Cute stuff to write on your boyfriends wall

I fell in love with a part 2 months ago. We are in an AFAB body that has, among many other things, OCD, limerence, and deep insecurities.
We already had/have an outer-gf, but my inner-gf feels more like "mine". Who else can I feel their joy in my heart like it's my own... Maybe it's very indirect self love, we all have mild variations of the body's face, and I love looking in the mirror more sense lobing her...so who knows. Don't care. I love her. I still do...
My inner-gf is soft, frilly, sparkly and likes pink since we were kids, and I'm ... The opposite. I am a polite but ill-mannered neurotic punk who overshares when their nervous... Ever sense our teens. Why we never realized we were different ppl between the amnesia, dissociation, and personality overhauls beats me. Maybe I thought I was a phase. Really funny and obvious in hindsight.
She likes being scooped up, and I like scooping. We're addictingly compatible, we can go anywhere and do anything together, and most of all we understand our pain ...and it feels amazing.
But here's all the fucked up stuff I can't tell anyone. You rdy?
My age-sliding gf holds the memories of our fathers CSA, our masc shell alters kindnesss reminds her of the father she wished she had, and now my gf is suffering intrusive sexual attraction to him because we have OCD, and we've all struggled with inappropriate sexual feelings toward any one who makes us feel safe, Because our father, our brothers, our cousins, every male person we trusted preyed on us, and it's making literally everyone in the system feel terrible, especially my gf who is now feeling suicidal for for corrupting the safest outlet she had to heal it.
This is just... Torture. It's literal torture and we're all tired.
We are both healing hypersexual parts too. I have some of those SA memories, but it's incredibly vague.
Long story: you don't have read, I just... I've seen other systems dump, and I need it... I really need it right now I'm so tired.
She coped by sexualizing her victimization, i coped by sexualizing victimizing. I've never actually victimized anyone, but I liked very "borderline" porn from the perspective of the "initiator" ,I'll say that. I have sense stopped watching it now because I realized playing "predator" is so I don't have to confront how I was preyed on... I am hypervigilant about anything that could scare her or me now.
I put in work to be better. Especially now with my sparkly GF who age regresses when she's vulnerable... Our intrusive thoughts are mutually corrosive sometimes, and my worst fear is being a monster like our father.
So... Falling in love with her meant we had to confront those wounds. I was afraid I was a monster, and she only knew monster love, so... not being able to hide them those intrusive thoughts, and having the subject just go "it's okay🌸 I like being afraid!!" Took all of my stength to rise above our mutual depravity.
It was hard, sometimes hilarious, but we actually did it. I taught her real love is when someone respects your consent. There's no such thing as "loving someone so bad you can't resist them", that's what parasites do, not ppl who love you. It made both of us trust me more, because given the chance, i never hurt her.
Apparently , that whole time I didn't realize that I'm not the only one who's afraid of being a monster... So is our shell. Let's call him "Sheller". Sheller is a strange person. I'm a strange person. We get along well now that they realize they're a part too, not a container, or robot. We still do, things are just... Awkward... It's not his fault...
Sometimes I'd blend with Sheller, and they'd struggle to seperate my love for my gf from their own. They're like me in that they don't really feel like a woman either. So we both felt NB. Till he realized he didn't.
This poor dude... Had no idea the can of worms identifying as masculine would open. The dude just wanted to see himself, and when he did, it was a big healing thing to stop feeling like he only existed as our shadow. Truly, nothing is different now, he's just like 8 inches taller, boob-less, and his shoulders are wide. He's just as nice and safe as before, although more afraid of hurting us now.
I tbh didn't mind he thought my gf was cute, cuz she is!!! I trust him , and Of course he likes being around her, she's like sunshine and rainbows, it feels good to feel her joy, and when he blends with her he just fades in the back without thinking. He blends and expresses with everyone, it's his job lol. He also feels genuine joy when I am happy, and he supported and mediated our couple issues, he has and continues to be really supportive of us. He works a job and gets us shit he doesn't care about cause it makes him happy. But I knew he was always quietly lonely. He loved seeing my gf get scooped up by me, cause she's a part of him too, a part that needs to feel loved and cherished. We all baby her tbh, but he never crossed any boundaries.
But then, this month, he fell in love with our old shell... "Shelley". Shelley had been inside an inner "infirmary" for a bit. She went through... so much for us. Shelley couldn't talk for months after ...And when she was finally discharged with his help... They bonded over the unique trauma of being shells, and being intense and weird. And when I say this dude was down bad, I mean it, he was down bad. Me and my gf are like treble, but they're BASS. Their love was so deep, and inspiring. Me and my gf were so happy, it felt like our awkward and stunted older brother fell in love and was opening up. We were going to have a cool older couple to bond with, and they were both just funny to watch too. We also remember reaching through Shelley, who never knew she was a system, but took care of us somehow even so, so we already cared for her.
My gf was happy for them, but started getting triggered by the glimpses she would see of their intimacy, and it made her think of the things she saw our parents doing by accident. And shed pop up sometimes when Shelley would feel those bright frilly things, and it would confuse her and make her uncomfortable.
She got really upset at Sheller one day and age regressed, telling everyone how uncomfortable it made her feel, pointing fingers and crying. Sheller felt terrible... He apologized profusely to my gf, asked how to make amends, and I did my part to soothe the rift between them too.
My gf felt very ashamed of both her regression and otp reaction, so she apologized for triggering his intrusive thoughts about being a monster again. She realized when she was big again that she was misdirecting anger at our father onto him, because Sheller is actually safe. She said she thinks she just wished she had pointed fingers at our Dad when he did what he did.
I think Shellers reaction to her discomfort was so gracious, kind, and safe... that she realized how much better things would have been for her if our Dad was like Sheller.
So she asked him if he could be her Dad. ... Lmao
He, understandably, insisted he was not stable enough to do that. He has too many intrusive thoughts he was still healing from, and could not risk both his own and her mental stability having even more responsibility on top of what he does. He was also honest that he saw my gf had some weird intrusive thoughts already slipping through and making him further uncomfortable. He said if he didn't share a brain, he would accept in a heartbeat, cause he likes taking care of us. And she accepted that well, but was sad.
She apologized about the intrusive thoughts, but when she thought about it more deeply, she explained she never had a safe male role model who didn't prey on her. That she wishes she had someone who could model familial love for her, and be a safe source of intamacy when she just wanted to be held without worrying it would turn sexual. She said I'm safe, but her attraction to me and mine to her reinforced the blurry lines she has around healthy admiration and sexuality. Me being the one to love her romantically but also hold her while shes age regressed sometimes makes her feel she's still warping those lines. I understand it, cause tbh, Sheller made me feel safe in that way too, but more like a brother.
He maintained his stance but said he already saw her as something like family. She realized it was enough to just know he loved her, and wasn't going to forget about her, and that we could all have family events with games or movies, and that was enough for her to move on happily.
The next day Sheller and Shelley had a beautiful date. They kept it inncoent in case my gfs signal was pulled in by accident. It was, but it wasn't a big deal, they were just dancing. I came out too so my gf felt less awkward. We had a whole evening together the four of us, and it was very fun. We just danced to our fave songs and listened to the rain storm.
My gf actually felt so happy and content. Id dance with her, and she's look over and see Shelley and Sheller laughing at us and waving at her. She was so happy, and felt like she finally had a family. But it was like... Out of nowhere she began spiraling.
She felt like she was going to lose all of us. She felt like she'd do something to mess things up. That her heart was breaking, or someone else's was. She couldn't place where it was coming from. Just heartbreak. Twisting sickening dread. Fear of abandonment. She started pulling back again and we all tried to comfort her to no help.
I switched in to comfort her more easily... But then I felt it too... It was like this depressive miasma... I started having all the same fears. Maybe I was just blending, but it was so confusing
She spent so long trying to understand why she felt this way, and testing different ideas, and now shes having those intrusive sexual attraction to Sheller really high.
Everyone involved feels fucking terrible now.
My gf has become incredibly depressed. She's terrified I'll leave her over this- and yeah, it's pretty disturbing and triggering for me, but I'm not really upset at her. I don't think I want to leave her yet. I mean I have intrusive sexual thoughts too, I've even had them about Sheller myself! But hers are way worse, cause she gets little and sees him as a father figure sometimes, and that must be so 🤢... OCD is like a shark and the more terrible a thought is the harder it tortures you with it.
My gf is trying not to feel suicidal... She's been far away all day... She feels like she will never know peace... Everytime she finally has someone show her love, her body reacts inappropriately, and not only will she lose me, but Sheller will Lose Shelley because he's getting his own intrusive thoughts about my gf, Shelley feels terrible because this all happened when she came along but my gf is afraid Shelley hates her, when she was excited to be yinyang friends with Shelley (who is also cute but more into spooky things).
Me and Shelley feel insecure too, cause like... Sheller is more masc than me and my gf is more femme than Shelley, so we are projecting all the insecurities into it. And what if we're wrong to trust them and they just run off and decide to have some gross fucked up trauma-themed relationship? Idk man, it's so mortifying even talking about it. But I really love both Sheller and my gf still, even with this burning in my chest, and they both are struggling with suicide ideation right now, and its just...
It's a whole ass mess...Our caretaker alt thinks Shelley, (sense she's an old shell) was blending with Sheller or my gf, and we were feeling her emotions, which we know she struggles with. It probably is that tbh. Cause we can barely lock onto Shelley sometimes. We think this is why it's been so weird and we don't even sound normal lately, and our signals are coming from weird angles.
So yeah... That's where we are... I just wanted to vent I guess. Support is welcome. I don't know man... Just feel so tired and embarrassed lol. I just feel like... Were so mentally ill and I hate it. Ugh... I hate our dad so fucking much. He really fucking broke us, and we're still in so much pain.
The only good news is we all have our anger placed in the right direction, not each other. We all understand what's happening isn't more than trauma. It just hurts so damn much ... Ugh... I really some how think we'll get through this... That day was so nice... And I felt so safe and happy... We all did ... And I think that's why we all possibly mutually ruined it lolol.

