Felted boots pattern
The Art of Shoemaking
2017.03.17 21:35 ArKan1aN The Art of Shoemaking
Resources and information on shoemaking.
2024.05.15 03:08 ForestHasEyes Polish GROM has been fighting a secret war for decades, our enemies aren't human [Part 3]
Blachowicz here.
Kept yah’ waiting, huh? Heh, sorry about that one, but I can explain. As we all know… we lost a few good men the last few months.
That’s the brutal part of a hybrid war like ours: We’re fighting a foe unconventional, with half our arsenal tied down because those who grant us authorization are either in disbelief of the true facts, or scared… or already assimilated. That being said our momentum recently was a change not seen in years, and because of that… despite the losses we have garnered, we were close through a breakthrough. One last night Krol pulls myself and other two must trusted squad leads into the back of our COP. There is one of our equipment cages, surrounded by m-bitter radios, tripods, and several hundred thousand dollars of equipment he brought us around a simple worn table. Before us he laid a map of eastern poland… red markings indicating cells that seemed to dot the countryside like a pestilence, or used to… as deep gashes of advance from raids had trisected their lines, even if ones did pop up in the interior.
It was a back and forth; an outside virus infecting Polska at it’s heart, and we were the antibodies sent to drive them out. To which… Major Krol points to one of the largest symbol on the map: a dark red diamond, the NATO symbol for an enemy unit, deep inside of an untouched wooded area, adjacent to a mountain ridge. Several jagged lines indicated entrenchment, with red horizontal lines indicating possible enemy control… or our contested control, for over 20kms surrounding it. Letting us all look, the Major lit himself a cigarette.
“Sir, you sure it’s wise to smoke in here with the dive tanks just behind us” 1st Squad’s lead quipped. “Fuck off” Krol dryly said.
“Alright… this is it… this is the one we’ve been searching for for years, this is the nucleus my predecessor commander died trying to find” he says, pointing to it. Not far from Zamosc, it was almost touching the border with Belarus, the contested area indicating the Strigoi did operate over it… indicating one of the largest spill through points. “-It’s an old soviet bunker, made during their 1960s initiative it was designed to hold the munitions and manpower of several units in the event of a NATO first strike” Krol explained. “It’s gotta be massive then…” I said gazing at the map; “Didn’t the army demolish all of the old soviet hulks near Belarus to prevent any infiltrations?” 3rd Squad’s lead asked. “National Police took the effort over… and by extension, the Strigoi. It was halfway demo’ed before they burrowed into it and have been using it as a bridgehead ever since. This is it…” Krol said. He looked around at all of us, a sense of certainty I had never seen before as he blew smoke from his nostrils; “We’ve been fucking around in the dark for so long, it’s hard to believe we’ve made any progress, but this is it. With this gone, this will set them back over a decade and the momentum will finally shift into our favor… into Poland’s… -Europe’s”.
I swear there was almost a flash of joy, of pride in his eyes and a phantom of a smirk before reality set back in “That being said… we can’t leave this to chance, especially not something as important as this. We’re going to have to go there ourselves… clear through every inch of that place, and tear it all down, piece by piece. I will be straight with you all… when we go, there will be some of us that aren’t coming back. -but we are going… a whole generation is counting on us, and unborn billions rely on us to succeed”. We all nodded, a silent agreement washing over us as we took this upon ourselves. Echo-1 spoke up: “So… They’re authorizing a raid? How big?”. “We’re rolling in as a hard target, armor, explosives, and air support” Krol answered, taking a drag off his cigarette. “Aviation? How the hell did we get that approved, we’ve gotten attempts shot down four times due to those leeches” I said in disbelief. “There’s too much evidence here pointing to the human trafficking tied to their actions… We’ve finally got too much weight pinning them down, to keep the hammer from slamming into their necks” Krol chuckled. He looked around “Any questions?”. “When?” Echo-3 asked. “Three hours. We’re hitting them in the dead of night, only time we could get the birds authorized. Get your boys ready. We’re rolling out” Krol said, dying the cigarette bud out on the table. I can’t begin to tell you the euphoria we felt leaving that cage, as our men started arriving, they did so a lot quicker, and with their heads a lot higher than they had in weeks. As Second Squad’s lead we were going to be one of the main arms of attack into the bunker, thus I made sure we had a breacher loaded with enough thermite, charges, and tools to cut through anything. Our shield bearer we ready to go, as was our assaulters, grenadiers, and machine gunner. I double checked each and everyone of their weapons; ensuring the feeder paws of our squad’s belt fed were intact, making sure every breach charge we had was properly set and packed. There was going to be no mistakes, no slip ups. The margin of error needed to be the smallest it had ever been for us tonight if we were going to make the gore spilt worth it.
Finally… there on the outside of the building, the bright LED lights kept the darkness of the ensuing night at bay as the roar of our MRAPs could be heard. It was said once that war is 99% peace, and 1% chaos, they were right. The slow periods where the blood slowed and the doubt creeped in was the worst… yet we all kept it at bay. We needed to, there was going to be no backing down tonight. All three squads were up, all of us ready to go… we circled up… short stares and shaky nods telling us one things: We were in this together, till the end… the finish line so many before us had been searching for, we were being granted tonight.
A single set of footsteps could be heard as we turned, Major Krol stepping into the center. He took the last drag of a cigarette, throwing it down to the ground and stamping it out onto the damp concrete. He looked around… his chin strap blowing in the weak air as he met everyone of our gazes… then mine… then looked around. “I want you to remember every detail of tonight, as you have every other night… when you are situationally aware, scanning for the enemy, liberating the subjugated, I want you to remember the sting of anxiety, the shake of adrenaline, the chill of the bunker, the heat of your weapon as it cuts them down… because tonight we are going to write every fine detail of our victory, their defeat, in history…” Krol’s words echoed deep into our souls. He paused for a moment, staring around he looked down… a small pause before he said “When you are ruthless in combat, remember to be patient, and reserved in victory. This conflict is for our existence… a lot of innocents have bled due to the mistakes of those who failed to listen, a lot of our brothers are now laid under because we had to bridge the gap of uncertainty with their lives. We remember them now… but in an hour? We forget them… when we raise our barrels, when we cut into those foes, and we liberate Polska!! This does not end tonight, but history puts everything in it’s place, and patience is the companion of the victor… All of our hard work will be cemented, no matter the obstacles we face in that darkness… no matter the demons, the blood, no matter what incomprehensible horrors, we will make them comprehend that to invade our land, to bleed our people, the justice will be paid in full… Load up. It’s time*”*.
The purpose in our steps was heavy as we climbed the back ramps of the MRAPS; Four of the heavily armored vehicles, one for each squad with an additional for attached personnel including our JTAC, the term means Joint Terminal Attack Controllers. With air support requisitioned to us for this operations, there needs to be a definite liaison on the ground who can directly communicate to the birds, and coordinate their fire and progress. I’d worked with many of them in the past, resourceful guys, quick thinking though I guess that comes with the position they hold of needing to quickly figure out what bombs to drop, on which target, at what precise points, whilst taking contact. He loaded in the lead vehicle with Major Krol… and soon, our convoy kicked off.
The drive was several hours as myself and my squad sat in the back of that forty ton goliath, the rumbling of the engine keeping us awake as the crap heater fought to keep the cold from the outside frost from setting in. I looked around to each of them, some were catching some sleep because even with the circumstances… better to get all the energy you can, than to stay awake for nothing. Others were checking their weapons… My gunner locked eyes with me, the same one from the village extraction… many of these men I had trained with for a while now, fought with for months.
We may have met on unconventional circumstances but those in JW Grom thrive on austere chance and create opportunity from scratch. I was pulled from my thought by the sound of a transmission, my peltors were set up for dual comms so I could both receive information from the Major and other leads, whilst communicating with my team.
Krol himself sent out: [“Approximately 10 minutes from enemy AO…”]. As the rest of the squads acknowledged, I quickly sent out [“Echo-2 Copies”], before kicking the boots of any of them sleeping: “Look alive, we’re here”. Through the exterior net armor of the MRAPS, and the bars protecting the small reinforced windows, we could barely see jack shit. I reached up, turning off the overhead light as we all looked through our nods to scan the outside. A dark wall of dense trees was shown before us, making it difficult to see… in addition to night vision capabilities we had also requisitioned ourselves some thermals… when mounted onto rifles they were bulky, made it a pain to aim down quickly, but considering the supernatural capabilities of spotting our foes we needed every advantage necessary.
I flipped out one of my tubes… scanning the outside with my scope. I looked over to one of my assaulters who had been assigned to man the turret of the MRAP, seated near the view screen as he controlled the 50. Cal. Each of the vehicle turrets had been assigned a direction to cover… we took the 9 o’clock, the left flank. “See anything?” I asked. He shook his head; “Negative… wait… I’ve got two cold signatures, front left heading to our rear”.
I quickly scanned the far tree line, at approximately 60 meters off our left were two cold signatures… followed by a third heading to our front… then another. They were surrounding us, moving at speeds so fast I could barely keep my reticle on them. Is this what the National Police saw? What they faced at that lodge without the benefit of a foot of heavy armor protecting them on all sides. Then… suddenly. Something slammed into the side of our MRAP so hard, it caused it to shake. From over the leader comms, Echo-3 quickly shouted [“Contact right!! 4 hostiles!!”].
One of the Strigoi… so bold, had charged and slammed into the side of our MRAP. I quickly looked to see the figure, a dark blue mass of cold energy through my thermal, back away without so much as a stagger… as they tried to flee into the woods, the white hot justice of Echo-3’s gun fired at them, cutting them down. “Blachowicz I’ve got a few breaking for our vic” my man on the turret called out, I spun around, spotting out the window.
Just then, Major Krol announced [“weapons free, watch and shoot for targets of opportunity…”]. I turned to him… “take those fuckers out-”. Without hesitation my vic’s turret began to quickly target them, and through the darkness I saw a stream of outgoing fire bisect one of them, the ISR of the black blood freaking out the optic so badly it didn’t know what temperature to register it as… but it did register it. As another was cut down, one broke through the tree line and latched onto the side of our MRAP. The thing tore at one of the outer net armor panels, usually made to stop RPGs. It grabbed at the bars near the windows, tearing one off… I lowered my rifle as we locked eyes through the reinforced window.
The thing… the Strigoi looked at me, skin cracked as putrefied muscle fibers seemed to leak through dead flesh. It’s teeth were corroded and worn down to sharp fragments, alongside newly mutated fangs that messily protrude from the jaws. Even through the thick walls of the MRAP I could hear it’s roar, as it then tried to punch it’s way through… it cracked the outer coating of the vehicle… but it wasn’t getting anywhere near. My machine gunner, seated next to me, seemed to chuckle at the sight, quippily saying “Yeah… fuck you too”. It’s then our vehicle lurched upwards, as we began to climb the small incline of the bunker. I knew the layout, mapped it in our head, the main entrance was built into the rocky side of an old cliff meaning we could easily set up a defensive perimeter around it, a horseshoe. Krol’s vehicle was first, taking to the right as Echo-3’s MRAP followed. My vehicle, third, left the incline and took a left and… that’s where things got complicated.
We’re still trying to work out what happened but… from what Joakim says his drone captured. Right when the MRAP turned, several of the monsters quickly slammed into the side of the vehicle, as another more bulkier one, pushed at it’s undercarriage. The result.. Was the 40 ton armored vehicle tipped over. It wasn’t uncommon, hell in some cases a well placed IED, a good shot with a recoilless rifle, have been known to tip over Oshkoshs and Maxpros all the time. But this beast? Needless to say we barely had a second to comprehend it as it leaned to the left; “Grab on to something-” is all I had time to shout. A mess of gear and men spilled onto one side of the vehicle as it slammed into the old gravel and dirt.
Several of my assaulters, my grenadier planted right ontop of myself and the others as we came to a stop. Someone’s knee slammed directly into the side of my skull, causing me to dazily bob in and out of consciousness as my face was smushed against the glass of one of the windows.
Through my peltors, the other squads were erratic;
[“Echo-2’s vehicle is down!!”].
[“Echo-3 to Echo-2… Echo-3 to Echo-2…”].
Krol’s voice came through the comms;
[“Echo-Lead to Echo-2… Fuc-... Echo-1 secure Echo 2’s flank, Echo-3”].
[“Echo-3 to other units, they’re spilling through, I’ve got several enemy combatants converging on Echo-2’s vehicle”].
I pushed the legs of my grenadier off my head as I fought to my hands and knees, unfucking my nods as I looked around… “Fuck it… we’re going lights on, shield your eyes” I muttered as I reached for the overhead lights and flipped them on. The bright LEDs bathed the inside of the vehicle as we all gained our bearings, a mess of multicam, gear, and weapons as we quickly pushed each other off. My gunner caught as he fought to realign his promask, from what I gathered one of the assaulters had landed directly into his gun, pushing it directly into his jugular, as pulled back at the rubber and coughed, freeing up his esophagus. We didn’t have time to think however… the sound of bending metal caught our attention… as the back ramp door of the MRAP was ripped clean off. I could barely believe it but as the white light of the MRAP’s interior poured to the outside, a hulking mass leaned in, the dead flesh on it’s face nearly fallen off as the hideous Strigoi leaned inside.
Without hesitation I aimed took aim, yelling “Keep to the deck!!” to any of those inbetween myself and the invader as I opened fire. A burst of full auto fire tore through it’s collar and neck, my men quickly clung to either sides of the fallen MRAP as a few more fired out. As the thing backed up, a blast of .50 cal fire quickly tore it to shreds, along with several others as I realized they were fuckin swarming over the outside of our vehicle. Echo-3’s vehicle continued to carefully fire on the Strigoi on the outside, the sounds of .50 cal ricocheting off the outside of our armor was enough to make the pucker factor set in.
[“Echo-3 to Echo-2”].
[“This is Echo-2, we’re green on ammo, equipment, men”].
[“Roger, we’re shifting fire, exit the vehicle”].
“Hurry up let’s go!!” I barked to my men, leading the way as I staggered out. I turned on my peq, taking aim at silhouettes in the brush as I began to fire. The sounds of machine guns lighting up the brush, as a sea of growls, howls, and incomprehensible roars fired back at us was the ambient noise of the night. My men quickly exited, my gunner being the last as he and I pulled back to the rest of the defensive perimeter. I set in my men to take up the frontal security, as 3rd squad took the right flank, 1st squad to the left. Major Krol and the JTAC were bickering with each other; “How far out are the birds”. “They’re entering airspace now…” Joakim said, already scanning his smart book.
I asked “What’ve we got?”. He then flipped through… to the NATO combined arms segment, quippily saying; “Apaches…”. This caused me to pause as Echo-3 turned their head whilst directing their squad’s fire “The hell… where did we get apaches from?”. “The Americans… they volunteered” Krol said dismissively as he took aim at the darkness, firing off a controlled trio. “Volunteered? They’re aware of what’s going on?” I asked.
Krol seemed to stop, glancing back at me before returning his focus “There’s a lot more going on than you realize, Blachowicz… Prep the breach, you and 1st are going on”.
I quickly pulled my breacher off the line, securing some thermite as the reinforced bunker door wasn’t going to go as easily as a conventional door breach would. 1st Squad pulled back, stacking up and preparing themselves to be the first in. All the while… Joakim gave his firing solution; “Alpha Hotel Two Five Nine, This is Bravo-4…… Type 2….”.
I snapped to my right, watching as a Strigoi managed to dark across the clear gravel field, only to be cut down by my gunner, the peq’s laser marking the burst as it tore through the beasts’ hips, as it hit the ground and still continued to claw, another GROM operator took aim and fired into it’s skull. Joakim popped up to his feet…. “Marking laser, high power…”. He then pulled out a target marking laser… if you’ve watched night operations, you’ve probably seen them.
The green laser than as it says on the label, marks targets. The pattern of which can vary… if it’s a point target, it’ll usually lasso an area, or remain on target until the target is removed with extreme prejudice. If its close air support, then it’ll be a line of the general area… and Joakim damn near marked the entire perimeter around us. He quickly pocketed the tool, turning back to Krol; “Don’t go past 20 meters unless you want to be liquidated”.
With that… 2nd and 1st stacked up at the door as 3rd squad took up the perimeter security. As Major Krol went over to Echo-1… I saw them. A single blinking IR strobe from the beasts as they moved on the far off horizon, converging from several angles… and fired. The sound of the Apache’s main gun, the M230, truly sounds like the hammer of god… the 30mm cannon shot through the dark sky, lighting it up as we saw three incoming streams tear up the woods. Only then as the sound broke did we start to hear their rotors as they broke and began to circle, firing again… then… Joakim dipped his head and looked to Krol; [“Foxtrot Mike, hang onto your teeth…”]. One of the Apaches fired off a AGM-114… a Hellfire. I barely saw it out of the corner of my eye as the Apache from our right flank fired off at a target approximately 200 meters off. A fireball lit up the forest as the horrendous roar echoed throughout… then went silent.
Echo-3 scanned the horizon carefully;
[“Echo-3 to Echo-Lead, enemy contact is starting to die down”].
[“Maintain perimeter, Close Air is to maintain fire mission until we are boots up, Break…”].
[“Echo-Lead to Echo-1, condition white has been met. Proceeds”]. I saw Echo-1 and his men quickly stack up close to the wall and gesture to me; Breaching. I quickly pulled my stack back against the wall as his and mine breacher quickly hit their actuators. Now under normal circumstances, it doesn’t take much for thermite to melt the locks off of a metal surface, in fact it’s a more precise took as alternative means get real medieval like saws, pry bars… we weren’t in the mood for precision, we need to breach their little lair, and drag them out. The sound of several pounds of hellfire burning through the metal could be heard around the corner as a sea of white and red sparks flew out… after several seconds, two of our men tossed a fragmentation grenade and a nine-bang through the opening… a series of concussive blasts and a large explosion rang out.
Echo-1 and his men maneuvered. 1st Squad quickly converged as we followed them in.
