my preteens), i am a pushover and a people-pleaser, and i know there are things i could have and should have handled better. i enabled a lot of his actions and wasnt clear on my boundaries/expectations. i have always been slow to anger, avoided confrontation, am shy and certainly not the type to 'put my foot down'.
after we had our first kid the fights really became more frequent and much worse. when i was pregnant, he was angry often. i had always dreamed of having a man be super attentive and nice etc during pregnancy and he overall was not. like me having insomnia would wake him up and instead of any sympathy i would receive anger, so instead of tossing and turning to get comfortable, i'd just stiffly lie awake next to him trying not to move. having appointments was always something that would ruin the entire day. he would always be upset leading up to them and the day would be ruined after. also, he would forget when they were coming so i would have to try and remind him, but reminding him would also upset him, because he didn't want to think about it - but if i ever waited until the day to remind him, god help me. our daughter was hospitalized days 2-4 of her life and though he was worried, he was more upset by the inconvenience that being in the hospital caused him.
i keep going on tangents, i apologize.
the fights ramped from just yelling and name-calling, etc to throwing things, punching walls, etc. he'd spill things purposefully and id be crying, running around cleaning things up, trying to prevent permanent damage. in a couple of particularly bad fights he has broken a cell phone, he has broken our daughter's desk and bookshelf, our $3000 sectional is destroyed because he would pour liquid and other disgusting things onto it while i was sobbing and begging him to stop. but we cant afford to replace it so we just have this disgusting reminder in our home. one time i was punished by him pouring an entire gallon of milk onto the floor, which he texted me a picture of to show that i'd have to clean it up before it soaked into the floor. this was because i had taken a test drive of a car we were considering during COVID and i did not ask the woman to wear a mask. (i was wearing one). and for 2 weeks after i was terrified one of us would get COVID and how i'd be punished for that.
3-5 times it escalated to him shoving me or holding his hands at my throat. which he has always claimed he only did because i 'laid hands on him' first. my infraction? i grabbed his arm mid-hurl to attempt to stop him from throwing a full soda can.
during a particularly horrid fight, after we had our 2nd child (who was an accident and another long story), i had a mental breakdown. and as he was humiliating me and yelling at me while i cried and begged him to stop and said i'd do anything, anything to make him feel better, i just ... woke up? he was saying choose me or the dog. i said i choose the dog, stood up and started packing. said i was done and divorcing him.
which was the first time i had ever ever said that or even really thought it, though i don't know how. even through all that shit i was still always reassuring him that i loved him and wanted to be with him, even though during our fights he'd say horrible things like how he hated me, i was the reason his life was miserable, (when in a good mood i 'saved him' and am 'too good' for him), was going to cheat on me to punish me, etc. no matter how bad he got i tried my absolute hardest to keep my insults inside. i did shockingly well for YEARS at repressing my anger and not saying anything damning. like one time i said 'you make me sick' in response to some horrible thing he said, and this was treated like the worst thing anyone could say. and despite the things he said to me, i GENUINELY felt awful and apologized over and over, i even wrote a long letter about it and the ways i would change and improve, thinking that would help our problems overall. he never read it lol.
after our fights, yeah he would usually apologize, but only if i had done it first and he would never stop the behaviors, and would always repeat insults ESPECIALLY if i told him they bothered me, like he'd compare me to my mom constantly or insult me with my maiden name (still does). in a few fights he referred to a secret 'list' of insults he could pony up if needed. in 2 instances i believe i was given a glimpse of the list, he hit on 2 things he knows i am very insecure about. and despite what i believe to be genuine apologies, i can't forget what he said, nor that this list exists? especially since he would continue to justify it with my actions prior to the insult if i brought it up today. and one of the actions was trying to leave him for being abusive.
well anyway, i threatened divorce and we had a days long argument, i couldn't leave due to some threats he made and i chickened out, finally we talked and he said he would never be physical with his anger again.
that was probably 2-3 years ago and he has only had 1-2 instances of breaking or throwing something out of anger since.
he has definitely changed and made efforts to manage his anger and help me more, but i am feeling like it is too little too late. he has said he would do 'anything' to save our marriage but still refuses any kind of therapy. during a few good long talks we've had, i brought up multiple other issues, but those issues kind of just got dropped after the talks as he focused on anger management, i guess. like i told him i'm done dealing with his insecurities and that i've done nothing to deserve a lack of trust - but the only change is now when he questions me, he will apologize while doing it. which just makes me feel guilty and unreasonable and like maybe it shouldnt bother me so much. like he just wants reassurance, what's so wrong with that?
but i am a deep well of resentment, bitterness, anger. i never used to be like this. i am depressed, i am anxious all the time. little things set me off like they used to him. it's like we've flipped the script. he acts like I'M abusive now. if we have a fight, it'll normally be as usual over some dumb little thing, but since i'm not scared of him in the same way i used to be, i'll try to stand up for myself. which will lead him to say things such as:
"your abuse has stopped but mine is still going on."
"i've changed, why can't you change?"
"your birth control and/or period is really making you crazy, let's get that changed." (have already changed twice).