Wall of text warning: I was writing a comment on another post but I figured I'd just make my own topic on it with my full thoughts on each faction and their skills, balancing, etc, after about 20 hours of playing (enough to get a decent idea). Personally I don't feel like any particular faction is especially strong currently and I think the balance of the factions is actually pretty decent overall.
Cleaners are the weakest by far and seem to suffer from some confused design choices. The Firebomb is great for punishing bunched enemies or denying area but this is a ranged game at the core so it often is completely useless on many maps or just makes you vulnerable if you try to use it aggressively, and particularly in mobile modes like Escort where there is high kill turnover and less opportunity for anyone to keep a strong foothold. The Incendiary Drone is decent, does what it should, not a lot to say about it. Strong alternative skill to Firebomb for mobile modes. Their Incendiary Ammo is a bit useless in a vacuum due to the nature of the TTK because most of the time it will not result in a kill you wouldn't have already gotten and it doesn't deal enough damage on its own to really speed up the TTK in any meaningful way. You still have to shoot someone the same number of times to get a kill and if you stop shooting to let the DOT tick instead you'll just die. On top of that, Incendiary Ammo actually reduces your weapon optimal range, and as mentioned before, this is typically a ranged game. The Incendiary Ammo shines more in situations where someone is running away and a teammate can finish them off instead since then it may have done enough damage or canceled their regen enough. It seems as though the Incendiary Ammo might be meant to offer a counter to Libertad's healing-oriented skills but it usually doesn't make a great deal of difference even there. The Cleaners are still playable, just kinda why would you choose them over anything else if you aren't playing them because you like them. Also the Cleaner ultra is ridiculous if you get in a good spot to use it because it instantly kills anyone you hit but again its range makes you vulnerable. The Cleaners biggest strength at the moment seems to be that they have messed up hitboxes, honestly. I think that the Cleaners really need some kind of help on their skills as they are now, they are weirdly situational and difficult to safely employ, but I suppose that is the real philosophy of the Cleaners as it is, they run around with explosive tanks on their backs that instantly kill them in The Division so an exploding flaming firebomber that may or may not live through their skill is oddly appropriate.
Echelon is strong by nature of being a crutch. Intel Suit lets the enemy team know you're nearby and can see them thanks to the notification, smart/skilled players will just listen for you and it's not a huge advantage against them, below average players won't pay attention to it though and it's quite strong against players that don't have good audio or are unaware of where their flanks are. However, the main advantage of the Intel Suit is that it reveals the enemies for your whole team no matter where they are. While you have to be in closer range to detect enemies with it, your teammates can be on the opposite side of the map and still see exactly where the enemy is which is a massive advantage. Digital Ghillie Suit is honestly a pretty balanced skill, someone paying attention will still notice you and Intel Suit counters it (weirdly, same faction counter) but it has a lot of outplay potential and lets you reposition or get into weird spots that the enemy team might not expect if they are distracted. It offers a similar advantage that Phantoms skills do in that it can easily be used to disengage a losing gunfight back into your advantage for a kill instead. Not much wrong with it, it's a well designed skill-expression skill. Echelon passive is kind of whatever, I don't feel like it's a great advantage because it gives you no direct benefit in a gunfight or even while traversing the map most of the time, it's another thing that is strong against unaware or distracted players. The Echelon ultra is of course quite strong in even an average-skilled players hands thanks to real-time wallhacks and a Golden Gun, although the sound it makes and sonar waves effects do put a bit of a target on you and sometimes the OHK gun doesn't actually get a OHK (somehow) but even being guaranteed just 2-3 kills for the duration is still enough to wipe an objective and some players will even try to hide from it. Echelon is overall a strong faction to use against players that are worse than you (likely why it is the most popular faction seemingly at the moment) but it doesn't provide any major meaningful advantage against equal or more skilled players since that will come down to your more practical gunfighting skills instead the majority of the time. Digital Ghillie offers some potential to outplay even skilled opponents but aside from that their skills heavily depend on their opponents being distracted to take advantage of them fully. Given that, the faction is pretty well balanced even with multiple players spamming Intel Suits on one team, since it only offers opportunities, it doesn't exploit them for you.
Phantoms are my personal favorite faction because I feel as though they have the widest degree of skill expression over any of the others. Mag Barrier used smartly can completely turn a lost gunfight around in your favor, especially if there is a choke point or corner you can use to make enemies chase you. Mag Barrier is one of the few skills in the game that is actually a punish skill when you use it correctly by letting an enemy get caught out if they try to ego on you or think they are winning the fight. That's on top of everything else it does. The EMP grenade is only a "counter" to it if someone is mindlessly spamming it because when used correctly you don't have time to throw an EMP grenade. You would have to pre-emptively EMP the Phantom player for every encounter if they use it well and that's not very feasible in a dynamic scenario. That said, Mag Barrier is fairly weak in terms of pure cover and a determined player can chew through it in a few seconds if you carelessly use it without exploiting the advantage it gives, or grenades can be thrown around it, enemies can run through it, its strength comes down entirely to the user. Blitz Shield is also a strong punish skill but currently the way player collision works makes it difficult to use against anyone that is experienced or skilled because no enemy player collision means they can jump through you. You can't really use the shield to turtle 1v1s since enemies can just run through and behind you, even if you're in a corner. Most players won't do this or know it's possible, so it can be a bit of a crutch against less skilled players at least. The Blitz Shield is mainly strong for punishing around corners if someone chases you since you can typically swap to it fast enough to surprise them before they get around the corner. It's also good for absorbing damage at range or aggressively disrupting enemy players on an objective for your team to pick off but that depends a lot on how good your team is and less on the shield itself. Phantoms passive is honestly extremely strong, and IMO the best passive in the game currently. Having 20 more health is massive when 110 damage OHK body shots exist since it allows you to survive hits no other faction can and combined with the other skills it offers retaliation and outplay potential no other faction has. The Phantom ultra is a bit mediocre in terms of kill potential, due to lack of range or mobility, vulnerable to grenades, and various other problems that come with moving slow and telegraphing yourself to the entire map as a giant target. The ultra's primary purpose is of course simply being a big shield to deny area to the enemy team or offer your team a safe place to stand on objectives for pushes. The Phantoms are a well-balanced and strong faction currently that offers a lot to players that know how to take advantage of their skills properly.
Libertad is probably the most well-balanced faction in the game at the moment. It's very straightforward and easy to grasp for players of all skill levels and doesn't depend on a lot of gun skill, map knowledge, or general experience to perform decently. Since none of their skills are directly offensive, they are easy to employ in a variety of situations, like fortifying an objective or pre-emptively giving your teammates an advantage for a push, refreshing a teammate after a close gunfight, using mid-gunfight for a surprise comeback, etc. El Remedio is such a strong heal that it can greatly increase your EHP in a straight gunfight to the point you need multiple extra hits to kill if the enemy misses any shots, and if you manage to break contact with them briefly you can set up the heal on yourself for a surprise punish similar to the Phantom Mag Barrier. It forces the enemy to decide if they try to kill you or break the canister first and assuming you are equally skilled, you will usually end up winning the 1v1. The main downside to El Remedio is its fairly long cooldown so you have to use it smartly or else you won't have it for major moments when your team might have needed it. It's strong and has some skill expression to it in a variety of ways. BioVida Boost is one-time instant version of El Remedio with similar uses, but it works much better with a unified team push and has a shorter cooldown which makes it much more useful for a more mobile style of play. Not only that but its heal is essentially instant, again being very strong if you manage to break contact for a moment in a gunfight to come back with full health before the enemy got their natural regen. Libertad's passive has no strings attached, simply natural regen with no downtime for you and any teammates near you, doesn't require you to do anything and is always active which makes it great for people of all skill levels since it's always being taken advantage of. The Libertad ultra is literally just an even bigger version of El Remedio that also increases your and teammates max HP massively, it can guarantee a last second payload push or let you lock down a critical objective to break out a losing zone match. Libertad is generally the best faction for anyone that's really new or isn't that great at FPS games since it doesn't depend on your technical skill too much aside from simply staying alive to give your team a constant advantage. Another nice thing about Libertad is they synergize incredibly well with the Phantoms' huge health pool. The only outstanding weakness of Libertad is the old classic: your teammates. It has very little potential to actually carry and under focused fire their healing is pretty irrelevant so you're not exactly going to go tank a payload by yourself. Even with the ultra on, a single person can chew through it and kill you if you give them long enough (not very long).
I've not gotten to play around a ton with DedSec yet but my initial impression is that they are very similar to Phantoms in terms of skill expression and offer a ton of flexibility that other factions don't have through being able to hack enemy deployables and regenerating devices. I would not call them imbalanced, but I do think they are the one faction that currently does lean the most into that because they counter every single other faction. Being able to shut off enemy skills and ultras is huge, even if it takes their own ultra to do it. But you are effectively turning everyone on the enemy team into the Rookie from Rainbow Six Siege temporarily while all the players on your team get to keep their skills. If you have multiple DedSec players on your team and properly chain the ultras then you are looking at a free objective push every single time. The Spiderbot is fairly alright, but it's currently bugged and sometimes enemy players can't destroy it properly which makes it stronger than it actually is, and that's on top of it taking more than one hit to kill anyways which I personally think shouldn't be a thing either. In its current state it is basically a guaranteed kill on anyone you hit with it if you use it aggressively, though, and I do think it should be adjusted in some way after they fix the desync issues with it. Hijack isn't always super relevant because at the moment deployables aren't very long-lived or common, but being able to flip a Phantom Mag Barrier is wildly strong and is the only counter play to a choke point punish in that it punishes the punish. Hijack is fairly useless though if the enemy team all happen to pick Echelon or Cleaners (which is a fair possibility). I think the skill is still a good skill expression skill and fine, though. The DedSec passive is unsurprisingly very strong because being able to throw two proximity mines on an objective or get multiple uses of grenades is obviously something no other faction can do and those things are one per life for a reason. The passive doesn't benefit if you don't live long enough to use it, though, so it can be kinda useless depending on the situation: if you never throw your grenade or mine, the passive literally does nothing. DedSec is currently in a very strong state overall, while I wouldn't say it's imbalanced, it's definitely one of the better factions if only for the fact it can shut off every enemy skill and ultra and has a way to essentially guarantee a kill.
If I had to "tier" each faction in terms of their effectiveness in a vacuum regardless of skill, I'd probably rank them (from best to worst): DedSec > Phantoms/Echelon > Libertad > Cleaners. But that is a very shallow slope with all factions being very much viable to play and do well with.
All of this is also given without thought to the current state of weapon balance generally speaking, while I do feel that Phantoms have a particular advantage currently due to the prevalence of Tac-50s. Echelon's Digital Ghillie also helps them get in close to employ some of the better weapons in the game currently like the MP7 or double barrel. DedSec's spiderbot sets them up for kills with all kinds of weapons, particularly the Tac-50. I don't see any of these skills being worse off without the existence of those weapons, however.
If I were to speculate on any adjustments that should be made: Spiderbots need to be fixed ASAP so they always properly appear on the targets screen to destroy them (not really an "adjustment", a bug fix). Libertad needs some kind of light buff in my opinion, maybe a bonus effect on a skill like slightly increasing max HP (good to help deal with prevalence of OHK snipers) or an alternate mode that poisons or debuffs enemies (Viviro would make sense because it's the chemical weapon made by the same company in Far Cry 6). Cleaners need a little bit of help, maybe allow them to also select Molotov cocktails as grenades that make small fire puddles that aren't quite as strong as their skills as a form of area denial to sort of solidify their "stay the fuck away from me" presence as a faction. The big one people talk about is the Intel Suit for Echelon but I honestly don't see much issue with this. The game literally highlights enemies for you already as it is, seeing them through walls briefly isn't a huge stretch when you can already hear people running around anyways since (thank god) we don't have anything like Dead Silence/Ninja/Covert Sneakers in this game. Echelon is a noob stomping faction and that's why it's generally popular right now but I think once more people get access to DedSec we will start to see more of them instead.
Anyways, that's all for today. I do really hope Ubi upkeeps this game well and makes smart balancing decisions that keep the game fun and engaging without oversimplifying or nerfing anything for the sake of salty people. If it were up to me, they'd reduce the TTK to 4 body shots max like original COD4 and then we'd really be cooking (after they fix the netcode, that is). Also hoping for The Division themselves to be introduced as a playable faction with deployable drones or even seeker mines...

So... my mom has never really been loving. My dad had/had PTSD. It is his way or the highway. My mom will straight up tell people "I learned to ignore him", "I never wanted another kid, I should've got my tubes tied after the first one, his dad is the only reason I didn't get an abortion". She will buy me things, and then when i'm telling her she is acting horribly yelling at me for something minimal (not writing a note in the cashapp for example) and then say "I wasn't treating you horribly when I bought you this thing earlier!!"
I don't remember the last time I got a hug from either one of my parents.
My parents never actually helped me get my license, they claim they "Tried to teach me!!" but got about 20 driving hours for me, refused to fill out the time sheets, and would yell and freak out at every mistake I made on the road. They bought me a barely driveable $900 grandam @ 18 after I was told i'd get a new car when I graduated (I am 22 and graduated in 2020) I was expecting like a decent condition 2007-2008 car that would reliably get me from point a to point b but was bought a 2002 wrecked grandam with hood latches due to deer wreck damage and struts so bad that the back end would slide out from under it on minimal potholes and tires that I had the fill back up daily to keep it off the ground. I had to eventually buy my own car (they never helped me fix it depaite my dad being a literal jet mechanic) and drive it back and forth from work illegally until I got good enough at driving to get my license, because it was apparently easier for my mom to continue driving me to work on her lunch break and picking me up from work at 7 then to spend a few weekends and hours after work some days with me preparing for a drivers test.
Both my mother and my dad would get physically aggressive and spank pretty excessively but not to the point where I was like "this is abuse". As I grew older and grew to be a bigger teenager it turned into them moreso actually trying to physically fight me, me running as to avoid a fight as they yelled things like "I'M GOING TO RIP YOUR F***ING HEAD OFF" and locking myself in my room or running around outside until they were no longer violently angry.
One time I got a full blown blender thrown at my shoulder as a kid because I didn't help my dad find his shoes when he was late to meet some of his work friends, he also in that instance chased me a quarter way down our street (thankfully I was like 16 5'10 and fast) before going home and cooling down.
One time he also threw a tape measure at my shin and I still have a mark in my shin bone from that.
Lots of promises that were never kept and were forgot about. "If you help me with this massive months long hard process I will buy you shing expensive thing" helps and never gets said thing but gets yelled at the whole time for not doing things "the right way"
My mom also called me ugly as a kid, told people in front of me (and I quote) "Yeah I was pissed when he came out with red hair, i don't like red heads!"
She would tell people I was a little bastard and would tell them the amount of adhd medication I was on and how it was enough for like 2 adults (i already started questioning why the hell I was on that amount of adhd medication in the first place, i was basically m37hed out on adderall and vyvanse and concerts as a 7-14 year okd kid)
One time she bought me a pokeball as a kid at walmart, and our way home I did something she didn't like and she grabbed the pokeball and chucked it out the window and bragged to people about it
One year my brother got a laptop and an ipod and some other stuff and ya boy got some action figures
My mom thrrows a fit that I don't "contribute in the house" or clean when I stick to my area of the house, don't use the kitchen or dishes (i have my own dishes I use and I eat out mainly so i don't have to deal with them) and don't created that messes that need to be cleaned up and I keep my areas of the house clean. I could probably go count 7 wrappers and 6 pop cans and 3 plates down on our kitchen bar right now and I do not spend any time in the kitchen but I am apparently supposed to clean that stuff up as well as do the dishes that I don't use.
My dad will say "Here i'll tell you what you need to do" and if I do anything other than agree with him he will say "well then you're f***int stupid"
My dad would get violently angry at you if there was a tiny piece of lettuce in his taco or anything but meat and cheese on his burger and if you laugh at him for how ridiculous he is reacting he redirects that anger and amplifies it towards you
My parents and brother would kinda gang up and do things that would "trigger" me and laugh and yell at me when I reacted badly.
I just want confirmation that this is narccisism. I've been looking for what to call my experience with my parents for a while and I think this is it.

Hiii everyone, my friend and I are looking for new people to play games with and to make a tight-knit friend group where we support eachother and spend time with eachother ^.^. We are variety gamers and we tend to jump between games we like so thats going to be a trend within this group. Also a plus is if you are talkative because we are a shy bunch and take our time getting to know people. We dont do horror or gory games with very specific exceptions, and we dont really play multiplayer FPS games (too much competitive spirit for our taste and toxicity). We are looking for open minded and chill and nice people (lgbtq+ friendly is a must). We are bit of completionists but also enjoy chill gameplay and we play for fun. We dont mind if anyone would be new to the games we already play since we are more than happy to introduce people to them. We tend to take our time with most games, take in the sights and explore, no rushing ^.^. Need people who have plenty of time to play games too since we play a lot and our sleep schedule can be all over the place.
We are also pretty heavy into MMORPGs so playing those is a must (even if we play them "casually" content wise, we tend to invest a lot of time into them, especially our main 3)
Sample of games we play atm:
Guild Wars 2 - an MMO where we achiev hunt, do open world stuff mainly and collect appereances etc. Its kind of our main game we always return to, especially for ingame events. Currently on a break after playing it a lot.
WoW - (currently on semi-break) where we also collect stuff, we like m+ (we plan on doing keys in next xpac, maybe some this last season too if we can find people) otherwise we do similar things as we do in GW2. We may or may not also try raiding in the game but it will highly depend on people around us and how new xpac ends up being since we are waiting on that one the most with all the QoL and so on.
FFXIV - Returned for current events and to catch up with the story to be ready for next xpac, we plan on playing for first month or two fully to experience launch and depending on how much fun we have with classes (new ones + old) and if we find friends to play with, might do Extreme trials but otherwise we are very casual, mostly playing game for all the casual content and a bit of socialising (since emotes in this games and characters are on point)
Grounded - one of the exceptions of somewhat horror games, we love this game and are itching to play it (we played it a lot) but we would like to have one to two more people to play it with for more fun and new experience
Minecraft - we also love this game and I run a private server for my friend and I and for whoever plays with us. Just like with grounded we are missing people to play it with for more fun, we have it lightly modded with mods we chose to enhance the vanilla experience + add some more fun things (like Twilight Forest). We take our time in here since we like to chill and do whatever we want (including just taking in the sights of the game)
Terraria - We played countless hours of base game and would love to have more people to play with, since my friend and I played over 400 hours together and we want to have fun with more people.
Rotwood - super fun roguelite game (we also like hades 2)
Stardew Valley - a little overwhelming but super cute game that has potential, we have not played it much yet
Overcooked 2- fun little game to play every now and then, makes us laugh a lot
We really like cute games too, like Slime Rancher 1,2, super auto pets etc. and games like Hollow Knight (our fav gave more or less) which unfortunately are not multiplayer, but gives a good idea of what other kind of games we like and are open to playing more than what we currently play.
DM me here if this caught your interest and sorry for the long post but I like being thorough so people know what they are getting into =^-^=