Stepping through the black wall of smoke, the dark abyss of the interior was illuminated in a white light as entered barrels raised. Shots rang out as several of the beasts near the entrance were cut down, though not immediately, rounds disconnected the shoulder of one of them, leading to their arm hanging limply by a single tendon as they roared… another series of rounds putting them down. What greeted us was a messy concrete hell of rust and debris, fecal matter, trash, and all kinds of obstacles laid in our way, our boots sticking to the floor. I thank every god we had promasks that night. I called my shield bearer up, 2nd squad leapfrogging ahead to take the next corridor as 1st squad checked their weapons.
One of my men mule kicked the metal door ahead, twice, finally the latch gave away as we tossed in a grenade. A horrifying roar was cut off as an M67 shook the walls of the ancient soviet mausoleum, frag and spall kicked off the walls as I moved in right behind my shield man. The cramped russian design meant there was barely enough space for three people, and that’s three normal people, not in 50kgs of kit, moving slowly and maneuvering against creatures of the dark. Still… we moved forward, my shield bearer and I pushing the pace as two stacked of either squad formed on either wall.
As we passed doorways they flowed in… “Door Left!!”, “Door Right!!”. “Move!!”.
Two men entered each side, no gunshots, we moved up, a roar came.
“Door left!!-”. A series of gunshots came out as we continued to push forward.
“Two down!!”. “Confirm them” Krol commanded, as a series of gunshots run out in response. From one of the doorways, a Strigoi emerged… a female… clumps of hair had been ripped from her decaying skull, as her blooded eyes locked on myself and my shieldman. The skin on her hands had been tore down to the point where barely her bones and tendons remain… looking like huge talons as she roared and lunged at us. He fired off his pistol, though the rounds did little to stop her as she pushed against our stack.
“Fuck!!” he muttered, somehow her strength caused him to stagnate, holding up the advance… fuck that. I shoved the muzzle of my MK18 into her ribcage, flipping the weapon to auto as I fired of round after round. The 5.56 salvo disconnecting her spinal column, causing her to fall as I continued to fire, along with a man to our right and left as the stacks reformed as we pushed to the end of the hall. I fell back, dropping the magazine and loading a fresh one, like clockwork a GROM Operator from 1st squad took my place. Krol was beside me as we approached the end of the hall.
[“-Prep an entry”] I radioed to my breacher, a comrade handed him one of the charges from his back panel as he took to the door, quickly securing it. We all moved as far back as we could, look away, exhale. The blast knocked metal and wood in all directions, scrapping against our uniforms and kit as we made our way in and what laid before us was… it used to be the center atrium of one of these bunkers. Soviet’s loved their grandiose designs, the complex was supposed to be a circular room around a central planning table… instead. It had been turned into some sort of church. Runes and old eastern Romuva pagan symbols written in black ink and blood across the walls, old rotten filing cabinets, long receipt terminals. In the center… several of the Strigoi were kneeling before the table where someone had been tied down, flayed, and… shared amongst the group. They rose to their feet, we aimed our barrels…
The ladder amongst turned to us… his skin wasn’t cracked, or flayed, it was smooth… it still looked dead as the body on the table but it seemed more… accustomed to it. I don’t know… evolved? Under the surface however I could see it’s darkened veins pumping whatever cursed blood ran through them as it locked two blood red eyes onto each of us. It’s nose had long since been turn off, exposing boney nostrils to the open air as it seemed to smirk. All across it’s body were the same symbols on the walls, in every cell… markings of death, of rebirth, of assimilation… From behind this seemingly Alpha emerges another figure I had never seemed before… dressed in a white cloak with a deer head.
"So they've followed the trail... they're too late" the Deer headed individual spoke, definitely not from here, a dialect similar to an Americans but... aristocratic? Each word was drawn out, assurance as if they had everything mapped down to our actions. They didn’t sound like they were from Poland or the east.
“Doesn’t matter…” the Alpha growled… and then, it lunged at us. Quickly breaking from their ground it slammed into my shield man knocking both him and myself at the ground as it displayed an intense feat of strength. Around us I could see several of the Strigoi leap at our comrades… though to no fruitful endeavor as I could see one GROM operator cut two down, as another got into a hand to hand confrontation… my breacher, crafty as they were, reached back and slammed one of the prybars of his kit into the skull of the beast.
The Alpha however was not content as it threw away the 90lb shield, sending it flying across the room as it grabbed my comrade by the skull. I quickly kicked up at it, firing my MK18 into it’s body as the rounds pierced it’s gray and rune covered flesh. The thing simply seemed to chuckle… that was until Major Krol blasted away at the side of it’s head, the alpha turned… and it’s smirk turned to a scowl when face to face with the major. A knowing pause almost like they had done this dance before…
The creature lunged, locking up with Major Krol as it swung and slammed railing. Krol didn’t back down however as he pushed against the creature, hiptossing it to the ground even as it tore at his armor and gear. But the beast pulled, both of them rolled and the Major was on his back as the thing reached for his neck. I fought to a kneel, firing into the creature messily with my MK18, trying not to hit my commander… then…
Click. A sound sends a chill up the spine of every warfighter during a firefight.
My gun ran dry. I dropped the magazine, looking to load another, but the thing came up and with one of it’s claws, sliced deep into my cheek, through the pro mask. I could feel my own blood go flying through the air as I landed hard on my back plate, spitting out red iron as I quickly tried to adjust my mask. Through my fogged up, blood covered lense… I saw my shield man raise his pistol, firing into the skull of the thing staggering it with a roar. Krol came from behind, drawing his knife he sunk it deep into the neck of it…. I reached for my rifle, forcing a new magazine in and damn near punching the bold release. ““Sir, down!!” I shouted, Krol rolled away, back to his own rifle as I fired. So did my comrade as he continued to fire his pistol… so did the Major as he fired his rifle. All of us chewing through that apex predator of darkness, that beast… the leader that had been preying on our people for so long. Layer by layer, muscle group by bone… eventually… the alpha landed on whatever was left of his back.
The silence of the fight died down as all of us checked our surroundings, GROM Operators putting controlled pairs in the heads and nerve stems of any Strigoi laying around… I flicked my weapon onto safe, letting it hang as I pulled off my mask. I dared not touch the wound on my face… the pain nearly crippling me if it wasn’t sheer will pushing me through, and adrenaline doing all it could to subdue it. The sound of the apaches continuing to lay hate drew us from our moment of contemplation as the Major went back to work; [“Confiscate any info, burn the rest…”]. He turned back to me as I shoved my damaged M50 mask back into it’s bag, chuckling as he looked at the sight; “You need a medevac, Blachowicz?” he quipped.
I shook my head, barely able to speak as I muttered; “Negative sir…”. The two of us scanned the room as my shield bearer went to collect his defense implement turned 90lb projectile, we scanned the center of the room, checking and confirming bodies, until we got to the last one alive. His white gown was soaked in red crimson and black ooze, as his dear head was mangled from bullet fire and impact from falling on it. I swear… the way his blood poured out of it though made me wonder if it was a mask. I gave it no second thoughts as he looked to Krol; “You… you can’t stop this, they’ve already-”.
The Major was in no mood for communication as his rifle snapped up and fired off three rounds to the body, four the head. The violent yet quick salvo ending the cultists life, I looked down at it, then to him as he remarked; “Have your squad drag him out to the front, burn the rest”. I stood alongside him, looking down as the sight of it’s deer head was both captivating and horrifying… the curiosity in me wanting to look closer at it fighting the primal instinct I had to burn the thing to ash. “-Haven’t seen one of those before…” I muttered, thinking the Major had an answer.
He didn’t. Krol saying “Neither have I…” shortly before he walked away, was what truly shook my soul about that entire night. Victory stood firm in our hearts that night as we stood outside of the bunker. The night sky burning with fire and white phosphorus as we watched the ruin burn from the inside from the other side of the lot. In the distance, the Apaches continued to scan and circle the forests, no longer firing…. Which meant they had driven any or turned to glass any enemy combatants within a four miles, probably both, more than likely the latter. Echo-1 patted me on the shoulder as we stood there, soaking it all in, though Krol looked none to pleased. “In the time it took us to take this one down, they’ll be trying to set up three more cells… that being established…” he said, looking to either of us, then to Echo-3. “-Hell of a thing we did tonight, been waiting for this one for a decade, cleanly, maybe more… but no time to rest on our laurels… we’ll have another task for us as soon as we’re boots down back home” he said, to which his eyes followed mine, the body of whatever cultist that was zipped up in a black body bag beside the wheel of one of the MRAPs. The fire from the bunker casting an orange hue over it’s shiny jet black outside, something didn’t sit right with me… “That wasn’t a Strigoi…” I said to Krol.
“That’s very clear…” the Major said, shoving his mask under his arm and lighting a cigarette. “So… someone’s helping them?” I asked. The meer notion of it shook me to my core, sickened me. This parasite was already badly infecting Europa, Polska… if it was spread like this throughout the world. Krol settled my nerves: “We’ll be ready… It’s not just us anymore”. As he said that, I realized what he meant… my eyes looking to the Apaches as they started to form up, leaving the areas as their thunderous propellers melted into the night’s calm, unnerving ambience.
It’s been a couple of weeks since then, Echo Detachment has been busy. We’ve gained good ground against the enemy and honestly I think in a few years, we might see a much larger change. For now… we must keep going, that being said the Strigoi aren’t the only ones we’ve been combating. Recently we’ve made contact with of some sort of extermination coalition, they’ve known about the Strigoi, and others plaguing the world, the level of corruption and corrosion on society goes deep. Regardless a lot of the units we’ve been working with are apart of NATO, such as this “4th Special Forces Group” of the American Military. I don’t know where the road from here leads, but we’ve gotten momentum on our side, finally. Just remember… these things are out there, in every town, every city, every nation… preying and waiting for you to be alone, vulnerable, so they can take you and replace you.
Watch your back, and stay safe.
For now, Blachowicz signing out. Until next time
submitted by ForestHasEyes to u/ForestHasEyes [link] [comments]
Kept yah’ waiting, huh? Heh, sorry about that one, but I can explain. As we all know… we lost a few good men the last few months.
That’s the brutal part of a hybrid war like ours: We’re fighting a foe unconventional, with half our arsenal tied down because those who grant us authorization are either in disbelief of the true facts, or scared… or already assimilated. That being said our momentum recently was a change not seen in years, and because of that… despite the losses we have garnered, we were close through a breakthrough. One last night Krol pulls myself and other two must trusted squad leads into the back of our COP. There is one of our equipment cages, surrounded by m-bitter radios, tripods, and several hundred thousand dollars of equipment he brought us around a simple worn table. Before us he laid a map of eastern poland… red markings indicating cells that seemed to dot the countryside like a pestilence, or used to… as deep gashes of advance from raids had trisected their lines, even if ones did pop up in the interior.
It was a back and forth; an outside virus infecting Polska at it’s heart, and we were the antibodies sent to drive them out. To which… Major Krol points to one of the largest symbol on the map: a dark red diamond, the NATO symbol for an enemy unit, deep inside of an untouched wooded area, adjacent to a mountain ridge. Several jagged lines indicated entrenchment, with red horizontal lines indicating possible enemy control… or our contested control, for over 20kms surrounding it. Letting us all look, the Major lit himself a cigarette.
“Sir, you sure it’s wise to smoke in here with the dive tanks just behind us” 1st Squad’s lead quipped. “Fuck off” Krol dryly said.
“Alright… this is it… this is the one we’ve been searching for for years, this is the nucleus my predecessor commander died trying to find” he says, pointing to it. Not far from Zamosc, it was almost touching the border with Belarus, the contested area indicating the Strigoi did operate over it… indicating one of the largest spill through points. “-It’s an old soviet bunker, made during their 1960s initiative it was designed to hold the munitions and manpower of several units in the event of a NATO first strike” Krol explained. “It’s gotta be massive then…” I said gazing at the map; “Didn’t the army demolish all of the old soviet hulks near Belarus to prevent any infiltrations?” 3rd Squad’s lead asked. “National Police took the effort over… and by extension, the Strigoi. It was halfway demo’ed before they burrowed into it and have been using it as a bridgehead ever since. This is it…” Krol said. He looked around at all of us, a sense of certainty I had never seen before as he blew smoke from his nostrils; “We’ve been fucking around in the dark for so long, it’s hard to believe we’ve made any progress, but this is it. With this gone, this will set them back over a decade and the momentum will finally shift into our favor… into Poland’s… -Europe’s”.
I swear there was almost a flash of joy, of pride in his eyes and a phantom of a smirk before reality set back in “That being said… we can’t leave this to chance, especially not something as important as this. We’re going to have to go there ourselves… clear through every inch of that place, and tear it all down, piece by piece. I will be straight with you all… when we go, there will be some of us that aren’t coming back. -but we are going… a whole generation is counting on us, and unborn billions rely on us to succeed”. We all nodded, a silent agreement washing over us as we took this upon ourselves. Echo-1 spoke up: “So… They’re authorizing a raid? How big?”. “We’re rolling in as a hard target, armor, explosives, and air support” Krol answered, taking a drag off his cigarette. “Aviation? How the hell did we get that approved, we’ve gotten attempts shot down four times due to those leeches” I said in disbelief. “There’s too much evidence here pointing to the human trafficking tied to their actions… We’ve finally got too much weight pinning them down, to keep the hammer from slamming into their necks” Krol chuckled. He looked around “Any questions?”. “When?” Echo-3 asked. “Three hours. We’re hitting them in the dead of night, only time we could get the birds authorized. Get your boys ready. We’re rolling out” Krol said, dying the cigarette bud out on the table. I can’t begin to tell you the euphoria we felt leaving that cage, as our men started arriving, they did so a lot quicker, and with their heads a lot higher than they had in weeks. As Second Squad’s lead we were going to be one of the main arms of attack into the bunker, thus I made sure we had a breacher loaded with enough thermite, charges, and tools to cut through anything. Our shield bearer we ready to go, as was our assaulters, grenadiers, and machine gunner. I double checked each and everyone of their weapons; ensuring the feeder paws of our squad’s belt fed were intact, making sure every breach charge we had was properly set and packed. There was going to be no mistakes, no slip ups. The margin of error needed to be the smallest it had ever been for us tonight if we were going to make the gore spilt worth it.
Finally… there on the outside of the building, the bright LED lights kept the darkness of the ensuing night at bay as the roar of our MRAPs could be heard. It was said once that war is 99% peace, and 1% chaos, they were right. The slow periods where the blood slowed and the doubt creeped in was the worst… yet we all kept it at bay. We needed to, there was going to be no backing down tonight. All three squads were up, all of us ready to go… we circled up… short stares and shaky nods telling us one things: We were in this together, till the end… the finish line so many before us had been searching for, we were being granted tonight.
A single set of footsteps could be heard as we turned, Major Krol stepping into the center. He took the last drag of a cigarette, throwing it down to the ground and stamping it out onto the damp concrete. He looked around… his chin strap blowing in the weak air as he met everyone of our gazes… then mine… then looked around. “I want you to remember every detail of tonight, as you have every other night… when you are situationally aware, scanning for the enemy, liberating the subjugated, I want you to remember the sting of anxiety, the shake of adrenaline, the chill of the bunker, the heat of your weapon as it cuts them down… because tonight we are going to write every fine detail of our victory, their defeat, in history…” Krol’s words echoed deep into our souls. He paused for a moment, staring around he looked down… a small pause before he said “When you are ruthless in combat, remember to be patient, and reserved in victory. This conflict is for our existence… a lot of innocents have bled due to the mistakes of those who failed to listen, a lot of our brothers are now laid under because we had to bridge the gap of uncertainty with their lives. We remember them now… but in an hour? We forget them… when we raise our barrels, when we cut into those foes, and we liberate Polska!! This does not end tonight, but history puts everything in it’s place, and patience is the companion of the victor… All of our hard work will be cemented, no matter the obstacles we face in that darkness… no matter the demons, the blood, no matter what incomprehensible horrors, we will make them comprehend that to invade our land, to bleed our people, the justice will be paid in full… Load up. It’s time*”*.
The purpose in our steps was heavy as we climbed the back ramps of the MRAPS; Four of the heavily armored vehicles, one for each squad with an additional for attached personnel including our JTAC, the term means Joint Terminal Attack Controllers. With air support requisitioned to us for this operations, there needs to be a definite liaison on the ground who can directly communicate to the birds, and coordinate their fire and progress. I’d worked with many of them in the past, resourceful guys, quick thinking though I guess that comes with the position they hold of needing to quickly figure out what bombs to drop, on which target, at what precise points, whilst taking contact. He loaded in the lead vehicle with Major Krol… and soon, our convoy kicked off.
The drive was several hours as myself and my squad sat in the back of that forty ton goliath, the rumbling of the engine keeping us awake as the crap heater fought to keep the cold from the outside frost from setting in. I looked around to each of them, some were catching some sleep because even with the circumstances… better to get all the energy you can, than to stay awake for nothing. Others were checking their weapons… My gunner locked eyes with me, the same one from the village extraction… many of these men I had trained with for a while now, fought with for months.
We may have met on unconventional circumstances but those in JW Grom thrive on austere chance and create opportunity from scratch. I was pulled from my thought by the sound of a transmission, my peltors were set up for dual comms so I could both receive information from the Major and other leads, whilst communicating with my team.
Krol himself sent out: [“Approximately 10 minutes from enemy AO…”]. As the rest of the squads acknowledged, I quickly sent out [“Echo-2 Copies”], before kicking the boots of any of them sleeping: “Look alive, we’re here”. Through the exterior net armor of the MRAPS, and the bars protecting the small reinforced windows, we could barely see jack shit. I reached up, turning off the overhead light as we all looked through our nods to scan the outside. A dark wall of dense trees was shown before us, making it difficult to see… in addition to night vision capabilities we had also requisitioned ourselves some thermals… when mounted onto rifles they were bulky, made it a pain to aim down quickly, but considering the supernatural capabilities of spotting our foes we needed every advantage necessary.