"you're so angry all the time"
to be clear, it's only been about.. idk, 4-5 months since i most recently said i was leaving him - because he made an absolutely vile threat to me which i don't think i'll ever be able to forgive - all because we were fighting, because i felt he continued to invalidate my feelings and not understand his role in all of this. i have told him i am going to be angry for a good long while as it is the result of HIS years long behavior. i have repeatedly told him that he is not alone in hating the ugly angry thing i have become.
in good moments he will SAY he knows what he did was wrong and that there was no excuse, but as soon as we have another disagreement and i'm trying to talk through it in a somewhat healthy manner, he'll inevitably say something that makes it clear he does NOT understand his role, does NOT truly accept blame, and still thinks that his prior justifications for ABUSING me make him 'not as bad' as his dad/grandpa/'true' abusers. his mom/gma didn't leave THEIR abusers, so i can tell it seems almost laughable to him that i would even consider leaving. and, i know from past arguments, that in his opinion, i have done way worse. i can provide additional context if needed, but suffice it to say it was definitely nothing that warranted years of abuse as punishment, and IMO i went above and beyond to not only apologize for it, but to fix it.
he definitely controls his anger better, tho he now tends to sulk and act cold instead, so i can still tell when he is upset and i still have a visceral reaction to it, heart racing etc. and, just to be clear, he has overall been a great and attentive dad, he doesn't yell at them. we both have areas we could improve in that way, but i feel like HE is actively impeding my ability to be, as lame as the phrase sounds to me, 'my best self.' since i actively stew in resentment and rage mixed with guilt and sadness. i almost want to cry and/or fly into a rage when i see my kids love on him - and i do feel they love him more - because he is there more and he plays with them, tickles them etc whereas esp recently, i have no energy or motivation or will to do anything but just sit there. i do cook, clean etc. but our house is not at a state i'd like anyone else to see it, almost ever. and we are already kind of falling into the 'dad is fun, mom is strict' roles which i already hate. like he gives them candy and i'm the one who has to say no more.
yesterday my daughter drew a picture of mommy an daddy. and idk if it was purposeful or not, but the picture of mommy was drawn with a giant frown.
i know that i am losing my mind and i am near a breaking point, i am distracted at work constantly or crying, my work is important and i live in constant fear ill make a mistake, i used to read a book a week but i haven't finished one in months because i cannot focus on anything but these issues. and i waffle between feeling good when i think about leaving to feeling insanely sad and guilty because i still do manage to love him somehow, i don't want to lose my kids even part of the time, they obviously love him immensely and even when he goes out to the store or something they are asking for him (3 and 5), and i always wanted another kid and if i don't do it with him, i probably never will due to age. but dw i know it would be the epitome of foolishness to conceive with him rn.
our financial situation is currently not great, idk how i'd afford to do everything, we're in debt and it's hard to stay on top of payments. but it's not like he's bringing in anything (SAHD), so aside from paying for lawyers etc, in theory i'd be ok.
i am estranged from my family, i have no friends. i have no options for childcare, i work night shift and thinking about how i would even find someone to be with them overnight in the small town i live in is baffling, and then when i'm with them, when would i sleep? i love my job, i worked hard to get it and i really, really don't want to have to switch, there are no day shift positions available rn. and since i have no will, motivation, etc, most of the time it just feels easier to stay than to go. everything is in both our names, everything. idk if id have to pay alimony. and he has made threats before when i've been close to leaving as ive alluded to. idk if he would actually follow through on them but the idea paralyzes me into inaction. and there's always the potential of his suicide which would destroy me.
when i do manage to be in a good mood, i truly feel like i forget my prior resolve to leave and my anger, i see the man i fell in love with and i am filled with guilt for even considering leaving, i love my family and i love seeing them together, and in these moments it DOES feel like i could eventually forgive him, or even like i'm overreacting and it's silly to say i've been abused or to even consider that this man would have it in him. i still think about us growing old together, i won't list out his positive qualities but obviously they have kept me around this long. perhaps he will continue to improve and i should give him more time. when in a good mood it feels unfair to blame him for EVERYTHING, for every negative aspect of my mental state (the lack of will, motivation, the sadness, i constantly feel like i'm forgetting something, i hate myself, i truly can hardly look in the mirror, i overthink every single interaction i have with people, social anxiety at an all time high, etc). i know i need therapy. but arranging it, paying for it and opening up to a stranger are all things that overwhelm me, and i know he would have a problem with it also. my self esteem is at an all time low, it feels unfair to say it is due to the ONLY person who has ever made me feel beautiful/wanted/sexy, how can it be the same person?
and as you will see in my history, i have seriously contemplated undiagnosed mental health issues, definitely depression/anxiety and perhaps borderline, ADHD. i have not raised that with him.
i fear so much becoming my mother, who is very very bitter and mean and clearly hates my dad but is still with him (imo because there are inheritance issues at play). they are full of contempt and they are vindictive towards each other. when i am angry i can feel myself becoming that way and it makes me sick. and makes me wonder if he was right to always compare me to her.
i have always believed in marrying for life. so it feels almost like betraying myself also.
i think i need to go, but i don't know how, or when, or how to approach it, since he has demonstrably made positive changes. it will feel like blindsiding him and i feel insanely guilty even tho i know any sane person would tell me i've done far more than i should already. i love him and i always thought we'd spend our lives together. i sometimes fantasize about just being alone. i sometimes think how i want him to explode into a rage and throw shit again so i can point to it as crossing a line and have a 'concrete' reason to leave. i think i try to provoke him sometimes but i think he knows it and is careful. most of the time i'm either sickeningly angry, crying, or numb.
even writing this makes me feel stupid and childish and like im just looking for validation for 'my side' and being unfair and biased. i truly cannot accurately perceive reality anymore.
if anyone is still here, ty, idk specifically what i am looking for. snap some sense into me i guess? am i crazy, can this be salvaged? have any of you ultimatum'd your partner into individual therapy? i really think it might help him but idk if i'm crazy to even want to keep trying.
2024.06.03 22:59 rapunzelbride Here Comes the Wedding
Hello, Charlotte! Love you! I desperately need to vent and hopefully you and your reddit fan base can give me advice! My wedding is in TWO WEEKS! And although I'm very much excited, I'm also extremely nervous about some potential family drama that may commence. There are 2 backstories to this, so get comfortable.
submitted by rapunzelbride to CharlotteDobreYouTube [link] [comments]