i'm working on a novel and would like to know if anyone could tell me any improvements i could make to the first chapter and prologue
Prologue
The day had started the same way it had for the past two years. The only difference was that I was going home. The hallway was crowded with people walking to and from their classes. Everyone was crowded next to each other so the halls were making the area feel claustrophobic. All the people talking mixed with the summer heat made me feel like I was locked in a sauna. I walked with Preston to the last class we would ever have together and as usual he was smiling. I never got why he always smiled even in situations where people should be sad he still smiled. He knew what today meant for me and he tried to keep light of the situation. I kept my head down away from what was ahead of me. My mind was too clouded about returning to see my family to notice anything in front of me. I walked into another student. It felt like I had walked into a wall. I knew immediately I had walked into tree. I stumble onto the ground and the commotion around me slows down to make room for us. He turned his bulky body around and apologized profusely without saying a word even though I had walked into him. He helped me off of the ground before hurrying down the hall.
“Alexandria, are you doing okay?” Preston said he had tilted his body downward so I had to look down to look him in his eyes. The way he was standing made him look like an idiot but he didn't seem to care. The way he acted made me laugh, which caused his smile to widen.
“I'm doing fine, just got lost in my head.”
“Thinking about how you’ll leave soon,” he said
“Was it that obvious?” He was the only person I told about me being an exchange student. I came to spend high school in Newkinawa and he was the only person I ever hung out with.
“I see what you mean,” he said “Newkinawa is a beautiful place with beautiful people to live in it…myself included”
“You wish,” I say with a smile we continue walking through the hallway “I'm just not excited to go back yet”
After I say that his smile grows wider “So you will miss me after all”
“I wouldn't say that much” I responded whilst smiling.
We had made it to our last class only to see it closed with a sign labeled “Uma incident” Uma was a student known for messing with the chemistry lab and destroying school property in the process. I've never actually met her but Preston says “She's a little weird but still nice”
“Guess class is canceled for today,” Preston remarked with a smile “Wanna go out to the court till the bell rings.”
“Sure let's go” I respond
The place we ate every day was outside. It used to be a tennis court before I moved in. Now they put trees and flowers all over the place. Preston really liked the blue color of the flowers but it just never clicked for me. I look over at Preston and he's staring up at the sky. There are a number of clouds in almost enough to block the sun but it still pokes its rays through and lands on Preston's face. The clouds swim in front of the sun till they block out the sun's light. Preston faces towards me.
“I'm gonna miss you Alexandria” he says
“You know you can just call me Alex,” I replied. I start to smile again. “I'll miss you too!" He smiles toward me again as we get up to leave as the clouds start to clump together and rain slowly falls. As we're walking back to the school there's a loud tearing sound followed by screams as the ground shakes.
The ground tears itself apart as the dirt and stone erupt from the ground. The sky blackens and a pale blue light escapes the earth. Then creatures erupt from the ground in a violent ejection from the earth creating a white pillar diffusing as they reach higher in the air. Some are clawing their way out of the cracks like maggots out of a corpse. People are swept into the updraft screaming for their lives.
The creatures descend like a tidal wave and tear apart any people caught in their path. They storm out of the crack in hundreds as more cracks in the earth form. Me and Preston started running away as people were screaming behind us. A girl running next to us has her legs slashed by a creature. The monster begins to tear open her chest as she chokes on her own blood. The monster shovels her lungs and innards into its decrepit mouth. Me and Preston keep running until we're met at the entrance of the school and we catch the attention of a monster as it begins to savagely rush toward us. The monster resembles ghosts my father told me about. But this one looks monstrously horrific. It floats in the air and opens its mouth so wide it nearly replaces its entire torso; its jaws hold savage teeth each the same old gray color of its body. Its eyes glow a rotten yellow color through the dark. It stretches out its arms showing its giant hands and claws like fingers. It swipes at us leaving a giant claw mark on the door behind us but Preston ducks my body down to avoid the attack. We run around it as the monster swaps its focus to another bystander. Screaming past us. Me and Preston run into the parking lot as people scream around us. We hide next to a car.
“What the hell is happening!?” I yell to Preston. More of the creatures fly over us and swoop down to people like vultures on roadkill devouring the fleeing people.
Preston starts to breathe heavily ”we need to get out of here and someplace safer”. As we were talking one of the monster phases through the car we were hiding next to forcing us to run into the street.
“Lets go to your house till things cool down” i say to Preston through panted breaths
“Wait couldn't we head to your house instead” Preston says.
“Why would that matter your house is closer anyways” i respond
“But-” Preston is interrupted by two creatures swooping above us to grab another person. The two monsters begin to pull the person apart while he writhes in pain before having his flesh be torn in half and having his organs be devoured.
“Come on lets go!!” I say as I grab his hand and run even faster.
By the time we reach Preston's house any living person is gone. On the street are just corpses laying torn and mutilated on the roads and sidewalk. The air in the neighborhood feels cold despite the season being summer. When I walk down the street I can still hear the occasional horrific wail the monsters give off. We move closer to Preston's house and I can see him sweating. He looked more worried than before when the creatures were chasing us and he kept darting his eyes away from his home.
“Preston, are you feeling okay?” he doesn't respond to my question and keeps darting his eyes. He walks slowly behind me and as I reach for the door handle and when I touch it it feels nearly freezing. I wrap my hoodie around my hand and slowly open the door. The house is quiet so me and Preston creep further into his house. The inside is cold and damp as if we were locked in a freezer. The further we move into the house the louder a subtle chewing sound is heard.
“It sounds like rats are eating a dead cow over there” I whisper. Preston continues to stay silent behind me. We slowly walk closer towards the kitchen and the sound gets louder and louder and louder until we reach the room.
We're met with a rancid smell of vomit and blood. My blood starts to run cold and every instinct in my body is telling me to run. I can feel Preston breathing get heavier as we get closer. We turn the corner and see Preston's mom lying on the ground dead with one of the creatures hunched over slurping her intestines. The sight causes me to vomit alerting the monster to our presence. The creature turns around and its mouth turns into a mortifying grin as it flies into Preston's moms body. The corpse begins to rise and spur splashing blood over the kitchen. When the corpse stops spasming it picks itself up from the ground and with glazed over eyes it holds its intestines in its hand and gives us the same grin it did when it was outside her body. The possessed corpse lunges at me and starts to chase me around the kitchen. The body is running into the walls and cabinets spraying its blood and other loose organs around the area as I'm avoiding its assault. The corpse leans over and ejects one of its loose intestines towards me, wrapping me in it. It pulls me towards it so fast I'm flung towards the ground. The corpse limbers over to me and raises its free hand aiming for my head. The creature's deranged smile causes the corpse’s cheeks to tear apart. It places both of its bloodied and demented hands on my face and starts to press my skull into the ground. I struggle to breathe. The room starts to get dark and blood escapes my head.
Until Preston jumps on top of his mothers corpse with a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabs it in the head. The possessed body tries to shake him off but he keeps stabbing, blood gets in on his face and tears start to escape his eyes. The creature violently ejects from the corpse's mouth causing her head to nearly explode and Preston stops stabbing the body. The body falls over in a splash of blood and organs. The monster leaves phasing through the roof leaving Preston crying over his mother's body. As the blood mixes with the tears he collapses to his knees crying. I walk over and hug him as the air around us turns bitter and the chill of death leaves the room and us with it.
Chapter 1 Eclipse
It's been 2 months since the apocalypse started. We've kept ourselves alive by looting grocery stores and houses, we hide from the creatures as we have no way to fight back against them. Preston came up with the idea to call them glanter’s. He’s looking better since we left his family home but I can tell something is wrong with him that he's not telling me. Everytime I ask him about it he tells me it's no big deal. I asked him earlier today and he just told me
“don't worry about it, I'm over it” without even looking at me. Now we're walking through the street and I'm walking behind Preston, I can barely see his head past the giant bag we're both carrying on our backs we use to carry supplies. I look up at the sky and it's still pitch black except for the moon giving us any amount of light. Preston turns around to face me.
“Let's check out that house, it might have some cool stuff in it” he points to a white house to our right. The house is a two story building with steps leading to the front door. There's a generator poking out from the backyard. The driveway is empty save for a couple of dried blood stains and tire marks. It's similar to the other houses in the neighborhood except for a couple broken windows.
“Sure why not” We head over to the house and I see something shining on the side of the house in the corner of my eye. I turn my head to look at it closer but it quickly disappears before I can see it clearly.
“Probably squirrel or something” I mumble to myself. Preston walks up the stairs to the house and I walk up the steps behind him as a breeze blows past my face. Preston tries to turn the door knob but the door is locked. I start to pull out a lockpick I grabbed at the store earlier. I motion towards Preston to move out of the way as I kneel down to pick the lock. It takes me a couple of minutes to unlock the door so I walk inside the house and Preston follows behind me while closing and locking the door. The doorway of the house leads to a dark room so I take a flashlight out of my bag to illuminate the area. Were put into the living room and bookshelves are on the walls and a large TV sat in front of a large black couch with smaller chairs surrounding it. Dust is covering every surface of the room and spiderwebs litter the corners of the walls. The area smells like moth balls and there's a lack of blood anywhere nearby.
“Guess the owners got out before the Glanter’s got in, '' I say to Preston. When he doesn't respond I turn around and he's already looking further into the house. When I find him he's managed to find a flight of stairs that lead to a lower portion of the house.
“I'll check on him later,” I think to myself as I headed towards the kitchen to see if we could restock on food. I walk past a bedroom and remark on how childish it looked. The walls were painted with blue and green stripes and a bunk bed sat on the right wall. There's a chest at the foot of the bed so I walk over and lift the top off of it. The box is layered with children's toys, a multitude of dolls, bears, and figures all jut out of the box. I notice a small robot toy and inspect it in my hands.
The cold metal makes my hand shiver and the sharp body shape makes the robot bigger than my hand. There's red lining around the robot's buttons surrounded by the cold gray of the robot's “skin”. It reminds me of a toy my little brother had. My heart feels heavy as I worry about what happened to my family. If they're alive, dead, or worse…possessed. The thoughts send a chill down my spine but I push them aside for now. I put the toy in my bag and exit the bedroom.
I can see the kitchen is down the hallway so I walk down the hall and enter. The kitchen is pretty clean except for a couple of dishes in the sink and the dust. There's a table seated for 3 people in the center of the room. I start opening the cabinets in search for any food or water. There's boxes of cereal leftover on top of shelves and a mix of chip bags and cookies in neat boxes stationed in the cabinets.
“Score,” I say to myself as I begin to put the snacks into my bag. When the cabinets are empty I look inside the fridge. The inside of the fridge ran out of power so most of the food inside is rotted. There are a couple of bottles of water in the front so I shove those in my bag. There's also a bag of oranges that still seem to be healthy in the back. I grab them and toss them on the table. There's rotten sandwich meat hidden in the drawer of the fridge.it smells like a dumpster outside of a butcher shop. I wrinkle my nose at the smell. I look around the kitchen for any bread with no luck.
I continue to look through the fridge until I hear Preston scream from another room. Immediately I bolt out of the kitchen leaving my bag behind and run towards the lower part of the house. I run down the stairs and nearly trip on the steps. The stairs lead to a big room. There are posters to tv shows and movies I don't recognize. The walls are painted black and there's a bear skin rug on the floor. I notice Preston standing next to a really big TV hyperventilating. I walk over to him and ask him.
“Are you ok? What happened?”
He talks through deep breaths “I… saw a… spider.”
“What?!” I respond in confusion.
“It was really big and I had jumped at my face”
“Sure it was.” I say while laughing “Let's go upstairs there's some food in the fridge we can eat”
“Wait, I think you should check this out.” He says while pointing towards one of the walls. I grab Preston's flashlight off the floor and face it towards the wall. Hanging halfway off the wall is a large map labeled Newkiwana scavenger hunt of 76.
“I think we should take it,” Preston says “You can read a map right?”
“A little but I'm not the best at it,” I say to him “can you read a map?”
“it shouldn’t be too hard it’s mainly pictures any way I'm sure I can figure it out”
I walk over to the wall where the map is hung there are trophies covering tables and shelved in their own personal cases one of them reads “1st place 100-meter swimming competition for 1986 Zack Hemmingway” and another one reads “2nd place 100-meter swimming competition for 1989 Zack Hemmingway”
“Guess this guy really liked swimming,” Preston remarks while staring at a wall of newspaper clippings. All of them are about the same person in swimming competitions. All labeled different things like “a new record for Zack “the dolphin” Hemmingway”,
‘Zach Hemmingway our star plans for the future” all the newspapers are about this kind he has paler skin and a bulky enough build to swim pretty well. Most of the pictures have him coming out of the water in a pool, his long black hair soaked and sitting at his shoulders. Another one has him sitting at a desk over a pile of books and his hair in a knot , “vicious wipeout ends the Dolphins career”, and “ex-swim champ Zack Hemmingway found in a drunken stupor outside strip club.
“Everyone has their own hobbies I guess,” I say as I take the map off of the wall and fold it up. “Sucks what happened to Zack though” I walked over to Preston’s bag and put the rolled map in one of the pockets. I walk back up the stairs and Preston grabs his bag and follows behind me.
We make our way towards the kitchen and Preston starts looking through the fridge for anything to eat. I grab an orange from the table and throw it at his head. The fruit bounces off his head and rolls on the floor. He turns around and grabs the fruit from the floor
“Why did you throw an orange at me?”
“It's the only food we have unless you plan on eating spoiled a sandwich“ He starts to peel it while walking towards the table. We both take a seat and start to eat the oranges from the bag. He plants his feet on top of the table and bites into the fully peeled orange. I grab a water bottle from a bag and start to drink from it as Preston says.
“I saw a dvd player in that man cave downstairs we could watch a movie if it still has power”
“Sure it could be fun.” Me and Preston spend the rest of our time eating until the bag of oranges is emptied and we head back downstairs. Preston grabs the DVD player from under the table and blows the dust off the top of it; he plugs it into the wall as I plop myself onto the couch. He plugs the DVD player into the TV and sits on the recliner next to me. He presses a few buttons on the remote and the TV lights up. I squint my eyes at how bright it is. It's the most amount of light I've seen that didn't come from a flashlight. I notice there's a box filled with DVDs. I pull the box over towards me. I ruffle through the box and see movies like Silence of the Lambs, Terminator 2, and Home alone.
“Dude some of these came out just before the world turned inside out” I say to him.
“Really? Let's play one.” He responds. I toss him Terminator 2 and he puts it into the DVD player.
We spend the next couple hours watching movies and laughing together. It's some of our only moments of peace we’ve had since the end of the world and to me it's the most fun I've had yet. We're putting in the next DVD when there's a loud crash outside and the TV shuts off. Preston goes behind it to see if it's still plugged in.
“I think the generator outside is busted” i say
“It seems that way” Preston replies while backing away from the tv” i'm gonna go check it out”
“Don't worry I got it” I say as I hop out of my chair. Preston waves goodbye as I head up the stairs. I make my way back through the hallway leading to the living room and front door. I reach the door and start to turn the knob. I open the door wide as a car speeds down the street. I step out of the door to see what had happened when I hear the screech of a glanter. It cuts through the sky like an unholy opera singer. A group of them fly by and chase the car as I rush back inside the house. I slam the door shut and look through the window as I see a couple of smaller glanters grab and shake the car violently looking for the driver. They tear at it, ripping off doors and breaking the windows. The driver screams as the seats cover with blood and he's ripped out of the car as multiple smaller glanters tear and bite off parts of his body like piranha's until his body is completely devoured. I run back to the man cave to warn Preston about what had happened. I spot him laying in his chair spinning a DVD disc on his finger.
“It's not safe outside right now”
“Why not?
“There's glanter's outside, they just ate a dude in his car”
“Did they see you come inside?”
“I don't think so , they flew off before I went inside.”
“well we're not dead so I'm gonna say they didn't see you. But let's stay here for a couple more hours just to be safe”
“Sounds good i'm gonna go find the master bedroom.” I start to walk back up the stairs to the house
“ Hold on why do you get the master bedroom” Preston says while walking after me.
“Because I'm gonna find it first” I say as I start to run to find the bedroom. He chases after me in pursuit of the bedroom. Me and Preston run around the house looking for the master bedroom. We look through room after room finding closets, the garage, a bathroom and a door leading to a balcony in the back of the house. I manage to run into the bedroom and yell out to Preston.``Found it!!”
He comes walking into the room breathing heavily from the running. We both check out the room. The walls are painted a cream yellow and the bed takes up most of the room's center. The bed has burgundy sheets poking out from its bottom and a quilt with multi-colored floral designs lay sprawled out on top of it. There's a wardrobe built into the wall and a black leather couch sits comfortably on the left wall.
“Dibs on the bed” I say as I jump on top of it. I stretch out on top of the quilt and search for a comfortable part to sleep in.
“Where am I supposed to sleep then?” Preston complains
“You can sleep on the couch it looks soft enough” I respond while pointing towards the couch “I saw some spare blankets in one of the closets”
“Alright i’ll be right back” he mumbles to himself “why do i always get the couch”
“ I'll be right here if you need me,” i call after him. I sit up on the bed and start to look around the room more. I notice the entrance to the wardrobe is cracked open slightly. I hop out of the bed and grab a flashlight from my bag as I walk into the wardrobe. I turn on my flashlight and stare in awe at how many clothes are in there. The room is only half as big as the bedroom but it's still bigger than any closet I've ever had. The wardrobe is full of shirts, dresses, pants, and shoes for men and women. I immediately start to look through the shoes to see if any fit my size. I throw a pair of black high heels behind me as Preston finds me in the wardrobe. He looks around before asking me.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding a new pair of clothes to wear cause I've been wearing the same pair of jeans for waaaaay too long”
“Fair enough. Is there any guy stuff in there?”
“Yeah right there” I hook my thumb behind me to point to the other end of the closet.
“I'm sure they won't mind if we take a couple of things…they're probably dead by now anyways,” Preston says with a slight grin on his face. The way he said made me spin my head to look at him but he was already on the opposite end of the wardrobe looking at suits.
I shake away the thought and continue looking for any pair of sneakers in my size. 40 minutes pass before I walk out of the wardrobe holding a new pair of jeans and a black guns-N-roses t-shirt. I toss the clothes on top of the bed and check to see if the shower in the bathroom still works. I turn the dial and wait for a moment. The shower head chokes a little before water comes pouring out. I reach my hand under the showerhead to feel the water. The water is cold, it causes my hand to shiver when I take it out. I shake the water off and say to myself.
“Good enough” as I start to take off my old clothes and get in the shower. The cold water bounces off my skin, it sends shivers down my spine but I still get the old dirt from the last few months off of me. I step out and see a couple of dry towels hanging off of the door. I grab one and dry my body off and grab another to wrap around my head and dry my hair. I step out of the bathroom and Preston is still inside the wardrobe. I put on my new clothes while his back is turned and walk over towards him when I'm finished.
“Still haven't found anything,” I ask him
He turns around “Nothing yet, the only thing interesting was this coat.” He holds a leather coat up to me. The coat is made of black leather and has a skull covered with blue flames on the back. There's a black shirt inside the coat with a skeleton hand making a thumbs-up embroidered on the front.
“ That's pretty cool, it's better than what you're wearing right now at least” he's outfitted in a blue hoodie with holes on the chest and tears at the sleeves. He also has a shirt with a faded picture of a blue flower printed on it.
“I guess you're right” he gets up from the floor and exits the wardrobe. He lays the clothes on the couch along next to the blanket and pillow he brought into the room.
“The shower works so you can get yourself clean In there,” I say to him
“You know, a shower sounds really good right now.” He gets up from the floor and grabs a pair of pajama pants that were laying next to him. He leaves the wardrobe and enters the bathroom, closing the door behind him. After a moment the water turns on and I hop on the bed to get ready to sleep. I squirm myself into the quilt and rest my head against one of the pillows. I shut my eyes and fall asleep listening to the passive sound of the shower like rain on a car.
I'm in a void. It feels like I'm standing in a puddle of water that reaches to my knees. I wade my way forward looking around for anything in the darkness. In the distance I can see 3 figures l. I moved closer to them and their silhouettes get clearer. I realize they are my dad and brothers. I start to run towards them kicking up water behind me until something grabs my leg. It pulls down violently forcing me under the water without a breath of air. I kick at the thing grabbing me until something grabs my other leg. I look down and see two glanter's each with a monstrous smile on their faces. They stare back at me and one of them tugs my leg harder than before and tears it off of my body. The water around me turns red as the glanter laugh's. The other smiles wider as it starts to fling me around the water forcing any air left in my lungs to be forced out as I scream in pain. The glanter throws me away and I can see my family slowly fade into the distance as I'm flown away.
I struggle to swim back to where I was, one of my legs is missing and the other is broken. The glanter's find me again and I try to get to the surface to escape them. I'm flapping my arms in any attempt to escape as one of the glanter's flies in front of me and grabs my arm. I look at the monster with tears in my eyes as it bites my arm and tears my body away from it. It flings my body away and with my remaining arm I clutch the wound as the water floods into my body leaving me in the void I started in. I look around and the glanter's seem to have left. I turn behind me and see my family again, this time I'm closer than before.
I grit my teeth and drag my body towards them slowly as I leave a trail of blood and tears behind me. I finally reach my family and grab one of my father's shoes. I stare up and he looks at me. His stare causes me to feel cold as a grotesque smile grows on his face. I stare in shock as my brothers each have the same look as my father.
I shoot up from my sleep panting heavily in a cold sweat.
“It was just a dream..just a dream…just a dream” I look at my hands as tears fall into them. I look around the room and see Preston sleeping peacefully on the couch. The room feels frozen in place as a chill runs down my spine. I get out of the bed and walk out of the bedroom. I make my way through the dark hallway and find the entrance to the balcony I saw earlier. I creak open the screen door and head outside. The Balcony is pretty large, about the size of the kitchen in the house. There are some chairs knocked over next to a table and I pick one up to sit on it. I look out into the expanse of the neighborhood, houses lined up next to each other, dozens broken apart by roads, and dead bodies scattered across the roads.
I look up in the sky and sit back in the chair. The sky looks empty except for the moon giving this world its only source of light. Without the moon, we’d be left in darkness. It hangs in the sky alone, no stars, no clouds, nothing but itself, and the void of the sky. I think back about the dream I had. My dad and my brother's all dead and possessed and then they kill me. I start to tear up thinking about it. I try to wipe away the tears but it’s no use. I'm too scared for my family. I don't know where they are if they're alive if they're worried about me I don't know anything! I start to quietly cry into my hands. I don't know how long I'm sitting there until I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn my head to face it and I see Preston. He was smiling and looking at me. I turn away to wipe my tears and he walks next to me.
“I heard you sneaking out of the bedroom so I followed you to see where you were going.” he says “but that's not my question.” he pauses and looks at me “my question is what’s got you feeling so down?” he leans over the railing of the balcony
“It's nothing, I just came out here to clear my head.” I say as more tears escape from my eyes in big slow drops that ride down the sides of my face.
“if you don't feel like telling me you don't have to but i'll be here if you ever change your mind”. He looks up at the moon before turning to face me and his smile widens “I'll always be here with you…trust me I'm not going anywhere”
I stare up at him and wipe away my tears as a smile grows on my face to match his. I get up and stare over the balcony with him. “So where are we heading next?” I say to him, Preston pulls the map we got from the man cave downstairs out from his pocket.
“After I got out of the shower I decided to take a look at the map for anything interesting we could see.”
“Ok did you find anything?” i ask
“I did,” he points at a spot on the right of the map. “We should head to the museum”
“I didn't want to go to a museum before the apocalypse why would i want to go now?'' I ask him.
“Well the best part of museums is the cool stuff right”
“Yeah what about it”
“The only problem is that you could only look at the fossils and armor but you could never take them.”
“So you want to rob a museum?” Prestons eyes light up at the question
“Exactly they might have a really cool sword I could use, or I could sharpen a dinosaur tooth and use that as a weapon, there might be a cursed shield that can summon the dead to fight for you. This opportunity is too good to pass up. We need to go!”
“That does seem pretty cool but wouldn't carrying that stuff weigh us down. What if a glanter is chasing us and we can't run fast enough because of the stuff we took from the museum.”
“We’ll only take things that are light. Even then I could just block the glanter with my newly acquired 2000 year old shield.”
“Fair enough we can go in a couple hours” I yawn and stretch out my arms. “Cause I'm feeling way too tired to walk all the way over there right now.”
“Alright i'm heading back to my couch and THEN we’ll head out to the museum” he leaves the balcony and heads back to the master bedroom leaving me alone on the balcony.
“Thanks Preston I'm not leaving either” I say into the sky. I turn around and walk back inside the house, closing the balcony door behind me. I walk back into the bedroom and Preston is hunched over and holding a flashlight looking at the map. He’s drawing lines through roads and marking X’s in different areas.
“What are the X’s for?” i ask him
“They’re places that glanter’s usually stay around. I'm marking them off so we remember not to go through them, or at least be more cautious.”
“Cool. Did you find where we are right now?” He points to an area where the lines all converge out of.
“Right around here is where the neighborhood ends. So if we follow this path we can make it to the museum in one piece” I pat him on the back and take the map from his hands.
“Get some sleep Preston, we have a full day tomorrow” he grins to himself before laying down on the couch. I put the map back into my bag and hop on the bed to get to sleep. I cover my body in the quilt and roll over facing away from Preston as he falls asleep. I nestle myself into the bed and slowly fall asleep to get ready for the next day.
I'm awoken by Preston shaking the bed I'm sleeping on. My eyes open and the room is foggy, I wipe away the sleep from my eyes and focus my attention towards Preston. He's practically jumping out of his skin with excitement, he's already fully dressed for the trip and shaking the bed with a wide smile on his face.
“Ok ok i'm up the air feels heavy as a groggy feeling fills my body. I wipe my eyes and the room starts to clear up. I turn to face Preston. He's still shaking my bed to wake me up, he’s already fully dressed and nearly jumping out of his skin in excitement.
“Ok ok, i'm up you can stop shaking the bed” i say
“Then get up we’ve got a long walk ahead of us” he says as he stops shaking the mattress. He grabs the map from my bag and points to one of the red lines.
“We're gonna follow this way to the museum. We’ll move past the hotel around the ice skating rink and around the park. We’ll mainly stick to walking through the streets, we might have to go rooftop hopping to avoid any glanter’s if we see them but i'm sure we won’t reach that point.” he explains
“Wait, wait, wait, why are avoiding the skating rink and the park” i ask
“ everytime we go near the park there's weird noises and light coming out of it”
“And why can't we go to the ice skating rink?”
“I didn't think it would be important”
“It couldn't hurt to check it out at least”
“Fine we could make a detour”
“Ok and how do you plan on getting on top of roofs?”
“I'm sure we'll figure it out when we get to it”
“Ok man as long as you’re sure '' I yawn and step out of the bed. Preston starts to put the map in his bag. I walk into the bathroom with my clothes and change out of my pajamas. Minutes later I walk out and see Preston sitting on the couch twiddling his thumbs.
“Finally you're out” he smiles at me before handing me my bag and slinging it over his shoulder. We took a last look inside the kitchen to see if we missed anything. Afterwards we leave for the outside. The cold air bites at my face but Preston walks down the stairs, his face buried in the map. I jog to catch up to him as we both head into the street.
“Hey Preston, could I see the map?”
“Sure” he hands over the map and continues walking. I look at the map and the numerous lines drawn on roads. I look at the corner of the map and notice a small map key with numerous symbols for different areas like a library, school, hospital, and more. There's even a way to tell how far away each location is. The text reads “1 inch=5 miles” I quickly count how far we are from the museum.
“Dude this museum is like 100 miles away.”
“Yep it'll be a long walk, it'll take us a while to get there”
“Did you plan on us walking there the whole time?”
“We might find bikes or something.” he pauses “well i did think we would walk the whole way”
“This is gonna take us weeks to get there!”
“Did you have anything else planned?”
“Well…i guess not but we should still try to find some bikes or something”
“Ok if we see any way to travel faster we’ll take it”
“Alright cool” I hand him the map back and he folds it back up and puts it in his bag. We walk further until we leave the gated neighborhood we started in. Preston takes the map back out and looks at it before he turns right and continues walking. I follow him staring forward at the expanse of the road. The outside of the neighborhood is surrounded by roads all leading to different parts of Newkinawa. We walk past a sign that reads “Coretown 20 miles ahead” I nudge Preston towards the sign and he checks the map again.
“Yep, the museum’s in Coretown. Would you believe the residents were pretty proud of it. Should be a fun place to explore” he says
“Yeah but it’ll take us a million years to get there.” i complain
“Lighten up, I'm sure it will be worth it”. We continue walking down the road slowly making our way to Coretown.