I flipped out one of my tubes… scanning the outside with my scope. I looked over to one of my assaulters who had been assigned to man the turret of the MRAP, seated near the view screen as he controlled the 50. Cal. Each of the vehicle turrets had been assigned a direction to cover… we took the 9 o’clock, the left flank. “See anything?” I asked. He shook his head; “Negative… wait… I’ve got two cold signatures, front left heading to our rear”.
I quickly scanned the far tree line, at approximately 60 meters off our left were two cold signatures… followed by a third heading to our front… then another. They were surrounding us, moving at speeds so fast I could barely keep my reticle on them. Is this what the National Police saw? What they faced at that lodge without the benefit of a foot of heavy armor protecting them on all sides. Then… suddenly. Something slammed into the side of our MRAP so hard, it caused it to shake. From over the leader comms, Echo-3 quickly shouted [“Contact right!! 4 hostiles!!”].
One of the Strigoi… so bold, had charged and slammed into the side of our MRAP. I quickly looked to see the figure, a dark blue mass of cold energy through my thermal, back away without so much as a stagger… as they tried to flee into the woods, the white hot justice of Echo-3’s gun fired at them, cutting them down. “Blachowicz I’ve got a few breaking for our vic” my man on the turret called out, I spun around, spotting out the window.
Just then, Major Krol announced [“weapons free, watch and shoot for targets of opportunity…”]. I turned to him… “take those fuckers out-”. Without hesitation my vic’s turret began to quickly target them, and through the darkness I saw a stream of outgoing fire bisect one of them, the ISR of the black blood freaking out the optic so badly it didn’t know what temperature to register it as… but it did register it. As another was cut down, one broke through the tree line and latched onto the side of our MRAP. The thing tore at one of the outer net armor panels, usually made to stop RPGs. It grabbed at the bars near the windows, tearing one off… I lowered my rifle as we locked eyes through the reinforced window.
The thing… the Strigoi looked at me, skin cracked as putrefied muscle fibers seemed to leak through dead flesh. It’s teeth were corroded and worn down to sharp fragments, alongside newly mutated fangs that messily protrude from the jaws. Even through the thick walls of the MRAP I could hear it’s roar, as it then tried to punch it’s way through… it cracked the outer coating of the vehicle… but it wasn’t getting anywhere near. My machine gunner, seated next to me, seemed to chuckle at the sight, quippily saying “Yeah… fuck you too”. It’s then our vehicle lurched upwards, as we began to climb the small incline of the bunker. I knew the layout, mapped it in our head, the main entrance was built into the rocky side of an old cliff meaning we could easily set up a defensive perimeter around it, a horseshoe. Krol’s vehicle was first, taking to the right as Echo-3’s MRAP followed. My vehicle, third, left the incline and took a left and… that’s where things got complicated.
We’re still trying to work out what happened but… from what Joakim says his drone captured. Right when the MRAP turned, several of the monsters quickly slammed into the side of the vehicle, as another more bulkier one, pushed at it’s undercarriage. The result.. Was the 40 ton armored vehicle tipped over. It wasn’t uncommon, hell in some cases a well placed IED, a good shot with a recoilless rifle, have been known to tip over Oshkoshs and Maxpros all the time. But this beast? Needless to say we barely had a second to comprehend it as it leaned to the left; “Grab on to something-” is all I had time to shout. A mess of gear and men spilled onto one side of the vehicle as it slammed into the old gravel and dirt.
Several of my assaulters, my grenadier planted right ontop of myself and the others as we came to a stop. Someone’s knee slammed directly into the side of my skull, causing me to dazily bob in and out of consciousness as my face was smushed against the glass of one of the windows.
Through my peltors, the other squads were erratic;
[“Echo-2’s vehicle is down!!”].
[“Echo-3 to Echo-2… Echo-3 to Echo-2…”].
Krol’s voice came through the comms;
[“Echo-Lead to Echo-2… Fuc-... Echo-1 secure Echo 2’s flank, Echo-3”].
[“Echo-3 to other units, they’re spilling through, I’ve got several enemy combatants converging on Echo-2’s vehicle”].
I pushed the legs of my grenadier off my head as I fought to my hands and knees, unfucking my nods as I looked around… “Fuck it… we’re going lights on, shield your eyes” I muttered as I reached for the overhead lights and flipped them on. The bright LEDs bathed the inside of the vehicle as we all gained our bearings, a mess of multicam, gear, and weapons as we quickly pushed each other off. My gunner caught as he fought to realign his promask, from what I gathered one of the assaulters had landed directly into his gun, pushing it directly into his jugular, as pulled back at the rubber and coughed, freeing up his esophagus. We didn’t have time to think however… the sound of bending metal caught our attention… as the back ramp door of the MRAP was ripped clean off. I could barely believe it but as the white light of the MRAP’s interior poured to the outside, a hulking mass leaned in, the dead flesh on it’s face nearly fallen off as the hideous Strigoi leaned inside.
Without hesitation I aimed took aim, yelling “Keep to the deck!!” to any of those inbetween myself and the invader as I opened fire. A burst of full auto fire tore through it’s collar and neck, my men quickly clung to either sides of the fallen MRAP as a few more fired out. As the thing backed up, a blast of .50 cal fire quickly tore it to shreds, along with several others as I realized they were fuckin swarming over the outside of our vehicle. Echo-3’s vehicle continued to carefully fire on the Strigoi on the outside, the sounds of .50 cal ricocheting off the outside of our armor was enough to make the pucker factor set in.
[“Echo-3 to Echo-2”].
[“This is Echo-2, we’re green on ammo, equipment, men”].
[“Roger, we’re shifting fire, exit the vehicle”].
“Hurry up let’s go!!” I barked to my men, leading the way as I staggered out. I turned on my peq, taking aim at silhouettes in the brush as I began to fire. The sounds of machine guns lighting up the brush, as a sea of growls, howls, and incomprehensible roars fired back at us was the ambient noise of the night. My men quickly exited, my gunner being the last as he and I pulled back to the rest of the defensive perimeter. I set in my men to take up the frontal security, as 3rd squad took the right flank, 1st squad to the left. Major Krol and the JTAC were bickering with each other; “How far out are the birds”. “They’re entering airspace now…” Joakim said, already scanning his smart book.
I asked “What’ve we got?”. He then flipped through… to the NATO combined arms segment, quippily saying; “Apaches…”. This caused me to pause as Echo-3 turned their head whilst directing their squad’s fire “The hell… where did we get apaches from?”. “The Americans… they volunteered” Krol said dismissively as he took aim at the darkness, firing off a controlled trio. “Volunteered? They’re aware of what’s going on?” I asked.
Krol seemed to stop, glancing back at me before returning his focus “There’s a lot more going on than you realize, Blachowicz… Prep the breach, you and 1st are going on”.
I quickly pulled my breacher off the line, securing some thermite as the reinforced bunker door wasn’t going to go as easily as a conventional door breach would. 1st Squad pulled back, stacking up and preparing themselves to be the first in. All the while… Joakim gave his firing solution; “Alpha Hotel Two Five Nine, This is Bravo-4…… Type 2….”.
I snapped to my right, watching as a Strigoi managed to dark across the clear gravel field, only to be cut down by my gunner, the peq’s laser marking the burst as it tore through the beasts’ hips, as it hit the ground and still continued to claw, another GROM operator took aim and fired into it’s skull. Joakim popped up to his feet…. “Marking laser, high power…”. He then pulled out a target marking laser… if you’ve watched night operations, you’ve probably seen them.
The green laser than as it says on the label, marks targets. The pattern of which can vary… if it’s a point target, it’ll usually lasso an area, or remain on target until the target is removed with extreme prejudice. If its close air support, then it’ll be a line of the general area… and Joakim damn near marked the entire perimeter around us. He quickly pocketed the tool, turning back to Krol; “Don’t go past 20 meters unless you want to be liquidated”.
With that… 2nd and 1st stacked up at the door as 3rd squad took up the perimeter security. As Major Krol went over to Echo-1… I saw them. A single blinking IR strobe from the beasts as they moved on the far off horizon, converging from several angles… and fired. The sound of the Apache’s main gun, the M230, truly sounds like the hammer of god… the 30mm cannon shot through the dark sky, lighting it up as we saw three incoming streams tear up the woods. Only then as the sound broke did we start to hear their rotors as they broke and began to circle, firing again… then… Joakim dipped his head and looked to Krol; [“Foxtrot Mike, hang onto your teeth…”]. One of the Apaches fired off a AGM-114… a Hellfire. I barely saw it out of the corner of my eye as the Apache from our right flank fired off at a target approximately 200 meters off. A fireball lit up the forest as the horrendous roar echoed throughout… then went silent.
Echo-3 scanned the horizon carefully;
[“Echo-3 to Echo-Lead, enemy contact is starting to die down”].
[“Maintain perimeter, Close Air is to maintain fire mission until we are boots up, Break…”].
[“Echo-Lead to Echo-1, condition white has been met. Proceeds”]. I saw Echo-1 and his men quickly stack up close to the wall and gesture to me; Breaching. I quickly pulled my stack back against the wall as his and mine breacher quickly hit their actuators. Now under normal circumstances, it doesn’t take much for thermite to melt the locks off of a metal surface, in fact it’s a more precise took as alternative means get real medieval like saws, pry bars… we weren’t in the mood for precision, we need to breach their little lair, and drag them out. The sound of several pounds of hellfire burning through the metal could be heard around the corner as a sea of white and red sparks flew out… after several seconds, two of our men tossed a fragmentation grenade and a nine-bang through the opening… a series of concussive blasts and a large explosion rang out.
Echo-1 and his men maneuvered. 1st Squad quickly converged as we followed them in.
Stepping through the black wall of smoke, the dark abyss of the interior was illuminated in a white light as entered barrels raised. Shots rang out as several of the beasts near the entrance were cut down, though not immediately, rounds disconnected the shoulder of one of them, leading to their arm hanging limply by a single tendon as they roared… another series of rounds putting them down. What greeted us was a messy concrete hell of rust and debris, fecal matter, trash, and all kinds of obstacles laid in our way, our boots sticking to the floor. I thank every god we had promasks that night. I called my shield bearer up, 2nd squad leapfrogging ahead to take the next corridor as 1st squad checked their weapons.
One of my men mule kicked the metal door ahead, twice, finally the latch gave away as we tossed in a grenade. A horrifying roar was cut off as an M67 shook the walls of the ancient soviet mausoleum, frag and spall kicked off the walls as I moved in right behind my shield man. The cramped russian design meant there was barely enough space for three people, and that’s three normal people, not in 50kgs of kit, moving slowly and maneuvering against creatures of the dark. Still… we moved forward, my shield bearer and I pushing the pace as two stacked of either squad formed on either wall.
As we passed doorways they flowed in… “Door Left!!”, “Door Right!!”. “Move!!”.
Two men entered each side, no gunshots, we moved up, a roar came.
“Door left!!-”. A series of gunshots came out as we continued to push forward.
“Two down!!”. “Confirm them” Krol commanded, as a series of gunshots run out in response. From one of the doorways, a Strigoi emerged… a female… clumps of hair had been ripped from her decaying skull, as her blooded eyes locked on myself and my shieldman. The skin on her hands had been tore down to the point where barely her bones and tendons remain… looking like huge talons as she roared and lunged at us. He fired off his pistol, though the rounds did little to stop her as she pushed against our stack.
“Fuck!!” he muttered, somehow her strength caused him to stagnate, holding up the advance… fuck that. I shoved the muzzle of my MK18 into her ribcage, flipping the weapon to auto as I fired of round after round. The 5.56 salvo disconnecting her spinal column, causing her to fall as I continued to fire, along with a man to our right and left as the stacks reformed as we pushed to the end of the hall. I fell back, dropping the magazine and loading a fresh one, like clockwork a GROM Operator from 1st squad took my place. Krol was beside me as we approached the end of the hall.
[“-Prep an entry”] I radioed to my breacher, a comrade handed him one of the charges from his back panel as he took to the door, quickly securing it. We all moved as far back as we could, look away, exhale. The blast knocked metal and wood in all directions, scrapping against our uniforms and kit as we made our way in and what laid before us was… it used to be the center atrium of one of these bunkers. Soviet’s loved their grandiose designs, the complex was supposed to be a circular room around a central planning table… instead. It had been turned into some sort of church. Runes and old eastern Romuva pagan symbols written in black ink and blood across the walls, old rotten filing cabinets, long receipt terminals. In the center… several of the Strigoi were kneeling before the table where someone had been tied down, flayed, and… shared amongst the group. They rose to their feet, we aimed our barrels…
The ladder amongst turned to us… his skin wasn’t cracked, or flayed, it was smooth… it still looked dead as the body on the table but it seemed more… accustomed to it. I don’t know… evolved? Under the surface however I could see it’s darkened veins pumping whatever cursed blood ran through them as it locked two blood red eyes onto each of us. It’s nose had long since been turn off, exposing boney nostrils to the open air as it seemed to smirk. All across it’s body were the same symbols on the walls, in every cell… markings of death, of rebirth, of assimilation… From behind this seemingly Alpha emerges another figure I had never seemed before… dressed in a white cloak with a deer head.
"So they've followed the trail... they're too late" the Deer headed individual spoke, definitely not from here, a dialect similar to an Americans but... aristocratic? Each word was drawn out, assurance as if they had everything mapped down to our actions. They didn’t sound like they were from Poland or the east.
“Doesn’t matter…” the Alpha growled… and then, it lunged at us. Quickly breaking from their ground it slammed into my shield man knocking both him and myself at the ground as it displayed an intense feat of strength. Around us I could see several of the Strigoi leap at our comrades… though to no fruitful endeavor as I could see one GROM operator cut two down, as another got into a hand to hand confrontation… my breacher, crafty as they were, reached back and slammed one of the prybars of his kit into the skull of the beast.
The Alpha however was not content as it threw away the 90lb shield, sending it flying across the room as it grabbed my comrade by the skull. I quickly kicked up at it, firing my MK18 into it’s body as the rounds pierced it’s gray and rune covered flesh. The thing simply seemed to chuckle… that was until Major Krol blasted away at the side of it’s head, the alpha turned… and it’s smirk turned to a scowl when face to face with the major. A knowing pause almost like they had done this dance before…
The creature lunged, locking up with Major Krol as it swung and slammed railing. Krol didn’t back down however as he pushed against the creature, hiptossing it to the ground even as it tore at his armor and gear. But the beast pulled, both of them rolled and the Major was on his back as the thing reached for his neck. I fought to a kneel, firing into the creature messily with my MK18, trying not to hit my commander… then…
Click. A sound sends a chill up the spine of every warfighter during a firefight.
My gun ran dry. I dropped the magazine, looking to load another, but the thing came up and with one of it’s claws, sliced deep into my cheek, through the pro mask. I could feel my own blood go flying through the air as I landed hard on my back plate, spitting out red iron as I quickly tried to adjust my mask. Through my fogged up, blood covered lense… I saw my shield man raise his pistol, firing into the skull of the thing staggering it with a roar. Krol came from behind, drawing his knife he sunk it deep into the neck of it…. I reached for my rifle, forcing a new magazine in and damn near punching the bold release. ““Sir, down!!” I shouted, Krol rolled away, back to his own rifle as I fired. So did my comrade as he continued to fire his pistol… so did the Major as he fired his rifle. All of us chewing through that apex predator of darkness, that beast… the leader that had been preying on our people for so long. Layer by layer, muscle group by bone… eventually… the alpha landed on whatever was left of his back.
The silence of the fight died down as all of us checked our surroundings, GROM Operators putting controlled pairs in the heads and nerve stems of any Strigoi laying around… I flicked my weapon onto safe, letting it hang as I pulled off my mask. I dared not touch the wound on my face… the pain nearly crippling me if it wasn’t sheer will pushing me through, and adrenaline doing all it could to subdue it. The sound of the apaches continuing to lay hate drew us from our moment of contemplation as the Major went back to work; [“Confiscate any info, burn the rest…”]. He turned back to me as I shoved my damaged M50 mask back into it’s bag, chuckling as he looked at the sight; “You need a medevac, Blachowicz?” he quipped.
I shook my head, barely able to speak as I muttered; “Negative sir…”. The two of us scanned the room as my shield bearer went to collect his defense implement turned 90lb projectile, we scanned the center of the room, checking and confirming bodies, until we got to the last one alive. His white gown was soaked in red crimson and black ooze, as his dear head was mangled from bullet fire and impact from falling on it. I swear… the way his blood poured out of it though made me wonder if it was a mask. I gave it no second thoughts as he looked to Krol; “You… you can’t stop this, they’ve already-”.
The Major was in no mood for communication as his rifle snapped up and fired off three rounds to the body, four the head. The violent yet quick salvo ending the cultists life, I looked down at it, then to him as he remarked; “Have your squad drag him out to the front, burn the rest”. I stood alongside him, looking down as the sight of it’s deer head was both captivating and horrifying… the curiosity in me wanting to look closer at it fighting the primal instinct I had to burn the thing to ash. “-Haven’t seen one of those before…” I muttered, thinking the Major had an answer.
He didn’t. Krol saying “Neither have I…” shortly before he walked away, was what truly shook my soul about that entire night. Victory stood firm in our hearts that night as we stood outside of the bunker. The night sky burning with fire and white phosphorus as we watched the ruin burn from the inside from the other side of the lot. In the distance, the Apaches continued to scan and circle the forests, no longer firing…. Which meant they had driven any or turned to glass any enemy combatants within a four miles, probably both, more than likely the latter. Echo-1 patted me on the shoulder as we stood there, soaking it all in, though Krol looked none to pleased. “In the time it took us to take this one down, they’ll be trying to set up three more cells… that being established…” he said, looking to either of us, then to Echo-3. “-Hell of a thing we did tonight, been waiting for this one for a decade, cleanly, maybe more… but no time to rest on our laurels… we’ll have another task for us as soon as we’re boots down back home” he said, to which his eyes followed mine, the body of whatever cultist that was zipped up in a black body bag beside the wheel of one of the MRAPs. The fire from the bunker casting an orange hue over it’s shiny jet black outside, something didn’t sit right with me… “That wasn’t a Strigoi…” I said to Krol.