I’m walking to PE today right and two of my friends (Friend A and B) happen to be walking some feet in front of me (talking to each other) and another friend (Friend C) of mine walking not next to them, not in front of them, BEHIND them on the OPPOSITE side of the hallway cus they don’t get along. Friend B leaves to their class, and Friend A, after a moment, PURPOSEFULLY SLOWS DOWN to walk next to friend C, and proceeds to call him a whore, worthless, asshole, those kinds of things. WHAT THE FUCK? BRO WASNT NEAR YOU, WASNT INTERACTING WITH YOU, I WATCHED HIM WALK TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HALL AND SLOW DOWN SO HE WOULDNT BE NEAR YOU, AND YOU PULL THAT? TF?? And I tell him before I head into PE (that I share with friend C btw) that that was rude and he shouldn’t have done that cus mans wasn’t even near you, and he says “your not my mom” . SO? NO ONE IS TELLING YOU TO BE NICE TO HIM BUT THAT SHIT WAS CHILDISH , PETTY , OUT OF NOWHERE ??? HE DIDNT DO NUN TO DESERVE THAT YOU WERE JUST AN ASS FOR NO REASON??? AND THEN GUESS WHAT? Me and friend C are now in the bleachers of the PE room talking about it (I’m telling him stuff like, that’s wasn’t fair to you, I’m sorry he did that, idk why he did) and he’s like “oh he does stuff like that all the time” HUHHHHHH and I ask him to specify cus like insulting you randomly or just insulting you like THAT in convo and he’s like “I’ll be minding my own and they’ll come up to me and do that” WTF and I’m like yea I’m not talking to them for a MINUTE after that one. And then it gets to lunch and obviously I’m pissed at friend a for that buffoonery in the hall so I’m not talking to them, and randomly in the middle of lunch he writes a lil note “feel better - initials” no. Straight up NO. He knew EXACTLY WHY I was pissed. He sometimes does this shit where when is pissed at him he gets all soft suddenly, and Ik it’s not that he feels cus it’s only around other people. I hate it’s so much hchchchhchchc. and my other friend tries to figure out what’s wrong and friend a says “don’t try to talk to them they’re not in the mood” who tf told you to talk for me? I was perfectly fine with my other friend, Ik shes not gonna pull that, hell I ASKED if any of my other friends have ever pulled that, so I play my apple and talk to my other friend, and dip Friend a as fast as possible after lunch.
Now I’m not gonna pretend it’s just Friend A and C dont click they had some this year and last year, and I don’t know if it’s completely resolved because friend A doesnt tell me BULLSHIT when I ask and friend C is like “I just want it to be over tbh” but the gist is friend C said shit and Friend A said shit (I’d love to go into detail but it’s not my drama nor do I even know it cus ⁾ and they’ve been beefing since, but thing is, I’ve only had friend Cs I for to go off and if it’s correct, friend A has basically isolated them , telling people shit, making any mutual friends stop being friends with him or ganging up on him, to the point I think I’m one of the few people who still talks to him respectfully (and before someone pulls some shit when I say they won’t tell me SHIT friend C has done, i mean that, there’s no details no explanations, they want me to just take their word for it. Friend C has not given me every detail -at my request cus if he can’t say everything about one topic don’t say anything so nothings misinterpreted- but it’s a hell of a lot more then the others.
Side rant: Honestly tho am I being petty too by not talking to them or ignoring them cus I’m thinking about it and that’s probably not the way to go but I alr know if I do talk to them whatever I say isnt gonna be between us because ‘somehow’ any anytime we have a negative private convo, I get a text from someone else telling me how they feel like or providing a context that wasn’t originally given??? Like thank you but you were not apart of the og convo?? I’m tired of hearing my drama back from other people because they can’t keep it to themselves, and I’m tired of having to fight 7 other people in one argument between me and friend A.
TLDR? One of my friends was an ass for no reason and has been hella disrespectful to my other friend, and idk if I’m being dramatic by ignoring them for it

I write what I can remember from conversations I have with my wife because I don’t remember everything and I go back an analyze the situation to see it from a different angle. Where did I mess up?
You -Can you stop butt dialing me?
Me -Sorry it wasn’t me it was the rain. That last time I did call you.
You -Mhmm
Me -You want to hear about my day?
You -Sure.
Me -Talks about the realtor, mochi peeing in my car, my struggle to find a vacuum, getting dirt and hair up and finally getting the first driver side seat done and then it rains.
You -Awww at the part where I can’t find the tool when looking for vacuum, and the rain coming down. At the end when I mention the rain you say “so you didn’t see the clouds?
Me -No it was nighttime.
You -This is exactly what I buy umbrellas for
Me -I wish I had a third arm to hold the umbrella while I vacuum
You -That’s why they make the big umbrellas to go over you while you work
Me -I don’t have one of those and the rain came out of nowhere
You -Why didn’t you put the vacuum in the car and finish it?
Me -I couldn’t because all my stuff was in there.
You -Why didn’t you move stuff around?
Me -I couldn’t because there’s too much stuff and I didn’t want things to get even more wet.
You -Haha I woulda said fuck it and did it.
Me -Yeah that just really didn’t make sense to me.
You -A lot of things don’t make sense to you and then you keep letting them get worse and worse.
Me -Babe I didn’t call to have this kind of conversation.
(Don’t remember the exact words said here if there were any)
Me -So what are you doing?
You -Nothing looking at the tv
Me -Oh are you crocheting? What are you watching tv?
You -No. Nothing.
Me -So you’re just staring at the tv?
You -Yeah
Me after a few seconds -Babe do you want to talk?
You -I did until you got all sassy
Me -How was I sassy?
You in a mocking voice -I didn’t call to have this kind of conversation
Me -It’s just that after—(you cut me off)
You -It doesn’t matter. You can’t let your wife make one comment? I was trying to help you. If you didn’t call to have this conversation you should have just called your mom or someone.
Me -Babe it was after everything I said.
You -Everything?
Me -Almost all of what I said. (May have said more here)
You -May have said something here.
Me after a few seconds -Babe I’ll just talk to you tomorrow hangs up
SOME THINGS SAID THAT I REMEMBERED WERE SAID BUT DONT KNOW WHERE IN THE CONVO
You -Sounds like a great day.
Me -It definitely was a day.
Silence
Me -Did the kids go down amiably?
You -Yeah they went down without a fuss.
Me -Good.
You -I deposited that check today so it’s available.
Me -Okay good, I saw that.
What I felt in that moment:
I was sharing what happened during my day. That it was a day were things didn’t really go my way and it didn’t feel good but I was dealing with it. As I told you about the rain situation it didn’t feel as if you were trying to help me, but as if you were trying to point out where I need to do better next time. How you would have done this and that and I why didn’t I do that.
I felt like when I said it didn’t make any sense to me to do it that way, I triggered you (not on purpose), and you said a blanket statement about me that was hurtful and not something I would have liked to hear from my wife after telling her I had a day full of things not going my way (I let things get worse and worse).
I really didn’t call to have a conversation like that with you. I wanted us to laugh together about everything going wrong (because sometimes it funny) but instead it felt awkward and cold and hurtful.
I truly have no clue what you were looking for me to say when you said all the things of what I could have done better and what you would have done and the comment about how things don’t make sense to me often and I just let them get worse and worse. Did you want me to say that those were good ideas? That I’ll buy an umbrella next time? .

Hoping this kind of post is allowed. Just super happy right now that I'm seeing some actual improvement in my gameplay in what feels like 1000 hours of zero improvement. I've typically always sat in Guardian. Then, I recently started taking improvement more seriously. Spend a lot of time reading subs like this one, and watching streamers - Specifically, streamers who focus on educational content.
I think, especially for those in this sub, this doesn't need to be said but what made me improve the most was actually trying to learn and climb. I think it's common for a lot of players (including myself, until recently) to say that they're making an effort to improve when they really aren't. They'll watch a couple videos on the meta and then just grind ranked. I genuinely think most of my improvement has come from things outside of the game itself.
Just to make this a bit more of a high-effort post, I wanna describe some of the biggest changes I've made to my gameplay, so it can maybe help people who were in my situation. Keep in mind, I main support, so all of my advice is pretty specific to that:

• Stopped warding obvious spots. (Like cliff wards) I watched some videos on good places to ward that aren't so obvious, but honestly it's a lot to remember and I've started to just use my own judgement on it. Also learned about using spells to give vision of cliffs to deward without placing a sentry ON the cliff.
  
• If I do ward an obvious spot, I only do it if I plan on actually defending that spot. That means it's pretty rare because I can't really trust teams to do what I want them to do.
  
• Stopped spamming spells to harrass in lane and focus more on auto attacks. ESPECIALLY if they have a channeled ability and I have a stun to stop it. I used to just chuck spells out on CD to harrass. Feels obviously braindead to me now, but that's guardian gameplay I guess.
  
• I also stopped spamming spells in fights. Before I used to see teamfight start and just throw out every spell to deal damage. Now I try to look for the most impactful time to use it. For example, instead of stunning a Bristleback at the start of the fight, I'll stun the Enigma who black holes.
  
• A continuation of the last thing is positioning. I now stay positioned very safely behind the team. I mostly did this before, but very often I'd come in to auto attack towers with the rest of the team because I felt like I wasn't contributing if I'm sitting behind. Obviously this makes no sense because as a support you're probably dealing minimal damage to a tower with your auto attacks.
  
• Just paying a lot more attention to pull and stack times. Stacking a lot throughout a match helps a shit ton. The match that put me into archon was won largely due to me stacking a lot of camps, I think, as we were far behind and my stacks allowed our pb to get super ahead in farm.
  
• Abandoning lane when it's clearly lost. Too many matches would have me just stay with my pos 1 when we're just constantly feeding or just unable to farm lane. Now, if the lane is lost, I tell the carry to farm and go to the opposite lane. Sometimes that gets me a crying pos 1, but I find that it gives me better results than just bashing my head against a wall.
  

There's probably more, but these are the main things I think have helped me. My recent winrate is pretty high, so I honestly think just these things will keep me climbing, since it feels like I contribute a massive amount in my matches. Most matches I seem to have around 60% kill participation. Significantly more assists than the other support.
I also know that most of these tips are incredibly obvious, but it's stuff I didn't know, so there's definitely people out there who aren't aware of these things. If you think any of it is wrong, do let me know. I'm sure it's not perfect advice.

Hey! I'm from Canada I'm looking to expand my friend circle and I'm hoping to find more genuine friends to play or chill with on discord and hopefully become long term friends!. I'm a variety gamer I play a lot of games on pc depending on my mood and wouldn't mind getting into new ones either if we connect!.
I would prefer if you are chill and non toxic because I only play games for fun and not a competitive gamer at all. I like to laugh and have a good time and don't really care if I lose the game the only thing that matters to me is that everyone is having fun but don't get me wrong I'm always trying my best to win haha. the game genres I'm into are Story based coop games, adventure, survival, horror, sandbox, party games, fighting, fps, rpg. I won't lie though I mainly play pve games as of right now but I play some pvp games from time to time it just depends if I like it or not. I love playing goofy indie games too.
I have work during the week so I get on in the evenings but on the weekends I'm off so I have a lot of time so I get on the afternoons and can play longer. I'm kind of a night owl and will stay up for long hours depending on how much fun we're having.
A few non gaming things I'm into are horror, true crime documentarys, wrestling, reading, writing sci fi, marvel, dc. I'm also down to just chill in vc and watch stuff it doesn't have to be games 24/7 if you want and we could stream our games, movies, shows.
A little about me is that I'm a extrovert and I have a pretty loud mouth so once I get to know you it will probably be hard to shut me up lol and I'll try and keep the conversation as cool and interesting as possible but if you're a introvert I don't mind having a quiet vc :). I get scared pretty easily I'm ngl so I'll probably get spooked sometimes in horror games so sorry about that lol. I like to joke around whenever we're in a bad situation in a game just to keep things light hearted. I think I'm pretty funny but sometimes my jokes can come off as cringy lmao. I might roast you here and there but it's all in good fun so don't take it personal feel free to roast me back XD. I'm active most days so I'm usaully down to play or just hangout in a vc. I'm a pretty open book once we get to know eachother and I'll put effort into the friendship as long as you're willing to do the same. I don't judge so everyone is welcome!. :D
Now finally on to the games list!
Current favourite games
Left 4 Dead 2
Cod zombies(all of them)
Terraria both modded and vanilla
Minecraft
Tf2
Palworld
Tekkken 8
Street fighter 6
Other games I'm willing to play
Don't Starve Together
Raft
Project Zomboid
Valheim
The Elder Scrolls Online
Stardew Vally
Dead By Daylight
Risk of Rain 2
The Outlast Trials
Lethal Company
Phasmophobia
Demonologist
Escape the Backrooms
Killing Floor 2
Remnant 2
GTA 5
Mk1
Halo Mcc
Like I said I'm a variety gamer so the list might change a bit often but I love trying out new games I also don't mind buying new games as long as your willing to teach me it lol.
Lastly I will say is that you please be 18+ and preferably in north america just so ping and timezones aren't a issue. Please have atleast 2 or 3 games that I got because I don't really like sticking to just 1 game unless it's new or we're both really into it. If I sound cool to you at all feel free to DM me and please tell me about yourself instead of just saying "hi" as its hard to connect with people who don't say much about themselves. I Look forward to seeing you all and thanks for reading! :)

So I've come to the horrible realization that I have no social life and I have no idea how I'd get started on building one. To make things clear from the start, this isn't cause of social anxiety or anything. I'm not a nervous persona and never had issues holding a conversation. My problem here is born of pure ignorance. I just don't know where people hang out or really how to establish relationships. I can maintain a friendship fine. I got friends. I just don't know how to start one. These people just found me and I managed to not scare them off.
To give you some background on I've just always been solitary given most of my hobbies (playing guitar, drawing, movies/books/games) are stuff you do alone in a room. I also never hung out much with people outside school cause I lived pretty far from everyone in school. I got into this nerd school thing (I'm honestly not sure what it's called cause it wasn't private) in case you're wondering what the circumstances are where I lived far away from everyone else. So even though I wanted to and people wanted to hang with me, I never really had much opportunity to since I always had stuff right after class and shit was too far to really meet em over weekends. And even in the very rare cases I was able to visit friends or they were able to visit me, these people are naturally gonna be pretty similar to me so we just did the same shit I'd do alone just with other people in the room. I figured stuff would change in college but for financial reasons I went to community college, and the one I went to was very much a "finish your classes and leave" kind of deal. Most people there weren't even around my age. So I ain't really meet people and I couldn't hang out with my friends and meet people through them cause they went out of state. Got a job but at a Thai restaurant but they ended up putting me in the back where nobody I interacted with regularly spoke English. After that I transferred to a state college and here I thought "finally, now's my chance to have a normal social life and hang out with people", but of course God had a really funny sense of humor cause right before I graduated from county the pandemic happened. The universe saw I had a chance at having a social life and through divine intervention prevented that from happening. So I basically just spend the last to years of my college online. Last year was hybrid so I went out a little but going to a tech school turns out everyone there is also pretty much isolated nerds. My roommate didn't even leave his room. I had to make sure he wasn't dead a few times and honestly I'm not convinced he wasn't. I'd fully believe if he reanimated by the fungus that grew from his pizza. Anyway then I graduated and since the job market wasn't great I took an opportunity for a job in Maryland when it arose. Thing is that state is very far from where all my friends, family and really everyone I know lives so if I was hoping to meet people through them after they came back from college that got ruined. Cheapest place I was able to find that's close to my work was a studio so I have no roommates. All my coworkers are also about a decade+ older than me and have families and shit, so I can't really hang out with them. I feel like I keeping winning a lottery in how to live the most accidentally isolated life ever. My parents are probably happy I'm the rare person that actually focused on my education and didn't go out partying and shit (tho that's more due to circumstances and not choice), but I imagine the pressure of finding someone's gonna ramp up eventually and I'd rather get ahead on that.
So if anyone can just give me some basic advice on where to meet people please help. I know bars are a thing just based off movies but I'm not much of a drinker. I can stomach it if that's the only place but I imagine people are hanging out outside bars in real life. I just don't know where. Part of this is my fault I know, I probably could've made choices to put myself out there more or be more proactive but I've always felt content with my life and never really wanted more till now. Just kind of woke up alone one day and thought "I don't think I've talked to another human being in person, that wasn't a coworker for months" and I want that to change. So any words would be appreciated. Pretend you're teaching an alien or something cause I'm pretty sure whatever stuff you're assuming I already know when you're writing your answer I probably don't.
Oh also I've never been into social media. Never really had much going on to post about outside drawings and shit.