“That’s very clear…” the Major said, shoving his mask under his arm and lighting a cigarette. “So… someone’s helping them?” I asked. The meer notion of it shook me to my core, sickened me. This parasite was already badly infecting Europa, Polska… if it was spread like this throughout the world. Krol settled my nerves: “We’ll be ready… It’s not just us anymore”. As he said that, I realized what he meant… my eyes looking to the Apaches as they started to form up, leaving the areas as their thunderous propellers melted into the night’s calm, unnerving ambience.
It’s been a couple of weeks since then, Echo Detachment has been busy. We’ve gained good ground against the enemy and honestly I think in a few years, we might see a much larger change. For now… we must keep going, that being said the Strigoi aren’t the only ones we’ve been combating. Recently we’ve made contact with of some sort of extermination coalition, they’ve known about the Strigoi, and others plaguing the world, the level of corruption and corrosion on society goes deep. Regardless a lot of the units we’ve been working with are apart of NATO, such as this “4th Special Forces Group” of the American Military. I don’t know where the road from here leads, but we’ve gotten momentum on our side, finally. Just remember… these things are out there, in every town, every city, every nation… preying and waiting for you to be alone, vulnerable, so they can take you and replace you.
Watch your back, and stay safe.
For now, Blachowicz signing out. Until next time
2024.05.15 03:04 caramel_raez The start of my SIBO/Candida? journey
Hey everyone, I’m mainly doing this for myself as a journal but whoever wants to join along is more than welcome to me. I’m hoping this becomes a success story and for my quality of life to stop being haunted. YOU DONT HAVE TO READ ALL OF THIS
I’m a 22 year old female in the US. I currently don’t have a job as I have been let go yesterday due to my unsuspecting symptoms and lack of communication. I can’t keep up with the regular 9-5 jobs and it’s turning into a pattern of me burning myself out. I don’t have anybody to rely on other than myself and I can’t get afford health insurance at the moment.
Current Symptoms: - Extreme Fatigue/Exhaustion - SouCurdling/Spicy tummy feeling? - Nausea/Contractions (especially after physical activity and eating or drinking) - Bloating/Gas/Gurgling -Rancid Smelling Poop - Acne - Regurgitating oil/grease - Recurrent yeast - Brain Fog/Confusion - Urinary Incontinence - Body Rashes/Allergic Reactions -Sugar Cravings - Migraines - Cotten Mouth/Dehydration - Malabsorption/Continual Hunger - Thinning Hair - Weight Loss - Weak Pelvic Floor? Tight/Tense Muscles? - Food in Stools (Not often) - Drunkness Feeling After Carbs? - Acid Reflux - Depression/Anxiety - Weak Immune System
Food Sensitivities that have developed: - Dairy -Gluten - Soy - Gastric foods/spices/drinks (including onion and garlic) - Processed Foods - Broths - Sugar (Fruit and All) - Starch - Acid (Fruits/Vinegars) - Medications (NSAIDS/Anti-Acids)
Tried treatments that I can remember: -Xifaxin (2 weeks) - Ortho Molecular Ortho Spore (2-3 months worked wonders but relapsed) -Dietitian: Low Fodmap Diet (3 months didn’t help) - Reuteri - B12, VitD, other vitamin supplements - Physical Therapy - Fluconazole - Boric Acid -Laxatives (basically all) - Collagen Peptides - Plant Based Protein Powder - Yoga
Most of Background: So I have been dealing with different illnesses that is a repeated pattern since I was possibly 12 years old. I would frequently have nasty migraines, stomach bugs, food poisoning, and respiratory infections out of the blue. It gotten to the point of my family always saying “there’s always something wrong with you”, “you’re just exaggerating”.
When it came to 2017, I started gaining rashes as allergic reactions. It couldn’t be classified as hives even though it looked the part because it would sting like a bitch instead of itching. It would run through out my body whenever I ate every so often and that was only on of the reactions as I had a second of my skin swelling as if it was a mosquito bite but worse and when the swelling went down, it would leave scars behind.
I went to an allergist and nothing popped up on the regular tests, but something popped up on the chemical patch test. The name of the chemical was called Balsam of Peru, it’s mainly a preservative that is in your common foods/beverages, cleaning products, and aerosols. I continued to have random allergic reactions here and there as it wasn’t feasible to follow a diet that strict in a household like mine.
Then came the end of 2019, I was having trouble with my stomach and would randomly gag from November til Jan 2020. I would literally start throwing up even if I had nothing in my stomach. I went to doctors but they kept thinking I was pregnant and would say my vitals were fine therefore there’s nothing wrong. One day mid Jan, I had throw up for the last time but there was something different..I couldn’t get up. I lost all strength in my legs and half of my strength in my arms. I went to the hospital and they did X-rays and scans just to say there was nothing wrong and it might be a virus that hit my nervous system. The next day they boot me out with nothing. I had to learn how to walk all over again like a baby until I gained my strength with only the help of my family which took about a month. Throughout that time I was still feeling sick and gagging/throwing up.
This is the point when my mom decides to get a referral to a GI and they look through my records from the hospital to find out I was backed up with waste up to my ribs. They did a horrifying flush on me and prescribed me linzess. It was getting me to poop more frequently but I still was feeling pretty sick often, it was manageable though.
I get to college, it was a shit show, I start to get more symptoms, like brain fog and fatigue. I thought it was all in my head at this point and tried my best in school but had low performance when I was used to easy A’s. I began to have yeast infections every so often. I start getting into vaping, smoking weed, and the occasional drinking. The vaping became chronic and whenever I would drink I would have alcohol poisoning like symptoms that were uncontrollable to the point where a couple of times I ended up in the hospital to get my stomach to stop contracting. I stopped all drinking and started becoming a religious smoker to deal with my symptoms, school, work, and every other stress in my life. All it did was make my health plummet even faster.
I finally got diagnosed with SIBO at the end of 2021 and thought “finally something!”, the GI thought to cure it was to give more laxatives to get my bowels to move more frequently. Instead it would turn me into a balloon that was about to burst but could not push anything out. The GI gave up anf I decided to move on. At this point I had to take a break from school because I was so tired whenever I woke up in the morning that I either slept completely through my alarms or I couldn’t physically get up out of bed. I constantly was having stomach issues. My yeast infections started coming at least 2x a month. I had so bad urinary incontinence that I had to wear diapers. I was dealing with so much stress with family, working, trying to make ends meet, trying different doctors that never helped and telling me different things. I was dealing with a psychologically abusive bf. Nobody believed how bad I felt everyday. How hard it was for me to eat, think, overall function like a human being. My bf seen it everyday but refused to acknowledge that when he says he understood that his actions would always say otherwise. It all mentally broke me and I crashed hard.
This brings me to practically the present. I cut contact with the EX bf and parents. I’m low contact with the rest of my family. I quit vaping for good, but the damage is already done. I am now on Wellbutrin and trying to pick up the pieces that are shattered. It’s been 6 months but my symptoms are worsening instead of getting better. I can’t hold down a 9-5 job, my stomach can’t and won’t tolerate anything. I starve myself most days, drink water and electrolyte drinks whenever my stomach take it.
Everyday I feel weak, exhausted, brain fog so bad that I can’t count to 5, stomach hurt. The last thing that made me question my entire existence, Saturday night I was starving so I made rice thinking it was the safest thing. The next morning I felt so drunk that I couldn’t function, I was so dehydrated and in so much pain I went to urgent care. The doctor looked at me as if I was on drugs, refused iv, and told me my symptoms were caused by trauma, it’s all in my head. She refused a work note as well. I felt a tad bit better after some electrolytes from home and went to sleep for work. I slept through my alarms and woke up 2.5 hrs late (total 14 hrs). I couldn’t move my body, text manager. She called after the shift explaining that she isn’t letting me go because of my illness, bc I failed to tell her about the day prior so she could plan accordingly. She wants me to focus on my health, it would’ve been kind if I wasn’t already drowning in debt and couldn’t even afford rent.
The reason why I wrote everything I could is because 1. I believe a lot of this is relevant to each other regarding SIBO and Candida in some way 2. It will help me for my future
If you made it this far CONGRATS 🎉🎊 🥳 And thank you for the support!
submitted by caramel_raez to Candida [link] [comments]
I’m a 22 year old female in the US. I currently don’t have a job as I have been let go yesterday due to my unsuspecting symptoms and lack of communication. I can’t keep up with the regular 9-5 jobs and it’s turning into a pattern of me burning myself out. I don’t have anybody to rely on other than myself and I can’t get afford health insurance at the moment.
Current Symptoms: - Extreme Fatigue/Exhaustion - SouCurdling/Spicy tummy feeling? - Nausea/Contractions (especially after physical activity and eating or drinking) - Bloating/Gas/Gurgling -Rancid Smelling Poop - Acne - Regurgitating oil/grease - Recurrent yeast - Brain Fog/Confusion - Urinary Incontinence - Body Rashes/Allergic Reactions -Sugar Cravings - Migraines - Cotten Mouth/Dehydration - Malabsorption/Continual Hunger - Thinning Hair - Weight Loss - Weak Pelvic Floor? Tight/Tense Muscles? - Food in Stools (Not often) - Drunkness Feeling After Carbs? - Acid Reflux - Depression/Anxiety - Weak Immune System
Food Sensitivities that have developed: - Dairy -Gluten - Soy - Gastric foods/spices/drinks (including onion and garlic) - Processed Foods - Broths - Sugar (Fruit and All) - Starch - Acid (Fruits/Vinegars) - Medications (NSAIDS/Anti-Acids)
Tried treatments that I can remember: -Xifaxin (2 weeks) - Ortho Molecular Ortho Spore (2-3 months worked wonders but relapsed) -Dietitian: Low Fodmap Diet (3 months didn’t help) - Reuteri - B12, VitD, other vitamin supplements - Physical Therapy - Fluconazole - Boric Acid -Laxatives (basically all) - Collagen Peptides - Plant Based Protein Powder - Yoga
Most of Background: So I have been dealing with different illnesses that is a repeated pattern since I was possibly 12 years old. I would frequently have nasty migraines, stomach bugs, food poisoning, and respiratory infections out of the blue. It gotten to the point of my family always saying “there’s always something wrong with you”, “you’re just exaggerating”.
When it came to 2017, I started gaining rashes as allergic reactions. It couldn’t be classified as hives even though it looked the part because it would sting like a bitch instead of itching. It would run through out my body whenever I ate every so often and that was only on of the reactions as I had a second of my skin swelling as if it was a mosquito bite but worse and when the swelling went down, it would leave scars behind.
I went to an allergist and nothing popped up on the regular tests, but something popped up on the chemical patch test. The name of the chemical was called Balsam of Peru, it’s mainly a preservative that is in your common foods/beverages, cleaning products, and aerosols. I continued to have random allergic reactions here and there as it wasn’t feasible to follow a diet that strict in a household like mine.
Then came the end of 2019, I was having trouble with my stomach and would randomly gag from November til Jan 2020. I would literally start throwing up even if I had nothing in my stomach. I went to doctors but they kept thinking I was pregnant and would say my vitals were fine therefore there’s nothing wrong. One day mid Jan, I had throw up for the last time but there was something different..I couldn’t get up. I lost all strength in my legs and half of my strength in my arms. I went to the hospital and they did X-rays and scans just to say there was nothing wrong and it might be a virus that hit my nervous system. The next day they boot me out with nothing. I had to learn how to walk all over again like a baby until I gained my strength with only the help of my family which took about a month. Throughout that time I was still feeling sick and gagging/throwing up.
This is the point when my mom decides to get a referral to a GI and they look through my records from the hospital to find out I was backed up with waste up to my ribs. They did a horrifying flush on me and prescribed me linzess. It was getting me to poop more frequently but I still was feeling pretty sick often, it was manageable though.
I get to college, it was a shit show, I start to get more symptoms, like brain fog and fatigue. I thought it was all in my head at this point and tried my best in school but had low performance when I was used to easy A’s. I began to have yeast infections every so often. I start getting into vaping, smoking weed, and the occasional drinking. The vaping became chronic and whenever I would drink I would have alcohol poisoning like symptoms that were uncontrollable to the point where a couple of times I ended up in the hospital to get my stomach to stop contracting. I stopped all drinking and started becoming a religious smoker to deal with my symptoms, school, work, and every other stress in my life. All it did was make my health plummet even faster.
I finally got diagnosed with SIBO at the end of 2021 and thought “finally something!”, the GI thought to cure it was to give more laxatives to get my bowels to move more frequently. Instead it would turn me into a balloon that was about to burst but could not push anything out. The GI gave up anf I decided to move on. At this point I had to take a break from school because I was so tired whenever I woke up in the morning that I either slept completely through my alarms or I couldn’t physically get up out of bed. I constantly was having stomach issues. My yeast infections started coming at least 2x a month. I had so bad urinary incontinence that I had to wear diapers. I was dealing with so much stress with family, working, trying to make ends meet, trying different doctors that never helped and telling me different things. I was dealing with a psychologically abusive bf. Nobody believed how bad I felt everyday. How hard it was for me to eat, think, overall function like a human being. My bf seen it everyday but refused to acknowledge that when he says he understood that his actions would always say otherwise. It all mentally broke me and I crashed hard.
This brings me to practically the present. I cut contact with the EX bf and parents. I’m low contact with the rest of my family. I quit vaping for good, but the damage is already done. I am now on Wellbutrin and trying to pick up the pieces that are shattered. It’s been 6 months but my symptoms are worsening instead of getting better. I can’t hold down a 9-5 job, my stomach can’t and won’t tolerate anything. I starve myself most days, drink water and electrolyte drinks whenever my stomach take it.
Everyday I feel weak, exhausted, brain fog so bad that I can’t count to 5, stomach hurt. The last thing that made me question my entire existence, Saturday night I was starving so I made rice thinking it was the safest thing. The next morning I felt so drunk that I couldn’t function, I was so dehydrated and in so much pain I went to urgent care. The doctor looked at me as if I was on drugs, refused iv, and told me my symptoms were caused by trauma, it’s all in my head. She refused a work note as well. I felt a tad bit better after some electrolytes from home and went to sleep for work. I slept through my alarms and woke up 2.5 hrs late (total 14 hrs). I couldn’t move my body, text manager. She called after the shift explaining that she isn’t letting me go because of my illness, bc I failed to tell her about the day prior so she could plan accordingly. She wants me to focus on my health, it would’ve been kind if I wasn’t already drowning in debt and couldn’t even afford rent.
The reason why I wrote everything I could is because 1. I believe a lot of this is relevant to each other regarding SIBO and Candida in some way 2. It will help me for my future
If you made it this far CONGRATS 🎉🎊 🥳 And thank you for the support!
2024.05.15 03:03 jcretrop Bolt Owner - quick thoughts on Blazer EV based on test drive
I currently drive the Bolt LT1 and just test drove the blazer.
Look, the Blazer costs way more than the Bolt does, and is larger, so a direct comparison is a bit nonsensical and irrelevant. That being said, I just test drove the base blazer EV LT1 and it’s very nice inside. The lower half of the front doors are still super cheap, but the top half is very premium, and the center screen is enormous and nice.
It didn’t seam to have the same “electric” noise as the Bolt, which is one of my complaints of the Bolt. I can’t tell if the Bolt whine is actually from the motor or just the manufactured sound. But whatever sound I hear as I bring it to a stop is annoying, especially with winter tires which seems to exacerbate it. It’s always such a relief to switch back to summer tires to lessen that noise.
Compared to the model Y, which I’ve rented before, the interior cabin of the blazer is also substantially nicer in my opinion. Would definitely look to a blazer EV over the model Y based on that.
The seating textile has a great feel and pattern as well.
I briefly played with the adaptive cruise, which felt pretty smooth and natural. My test drive didn’t have lane centering to test.
I had little time to test everything out, or really play with routing or EV charging etc., but I was generally impressed. Is it worth its price? I mean, maybe. Current Bolt owners get an additional $2500 incentive FWIW.
I hope the next gen Bolt (which I really hope they still make available in BoltEV guise) adopts the screen and some of the improved fit and finish of the Blazer EV.
As a side note, the salesperson was telling me he thinks Chevy will add back CarPlay. According to him, the executive that made that decision is no longer with Chevy. But look, you always got to take these comments with a with a bushel of salt.
One minor complaint on the Bolt EV, in my desired seating position, in terms of height, the top of the steering wheel obscured the top of the screen. I wanted to raise the steering wheel but I was already at the top of the range. This seems like it might be a problem for people. I’m not that tall. 5’ 8”, but like sitting at a normal height. I can’t believe it’s going to work for most people, but hey, YMMV.
submitted by jcretrop to BoltEV [link] [comments]
Look, the Blazer costs way more than the Bolt does, and is larger, so a direct comparison is a bit nonsensical and irrelevant. That being said, I just test drove the base blazer EV LT1 and it’s very nice inside. The lower half of the front doors are still super cheap, but the top half is very premium, and the center screen is enormous and nice.
It didn’t seam to have the same “electric” noise as the Bolt, which is one of my complaints of the Bolt. I can’t tell if the Bolt whine is actually from the motor or just the manufactured sound. But whatever sound I hear as I bring it to a stop is annoying, especially with winter tires which seems to exacerbate it. It’s always such a relief to switch back to summer tires to lessen that noise.
Compared to the model Y, which I’ve rented before, the interior cabin of the blazer is also substantially nicer in my opinion. Would definitely look to a blazer EV over the model Y based on that.
The seating textile has a great feel and pattern as well.
I briefly played with the adaptive cruise, which felt pretty smooth and natural. My test drive didn’t have lane centering to test.
I had little time to test everything out, or really play with routing or EV charging etc., but I was generally impressed. Is it worth its price? I mean, maybe. Current Bolt owners get an additional $2500 incentive FWIW.