OKay. I'm gonna get hate for this BUT CAN WORLD SEND ME A CUTE NERD I WANT ATTENTION AND NEED SOME MORE PEOPLE IN MY LIFE!!!
LIKE FUCK I"M EASY. I am so easy to please. literally all you gotta do is text me everyday and hang out with me .IT CAN EVEN BE ON DISCORD. Like bruh. got a game you're playing? great.let me sit on discord voice chat (video preferred) and watch you basically stream it to specifically me. got some code you need to work on? GREAT I"M A GREAT RUBBER DUCK and I have experience in coding so you can send the code and we can see who gets it fixed faster. NEED TO TOUCH GRASSS? GREAT let's go to the farmer's market on Saturday and get some kettle corn. I AM EASY TO PLEASE. I dont' need your money, I don't need gifts. I dont 'need fancy dinners. FUCK TAKE ME TO MC DONALDS!!! I love myself some chicken nuggets from there. and we can share a big thing of fries. Literally just include me in your day and I'll be perfectly happy. Give me a phone call after that one big game you were playing with your friends. or even let me just sit and cheer you all on. text me about the most random shit. I"M SO FUCKING EASY. I'm so easy. we can even do long distance! as long as we texting all day every day I'm fucking satisfied.
I'm at a point in my dating career where I wanna be like "maybe I should just look for open relationships" or at lest offer cause clearly I'm not enough by myself. So like. yeah. I'm only high maintenance cause I need a lot of attention. But like if my boyfriend is an introvert... I'll get it If he needs to take a few hours to recharge. I have a best friend who I recently hung out with and we went to the mall and I completely forgot that they get such and anxiety and oversimualtion from malls. I thought iw as going to be staying til the evening but once I remembered that I was like "aw hell no I aint' staying longer. they need some decompressing and just dropped them off, got my stuff and left. no questions ask. NO retaliation. so yeah.
Idk. I also say specifically a nerd cause apparently I'm into nerds (it took me a long time to accept that but they all do look the same or have teh same aspects). I'm so easy to please. maybe not in bed, But I'm easy to please emotionally.
something I loved bout discord boy was that he would constantly text me and we voice chatted a TON. and like that was satisfying enough. cause it was HIM. I liked him. I wanted him. He was CUTE. Bro needed a camera though cause I missed out on looking at his face. (we only talked on discord and hung out once). When I dug up an old screen shot of his bumble profile, I literally paused, looking at him and got sad cause I remembered then and there how cute I thought he was. Like fuck. FUCK. I swear if that girl he's talking to now isn't giving him what I was missing, then I"M GONNA BE PISSED. cause even though he left me for her, I still want him to be happy. I still miss our voice chats. I still miss the plans we made. We were gonna watch movies together and would talk about how we would do it. and I was so excited. cause it mean I got to spend time with him in person. and I really wanted to spend time in person. so that bitch better be giving him that time in person like she wasn't before he met me. SHE BETTER BE. also better be listening to him talk about the games he's playing. tease him about wanting to marry Andrea instead of the other chick from his game in space. LIKE BE GIVING THAT BOY SOME SHIT. she also better see that hot wheels car collection. cause like I never got to see it.i only heard about it. He had like 200 hot wheels. damn. ALSO BETTER BE GETTING THAT BOY OUTTA THE HOUSE. I got him to ONE farmers market and Kroger. He needs to touch grass.... my dear, he wanted to go out with you so badly. SO GO OUT WITH HIM HE NEEDS TO TOUCH GRASSS!!! even if it's front lawn grass. But like take him to target.take him to Walmart. Also make sure he's not stressed about living with his dad or needing to help his dad a lot. AND OMG tell him he's cute. CAUSE HE IS!!! HE IS. AND GOD DAMNIT USE THE FUCKING SEXY TIME PLAYLIST HE HAS. PLEASE. HE NEEDS TO USE THAT ONE DAY. OMG. AND GOD DAMNIT follow him on Spotify. he has no followers what so ever. And listen to his 200 song playlist all the way through, he'll listen to each and every song with you. DO THAT SHIT. DO IT. I couldn't do it all cause he didn't actually want me but now that he has someone he wants, DO IT. PLEASE.
augh I just realized I might not over be discord boy lol. He was the nerdiest guy I talked to. I wish I had been able to take him out on a date. like a real one. lol. whatever. Sucks to suck.
I'm also fucking annoyed that the guys I'm into I never stand a chance with. praying to god he doesn't find this but there's this a YouTuber I follow and I only really follow with him and his community cause I think he's cute and sweet. but like.... lets hope he doesn't see this cause he's gonna be weirded out if he finds out.
augh. nerds are so underrated when it comes to dating. I think I'm lucky that I'm attracted to them. But also unlucky cause I'm not good looking enough or something. idk. AUGHHHHHHHH Fuck my life. I need to go take my meds.i'm signing off.

So I've recently come to the horrible realization that I have no social life, no dating experience, and I have no idea how I'd get started on either. To make things clear from the start, this isn't cause of social anxiety or anything. I'm not a nervous persona and never had issues holding a conversation. My problem here is born of pure ignorance. I just don't know where people hang out or really how to establish relationships both platonic and romantic. I can maintain a friendship fine. I got friends. I just don't know how to start one. These people just found me and I managed to not scare them off.
To give you some background on I've just always been solitary given most of my hobbies (playing guitar, drawing, movies/books/games) are stuff you do alone in a room. I also never hung out much with people outside school cause I lived pretty far from everyone in school. I got into this nerd school thing (I'm honestly not sure what it's called cause it wasn't private) in case you're wondering what the circumstances are where I lived far away from everyone else. So even though I wanted to and people wanted to hang with me, I never really had much opportunity to since I always had stuff right after class and shit was too far to really meet em over weekends. And even in the very rare cases I was able to visit friends or they were able to visit me, these people are naturally gonna be pretty similar to me so we just did the same shit I'd do alone just with other people in the room. I figured stuff would change in college but for financial reasons I went to community college, and the one I went to was very much a "finish your classes and leave" kind of deal. Most people there weren't even around my age. So I ain't really meet people and I couldn't hang out with my friends and meet people through them cause they went out of state. Got a job but at a Thai restaurant but they ended up putting me in the back where nobody I interacted with regularly spoke English. After that I transferred to a state college and here I thought "finally, now's my chance to have a normal social life and hang out with people", but of course God had a really funny sense of humor cause right before I graduated from county the pandemic happened. The universe saw I had a chance at having a social life and through divine intervention prevented that from happening. So I basically just spend the last to years of my college online. Last year was hybrid so I went out a little but going to a tech school turns out everyone there is also pretty much isolated nerds. My roommate didn't even leave his room. I had to make sure he wasn't dead a few times and honestly I'm not convinced he wasn't. I'd fully believe if he reanimated by the fungus that grew from his pizza. Anyway then I graduated and since the job market wasn't great I took an opportunity for a job in Maryland when it arose. Thing is that state is very far from where all my friends, family and really everyone I know lives so if I was hoping to meet people through them after they came back from college that got ruined. Cheapest place I was able to find that's close to my work was a studio so I have no roommates. All my coworkers are also about a decade+ older than me and have families and shit, so I can't really hang out with them. I feel like I keeping winning a lottery in how to live the most accidentally isolated life ever. My parents are probably happy I'm the rare person that actually focused on my education and didn't go out partying and shit (tho that's more due to circumstances and not choice), but I imagine the pressure of finding someone's gonna ramp up eventually and I'd rather get ahead on that.
So if anyone can just give me some basic advice on where to meet people please help. Both for platonic reasons and not. I know bars are a thing just based off movies but I'm not much of a drinker. I can stomach it if that's the only place but I imagine people are hanging out outside bars in real life. I just don't know where. Also naturally have zero dating experience. Not even like the basics. Never asked anyone out/went on a date. I know rule 1 and 2 and probably some others is to not be ugly and I'm not. I am short but I figure I can make up for that. I can talk to women fine, I don't get nervous. Granted I've never tried pursuing someone before and I sure as hell don't know how to close a deal or tell if someone's interesting so who know I might choke there. Part of this is my fault I know, I probably could've made choices to put myself out there more or be more proactive but I've always felt content with my life and never really wanted more till now. Just kind of woke up alone one day and thought "I don't think I've talked to another human being in person, that wasn't a coworker for months" and I want that to change. So any words would be appreciated. Pretend you're teaching an alien or something cause I'm pretty sure whatever stuff you're assuming I already know when you're writing your answer I probably don't.
Oh also I've never been into social media. Never really had much going on to post about outside drawings and shit. I know most dating is online and a lot of people meet through Instagram. Not sure what I'd do there. I have like no photos of me, cause of the isolation thing, my page is just doodles from my notepad. I can take a mirror selfie but I don't know if that'd be sufficient. Maybe for Tinder but probably not one of the more reputable sites, but again, what would I know. I'm genuinely clueless.

So I've recently come to the horrible realization that I have no social life, no dating experience, and I have no idea how I'd get started on either. To make things clear from the start, this isn't cause of social anxiety or anything. I'm not a nervous persona and never had issues holding a conversation. My problem here is born of pure ignorance. I just don't know where people hang out or really how to establish relationships both platonic and romantic. I can maintain a friendship fine. I got friends. I just don't know how to start one. These people just found me and I managed to not scare them off.
To give you some background on I've just always been solitary given most of my hobbies (playing guitar, drawing, movies/books/games) are stuff you do alone in a room. I also never hung out much with people outside school cause I lived pretty far from everyone in school. I got into this nerd school thing (I'm honestly not sure what it's called cause it wasn't private) in case you're wondering what the circumstances are where I lived far away from everyone else. So even though I wanted to and people wanted to hang with me, I never really had much opportunity to since I always had stuff right after class and shit was too far to really meet em over weekends. And even in the very rare cases I was able to visit friends or they were able to visit me, these people are naturally gonna be pretty similar to me so we just did the same shit I'd do alone just with other people in the room. I figured stuff would change in college but for financial reasons I went to community college, and the one I went to was very much a "finish your classes and leave" kind of deal. Most people there weren't even around my age. So I ain't really meet people and I couldn't hang out with my friends and meet people through them cause they went out of state. Got a job but at a Thai restaurant but they ended up putting me in the back where nobody I interacted with regularly spoke English. After that I transferred to a state college and here I thought "finally, now's my chance to have a normal social life and hang out with people", but of course God had a really funny sense of humor cause right before I graduated from county the pandemic happened. The universe saw I had a chance at having a social life and through divine intervention prevented that from happening. So I basically just spend the last to years of my college online. Last year was hybrid so I went out a little but going to a tech school turns out everyone there is also pretty much isolated nerds. My roommate didn't even leave his room. I had to make sure he wasn't dead a few times and honestly I'm not convinced he wasn't. I'd fully believe if he reanimated by the fungus that grew from his pizza. Anyway then I graduated and since the job market wasn't great I took an opportunity for a job in Maryland when it arose. Thing is that state is very far from where all my friends, family and really everyone I know lives so if I was hoping to meet people through them after they came back from college that got ruined. Cheapest place I was able to find that's close to my work was a studio so I have no roommates. All my coworkers are also about a decade+ older than me and have families and shit, so I can't really hang out with them. I feel like I keeping winning a lottery in how to live the most accidentally isolated life ever. My parents are probably happy I'm the rare person that actually focused on my education and didn't go out partying and shit (tho that's more due to circumstances and not choice), but I imagine the pressure of finding someone's gonna ramp up eventually and I'd rather get ahead on that.
So if anyone can just give me some basic advice on where to meet people please help. Both for platonic reasons and not. I know bars are a thing just based off movies but I'm not much of a drinker. I can stomach it if that's the only place but I imagine people are hanging out outside bars in real life. I just don't know where. Also naturally have zero dating experience. Not even like the basics. Never asked anyone out/went on a date. I know rule 1 and 2 and probably some others is to not be ugly and I'm not. I am short but I figure I can make up for that. I can talk to women fine, I don't get nervous. Granted I've never tried pursuing someone before and I sure as hell don't know how to close a deal or tell if someone's interesting so who know I might choke there. Part of this is my fault I know, I probably could've made choices to put myself out there more or be more proactive but I've always felt content with my life and never really wanted more till now. Just kind of woke up alone one day and thought "I don't think I've talked to another human being in person, that wasn't a coworker for months" and I want that to change. So any words would be appreciated. Pretend you're teaching an alien or something cause I'm pretty sure whatever stuff you're assuming I already know when you're writing your answer I probably don't.
Oh also I've never been into social media. Never really had much going on to post about outside drawings and shit. I know most dating is online and a lot of people meet through Instagram. Not sure what I'd do there. I have like no photos of me, cause of the isolation thing, my page is just doodles from my notepad. I can take a mirror selfie but I don't know if that'd be sufficient. Maybe for Tinder but probably not one of the more reputable sites, but again, what would I know. I'm genuinely clueless.

So I've recently come to the horrible realization that I have no social life, no dating experience, and I have no idea how I'd get started on either. To make things clear from the start, this isn't cause of social anxiety or anything. I'm not a nervous persona and never had issues holding a conversation. My problem here is born of pure ignorance. I just don't know where people hang out or really how to establish relationships both platonic and romantic. I can maintain a friendship fine. I got friends. I just don't know how to start one. These people just found me and I managed to not scare them off.
To give you some background on I've just always been solitary given most of my hobbies (playing guitar, drawing, movies/books/games) are stuff you do alone in a room. I also never hung out much with people outside school cause I lived pretty far from everyone in school. I got into this nerd school thing (I'm honestly not sure what it's called cause it wasn't private) in case you're wondering what the circumstances are where I lived far away from everyone else. So even though I wanted to and people wanted to hang with me, I never really had much opportunity to since I always had stuff right after class and shit was too far to really meet em over weekends. And even in the very rare cases I was able to visit friends or they were able to visit me, these people are naturally gonna be pretty similar to me so we just did the same shit I'd do alone just with other people in the room. I figured stuff would change in college but for financial reasons I went to community college, and the one I went to was very much a "finish your classes and leave" kind of deal. Most people there weren't even around my age. So I ain't really meet people and I couldn't hang out with my friends and meet people through them cause they went out of state. Got a job but at a Thai restaurant but they ended up putting me in the back where nobody I interacted with regularly spoke English. After that I transferred to a state college and here I thought "finally, now's my chance to have a normal social life and hang out with people", but of course God had a really funny sense of humor cause right before I graduated from county the pandemic happened. The universe saw I had a chance at having a social life and through divine intervention prevented that from happening. So I basically just spend the last to years of my college online. Last year was hybrid so I went out a little but going to a tech school turns out everyone there is also pretty much isolated nerds. My roommate didn't even leave his room. I had to make sure he wasn't dead a few times and honestly I'm not convinced he wasn't. I'd fully believe if he reanimated by the fungus that grew from his pizza. Anyway then I graduated and since the job market wasn't great I took an opportunity for a job in Maryland when it arose. Thing is that state is very far from where all my friends, family and really everyone I know lives so if I was hoping to meet people through them after they came back from college that got ruined. Cheapest place I was able to find that's close to my work was a studio so I have no roommates. All my coworkers are also about a decade+ older than me and have families and shit, so I can't really hang out with them. I feel like I keeping winning a lottery in how to live the most accidentally isolated life ever. My parents are probably happy I'm the rare person that actually focused on my education and didn't go out partying and shit (tho that's more due to circumstances and not choice), but I imagine the pressure of finding someone's gonna ramp up eventually and I'd rather get ahead on that.
So if anyone can just give me some basic advice on where to meet people please help. Both for platonic reasons and not. I know bars are a thing just based off movies but I'm not much of a drinker. I can stomach it if that's the only place but I imagine people are hanging out outside bars in real life. I just don't know where. Also naturally have zero dating experience. Not even like the basics. Never asked anyone out/went on a date. I know rule 1 and 2 and probably some others is to not be ugly and I'm not. I am short but I figure I can make up for that. I can talk to women fine, I don't get nervous. Granted I've never tried pursuing someone before and I sure as hell don't know how to close a deal or tell if someone's interesting so who know I might choke there. Part of this is my fault I know, I probably could've made choices to put myself out there more or be more proactive but I've always felt content with my life and never really wanted more till now. Just kind of woke up alone one day and thought "I don't think I've talked to another human being in person, that wasn't a coworker for months" and I want that to change. So any words would be appreciated. Pretend you're teaching an alien or something cause I'm pretty sure whatever stuff you're assuming I already know when you're writing your answer I probably don't.
Oh also I've never been into social media. Never really had much going on to post about outside drawings and shit. I know most dating is online and a lot of people meet through Instagram. Not sure what I'd do there. I have like no photos of me, cause of the isolation thing, my page is just doodles from my notepad. I can take a mirror selfie but I don't know if that'd be sufficient. Maybe for Tinder but probably not one of the more reputable sites, but again, what would I know. I'm genuinely clueless.

I'm on this sub for military-specific information and support for SOs, but every single day there are just updates with general relationship stuff that really doesn't relate to the military/being a military SO specifically.
Maybe I'm wrong on this, but your partner, spouse or sneaky link just being in the military does -not- automatically make your question relevant to this sub. Unless your situation is specifically affected by your SO's service beyond it just being long distance, or you need help or information related to processes etc that involve the military, I don't feel like it should be posted here.
For general relationship advice, there's relationships and other such subreddits. There are so many posts that are just general relationship or long-distance relationship related things with basically 'oh btw they're in the military' thrown in to make it somehow relevant to this sub.
Eg "They keep ignoring my texts but are online, do they still love me?" → how is this related to the military? Unless your question is whether they have security limitations stopping them from replying despite being online, this is a general relationship issue that is irrelevant to the military.
or "They cheated, do I stay with them?" → unless you are asking about things related to military divorce processes, military child support payment obligations, COC reporting, military support for families..... how does them being in the military matter?
Maybe it's just me, but while I understand that people are going through rough times and need support, this sub is for the military SO-related stuff, not just 'I'm a military SO, so everything I write, even if off-topic, is automatically relevant here' stuff.

I need outside perspective because I am confused at where things went sour. AITAH? I will be deleting in an hour. I write records of convos my wife and I have because I forget things and I’m working on being a better communicator to her.
Context
I had a day full of stuff going wrong and one of those things was my dog peed in my car (my fault). I went to look for a pet vacuum and no luck so I bought one and just went o cleaned up all the mess in the car, and get ready to get the pee, it rains…hard. This was our convo almost word for word when I got in.
You -Can you stop butt dialing me?
Me -Sorry it wasn’t me it was the rain. That last time I did call you.
You -Mhmm
Me -You want to hear about my day?
You -Sure.
Me -Talks about the realtor, mochi peeing in my car, my struggle to find a vacuum, getting dirt and hair up and finally getting the first driver side seat done and then it rains.
You -Awww at the part where I can’t find the tool when looking for vacuum, and the rain coming down. At the end when I mention the rain you say “so you didn’t see the clouds?
Me -No it was nighttime.
You -This is exactly what I buy umbrellas for
Me -I wish I had a third arm to hold the umbrella while I vacuum
You -That’s why they make the big umbrellas to go over you while you work
Me -I don’t have one of those and the rain came out of nowhere
You -Why didn’t you put the vacuum in the car and finish it?
Me -I couldn’t because all my stuff was in there.
You -Why didn’t you move stuff around?
Me -I couldn’t because there’s too much stuff and I didn’t want things to get even more wet.
You -Haha I woulda said fuck it and did it.
Me -Yeah that just really didn’t make sense to me.
You -A lot of things don’t make sense to you and then you keep letting them get worse and worse.
Me -Babe I didn’t call to have this kind of conversation.
(Don’t remember the exact words said here if there were any)
Me -So what are you doing?
You -Nothing looking at the tv
Me -Oh are you crocheting? What are you watching tv?
You -No. Nothing.
Me -So you’re just staring at the tv?
You -Yeah
Me after a few seconds -Babe do you want to talk?
You -I did until you got all sassy
Me -How was I sassy?
You in a mocking voice -I didn’t call to have this kind of conversation
Me -It’s just that after—(you cut me off)
You -It doesn’t matter. You can’t let your wife make one comment? I was trying to help you. If you didn’t call to have this conversation you should have just called your mom or someone.
Me -Babe it was after everything I said.
You -Everything?
Me -Almost all of what I said. (May have said more here)
You -May have said something here.
Me after a few seconds -Babe I’ll just talk to you tomorrow hangs up
SOME THINGS SAID THAT I REMEMBERED WERE SAID BUT DONT KNOW WHERE IN THE CONVO
You -Sounds like a great day.
Me -It definitely was a day.
Silence
Me -Did the kids go down amiably?
You -Yeah they went down without a fuss.
Me -Good.
You -I deposited that check today so it’s available.
Me -Okay good, I saw that.

Hi! I’m a 26m from southern USA & I recently started taking salsa and bachata lessons & naturally got curious about the music as well as the language and then that got me into a rabbit hole that eventually led its way into me realizing I would like to learn Spanish! I’m surrounded now by Spanish speakers but I don’t want to annoy anyone so I figured a penpal who speaks it would greatly help with me learning it!
I’m also looking for a friend to just chat with about our mundane stuff but also the spicy things :) . I don’t really have much to offer in return but I do speak russian as it’s my native language so if that interests you , I would be happy to exchange languages with you! Doesn’t matter where u are from, I’d love to befriend someone and learn about your culture! :)
About me , I’m a comp sci major currently in college , work as a dispatcher for a trucking company. My hobbies now obviously include dancing , but are not limited to it . I like tinkering ( there’s a tiny cute little engine sitting on my desk) , I read a lot of, love history , workout , play guitar and occasionally play chess. I’m also a film buff if that interests anyone! If any of this is remotely intriguing to you , please reach out! Whoever you are , I hope we become great friends! Thank you:)

On March 4, 2024 my son Prince Solomon was born which I have tested positive for methamphetamines which I didn't know I was helping my friend clean up her house so CPS was involved investigating because I came up positive while having my baby The hospital mandator reporter called CPS told them that I came back positive for a methamphetamines which my baby was not born with the drugs and his system due to that situation they had my case open for 45 days to rule if there was gonna keep the case open or close it within the next 20 days of the investigation my case manager never told me that I tested positive six times for fentanyl I never done fentanyl a day in my life I asked my CPS worker can I get a copy of my test result records she told me that she has to contact her supervisor and see what she says then the next phone call I get that there was closing out my case that there was no longer a prop of a cause to keep my case open that my kids was taking care of that was no abuse or neglect in my home of my children my case was closed April 25, 2024 due to this allegedly case right here that the reason why now my children has been taken out of my custody into protective service of children services I was asleep the undercover cops came into my apartment they never knocked they never announced they stuff my baby boy that's two months old was in the room with me asleep my son Khyree was at Nanas Which ever pertain at this time they arrested my roommates boyfriend which they was legally investigating him the apartment is not in his name nor my name is his wife name They never presented a search warrant to enter the home they lied on the report saying that they knocked for several hours indicating have to use force entry to get into the door which I'm not understanding because my door is still intact and I have a two month old baby which all that noise would've woke him up especially me too due to the way the police woke me up with guns in my face in the office say my name Bella a couple of times until the point I woke up to realize the office had guns in my face which they told me to take the covers off me slowly as which I done they handcuffed me as my but I was unzipping the first thing that came into my mind was my baby boy Khyree there was my son Khyree was in I told him if he's not up here that he must be at the Nanas so the police went downstairs to the Nanas and went got my son Khyree the other office to grab My Son's playpen and told My Son you're going to Kitty jail now at that time there let me go back into the house grab some clothes for my kids feed him and everything else let me go back downstairs and bring My Son back to the Nanas Nana came back upstairs and grab my son Prince Solomon due to The situation of that time CPS showed up I was talking to the investigator and the CPS worker walked up we barely said a few words To the both of us and she walked away which means Me in the officer thought she left The office she told me if I would help him that he will make sure CPS won't take my kids pretend that the police already finished their investigation they left the paper that says on that paperwork it said they took these items.
One. narcotics 2. indicative ownership 3. Firearm 4. Ammunition 5. Phone 6. Paraphernalia 7 Male /clothing
After the officer was done searching I went back downstairs to where my kids was at the babysitter I got a call from the detective asking me where I was at I told him where I was and when I open the door it was four black-and-white officers and two CPS worker and also the detective which he was blocking the door I was crying hysterically telling him why are you taking my children for they indicated that I told them that I didn't know where the whereabouts of my son Khyree let alone that the officer had to knock for several hours to wake me That was a report on top of it they're saying that they found baggies like type with the indicate of crystal met subject inside her purse next to his ID which I never had drugs in anywhere my children can touch it or what I'm not understanding if you feel like that I am on drugs or indicating on drugs then you should've never close my case out Reason because they took my kids is indicating that Miss Wilson is neglecting her children due to her substance abuse Miss Wilson have left her son Prince Solomon alone for several hours wow she indicated that I told her that I didn't know where my kids were let alone Khyree they snatch my kids out of my arms I was crying hysterically I asked I wanted to CP workers do you have any children she told me no I told her how can you tell me I'm child neglecting my baby and all I did was get some sleep and he was in the other room so obviously everybody across the world they leave their children in the room as they go to sleep at night that means they're all neglected

Intro: While running through the forest one full moon night, you smelled a particularly delicious-seeming dead rabbit. Never one to waste a good meal, you go for it, but as you’re beginning to chow down, you feel something sharp closing over your leg. It hurts. You don’t know how you’re going to get out of this, but you do know one thing: You’re going to take a piece out of whoever did this to you.
Summary: Speaker finds Listener trapped in the woods, so she finds a way to patch him up.
Go ahead and monetize, it's fine. Word count is about 1700.
If you fill this or plan to fill this, please notify me. Please don't make edits without asking first.
Line breaks represent the listener talking or space where no one talks and should be short pauses, words within {brackets} represent the speaker’s tone or sfx. At ellipses, the speaker trails off, and at dashes, she is either cut off abruptly by the listener or by herself.
Author’s Note: Y’know, I don’t think this is what I envisioned originally, there was going to be a lot more of the “get you to calm down, heal your injuries, make the pain go away” stuff, but I think I like it nonetheless. It certainly feels more realistic now, with the lack of getting in range of a wild animal’s teeth. And who knows? Maybe it has more series potential the way it is. We might even find out, one day.
If you want to read this somewhere other than Reddit, it's also here.
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{preoccupied} All right, what’s on the docket for today? Check the rabbit traps, see if I got anything edible, that’s a good start. After that, maybe I can head down to the creek, try to catch some fish. Even if I don’t get any bites, it’ll still be nice to- whoa.
{a little awed} Well, damn. That’s a beautiful sunrise. Been a long time since I’ve seen one like that. Hell, for someone who lives in nature, I don’t spend enough time appreciating it.
{sigh} Yup, lovely. {back to business} All right, that’ll be enough appreciating for now. Time and tide, after all, and scavengers are even less polite than they are.
All right, where did I leave the first one, again? Past the fallen tree, yes, leave the track at the rock that looks like a bear-
{scared gasp} {quieter} Okay. That’s a wolf. That’s a wolf. He sees me, yup, looking right at me. That’s bad. Okay, okay, survival lessons, what do I do… He probably doesn’t want a fight. Make myself larger, make noise.
{loudly} Hey! Hey, you, wolf! Get outta here! Come on, I know you don’t want to be around a human, shoo! Leave!
{to self} {worried} Why isn’t it- Okay, that’s not ideal. He’s not moving, he’s growling at me, I should- what should I do? This seems strange. If it was going to jump me, wouldn’t it have by now?
{trying not to panic} Oh, fuck, what do I do? If I move towards him, will he take it as aggression and attack? But, if I walk away, he could think of me as prey and attack anyway. I suppose it’s a wild animal, there’s no telling what it could actually do, is there? But… wait, does he look… why’s he looking at me like that? He almost seems… scared.
{forced calm} All right, use your brain, {insert name here}. There is a wolf, here, in the place where you set a rabbit trap. Why? Probably because it wants to eat the rabbit, and you’re interrupting a hungry predator. But no, that doesn’t fit so well, he’d be doing… something other than this, I think, if I actually was getting between him and food. Maybe he already finished it, and he’s just chilling? I suppose that’s possible… But then he would’ve left already, right? So there’s probably something keeping him here. Like what? No chance it’s cubs, I’d be dead already. Same with an injured packmate, probably same with a stash of food. So why…
The trap? No, that wouldn’t even make sense. It’s tiny. It’d kill a rabbit, for sure, but a wolf probably couldn’t even get his paw through the little loop, much less get caught by it. But maybe…
Hey, hey, stay calm, buddy. I’m not threatening you, I’m not even gonna get in your blind spot, just want to walk over to the side… Yup, that’s it, you can keep your eyes right on me, see? I’m not a threat. Just want to look at- {gasp}
{shocked} What? Where did- How!
{forced calm} Okay, okay, the how isn’t that important. The wolf has his leg caught in a trap. Bloody hell, that looks nasty. That explains the immobility, and the growling. Poor guy is probably scared out of his mind right now, with that thing through his leg. {upset} I can’t believe you can still even get your hands on spike traps like that! I mean, come on, isn’t that inhumane?
{forced calm} Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. How do I help him? I could… call the forestry service? But cell service is so horrible out here… I could drive into town and call them? Oh, but what if they said they can’t help? Or what if they’re too late, and he’s already chewed his paw off by the time they get here? Wait, do wolves do that? I think I read somewhere that they do that. I shouldn’t let him do that. Okay, can’t get anyone else to come help, I could try to get the trap off it myself? That’s… that’s a really not-good idea, isn’t it? Yeah, he’s a wild animal. Probably doesn’t like humans so much in the first place, and now he’s scared and in pain… He’d probably maim me before I even had the chance to help, no dice. But I have to do something…
{upset} Ugh! Come on, {insert name here}, think! There has to be something you can do. Something you can… {gasp}
{excited} That’ll work! Okay, wait- right there, Mr. Wolf, stay- do not chew your paw off while I’m gone, I promise I’m going to make the pain stop.
{running footsteps sfx} {fading away} {chuckle} Heh, I’m talking to the wolf like he understands me. Ridiculous. Oh, but I hope he gets the message…
{some indicator of a time skip}
{running footsteps} {out of breath} I’m back! I’m… back. I made it. You’re still here, right? Oh, oh good. Please tell me you didn’t injure your paw any further.
{confused} Wait… you’re not growling at me anymore. Huh? That doesn’t make much sense. I- eh, can’t worry about it right now. {coaxing} I brought you some food, buddy! It’ll be nice and tasty, and it’ll help you go off to sleep so I can get that thing off your leg. Doesn’t that sound good? Don’t you want to feel better?
{considering} Uhhh… how to give it to you… All right, I can push the tupperware into your reach with a stick, that’ll work just fine, yeah? Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
{scraping sfx}
{coaxing} All right, Mr. Wolf, don’t you want to eat the bacon? I promise it’ll taste good!
{perplexed} Was that… a sigh? Did you just sigh at- oh, well, you’re eating. Good enough for me.
{pleased} Wow, you polished that whole thing off. Okay, the pills should be kicking in soon. I think they’ll work as well on you as they would a human? We’re both mammals, our chemistry shouldn’t be too different. God, I hope that’s how it works.
{fading out} Yup, there we go. That’s it, buddy, just go to sleep… You’ll feel much better when you wake up, just let it all drift away… I’ve got you.
Okay. Damn, that leg looks even worse up close. I don’t think I can patch it up here. I might need to…
{some indicator of a time skip}
{fade in} -right, I think that oughta do it. All patched up, the gauze should hold decently well. As long as he doesn’t go stepping on any more traps, he should be able to use the leg as much as he needs. Oh! That reminds me. I need to find out who set that trap, maybe there’s some kind of-
{small voice} Your eyes are open. How long have your eyes been open?
{terrified} I- uh- wait, fuck, no- this isn’t what was supposed to- uh- okay, down, down, stay back, please don’t kill me- I’ll give you more bacon if you don’t kill me please-
I… I’m not dead?
{scared gasp}
I keep opening my eyes… and he keeps being there. Just tell me, am I gonna die or not?
{disbelief} What, you’re a communicative wolf, now? What’s that whine supposed to mean?
{plaintive} Oh my God, I’m losing it. I’m cracking up under the stress. I’m actually trying to talk with the vicious wild animal.
…Well, in for a penny. What is it that you want, Mr. Wolf? Is there some reason you haven’t killed me yet? I doubt it’s gratitude.
{perplexed} Wha- The refrigerator? You’re pawing at- {shell shocked} Oh my God. It’s the bacon. He wants more bacon. Well. I guess I did say I’d give him some, and I’m not dead. All right then, Mr. Wolf, if you’d like to move out of the way so I can reach the fridge…
Thank you.
This is the most surreal bloody thing I have ever encountered, I hope you know. How in the hell do you understand me?
{door opening and closing sfx}
Yeah, I didn’t really expect an answer. Well, uh, here’s your bacon. Please don’t bite my hand.
{scraping sfx}
{nervous} Are we… are we cool? I patched up your leg and gave you some food, and you don’t turn me into food? Sound reasonable?
…In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I’m going to take that as an affirmative.
{fond} Aww, that was a cute little- {nervous} okay, okay. Not calling you cute. Message received.
Uh- whoa, wait, what are you doing? What are you sniffing around for? I don’t have any more bacon-
The… trap? Why do you care about…
That is the strongest “mind your business” stare I have ever gotten from anything, human or animal. Understood, business minding.
Sniffing… OH! You’re going to- nope, never mind, I’m not involved, you do you, Mr. Wolf.
{annoyed} Y’know, just because you could kill me, doesn’t mean you have call to be rude. I did save your leg, after all.
{taken aback} Is that… your version of an apology?
I- Apology accepted. Or, wait. {mischievous} I can’t go through my life knowing I could’ve said this, but didn’t. I’ll accept your apology, on one condition. I get to scritch your ears.
Don’t look at me like that, you’re fluffy. I want to scritch. I- is that okay?
{gasp} All right, I’m going to risk it.
{scritching sfx}
{in awe} I’m… I’m petting a wolf. I did not expect this… ever.
You really are fluffy, this is nice. And it looks like you’re enjoying it, too-
Oop, okay. I guess we’re done.
All right, yup, I shall open the door. You shall exit the door, and continue to do whatever wolves do. Don’t step in any more traps, okay? I don’t want to have to risk getting mauled again.
{door opens and closes sfx}
{muffled} {exhale} {stunned} Oh my God. Did that really just happen? There’s no way that just happened. The wolf understood me. That’s not how wolves work! Wild animals don’t just speak English. Was he… was he somehow sentient? Does that mean that there are other creatures out there that can think like that? God, that just makes the fact that that spike trap exists even worse. I… I really can’t even process this. How does one begin to process this? I gave a wolf headpats. This is not a normal experience.
I… don’t think I’m going fishing today. Maybe I’ll just have a nice little lie-down, instead, and when I wake up it’ll have been a weird dream. Yeah. That’d work.
…I wonder if I’ll ever see him again?