I hope the next gen Bolt (which I really hope they still make available in BoltEV guise) adopts the screen and some of the improved fit and finish of the Blazer EV.
As a side note, the salesperson was telling me he thinks Chevy will add back CarPlay. According to him, the executive that made that decision is no longer with Chevy. But look, you always got to take these comments with a with a bushel of salt.
One minor complaint on the Bolt EV, in my desired seating position, in terms of height, the top of the steering wheel obscured the top of the screen. I wanted to raise the steering wheel but I was already at the top of the range. This seems like it might be a problem for people. I’m not that tall. 5’ 8”, but like sitting at a normal height. I can’t believe it’s going to work for most people, but hey, YMMV.
2024.05.15 03:02 caramel_raez The start of my SIBO/Candida? journey
Hey everyone, I’m mainly doing this for myself as a journal but whoever wants to join along is more than welcome to me. I’m hoping this becomes a success story and for my quality of life to stop being haunted. YOU DONT HAVE TO READ ALL OF THIS
I’m a 22 year old female in the US. I currently don’t have a job as I have been let go yesterday due to my unsuspecting symptoms and lack of communication. I can’t keep up with the regular 9-5 jobs and it’s turning into a pattern of me burning myself out. I don’t have anybody to rely on other than myself and I can’t get afford health insurance at the moment.
Current Symptoms: - Extreme Fatigue/Exhaustion - SouCurdling/Spicy tummy feeling? - Nausea/Contractions (especially after physical activity and eating or drinking) - Bloating/Gas/Gurgling -Rancid Smelling Poop - Acne - Regurgitating oil/grease - Recurrent yeast - Brain Fog/Confusion - Urinary Incontinence - Body Rashes/Allergic Reactions -Sugar Cravings - Migraines - Cotten Mouth/Dehydration - Malabsorption/Continual Hunger - Thinning Hair - Weight Loss - Weak Pelvic Floor? Tight/Tense Muscles? - Food in Stools (Not often) - Drunkness Feeling After Carbs? - Acid Reflux - Depression/Anxiety - Weak Immune System
Food Sensitivities that have developed: - Dairy -Gluten - Soy - Gastric foods/spices/drinks (including onion and garlic) - Processed Foods - Broths - Sugar (Fruit and All) - Starch - Acid (Fruits/Vinegars) - Medications (NSAIDS/Anti-Acids)
Tried treatments that I can remember: -Xifaxin (2 weeks) - Ortho Molecular Ortho Spore (2-3 months worked wonders but relapsed) -Dietitian: Low Fodmap Diet (3 months didn’t help) - Reuteri - B12, VitD, other vitamin supplements - Physical Therapy - Fluconazole - Boric Acid -Laxatives (basically all) - Collagen Peptides - Plant Based Protein Powder - Yoga
Most of Background: So I have been dealing with different illnesses that is a repeated pattern since I was possibly 12 years old. I would frequently have nasty migraines, stomach bugs, food poisoning, and respiratory infections out of the blue. It gotten to the point of my family always saying “there’s always something wrong with you”, “you’re just exaggerating”.
When it came to 2017, I started gaining rashes as allergic reactions. It couldn’t be classified as hives even though it looked the part because it would sting like a bitch instead of itching. It would run through out my body whenever I ate every so often and that was only on of the reactions as I had a second of my skin swelling as if it was a mosquito bite but worse and when the swelling went down, it would leave scars behind.
I went to an allergist and nothing popped up on the regular tests, but something popped up on the chemical patch test. The name of the chemical was called Balsam of Peru, it’s mainly a preservative that is in your common foods/beverages, cleaning products, and aerosols. I continued to have random allergic reactions here and there as it wasn’t feasible to follow a diet that strict in a household like mine.
Then came the end of 2019, I was having trouble with my stomach and would randomly gag from November til Jan 2020. I would literally start throwing up even if I had nothing in my stomach. I went to doctors but they kept thinking I was pregnant and would say my vitals were fine therefore there’s nothing wrong. One day mid Jan, I had throw up for the last time but there was something different..I couldn’t get up. I lost all strength in my legs and half of my strength in my arms. I went to the hospital and they did X-rays and scans just to say there was nothing wrong and it might be a virus that hit my nervous system. The next day they boot me out with nothing. I had to learn how to walk all over again like a baby until I gained my strength with only the help of my family which took about a month. Throughout that time I was still feeling sick and gagging/throwing up.
This is the point when my mom decides to get a referral to a GI and they look through my records from the hospital to find out I was backed up with waste up to my ribs. They did a horrifying flush on me and prescribed me linzess. It was getting me to poop more frequently but I still was feeling pretty sick often, it was manageable though.
I get to college, it was a shit show, I start to get more symptoms, like brain fog and fatigue. I thought it was all in my head at this point and tried my best in school but had low performance when I was used to easy A’s. I began to have yeast infections every so often. I start getting into vaping, smoking weed, and the occasional drinking. The vaping became chronic and whenever I would drink I would have alcohol poisoning like symptoms that were uncontrollable to the point where a couple of times I ended up in the hospital to get my stomach to stop contracting. I stopped all drinking and started becoming a religious smoker to deal with my symptoms, school, work, and every other stress in my life. All it did was make my health plummet even faster.
I finally got diagnosed with SIBO at the end of 2021 and thought “finally something!”, the GI thought to cure it was to give more laxatives to get my bowels to move more frequently. Instead it would turn me into a balloon that was about to burst but could not push anything out. The GI gave up anf I decided to move on. At this point I had to take a break from school because I was so tired whenever I woke up in the morning that I either slept completely through my alarms or I couldn’t physically get up out of bed. I constantly was having stomach issues. My yeast infections started coming at least 2x a month. I had so bad urinary incontinence that I had to wear diapers. I was dealing with so much stress with family, working, trying to make ends meet, trying different doctors that never helped and telling me different things. I was dealing with a psychologically abusive bf. Nobody believed how bad I felt everyday. How hard it was for me to eat, think, overall function like a human being. My bf seen it everyday but refused to acknowledge that when he says he understood that his actions would always say otherwise. It all mentally broke me and I crashed hard.
This brings me to practically the present. I cut contact with the EX bf and parents. I’m low contact with the rest of my family. I quit vaping for good, but the damage is already done. I am now on Wellbutrin and trying to pick up the pieces that are shattered. It’s been 6 months but my symptoms are worsening instead of getting better. I can’t hold down a 9-5 job, my stomach can’t and won’t tolerate anything. I starve myself most days, drink water and electrolyte drinks whenever my stomach take it.
Everyday I feel weak, exhausted, brain fog so bad that I can’t count to 5, stomach hurt. The last thing that made me question my entire existence, Saturday night I was starving so I made rice thinking it was the safest thing. The next morning I felt so drunk that I couldn’t function, I was so dehydrated and in so much pain I went to urgent care. The doctor looked at me as if I was on drugs, refused iv, and told me my symptoms were caused by trauma, it’s all in my head. She refused a work note as well. I felt a tad bit better after some electrolytes from home and went to sleep for work. I slept through my alarms and woke up 2.5 hrs late (total 14 hrs). I couldn’t move my body, text manager. She called after the shift explaining that she isn’t letting me go because of my illness, bc I failed to tell her about the day prior so she could plan accordingly. She wants me to focus on my health, it would’ve been kind if I wasn’t already drowning in debt and couldn’t even afford rent.
The reason why I wrote everything I could is because 1. I believe a lot of this is relevant to each other regarding SIBO and Candida in some way 2. It will help me for my future
If you made it this far CONGRATS 🎉🎊 🥳 And thank you for the support!
submitted by caramel_raez to SIBO [link] [comments]
I’m a 22 year old female in the US. I currently don’t have a job as I have been let go yesterday due to my unsuspecting symptoms and lack of communication. I can’t keep up with the regular 9-5 jobs and it’s turning into a pattern of me burning myself out. I don’t have anybody to rely on other than myself and I can’t get afford health insurance at the moment.
Current Symptoms: - Extreme Fatigue/Exhaustion - SouCurdling/Spicy tummy feeling? - Nausea/Contractions (especially after physical activity and eating or drinking) - Bloating/Gas/Gurgling -Rancid Smelling Poop - Acne - Regurgitating oil/grease - Recurrent yeast - Brain Fog/Confusion - Urinary Incontinence - Body Rashes/Allergic Reactions -Sugar Cravings - Migraines - Cotten Mouth/Dehydration - Malabsorption/Continual Hunger - Thinning Hair - Weight Loss - Weak Pelvic Floor? Tight/Tense Muscles? - Food in Stools (Not often) - Drunkness Feeling After Carbs? - Acid Reflux - Depression/Anxiety - Weak Immune System
Food Sensitivities that have developed: - Dairy -Gluten - Soy - Gastric foods/spices/drinks (including onion and garlic) - Processed Foods - Broths - Sugar (Fruit and All) - Starch - Acid (Fruits/Vinegars) - Medications (NSAIDS/Anti-Acids)
Tried treatments that I can remember: -Xifaxin (2 weeks) - Ortho Molecular Ortho Spore (2-3 months worked wonders but relapsed) -Dietitian: Low Fodmap Diet (3 months didn’t help) - Reuteri - B12, VitD, other vitamin supplements - Physical Therapy - Fluconazole - Boric Acid -Laxatives (basically all) - Collagen Peptides - Plant Based Protein Powder - Yoga
Most of Background: So I have been dealing with different illnesses that is a repeated pattern since I was possibly 12 years old. I would frequently have nasty migraines, stomach bugs, food poisoning, and respiratory infections out of the blue. It gotten to the point of my family always saying “there’s always something wrong with you”, “you’re just exaggerating”.
When it came to 2017, I started gaining rashes as allergic reactions. It couldn’t be classified as hives even though it looked the part because it would sting like a bitch instead of itching. It would run through out my body whenever I ate every so often and that was only on of the reactions as I had a second of my skin swelling as if it was a mosquito bite but worse and when the swelling went down, it would leave scars behind.
I went to an allergist and nothing popped up on the regular tests, but something popped up on the chemical patch test. The name of the chemical was called Balsam of Peru, it’s mainly a preservative that is in your common foods/beverages, cleaning products, and aerosols. I continued to have random allergic reactions here and there as it wasn’t feasible to follow a diet that strict in a household like mine.
Then came the end of 2019, I was having trouble with my stomach and would randomly gag from November til Jan 2020. I would literally start throwing up even if I had nothing in my stomach. I went to doctors but they kept thinking I was pregnant and would say my vitals were fine therefore there’s nothing wrong. One day mid Jan, I had throw up for the last time but there was something different..I couldn’t get up. I lost all strength in my legs and half of my strength in my arms. I went to the hospital and they did X-rays and scans just to say there was nothing wrong and it might be a virus that hit my nervous system. The next day they boot me out with nothing. I had to learn how to walk all over again like a baby until I gained my strength with only the help of my family which took about a month. Throughout that time I was still feeling sick and gagging/throwing up.
This is the point when my mom decides to get a referral to a GI and they look through my records from the hospital to find out I was backed up with waste up to my ribs. They did a horrifying flush on me and prescribed me linzess. It was getting me to poop more frequently but I still was feeling pretty sick often, it was manageable though.
I get to college, it was a shit show, I start to get more symptoms, like brain fog and fatigue. I thought it was all in my head at this point and tried my best in school but had low performance when I was used to easy A’s. I began to have yeast infections every so often. I start getting into vaping, smoking weed, and the occasional drinking. The vaping became chronic and whenever I would drink I would have alcohol poisoning like symptoms that were uncontrollable to the point where a couple of times I ended up in the hospital to get my stomach to stop contracting. I stopped all drinking and started becoming a religious smoker to deal with my symptoms, school, work, and every other stress in my life. All it did was make my health plummet even faster.
I finally got diagnosed with SIBO at the end of 2021 and thought “finally something!”, the GI thought to cure it was to give more laxatives to get my bowels to move more frequently. Instead it would turn me into a balloon that was about to burst but could not push anything out. The GI gave up anf I decided to move on. At this point I had to take a break from school because I was so tired whenever I woke up in the morning that I either slept completely through my alarms or I couldn’t physically get up out of bed. I constantly was having stomach issues. My yeast infections started coming at least 2x a month. I had so bad urinary incontinence that I had to wear diapers. I was dealing with so much stress with family, working, trying to make ends meet, trying different doctors that never helped and telling me different things. I was dealing with a psychologically abusive bf. Nobody believed how bad I felt everyday. How hard it was for me to eat, think, overall function like a human being. My bf seen it everyday but refused to acknowledge that when he says he understood that his actions would always say otherwise. It all mentally broke me and I crashed hard.
This brings me to practically the present. I cut contact with the EX bf and parents. I’m low contact with the rest of my family. I quit vaping for good, but the damage is already done. I am now on Wellbutrin and trying to pick up the pieces that are shattered. It’s been 6 months but my symptoms are worsening instead of getting better. I can’t hold down a 9-5 job, my stomach can’t and won’t tolerate anything. I starve myself most days, drink water and electrolyte drinks whenever my stomach take it.
Everyday I feel weak, exhausted, brain fog so bad that I can’t count to 5, stomach hurt. The last thing that made me question my entire existence, Saturday night I was starving so I made rice thinking it was the safest thing. The next morning I felt so drunk that I couldn’t function, I was so dehydrated and in so much pain I went to urgent care. The doctor looked at me as if I was on drugs, refused iv, and told me my symptoms were caused by trauma, it’s all in my head. She refused a work note as well. I felt a tad bit better after some electrolytes from home and went to sleep for work. I slept through my alarms and woke up 2.5 hrs late (total 14 hrs). I couldn’t move my body, text manager. She called after the shift explaining that she isn’t letting me go because of my illness, bc I failed to tell her about the day prior so she could plan accordingly. She wants me to focus on my health, it would’ve been kind if I wasn’t already drowning in debt and couldn’t even afford rent.
The reason why I wrote everything I could is because 1. I believe a lot of this is relevant to each other regarding SIBO and Candida in some way 2. It will help me for my future
If you made it this far CONGRATS 🎉🎊 🥳 And thank you for the support!
2024.05.15 02:55 S8what Old Erangel amazing?
Booted up old Erangel, felt the nostalgia hit me, the plane flew and I went wow the game was so good back then.
Played a few games and quickly realized I love the fact that I can spam Erangel, but that's about it.
New erangel/game is so good, the loot (clothes and stuff), the car spawns, the buildings and their layouts that help the fights flow vs choking out fights, the graphics that look like they are poking my eyes (that's the only way I think I can explain how I feel about it) recoil feels satisfying to control.
The biggest surprise to me is how good "new" buildings are compared to the old ones, they are better for looting and for fighting...
submitted by S8what to PUBATTLEGROUNDS [link] [comments]
Played a few games and quickly realized I love the fact that I can spam Erangel, but that's about it.
New erangel/game is so good, the loot (clothes and stuff), the car spawns, the buildings and their layouts that help the fights flow vs choking out fights, the graphics that look like they are poking my eyes (that's the only way I think I can explain how I feel about it) recoil feels satisfying to control.
The biggest surprise to me is how good "new" buildings are compared to the old ones, they are better for looting and for fighting...
2024.05.15 02:46 TheChessWar Purple Guy Moveset
I thought that it would be fun to imagine a fnaf character as a smash fighter. and while freddy made sense i felt william afton was more appropriate. so with out further ado here is his moveset
Purple Guy MOVESET
Lightweight with 2 jumps (the jumps would just have afton raise elevation, no animation)
Gimmick
More so a visual thing but afton would be a 2d sprite like mr game and watch. Except for all of his moves where he is springtrap or a springtrap variant which would use a 3d model. The exception is spring bonnie which would stay 2d Also when he crouches he will turn into a 2d spring bonnie collapsed on the floor
Basic Attacks
Jab: Disassemble (Afton swing one arm forward before swinging the other)
Basic 2 hit Jab
(Aftons famous sprite)
Dash: Foxy Go Go (Afton dawns a foxy mask and jumps forward)
Pretty strong Damage
(Michael Scaring his brother and Withered Foxy Jump Scare)
Side Tilt: Run (Both his arms are put forward as he runs forward)
Does Good knockback but mid damage
(When he ran into the suit)
Up tilt: Fear (Afton punches his arm above him)
Does Great Knockback but no damage
(Running away from the spirits)
Down Tilt: Spirit (a spirit appears in front of afton)
Does minor damage but can cause a stun
(Spirts causing aftons springtrap)
Side Smash: Jumpscare (Afton turns into springtrap and walks forward)
Does A lot of damage and has a chance to stun
(Springtrap jumpscare fnaf 3)
Up Smash: Dark Trap (Afton Turns into spring trap as he leans back before leaning forward back to standing position)
Does Great Damage but really slow
(Dark Springtrap aka sister location springtrap cutscene)
Down Smash: Springtrapped (Afton freaks out in the suit (still 2d) )
Does Great Damage to both afton and the opponent. But also can bury
(Aftons death)
Aerials
Neutral Air: Activation (Spring bonnie extends all of their limbs)
Does Great Damage to afton and his foe. And also great knockback to the foe
(First thing to happen when Aftons springlocked)
F Air: World Slash(Afton smashes the below area)
Does Great damage and can spike.
(Fnaf world attack)
B Air: First Spring (As spring bonnie punches down behind him)
Does Great damage and can spike
(First spring bonnie appearance)
Up Air: Dark Return (Afton Turns into spring trap as he leans back before leaning forward back to standing position)
Does Great Damage but really slow
(Dark Springtrap aka sister location springtrap cutscene)
Down Air: Panic (Afton shakes the feet below him)
Hits great damage and can spike. Also has a chance to use the springtrap model which would just be visual
(When burntrap got kidnapped. And the panic animation shared between afton and CC)
Grabs
Grab: Shadow freddy appears the foe as both Hold the opponent up
(Loosely based on the events before the bite of 83 and the events in the follow me games)
Pummel: Same thing as his jab
F Throw: Shadow freddy walks forward where the opponent follows them before shadow freddy disappears and william runs up and punches the foe twice
(the events in the follow me games)
B Throw: Shadow freddy walks behind afton where the opponent follows them before shadow freddy disappears and william runs up and punches the foe twice
(the events in the follow me games)
Up Throw: Uppercut
(smash original)
Down Throw: Puts opponent in suit (doesn’t do any damage but when the throw is finished it causes the foe to still be wearing the suit for 15 seconds which while making them heavier also makes them incredibly slow and jumps go half as far)
Specials
Neutral Special: Ventilation
Springtrap enters a vent in the ground. Acts Like meta knights peek a boo with some minor differences. First after a random amount of time the opponent will become poisoned and lightweight. After all theres a thing in vents its harder to get clean air. After another amount of random time a random phantom animatronic will appear and stalk the opponent. If it hits the opponent they will become dizzy. Sounds broken right. Well while in the vents will also takes damage. And after a random amount of time will be bouted out at a random part of the stage with the dizzy effect. Could happen before or after a phantom spawns but will always happen after the light wight poison. So it’s a very risk and reward move how much damage do you wanna take, the opponent is light do i strike now or risk getting booted for the phantom. Also can only move horizontally and puts you in free fall if existed in the air
Side Special: Plushtrap
Plushtrap appears in front of Afton and chases the nearest foe. Only one plushtrap can be on screen per afton player at a time. When it manages to hit a foe it act like a stronger pikmin that will take 5 seconds to disappear where it takes no time to spawn another one. If After 30 seconds the plushtrap never hits someone it will naturally disappear where it takes 15 seconds to spawn another one. And it will freeze for 2 seconds if hit by a projectile. Finally it can’t fall off cliffs nor can it jump so it will never be in the air. unless spawned in the where it acts like a Pikmin spawned in the air. Also wouldn’t change anything mechanically but it has a 1/10 chance to summon a bunny from princess quest. Specifically the flying ones that appear in the beginning. And a 1/50 chance to summon vanny. Again changes nothing except visual
Up Special: Malware
Afton turns into springtrap as a tentacle comes out of his body. You can point to which direction you want the tentacle to appear. It acts as a basic tether recovery with one caveat. If it hits a foe they will have a 25% chance to become infected. When infected your directions reverse and out of every 16 attacks 1 of them will not go through and leave you vulnerable. You will be infected for sixteen second before you are cured. Now to balance it out if the attack is used and doesn’t connect to a stage or player there will be heavy end lag and will put you in free fall if used in the air. So always be careful when using this move
Down Special: Bite of 83
As Springtrap Will Bites Down. acts exactly like wario's neutral special.
Final Smash: Missing Character incident
A cinematic final smash. The smash starts with afton throwing a rainbow knife as a refrence to the move slasher in Fnaf World. Any one hit by the rainbow knife has a 1/10 chance to instantly lose stock. But if that one in ten chance fails they enter the cinematic. It shows the character at a birthday party before they’re lured away by a 3d model for spring bonnie.it then cuts to black before showing the character trapped in a golden freddy suit. Racking up tons of damage but no knockback. However if the opponents damage goes over 100% it is an instant stock loss
Cosmetics + Gimmicks
Every costume has both a different color for will and a different springtrap variant. And you can pick which springtrap variant you want with whatever afton you want. So you could have alt 3 afton with an alt 7 springtrap.
Costumes
Pure Purple - Springtrap
Pure Orange (Midnight Motorist) - Scraptrap
Pure Pink (Pink guy theory (no i don’t believe it just felt like it should be referenced) ) - Vanny
Pure Blue (Phone Guy) - Glitchtrap
Pure Red (Old man consequences) - Frost Springtrap (yes i know only plushtrap has a skin in special delivery but creative liberties)
Pure Yellow (Prize King And Sun) - Toxic Springtrap
Pure Bluish Grey (Moon) - Burntrap
Black body with white stripes and white face (Puppet) - Flaming Springtrap
Stage Entrance: Will comes in on a car like captain falcons
Taunts
Iconic Save Them Sprite
Eats pizza
Pose he takes in fruit maze
Victory Animations
Springtrap stands in the middle of a bunch of masks with a light in there eyes
The puppet lays on the floor as a car stands parked in the background
Nothing appears on screen before springtrap jumps the screen
(If you win the match with the final smash it show william dancing in the pizzeria)
submitted by TheChessWar to GameTheorists [link] [comments]
Purple Guy MOVESET
Lightweight with 2 jumps (the jumps would just have afton raise elevation, no animation)
Gimmick
More so a visual thing but afton would be a 2d sprite like mr game and watch. Except for all of his moves where he is springtrap or a springtrap variant which would use a 3d model. The exception is spring bonnie which would stay 2d Also when he crouches he will turn into a 2d spring bonnie collapsed on the floor
Basic Attacks
Jab: Disassemble (Afton swing one arm forward before swinging the other)
Basic 2 hit Jab
(Aftons famous sprite)
Dash: Foxy Go Go (Afton dawns a foxy mask and jumps forward)
Pretty strong Damage
(Michael Scaring his brother and Withered Foxy Jump Scare)
Side Tilt: Run (Both his arms are put forward as he runs forward)
Does Good knockback but mid damage
(When he ran into the suit)
Up tilt: Fear (Afton punches his arm above him)
Does Great Knockback but no damage
(Running away from the spirits)
Down Tilt: Spirit (a spirit appears in front of afton)
Does minor damage but can cause a stun
(Spirts causing aftons springtrap)
Side Smash: Jumpscare (Afton turns into springtrap and walks forward)
Does A lot of damage and has a chance to stun
(Springtrap jumpscare fnaf 3)
Up Smash: Dark Trap (Afton Turns into spring trap as he leans back before leaning forward back to standing position)
Does Great Damage but really slow
(Dark Springtrap aka sister location springtrap cutscene)
Down Smash: Springtrapped (Afton freaks out in the suit (still 2d) )
Does Great Damage to both afton and the opponent. But also can bury
(Aftons death)
Aerials
Neutral Air: Activation (Spring bonnie extends all of their limbs)
Does Great Damage to afton and his foe. And also great knockback to the foe
(First thing to happen when Aftons springlocked)
F Air: World Slash(Afton smashes the below area)
Does Great damage and can spike.
(Fnaf world attack)
B Air: First Spring (As spring bonnie punches down behind him)
Does Great damage and can spike
(First spring bonnie appearance)
Up Air: Dark Return (Afton Turns into spring trap as he leans back before leaning forward back to standing position)
Does Great Damage but really slow
(Dark Springtrap aka sister location springtrap cutscene)
Down Air: Panic (Afton shakes the feet below him)
Hits great damage and can spike. Also has a chance to use the springtrap model which would just be visual
(When burntrap got kidnapped. And the panic animation shared between afton and CC)
Grabs
Grab: Shadow freddy appears the foe as both Hold the opponent up
(Loosely based on the events before the bite of 83 and the events in the follow me games)
Pummel: Same thing as his jab
F Throw: Shadow freddy walks forward where the opponent follows them before shadow freddy disappears and william runs up and punches the foe twice
(the events in the follow me games)
B Throw: Shadow freddy walks behind afton where the opponent follows them before shadow freddy disappears and william runs up and punches the foe twice
(the events in the follow me games)
Up Throw: Uppercut
(smash original)
Down Throw: Puts opponent in suit (doesn’t do any damage but when the throw is finished it causes the foe to still be wearing the suit for 15 seconds which while making them heavier also makes them incredibly slow and jumps go half as far)
Specials
Neutral Special: Ventilation
Springtrap enters a vent in the ground. Acts Like meta knights peek a boo with some minor differences. First after a random amount of time the opponent will become poisoned and lightweight. After all theres a thing in vents its harder to get clean air. After another amount of random time a random phantom animatronic will appear and stalk the opponent. If it hits the opponent they will become dizzy. Sounds broken right. Well while in the vents will also takes damage. And after a random amount of time will be bouted out at a random part of the stage with the dizzy effect. Could happen before or after a phantom spawns but will always happen after the light wight poison. So it’s a very risk and reward move how much damage do you wanna take, the opponent is light do i strike now or risk getting booted for the phantom. Also can only move horizontally and puts you in free fall if existed in the air
Side Special: Plushtrap
Plushtrap appears in front of Afton and chases the nearest foe. Only one plushtrap can be on screen per afton player at a time. When it manages to hit a foe it act like a stronger pikmin that will take 5 seconds to disappear where it takes no time to spawn another one. If After 30 seconds the plushtrap never hits someone it will naturally disappear where it takes 15 seconds to spawn another one. And it will freeze for 2 seconds if hit by a projectile. Finally it can’t fall off cliffs nor can it jump so it will never be in the air. unless spawned in the where it acts like a Pikmin spawned in the air. Also wouldn’t change anything mechanically but it has a 1/10 chance to summon a bunny from princess quest. Specifically the flying ones that appear in the beginning. And a 1/50 chance to summon vanny. Again changes nothing except visual
Up Special: Malware
Afton turns into springtrap as a tentacle comes out of his body. You can point to which direction you want the tentacle to appear. It acts as a basic tether recovery with one caveat. If it hits a foe they will have a 25% chance to become infected. When infected your directions reverse and out of every 16 attacks 1 of them will not go through and leave you vulnerable. You will be infected for sixteen second before you are cured. Now to balance it out if the attack is used and doesn’t connect to a stage or player there will be heavy end lag and will put you in free fall if used in the air. So always be careful when using this move
Down Special: Bite of 83
As Springtrap Will Bites Down. acts exactly like wario's neutral special.
Final Smash: Missing Character incident
A cinematic final smash. The smash starts with afton throwing a rainbow knife as a refrence to the move slasher in Fnaf World. Any one hit by the rainbow knife has a 1/10 chance to instantly lose stock. But if that one in ten chance fails they enter the cinematic. It shows the character at a birthday party before they’re lured away by a 3d model for spring bonnie.it then cuts to black before showing the character trapped in a golden freddy suit. Racking up tons of damage but no knockback. However if the opponents damage goes over 100% it is an instant stock loss
Cosmetics + Gimmicks
Every costume has both a different color for will and a different springtrap variant. And you can pick which springtrap variant you want with whatever afton you want. So you could have alt 3 afton with an alt 7 springtrap.
Costumes
Pure Purple - Springtrap
Pure Orange (Midnight Motorist) - Scraptrap
Pure Pink (Pink guy theory (no i don’t believe it just felt like it should be referenced) ) - Vanny
Pure Blue (Phone Guy) - Glitchtrap
Pure Red (Old man consequences) - Frost Springtrap (yes i know only plushtrap has a skin in special delivery but creative liberties)
Pure Yellow (Prize King And Sun) - Toxic Springtrap
Pure Bluish Grey (Moon) - Burntrap
Black body with white stripes and white face (Puppet) - Flaming Springtrap
Stage Entrance: Will comes in on a car like captain falcons
Taunts
Iconic Save Them Sprite
Eats pizza
Pose he takes in fruit maze
Victory Animations
Springtrap stands in the middle of a bunch of masks with a light in there eyes
The puppet lays on the floor as a car stands parked in the background
Nothing appears on screen before springtrap jumps the screen
(If you win the match with the final smash it show william dancing in the pizzeria)
2024.05.15 02:39 Terrible_Activity182 I (23M) have done some research, among serious introspection, and am confused as to whether or not I’m psychopathic.
TLDR: I’m having new revelations and want to know how my personality matches up to ASPD. Long read.
This is potentially not possible over the internet but I’m having trouble reconciling some ideas and was searching for other opinions. I don’t go to therapy.
I have never thought of myself as “psychopathic.” I’ve always held the belief that people who were psychopathic were violent. I am the opposite. As a kid, I did not outlet anger well, but by the end of elementary school it had been coerced out of me. In the past, when thinking of whether or not I’m a psychopath, I had always hard-stopped the thought because I’m not violent. Over the past few days, I have looked more into psychopathy, and I don’t know how I don’t fit into it.
I used to think I felt empathy like normal people do, but then I learned there’s different kinds of empathy. I don’t think I feel affective empathy at all. It’s essentially all cognitive empathy. I actually didn’t even realize people’s emotional state could change to match another’s when they’re empathizing. Like, hearing how someone lost a family member actually makes people feel sad? I don’t understand that. Personally, I always thought empathy was, “how would I feel in their shoes… not good, I should help them.”
I’ve always maintained towards friends that I don’t feel embarrassment. I used to think I felt remorse, and guilt, but I think deep down, it’s all regret. I don’t even understand how guilt could feel different than remorse. I channel guilt as regret for choosing that behavior, or action. I channel remorse as regret for making someone feel a certain way, because (cognitive empathy kicks in) I wouldn’t want to feel that way.
I think as a kid, I took the Golden Rule as an oath rather than a “rule.” I treated everyone the way I want to be treated. I still do, and I hold myself to strict standards. I studied math in college for 3.5 years (didn’t graduate) and developed a heightened sense for logic. I strive to be as logical as possible, justifying everything I do with it. When it comes to other people, if they don’t have a grasp of logic, I borderline cannot interact with them. I can’t really help it, but I just lose so much respect/admiration for people being unintelligent.
I feel hyper-aware of the people around me (not everyone around me, but those I’m fixated on) and am constantly analyzing and searching for inclinations that: they don’t know logic, are being deceitful, are lying, or being deceptive. I am extremely fixated on figuring out if the person I’m interacting with is being “themselves.” If they aren’t, it’s an immediate loss of respect and admiration. It’s as if I’m automatically gaining the knowledge that this person is less than me because I’m following the code and they aren’t.
I have this code of good behavior, and logic, that I follow very closely. I’m constantly observing other people to see if they deviate from that code. I really try to avoid conflicts with people. They never happen with strangers, but on occasion with people I have been close with. It usually starts with me recognizing a patterned behavior I don’t like, and I either address it, or stir up the conversation to a point where the behavior is inevitably forced to the surface, and must be addressed. I do this with hard facts and logic, and am paying such close attention to every detail — I can’t possibly be caught mixing up my words or being wrong. If someone tells me I’m wrong, they instantly become inferior to me, because they aren’t considering everything I’m considering.
I’ve never ONCE associated any of this with psychopathy until the past few days. A lot of my research showed that psychopaths do lie. They are manipulative, and deceitful — not feeling bad when they wrong someone. This could NOT be me, as I try so hard to be logical and stray from manipulation. I like facts, only.
But then I got to thinking. I DO lie. I lie about substance abuse. I lie about the money I make. The money I spend. I lie about the direction I’m heading in life. I lie about what I want to do. I lie so I can do what I want to do. I lie a fuck-ton, but only as it pertains to me. I don’t lie to gain status in a conversation. I don’t lie to create a power imbalance. I lie so that my world does not come crashing down on me. I’m deceitful towards my mother. Everything I am so meticulous about when it comes to social interaction, is voided when it comes to MY existential future on Earth.
It’s hard for me to understand if this is psychopathy or not. I used to think I had ADHD because of my dysfunction, and because I feel like my brain is very active. But the activity I refer to in my brain, I believe is just rumination. I used to explain to my friends that I have a really good memory, and it’s associated with when I have a strong emotional release. It’s almost like… a photographic memory in the moments surrounding my entrance into a heightened emotional state. I have a diagnosed IQ of over 140, and have always attributed my hyper-awareness, attention to detail, and memory to that. What I’m learning about psychopathy is painting a slightly different picture when I think back to everything I’ve thought about in the past. I thought, more recently, I had OCD. Primarily because I have obsessive thoughts about people and their social intents. These thoughts have been aroused primarily in the last few years, but I wasn’t as aware of them until now. Researching psychopathy leads me to believe I’m ruminating when my emotional state is disturbed.
I’m trying not to confirm my biases, but it is difficult to keep that line clear.
I’ve recently realized I have a bit of an obsession with control. Not that I need to be in control. Rather, other people aren’t in control of themselves, and so I make it my duty to “help” them get in control. I don’t have a lot of great examples of this in real life, because I spend a lot of time in isolation. I’ve done a lot of this virtually in videogames. The worst thing I’ve done, in the sense of establishing control, is I called another kid’s school principal, and left a voicemail lying about how the kid beat up my sister while they were walking home after school. I don’t even have a sister. I wanted it to be established — I am not to fuck with.
Zero guilt. Zero remorse. A tinge of regret due to cognitive empathy. Zero fear of consequence. And there was no consequence.
When it comes to manipulation, I do my best not to manipulate. I have heard from close friends, ex girlfriends, and my mother, that I’m manipulative. In my mind, they have all been 100% completely unjustified and unreasonable when they said it. Looking back, I try to understand where they’re coming from, but I can’t. Either I’m manipulative but have zero idea, or I’m just correct and they were being stupid to suggest that. It sounds so conceited and arrogant writing it out, but at the same time I fully believe it to be true. In my eyes, they’re all manipulators.
Perhaps there are fundamental aspects of psychopathy that are missing from my thought, and I don’t match up to them. An opinion on just… what you think of me, I guess, would be listened to. There’s probably a lot of context that I left out. I can provide it, if need be.
My final thought is, would an undiagnosed psychopath, who believes they’re a psychopath, believe a diagnosed psychopath if they tell them they’re not a psychopath? Thanks for the read.
submitted by Terrible_Activity182 to psychopath [link] [comments]
This is potentially not possible over the internet but I’m having trouble reconciling some ideas and was searching for other opinions. I don’t go to therapy.
I have never thought of myself as “psychopathic.” I’ve always held the belief that people who were psychopathic were violent. I am the opposite. As a kid, I did not outlet anger well, but by the end of elementary school it had been coerced out of me. In the past, when thinking of whether or not I’m a psychopath, I had always hard-stopped the thought because I’m not violent. Over the past few days, I have looked more into psychopathy, and I don’t know how I don’t fit into it.
I used to think I felt empathy like normal people do, but then I learned there’s different kinds of empathy. I don’t think I feel affective empathy at all. It’s essentially all cognitive empathy. I actually didn’t even realize people’s emotional state could change to match another’s when they’re empathizing. Like, hearing how someone lost a family member actually makes people feel sad? I don’t understand that. Personally, I always thought empathy was, “how would I feel in their shoes… not good, I should help them.”