Intro: While running through the forest one full moon night, you smelled a particularly delicious-seeming dead rabbit. Never one to waste a good meal, you go for it, but as you’re beginning to chow down, you feel something sharp closing over your leg. It hurts. You don’t know how you’re going to get out of this, but you do know one thing: You’re going to take a piece out of whoever did this to you.
Summary: Speaker finds Listener trapped in the woods, so she finds a way to patch him up.
Go ahead and monetize, it's fine. Word count is about 1700.
If you fill this or plan to fill this, please notify me. Please don't make edits without asking first.
Line breaks represent the listener talking or space where no one talks and should be short pauses, words within {brackets} represent the speaker’s tone or sfx. At ellipses, the speaker trails off, and at dashes, she is either cut off abruptly by the listener or by herself.
Author’s Note: Y’know, I don’t think this is what I envisioned originally, there was going to be a lot more of the “get you to calm down, heal your injuries, make the pain go away” stuff, but I think I like it nonetheless. It certainly feels more realistic now, with the lack of getting in range of a wild animal’s teeth. And who knows? Maybe it has more series potential the way it is. We might even find out, one day.
If you want to read this somewhere other than Reddit, it's also here.
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{preoccupied} All right, what’s on the docket for today? Check the rabbit traps, see if I got anything edible, that’s a good start. After that, maybe I can head down to the creek, try to catch some fish. Even if I don’t get any bites, it’ll still be nice to- whoa.
{a little awed} Well, damn. That’s a beautiful sunrise. Been a long time since I’ve seen one like that. Hell, for someone who lives in nature, I don’t spend enough time appreciating it.
{sigh} Yup, lovely. {back to business} All right, that’ll be enough appreciating for now. Time and tide, after all, and scavengers are even less polite than they are.
All right, where did I leave the first one, again? Past the fallen tree, yes, leave the track at the rock that looks like a bear-
{scared gasp} {quieter} Okay. That’s a wolf. That’s a wolf. He sees me, yup, looking right at me. That’s bad. Okay, okay, survival lessons, what do I do… He probably doesn’t want a fight. Make myself larger, make noise.
{loudly} Hey! Hey, you, wolf! Get outta here! Come on, I know you don’t want to be around a human, shoo! Leave!
{to self} {worried} Why isn’t it- Okay, that’s not ideal. He’s not moving, he’s growling at me, I should- what should I do? This seems strange. If it was going to jump me, wouldn’t it have by now?
{trying not to panic} Oh, fuck, what do I do? If I move towards him, will he take it as aggression and attack? But, if I walk away, he could think of me as prey and attack anyway. I suppose it’s a wild animal, there’s no telling what it could actually do, is there? But… wait, does he look… why’s he looking at me like that? He almost seems… scared.
{forced calm} All right, use your brain, {insert name here}. There is a wolf, here, in the place where you set a rabbit trap. Why? Probably because it wants to eat the rabbit, and you’re interrupting a hungry predator. But no, that doesn’t fit so well, he’d be doing… something other than this, I think, if I actually was getting between him and food. Maybe he already finished it, and he’s just chilling? I suppose that’s possible… But then he would’ve left already, right? So there’s probably something keeping him here. Like what? No chance it’s cubs, I’d be dead already. Same with an injured packmate, probably same with a stash of food. So why…
The trap? No, that wouldn’t even make sense. It’s tiny. It’d kill a rabbit, for sure, but a wolf probably couldn’t even get his paw through the little loop, much less get caught by it. But maybe…
Hey, hey, stay calm, buddy. I’m not threatening you, I’m not even gonna get in your blind spot, just want to walk over to the side… Yup, that’s it, you can keep your eyes right on me, see? I’m not a threat. Just want to look at- {gasp}
{shocked} What? Where did- How!
{forced calm} Okay, okay, the how isn’t that important. The wolf has his leg caught in a trap. Bloody hell, that looks nasty. That explains the immobility, and the growling. Poor guy is probably scared out of his mind right now, with that thing through his leg. {upset} I can’t believe you can still even get your hands on spike traps like that! I mean, come on, isn’t that inhumane?
{forced calm} Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. How do I help him? I could… call the forestry service? But cell service is so horrible out here… I could drive into town and call them? Oh, but what if they said they can’t help? Or what if they’re too late, and he’s already chewed his paw off by the time they get here? Wait, do wolves do that? I think I read somewhere that they do that. I shouldn’t let him do that. Okay, can’t get anyone else to come help, I could try to get the trap off it myself? That’s… that’s a really not-good idea, isn’t it? Yeah, he’s a wild animal. Probably doesn’t like humans so much in the first place, and now he’s scared and in pain… He’d probably maim me before I even had the chance to help, no dice. But I have to do something…
{upset} Ugh! Come on, {insert name here}, think! There has to be something you can do. Something you can… {gasp}
{excited} That’ll work! Okay, wait- right there, Mr. Wolf, stay- do not chew your paw off while I’m gone, I promise I’m going to make the pain stop.
{running footsteps sfx} {fading away} {chuckle} Heh, I’m talking to the wolf like he understands me. Ridiculous. Oh, but I hope he gets the message…
{some indicator of a time skip}
{running footsteps} {out of breath} I’m back! I’m… back. I made it. You’re still here, right? Oh, oh good. Please tell me you didn’t injure your paw any further.
{confused} Wait… you’re not growling at me anymore. Huh? That doesn’t make much sense. I- eh, can’t worry about it right now. {coaxing} I brought you some food, buddy! It’ll be nice and tasty, and it’ll help you go off to sleep so I can get that thing off your leg. Doesn’t that sound good? Don’t you want to feel better?
{considering} Uhhh… how to give it to you… All right, I can push the tupperware into your reach with a stick, that’ll work just fine, yeah? Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
{scraping sfx}
{coaxing} All right, Mr. Wolf, don’t you want to eat the bacon? I promise it’ll taste good!
{perplexed} Was that… a sigh? Did you just sigh at- oh, well, you’re eating. Good enough for me.
{pleased} Wow, you polished that whole thing off. Okay, the pills should be kicking in soon. I think they’ll work as well on you as they would a human? We’re both mammals, our chemistry shouldn’t be too different. God, I hope that’s how it works.
{fading out} Yup, there we go. That’s it, buddy, just go to sleep… You’ll feel much better when you wake up, just let it all drift away… I’ve got you.
Okay. Damn, that leg looks even worse up close. I don’t think I can patch it up here. I might need to…
{some indicator of a time skip}
{fade in} -right, I think that oughta do it. All patched up, the gauze should hold decently well. As long as he doesn’t go stepping on any more traps, he should be able to use the leg as much as he needs. Oh! That reminds me. I need to find out who set that trap, maybe there’s some kind of-
{small voice} Your eyes are open. How long have your eyes been open?
{terrified} I- uh- wait, fuck, no- this isn’t what was supposed to- uh- okay, down, down, stay back, please don’t kill me- I’ll give you more bacon if you don’t kill me please-
I… I’m not dead?
{scared gasp}
I keep opening my eyes… and he keeps being there. Just tell me, am I gonna die or not?
{disbelief} What, you’re a communicative wolf, now? What’s that whine supposed to mean?
{plaintive} Oh my God, I’m losing it. I’m cracking up under the stress. I’m actually trying to talk with the vicious wild animal.
…Well, in for a penny. What is it that you want, Mr. Wolf? Is there some reason you haven’t killed me yet? I doubt it’s gratitude.
{perplexed} Wha- The refrigerator? You’re pawing at- {shell shocked} Oh my God. It’s the bacon. He wants more bacon. Well. I guess I did say I’d give him some, and I’m not dead. All right then, Mr. Wolf, if you’d like to move out of the way so I can reach the fridge…
Thank you.
This is the most surreal bloody thing I have ever encountered, I hope you know. How in the hell do you understand me?
{door opening and closing sfx}
Yeah, I didn’t really expect an answer. Well, uh, here’s your bacon. Please don’t bite my hand.
{scraping sfx}
{nervous} Are we… are we cool? I patched up your leg and gave you some food, and you don’t turn me into food? Sound reasonable?
…In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I’m going to take that as an affirmative.
{fond} Aww, that was a cute little- {nervous} okay, okay. Not calling you cute. Message received.
Uh- whoa, wait, what are you doing? What are you sniffing around for? I don’t have any more bacon-
The… trap? Why do you care about…
That is the strongest “mind your business” stare I have ever gotten from anything, human or animal. Understood, business minding.
Sniffing… OH! You’re going to- nope, never mind, I’m not involved, you do you, Mr. Wolf.
{annoyed} Y’know, just because you could kill me, doesn’t mean you have call to be rude. I did save your leg, after all.
{taken aback} Is that… your version of an apology?
I- Apology accepted. Or, wait. {mischievous} I can’t go through my life knowing I could’ve said this, but didn’t. I’ll accept your apology, on one condition. I get to scritch your ears.
Don’t look at me like that, you’re fluffy. I want to scritch. I- is that okay?
{gasp} All right, I’m going to risk it.
{scritching sfx}
{in awe} I’m… I’m petting a wolf. I did not expect this… ever.
You really are fluffy, this is nice. And it looks like you’re enjoying it, too-
Oop, okay. I guess we’re done.
All right, yup, I shall open the door. You shall exit the door, and continue to do whatever wolves do. Don’t step in any more traps, okay? I don’t want to have to risk getting mauled again.
{door opens and closes sfx}
{muffled} {exhale} {stunned} Oh my God. Did that really just happen? There’s no way that just happened. The wolf understood me. That’s not how wolves work! Wild animals don’t just speak English. Was he… was he somehow sentient? Does that mean that there are other creatures out there that can think like that? God, that just makes the fact that that spike trap exists even worse. I… I really can’t even process this. How does one begin to process this? I gave a wolf headpats. This is not a normal experience.
I… don’t think I’m going fishing today. Maybe I’ll just have a nice little lie-down, instead, and when I wake up it’ll have been a weird dream. Yeah. That’d work.
…I wonder if I’ll ever see him again?

My (23F) boyfriend (23M) supports us financially while I stay home and do housework such as taking care of pets and all that stuff. The reason I haven't been working is that after I started transitioning, there were a whole lot of things about my childhood that started to surface in my head once I had made it past the barrier of societal acceptance. My mother was very emotionally neglectful of me especially once I got older. She had a fragile ego and relied on men to get things done while simultaneously infantilizing me. I wasn't taught much in the social ways and I stayed on my room most of the time. She would make me food and make me feels bad when I didn't want it. Weird stuff. It wasn't until recently that I became open to the idea of being neurodivergent and that's a whole can of worms in itself. Anyway, she became so financially dependent on me and guilt tripped me into keeping the house afloat, being a better brother (and by that she meant father because she went though so many partners all the while blaming men for being shitty), and whatever else. Speaking of my father, he passed when I was just a freshman in Highschool. Found out one morning from my mother and she sent me to school that same morning, fun. He was good to me. I like to think he still would have been proud of me even though he liked to call me his "number one son" despite being his only then son. Anywho, when he was getting to be sick, I was all alone in his apartment for months before my mother decided he was too far gone for me to be living alone like that. A little too late I say. I got the classic, "you're so mature for your age" crap all through that. You know what that means for someone later on. This all lead to a suppressed ideation of being infantilized due to all the pressure. I want that feeling of being saved and coddled and protected without any expectation. This left me ruined once I had left my job due to constant panic attacks. I had saved up so much money from having that expectation to provide so I decided to live on that for a while. My boyfriend and I were already talking about moving in together, but when we moved in, I just couldn't do it. I can't rationalize working. I'm already depressed as hell. I lost everyone when I transitioned. I cut off my family and my "friends" were all bigots the whole time because that's the crowd I had to be with because I was repressing my true feelings. I cope day in and day out by playing video games and doing age regression activities and even then I don't even let myself have the latter (please don't judge, it really helps, except for when it just feels like an outlet for that previously described trauma, but whatever). I have given up my financial responsibility so that I can at least not have to interact with other people besides the one person I love more than anything. I know I'm putting so much stress on him and we've talked up and down about all of this. We are mega transparent and understanding of each other. He tells me he's okay with it and I 100% believe him. I just have these nagging thoughts (especially because he's gone rn for a couple of weeks for work stuff) where I'm not good enough and I'm asking too much. I want him to help my heal my inner child, but he's so busy and he works so hard, but I hate myself too much to do it myself. Playing video games is my safe go to for dopamine. It takes no effort to load up the system and get to it. Ugh, sorry for the rant this is just so frustrating.
TLDR: High expectations and simultaneous infantilization from childhood has ruined my chances of being a functioning adult