I’ve always maintained towards friends that I don’t feel embarrassment. I used to think I felt remorse, and guilt, but I think deep down, it’s all regret. I don’t even understand how guilt could feel different than remorse. I channel guilt as regret for choosing that behavior, or action. I channel remorse as regret for making someone feel a certain way, because (cognitive empathy kicks in) I wouldn’t want to feel that way.
I think as a kid, I took the Golden Rule as an oath rather than a “rule.” I treated everyone the way I want to be treated. I still do, and I hold myself to strict standards. I studied math in college for 3.5 years (didn’t graduate) and developed a heightened sense for logic. I strive to be as logical as possible, justifying everything I do with it. When it comes to other people, if they don’t have a grasp of logic, I borderline cannot interact with them. I can’t really help it, but I just lose so much respect/admiration for people being unintelligent.
I feel hyper-aware of the people around me (not everyone around me, but those I’m fixated on) and am constantly analyzing and searching for inclinations that: they don’t know logic, are being deceitful, are lying, or being deceptive. I am extremely fixated on figuring out if the person I’m interacting with is being “themselves.” If they aren’t, it’s an immediate loss of respect and admiration. It’s as if I’m automatically gaining the knowledge that this person is less than me because I’m following the code and they aren’t.
I have this code of good behavior, and logic, that I follow very closely. I’m constantly observing other people to see if they deviate from that code. I really try to avoid conflicts with people. They never happen with strangers, but on occasion with people I have been close with. It usually starts with me recognizing a patterned behavior I don’t like, and I either address it, or stir up the conversation to a point where the behavior is inevitably forced to the surface, and must be addressed. I do this with hard facts and logic, and am paying such close attention to every detail — I can’t possibly be caught mixing up my words or being wrong. If someone tells me I’m wrong, they instantly become inferior to me, because they aren’t considering everything I’m considering.
I’ve never ONCE associated any of this with psychopathy until the past few days. A lot of my research showed that psychopaths do lie. They are manipulative, and deceitful — not feeling bad when they wrong someone. This could NOT be me, as I try so hard to be logical and stray from manipulation. I like facts, only.
But then I got to thinking. I DO lie. I lie about substance abuse. I lie about the money I make. The money I spend. I lie about the direction I’m heading in life. I lie about what I want to do. I lie so I can do what I want to do. I lie a fuck-ton, but only as it pertains to me. I don’t lie to gain status in a conversation. I don’t lie to create a power imbalance. I lie so that my world does not come crashing down on me. I’m deceitful towards my mother. Everything I am so meticulous about when it comes to social interaction, is voided when it comes to MY existential future on Earth.
It’s hard for me to understand if this is psychopathy or not. I used to think I had ADHD because of my dysfunction, and because I feel like my brain is very active. But the activity I refer to in my brain, I believe is just rumination. I used to explain to my friends that I have a really good memory, and it’s associated with when I have a strong emotional release. It’s almost like… a photographic memory in the moments surrounding my entrance into a heightened emotional state. I have a diagnosed IQ of over 140, and have always attributed my hyper-awareness, attention to detail, and memory to that. What I’m learning about psychopathy is painting a slightly different picture when I think back to everything I’ve thought about in the past. I thought, more recently, I had OCD. Primarily because I have obsessive thoughts about people and their social intents. These thoughts have been aroused primarily in the last few years, but I wasn’t as aware of them until now. Researching psychopathy leads me to believe I’m ruminating when my emotional state is disturbed.
I’m trying not to confirm my biases, but it is difficult to keep that line clear.
I’ve recently realized I have a bit of an obsession with control. Not that I need to be in control. Rather, other people aren’t in control of themselves, and so I make it my duty to “help” them get in control. I don’t have a lot of great examples of this in real life, because I spend a lot of time in isolation. I’ve done a lot of this virtually in videogames. The worst thing I’ve done, in the sense of establishing control, is I called another kid’s school principal, and left a voicemail lying about how the kid beat up my sister while they were walking home after school. I don’t even have a sister. I wanted it to be established — I am not to fuck with.
Zero guilt. Zero remorse. A tinge of regret due to cognitive empathy. Zero fear of consequence. And there was no consequence.
When it comes to manipulation, I do my best not to manipulate. I have heard from close friends, ex girlfriends, and my mother, that I’m manipulative. In my mind, they have all been 100% completely unjustified and unreasonable when they said it. Looking back, I try to understand where they’re coming from, but I can’t. Either I’m manipulative but have zero idea, or I’m just correct and they were being stupid to suggest that. It sounds so conceited and arrogant writing it out, but at the same time I fully believe it to be true. In my eyes, they’re all manipulators.
Perhaps there are fundamental aspects of psychopathy that are missing from my thought, and I don’t match up to them. An opinion on just… what you think of me, I guess, would be listened to. There’s probably a lot of context that I left out. I can provide it, if need be.
My final thought is, would an undiagnosed psychopath, who believes they’re a psychopath, believe a diagnosed psychopath if they tell them they’re not a psychopath? Thanks for the read.
2024.05.15 02:39 Opposite-Pomelo609 Adult Autism Diagnosis
I am in my 40s, with a good career in the legal field, married with children. Every morning, I wake up with a feeling that I should get an adult evaluation on whether I am in the spectrum or not.
Growing up, I felt different. Based on my parents' stories, I was hyper lexic, and odd as a child. The last time I poured my heart out to my mother was when I observed a pattern of always being excluded by my peers. I felt different.
I somehow probably was able to mask my autism or probably found my people when I went to law school. A lot of my quirks was embraced in law school- like having attention to detail, keeping to myself, literally interpreting the law.
Now that I am an adult, I still wish to find closure as to whether I am autistic.
Does anyone know where I can get diagnosed in Manila?
submitted by Opposite-Pomelo609 to OffMyChestPH [link] [comments]
Growing up, I felt different. Based on my parents' stories, I was hyper lexic, and odd as a child. The last time I poured my heart out to my mother was when I observed a pattern of always being excluded by my peers. I felt different.
I somehow probably was able to mask my autism or probably found my people when I went to law school. A lot of my quirks was embraced in law school- like having attention to detail, keeping to myself, literally interpreting the law.
Now that I am an adult, I still wish to find closure as to whether I am autistic.
Does anyone know where I can get diagnosed in Manila?
2024.05.15 02:33 Ok-Inflation-4705 Am I (25F) experiencing "future-faking" with my BF (29M) or is my past making me perceive problems where there aren't any?
***I posted this originally in raisedbynarcissists but think this might be a better place for it
TLDR: I'm struggling to understand if my relationship issues are genuine concerns or my past influencing my perception. My boyfriend (29M) and I (25F) have been dating long-distance for 10 months. He initially talked a lot about our future, including plans to get a place together, but has since become non-committal and distant. Given my history with a narcissistic parent, I'm unsure if these are red flags or typical relationship hurdles. I'm worried he's "future faking" me. Any advice on discerning these issues would be appreciated. ___________________________
Sorry this is so long - It's clearly weighing heavy on my mind and I also have a habit of overexplaining myself due to my past. Believe it or not, this was my attempt to keep it short.
As someone raised by a single narcissistic parent, I (25F) have a lot of difficulty in figuring out if my perception is accurate or if I'm misinterpreting things. I've spent years working on this in therapy and have made progress in figuring out when I'm being treated poorly, specifically in platonic relationships, but have still a ways to go.
Recently, I've gotten into a relationship with my bf (29M) after having been single for 5 years. The person I've started dating proactively chased me during this time and I was clear that I wanted to be just friends due to concerns about long-distance, feeling overwhelmed with the interest they had in me without knowing me super well, and feeling like my boundaries weren't being respected. Over those 5 years, we developed a strong friendship/relationship and these issues resolved (except for the long-distance). I had a major life event happen in 2023 that had me questioning how much of my life I had lived in fear and avoidance. Simultaneously, this person was a huge support to me while I went through this difficult moment. I decided I was ready to pursue a romance with him and he agreed he wanted to too. So we started officially dating roughly 10 months ago.
In the beginning of our relationship, he would make tons of comments about our future together, talking about our kids, what life would be like when we're married, trips that we would take, etc. I was hesitant in the beginning to believe this, but slowly started to imagine this future too and would join in these conversations. I had never dated someone who so openly talked about a future with me and while it felt scary in the beginning, I started to feel like it was a beautiful thing and I was experiencing healthy love.
Back in January, he started to talking to me about getting a place in my city. Although we're long distance, he has to come to my city fairly often for business reasons and likes to extend his stays to spend time with me. I initially thought he just meant something for himself that he would stay in when he was in my city. This wasn't super surprising since he has an apartment in another city sitting completely empty and he was talking about getting a place in another city for when he'd visit before we started dating. To be clear, he has vast financial resources. Like hundreds of millions.
I was excited that he was going to get a place in my city, because I knew it would make him more comfortable when he'd visit and therefore make his visits more likely. However, he clarified to me a week later that he actually wanted to get a place for the both of us - where I would stay full time and he would stay when he was visiting. He was surprised that I thought this would just be his place. I thought about it and got excited at the idea (although I had some concerns about living alone for those periods he wasn't there - I've always had roommates and have loved it honestly).
Once I agreed, he said he wanted to start looking at places when he was visiting my city for a few weeks that February. I started to look at places online and have conversations with him about what we'd both want. February came, he didn't make any effort or mention of seeing places in person. My roommates started to ask me if I'd be renewing the lease with them or not and I told them I wasn't sure. I'd periodically bring it up to him and emphasize that we probably need to start looking and make serious progress on it. He would agree, but I wouldn't hear anything more about it. Finally, I told him I needed to give my roommates a final answer about it. He said that I should renew the lease with them so that we're not rushed into finding something and can find the perfect place. He said it was okay if the leases overlapped, assuring me that it wouldn't be a problem and he'd cover it financially. I was hesitant, but given his vast wealth, I figured this was just one of those rich people things where comfort is prioritized over wastefulness.
He has not brought it up since. Recently, I had felt some distance from him. He wasn't as communicative. He flaked on a vacation we were supposed to go on during my spring break at the last minute due to a conference he wanted to attend. He was vague about when he would be able to visit next, saying that I could visit him whenever even though he knew I was in school until May. He invited me to go to a friend's wedding in a far away state in late April, but said he figured I wouldn't be able to go because he knew I had finals. I decided to make it work by flying in for 48 hours despite having finals. While we were together in person, it didn't seem like anything was wrong at all. I decided to talk to him about some of these concerns and mentioned the apartment. He said that he wanted to find the perfect place for us and not stress about it. I told him that I get that, but we need to take action in order to find the perfect place. He said that there's no rush. I pointed out he said he wanted to start looking at places in February, so it seemed like he wanted to get a place fairly soon, but I was feeling confused because since those early talks, I've been the only one to talk to him about it. I told him that it felt like he didn't want to get a place with me anymore. He said that he does want to still but when he brought it up to me, he meant he wanted to get a place in the future and there's no timeline. In his head, it will happen eventually and I shouldn't be worried (????? WTF). Anyways, I decided to drop it and give him the benefit of the doubt.
He also early on told me how excited he was for when we go to his home country, how we'll go in the next year, how he needs to take me there. A week or two ago, an opportunity came up where he would be in a nearby country for business and I would be on a break from school. We talked about me going with him and then going to his home country after for a bit. Yesterday, I asked him about it and he started to express doubts, saying he's never taken a girl home before... Keep in mind: 1) I have already met his parents and brothers more than once. 2) This man has only dated one other person, and it was in high school. 3) This man has been talking about taking me there as soon as its convenient since we started dating.
I'm worried given my past with parental narcissistic abuse and having my perception constantly questioned/invalidated that I'm not able to identify red flags unless they're really severe or different from what I experienced growing up. Prior to this relationship, I always pursued men that were emotionally distant and whose love I had to earn because it felt safer (and mirrored my relationship with my absent parent). This is the first time I've dated someone who consistently showed interest in me. I thought this was healthier and that I was recalibrating my dating patterns, but now I'm starting to have doubts. I'm feeling like I can't trust his word anymore. I'm starting to wonder if he's been future faking me.
What do you guys think? Any tips on what I should be looking out for in the future? Or how you can know with certainty that there might be love bombing/future faking before things get worse? I don't want to find myself in a position years down the line in an abusive or toxic relationship and realize that there were signs I missed/ignored earlier on. I also don't want to ruin a happy and healthy relationship because I'm making mountains out of mole hills.
submitted by Ok-Inflation-4705 to relationship_advice [link] [comments]
TLDR: I'm struggling to understand if my relationship issues are genuine concerns or my past influencing my perception. My boyfriend (29M) and I (25F) have been dating long-distance for 10 months. He initially talked a lot about our future, including plans to get a place together, but has since become non-committal and distant. Given my history with a narcissistic parent, I'm unsure if these are red flags or typical relationship hurdles. I'm worried he's "future faking" me. Any advice on discerning these issues would be appreciated. ___________________________
Sorry this is so long - It's clearly weighing heavy on my mind and I also have a habit of overexplaining myself due to my past. Believe it or not, this was my attempt to keep it short.
As someone raised by a single narcissistic parent, I (25F) have a lot of difficulty in figuring out if my perception is accurate or if I'm misinterpreting things. I've spent years working on this in therapy and have made progress in figuring out when I'm being treated poorly, specifically in platonic relationships, but have still a ways to go.
Recently, I've gotten into a relationship with my bf (29M) after having been single for 5 years. The person I've started dating proactively chased me during this time and I was clear that I wanted to be just friends due to concerns about long-distance, feeling overwhelmed with the interest they had in me without knowing me super well, and feeling like my boundaries weren't being respected. Over those 5 years, we developed a strong friendship/relationship and these issues resolved (except for the long-distance). I had a major life event happen in 2023 that had me questioning how much of my life I had lived in fear and avoidance. Simultaneously, this person was a huge support to me while I went through this difficult moment. I decided I was ready to pursue a romance with him and he agreed he wanted to too. So we started officially dating roughly 10 months ago.
In the beginning of our relationship, he would make tons of comments about our future together, talking about our kids, what life would be like when we're married, trips that we would take, etc. I was hesitant in the beginning to believe this, but slowly started to imagine this future too and would join in these conversations. I had never dated someone who so openly talked about a future with me and while it felt scary in the beginning, I started to feel like it was a beautiful thing and I was experiencing healthy love.
Back in January, he started to talking to me about getting a place in my city. Although we're long distance, he has to come to my city fairly often for business reasons and likes to extend his stays to spend time with me. I initially thought he just meant something for himself that he would stay in when he was in my city. This wasn't super surprising since he has an apartment in another city sitting completely empty and he was talking about getting a place in another city for when he'd visit before we started dating. To be clear, he has vast financial resources. Like hundreds of millions.
I was excited that he was going to get a place in my city, because I knew it would make him more comfortable when he'd visit and therefore make his visits more likely. However, he clarified to me a week later that he actually wanted to get a place for the both of us - where I would stay full time and he would stay when he was visiting. He was surprised that I thought this would just be his place. I thought about it and got excited at the idea (although I had some concerns about living alone for those periods he wasn't there - I've always had roommates and have loved it honestly).
Once I agreed, he said he wanted to start looking at places when he was visiting my city for a few weeks that February. I started to look at places online and have conversations with him about what we'd both want. February came, he didn't make any effort or mention of seeing places in person. My roommates started to ask me if I'd be renewing the lease with them or not and I told them I wasn't sure. I'd periodically bring it up to him and emphasize that we probably need to start looking and make serious progress on it. He would agree, but I wouldn't hear anything more about it. Finally, I told him I needed to give my roommates a final answer about it. He said that I should renew the lease with them so that we're not rushed into finding something and can find the perfect place. He said it was okay if the leases overlapped, assuring me that it wouldn't be a problem and he'd cover it financially. I was hesitant, but given his vast wealth, I figured this was just one of those rich people things where comfort is prioritized over wastefulness.
He has not brought it up since. Recently, I had felt some distance from him. He wasn't as communicative. He flaked on a vacation we were supposed to go on during my spring break at the last minute due to a conference he wanted to attend. He was vague about when he would be able to visit next, saying that I could visit him whenever even though he knew I was in school until May. He invited me to go to a friend's wedding in a far away state in late April, but said he figured I wouldn't be able to go because he knew I had finals. I decided to make it work by flying in for 48 hours despite having finals. While we were together in person, it didn't seem like anything was wrong at all. I decided to talk to him about some of these concerns and mentioned the apartment. He said that he wanted to find the perfect place for us and not stress about it. I told him that I get that, but we need to take action in order to find the perfect place. He said that there's no rush. I pointed out he said he wanted to start looking at places in February, so it seemed like he wanted to get a place fairly soon, but I was feeling confused because since those early talks, I've been the only one to talk to him about it. I told him that it felt like he didn't want to get a place with me anymore. He said that he does want to still but when he brought it up to me, he meant he wanted to get a place in the future and there's no timeline. In his head, it will happen eventually and I shouldn't be worried (????? WTF). Anyways, I decided to drop it and give him the benefit of the doubt.
He also early on told me how excited he was for when we go to his home country, how we'll go in the next year, how he needs to take me there. A week or two ago, an opportunity came up where he would be in a nearby country for business and I would be on a break from school. We talked about me going with him and then going to his home country after for a bit. Yesterday, I asked him about it and he started to express doubts, saying he's never taken a girl home before... Keep in mind: 1) I have already met his parents and brothers more than once. 2) This man has only dated one other person, and it was in high school. 3) This man has been talking about taking me there as soon as its convenient since we started dating.
I'm worried given my past with parental narcissistic abuse and having my perception constantly questioned/invalidated that I'm not able to identify red flags unless they're really severe or different from what I experienced growing up. Prior to this relationship, I always pursued men that were emotionally distant and whose love I had to earn because it felt safer (and mirrored my relationship with my absent parent). This is the first time I've dated someone who consistently showed interest in me. I thought this was healthier and that I was recalibrating my dating patterns, but now I'm starting to have doubts. I'm feeling like I can't trust his word anymore. I'm starting to wonder if he's been future faking me.
What do you guys think? Any tips on what I should be looking out for in the future? Or how you can know with certainty that there might be love bombing/future faking before things get worse? I don't want to find myself in a position years down the line in an abusive or toxic relationship and realize that there were signs I missed/ignored earlier on. I also don't want to ruin a happy and healthy relationship because I'm making mountains out of mole hills.
2024.05.15 02:18 Electrical_Gas9420 No Contact Impossible Have a Child
Hello,
I've never posted about this kind of stuff, but I've never experienced such a persistent nagging pain
My ex and I had a very turbulent 7 year relationship, I initially met her months after healing from another long term relationship, about 25 years, and that ended amicably, and to this day I see her as a friend.
The beginning of our relationship was amazing, it was very sexually charged, she was into everything and anything I did, she was sweet, comforting, a great listener, the times we had were almost euphoric. Even during this phase of the relationship, I acknowledged to myself that I have to take things slow as things are moving so fast.
About a month and a half into "dating" she got pregnant, and I told her I will be there for you, and I'll never run away from being a Father, ever! Immediately everything changed, and of course I understand why and empathize with how she may have felt suddenly being pregnant, and I genuinely cared and made myself available at all times. We only lived a building apart, we were basically doors down from each other.
Immediately she wanted to get a place together, I let her know that she could stay with me anytime, give it a trial run, but we still need to get know each other, as I just got over a 25 year relationship. She started staying with me on and off and I began seeing a complete different side of her, she would storm out of my place and take issue with little things like clothes on the floor, or an unmade bed, I mean over the top anger.
Still throughout this period I began falling in love with her, and falling in love with my unborn child. During this period I started discovering a pattern of lies, some just white lies, some extremely severe, lies that had the potential to affect any sort of positive outcome as they entailed criminal behavior. When confronted with the worst ones I was assured she would stop.
Skip ahead to the birth, I was with her, we were both content, a happy beautiful healthy daughter came from the womb. I was in love, both with my child, as well as the Mother. We were inseparable for awhile, then she became extremely controlling, even vicious at times. My time with my daughter was often relegated to when the Mother was asleep, I would let her sleep when my daughter woke up in the night and bond with her then.
One day she got extremely upset with me as I wanted to bring my daughter and her to a family event, she had an issue with a family member of mine, this turned into a CRAZY argument, that ended up with me being denied seeing my child for over 12 days. I ended up going to the courthouse to file papers that would give me the legal right to see my daughter, regardless of the status of my relationship with the Mother.
I never served those papers, as my daughter had gotten sick, and we both met at her pediatrician appointment, everything melted away and we were together again, she became loving again, we shared bringing up our child, but I began to lose touch with all my family, including my friends, anything I would do or plan to do would cause an insane amount of friction.
Through this time we did our best to be close, but the lies never stopped, and I completely began to lose my sense of self. There were times when my daughter would be completely weaponized, used as a pawn to control me, I slowly began isolating myself from just about anyone but my daughter and the Mother. We would have an argument, could be anything, big or small, and instantly I'd be disregarded, no communication, no texts, no calls, no responses. Then we would get together and she would show me love and kindness, and I'd be hooked again. This on and off pattern lasted a good 6 years. I still struggle thinking about how dark some of those days were, and I've never strayed or abandoned my daughter. She's the light of my life, just has 2 parents that can't seem to live peacefully together.
Forward to now, just a few months ago we talked and decided it would be best to part and focus on co-parenting. The 1st month was great, we were cordial to each other during pick ups and drop offs, but we stopped both putting our child to bed together. If she had her I used to always go over and put her to bed, read books, bathe, etc and she would for the most part so the same when I have my daughter. We stopped that, as when my daughter did fall asleep that's when we would connect, quite often it was just sexual, looking back it was like giving a dog a bone, it was void of true intimacy, it was just enough to keep things balanced in an odd way, it became the only affection I came to know.
This entire time, regardless of our status, whenever we were with other people she was a gem, she always would bring gifts even if not necessary, always be extremely affectionate towards me, basically playing a part.
Here's an example, I got sick one evening, some sort of food poisoning, it got bad enough where I had to go to the hospital and be treated in a bed from early morning until evening. This happened to fall on a night we had planned a "date" night. She came to the hospital to pick me up, my parents were there and she was as sweet as you could imagine, as soon as I got discharged and we were driving home, now just the two of us, she flipped on me for ruining our date. She bought tickets to a show, and she was recklessly pissed off and as mean as one could imagine, and I was still sick, she ended up storming out of my place.
These kinds of situations became normal, and a nonstop cycle of on again/off again partners became the norm.
I'm getting long winded now, but I'll come back to the present. After about a month of just co-parenting and coming to terms with ending any sort of romantic relationship, and being cordial to one another, she started reminiscing about our past, sharing pictures of happy times with my daughter and us together, pictures of just her and I, messages of love, how she misses me, will always love me, all these things, and I opened the door again. This was days before she was leaving for a "yoga retreat" and I would have my daughter. Needless to say, those 4 days there was no more communication, not even with my daughter. The 1st communication on a Sunday morning was about being together again, and sentiments of love.
This has since happened 2 more times, always surrounded by secrecy, even if it directly affects my daughter, which unfortunately it has. Come to find out she was never away, "out of town" she was just down the road at an Airbnb with some guy that fly's in from out of state, she told me all this and actually said how much I would like him, and that this guy would love to meet me, and at the same time maintaining how much she still loves me. Just whacky, not even months after ending any romantic partnership.
This coming week my daughter and her are taking their first "vacation" without me involved. I was completely fine with this, expressing how I first had some mixed feelings, because my daughter has never really traveled without me and her Mother together. Then I came to terms with it and even started suggesting places to show her, a beach to check out, dolphins in these waters, manatees here etc. The guy she's been seeing at random airbnbs lives in the state they are flying too.
It's just thrown me for such a loop. I haven't truly trusted her for a while for good reasons, lots of lies, and complete disregard for any prior planned commitments, but this just feels out of the park, and has me feeling like an emotional train wrecked weakling. Yesterday I responded to an email saying "I just need to process some of this stuff and not communicate unless it has to do with our daughter", the response was crazy, completely shitting on me as a person on how much I've wronged her and how I never cared for her and all this stuff. My reply was you are right, I'm sorry, I've been having trouble letting go, but I'm now ready too, let's focus on being the best we can be for our daughter.
Instant reply of what a great father I am, how I've always been there, how much my daughter loves me and counts down the days to when I have her. How sorry she is that she treated me poorly, etc. It's all just nuts, and I can't simply not communicate, and I'm so confused as to why I'm feeling so hurt by all this stuff while I recognize the healthiest thing I can do for myself is truly let go. I have so many mixed emotions I can't even think about dating, or even chilling with someone new. I'm all over the place, mainly sad, it's so confusing. So many mixed signals, and I think my esteem has been shattered for awhile now.
Only with my daughter do I feel myself, she brings the best out in me, she always has, she's like sunshine on a rainy day, she's the best!
Apologies for such a long winded post, may not even make clear sense, just let my "swipe" keyboard go nuts for a bit
Hope you are all well!
submitted by Electrical_Gas9420 to ExNoContact [link] [comments]
I've never posted about this kind of stuff, but I've never experienced such a persistent nagging pain
My ex and I had a very turbulent 7 year relationship, I initially met her months after healing from another long term relationship, about 25 years, and that ended amicably, and to this day I see her as a friend.
The beginning of our relationship was amazing, it was very sexually charged, she was into everything and anything I did, she was sweet, comforting, a great listener, the times we had were almost euphoric. Even during this phase of the relationship, I acknowledged to myself that I have to take things slow as things are moving so fast.
About a month and a half into "dating" she got pregnant, and I told her I will be there for you, and I'll never run away from being a Father, ever! Immediately everything changed, and of course I understand why and empathize with how she may have felt suddenly being pregnant, and I genuinely cared and made myself available at all times. We only lived a building apart, we were basically doors down from each other.
Immediately she wanted to get a place together, I let her know that she could stay with me anytime, give it a trial run, but we still need to get know each other, as I just got over a 25 year relationship. She started staying with me on and off and I began seeing a complete different side of her, she would storm out of my place and take issue with little things like clothes on the floor, or an unmade bed, I mean over the top anger.
Still throughout this period I began falling in love with her, and falling in love with my unborn child. During this period I started discovering a pattern of lies, some just white lies, some extremely severe, lies that had the potential to affect any sort of positive outcome as they entailed criminal behavior. When confronted with the worst ones I was assured she would stop.
Skip ahead to the birth, I was with her, we were both content, a happy beautiful healthy daughter came from the womb. I was in love, both with my child, as well as the Mother. We were inseparable for awhile, then she became extremely controlling, even vicious at times. My time with my daughter was often relegated to when the Mother was asleep, I would let her sleep when my daughter woke up in the night and bond with her then.
One day she got extremely upset with me as I wanted to bring my daughter and her to a family event, she had an issue with a family member of mine, this turned into a CRAZY argument, that ended up with me being denied seeing my child for over 12 days. I ended up going to the courthouse to file papers that would give me the legal right to see my daughter, regardless of the status of my relationship with the Mother.
I never served those papers, as my daughter had gotten sick, and we both met at her pediatrician appointment, everything melted away and we were together again, she became loving again, we shared bringing up our child, but I began to lose touch with all my family, including my friends, anything I would do or plan to do would cause an insane amount of friction.
Through this time we did our best to be close, but the lies never stopped, and I completely began to lose my sense of self. There were times when my daughter would be completely weaponized, used as a pawn to control me, I slowly began isolating myself from just about anyone but my daughter and the Mother. We would have an argument, could be anything, big or small, and instantly I'd be disregarded, no communication, no texts, no calls, no responses. Then we would get together and she would show me love and kindness, and I'd be hooked again. This on and off pattern lasted a good 6 years. I still struggle thinking about how dark some of those days were, and I've never strayed or abandoned my daughter. She's the light of my life, just has 2 parents that can't seem to live peacefully together.
Forward to now, just a few months ago we talked and decided it would be best to part and focus on co-parenting. The 1st month was great, we were cordial to each other during pick ups and drop offs, but we stopped both putting our child to bed together. If she had her I used to always go over and put her to bed, read books, bathe, etc and she would for the most part so the same when I have my daughter. We stopped that, as when my daughter did fall asleep that's when we would connect, quite often it was just sexual, looking back it was like giving a dog a bone, it was void of true intimacy, it was just enough to keep things balanced in an odd way, it became the only affection I came to know.
This entire time, regardless of our status, whenever we were with other people she was a gem, she always would bring gifts even if not necessary, always be extremely affectionate towards me, basically playing a part.
Here's an example, I got sick one evening, some sort of food poisoning, it got bad enough where I had to go to the hospital and be treated in a bed from early morning until evening. This happened to fall on a night we had planned a "date" night. She came to the hospital to pick me up, my parents were there and she was as sweet as you could imagine, as soon as I got discharged and we were driving home, now just the two of us, she flipped on me for ruining our date. She bought tickets to a show, and she was recklessly pissed off and as mean as one could imagine, and I was still sick, she ended up storming out of my place.
These kinds of situations became normal, and a nonstop cycle of on again/off again partners became the norm.
I'm getting long winded now, but I'll come back to the present. After about a month of just co-parenting and coming to terms with ending any sort of romantic relationship, and being cordial to one another, she started reminiscing about our past, sharing pictures of happy times with my daughter and us together, pictures of just her and I, messages of love, how she misses me, will always love me, all these things, and I opened the door again. This was days before she was leaving for a "yoga retreat" and I would have my daughter. Needless to say, those 4 days there was no more communication, not even with my daughter. The 1st communication on a Sunday morning was about being together again, and sentiments of love.
This has since happened 2 more times, always surrounded by secrecy, even if it directly affects my daughter, which unfortunately it has. Come to find out she was never away, "out of town" she was just down the road at an Airbnb with some guy that fly's in from out of state, she told me all this and actually said how much I would like him, and that this guy would love to meet me, and at the same time maintaining how much she still loves me. Just whacky, not even months after ending any romantic partnership.
This coming week my daughter and her are taking their first "vacation" without me involved. I was completely fine with this, expressing how I first had some mixed feelings, because my daughter has never really traveled without me and her Mother together. Then I came to terms with it and even started suggesting places to show her, a beach to check out, dolphins in these waters, manatees here etc. The guy she's been seeing at random airbnbs lives in the state they are flying too.
It's just thrown me for such a loop. I haven't truly trusted her for a while for good reasons, lots of lies, and complete disregard for any prior planned commitments, but this just feels out of the park, and has me feeling like an emotional train wrecked weakling. Yesterday I responded to an email saying "I just need to process some of this stuff and not communicate unless it has to do with our daughter", the response was crazy, completely shitting on me as a person on how much I've wronged her and how I never cared for her and all this stuff. My reply was you are right, I'm sorry, I've been having trouble letting go, but I'm now ready too, let's focus on being the best we can be for our daughter.
Instant reply of what a great father I am, how I've always been there, how much my daughter loves me and counts down the days to when I have her. How sorry she is that she treated me poorly, etc. It's all just nuts, and I can't simply not communicate, and I'm so confused as to why I'm feeling so hurt by all this stuff while I recognize the healthiest thing I can do for myself is truly let go. I have so many mixed emotions I can't even think about dating, or even chilling with someone new. I'm all over the place, mainly sad, it's so confusing. So many mixed signals, and I think my esteem has been shattered for awhile now.
Only with my daughter do I feel myself, she brings the best out in me, she always has, she's like sunshine on a rainy day, she's the best!
Apologies for such a long winded post, may not even make clear sense, just let my "swipe" keyboard go nuts for a bit
Hope you are all well!
2024.05.15 02:04 Terrible_Estimate606 The memory’s my wife wants to forget
It’s gunna be a long one so I suggest getting your self a drink get comfy and I’ll try to make it the easiest read I can. As the title suggests this is what happened to me, my wife and our 2 year old son. The lord as my witness everything written is 100 percent true and accurate with many witnesses.
I don’t even know where to start this so I’ll just go from where I feel is relevant, I 31 male moved to Cornwall uk in 2018 then 24 coming up to 25. I moved into a beautiful one bedroom flat with sea views with nothing but a motorbike 1 bag on my back and a starting date for work 18th February 2018.
All was fine everything was going good life was finally looking up I moved from a city to rural countryside breathtaking beaches, beautiful people and I was ready to finally start adulthood. When I moved into my flat I had nothing, absolutely nothing apart from 7 days worth of clean boxers and socks a guitar and some chef whites. The flat was unfurnished apart from a bed frame and a chest of drawers so naturally I would have to buy everything I needed while I was there, I didn’t even have a mattress for my bed. 2018 was a big year for Cornwall as we had the beast of the east, heavy snow (now I like snow and being a northern boy I was used to it but this stuff came down thick and heavy)! As I said I had a motorbike for transport and I was in work when the beast of the east hit and obviously couldn’t ride back home as the snow was about 2 ft deep by the time I left.
So I walk home and as soon as you entered my flat my bedroom was to the right of the front door a cubard directly in front of you my bathroom just to the left and my living room just down the hallway to the left also. In my hall way I had a shoe rack where I always used to put my shoes, now given I had just walked 3 miles in the snow I could swear I put my bike boots on said shoe rack when I got home. Any way I carried on with my evening as normal and played guitar drank a few beers and just generally chilled before getting my head down. I was sleeping on my couch as my mattress hadn’t arrived yet, but the next morning when I woke up my bike boots was in-front of the couch like some one had jumped on them walked up to where I was sleeping and jumped out. Not only that my heater had been pulled out of the alcove it was in and turned on. I passed this off as nothing it was probably just me and I didn’t remember.
Fast forward a few months nearly a year and I’m all settled my flat is great, my work is great life is good. I met a beautiful young lady (that’s now my wife) although we just started as friends. I’m so happy.
How ever I worked on a holiday park as a chef, one day I get a knock on the back door to the kitchen. There was a man that I had been serving all week and he said sorry to bother you but my wife would like a word with you. Now I’m thinking great what have I done now. But she was smiling and happy and said to me is your gf or wife pregnant I had neither at the time, so I responded nope why do you ask? She told me her name it was carrol (forget her second name) she was a head at a spiritual church in wales. She proceeded to tell me I had a little boys spirit following me around and she could see him. I didn’t know how to react, so I just said oh ok really! And took her details added her on Facebook etc etc, now a few months go by things in the flat was getting weird not that I recognised at the time but like things moving / going missing and I just played it off like it was me being tired from work.
Again fast forward a little bit I’m dating my now wife and mother to my children, she’s staying over but she worked evenings till early hours in the morning when i would wait to go pick her up, at this point I had sold my motorbike to buy a car (more practical and I needed one as per the condition where I worked was I had to have a car to collect stock of a morning).
One night she was in work I was sat at my table designing her tattoo for the back of her leg as I love to draw, I used to have lanterns on my table that where on like a metal frame but they could swing. That night I was drawing both lanterns where swinging in unison so I FaceTimed I will call her red (as I don’t wish to identify her by name). While on face time I showed her the lanterns and I stepped away from the table thinking my shading was moving them and the second I did I swear to the almighty lord they stoped dead! Dead centre like they hadn’t even moved. She witnessed this and was like what the ****.
But once again we put it to the back of our minds and fast forward a few days / maybe a week. I used to have a picture of red and her best friend one of them stupid long ones that you get from a photo machine at an arcade, locked behind my intercoms phone. One day we was stood in the living room and i promise no one was near it but this picture came from behind the phone and landed in the middle of the living room floor. We laughed about it at the time and was like oooooo spooky but we was stupid!
So strange things kept happening red hated being in the flat on her own and hated being in my room as I had a built in wardrobe and she would always say she felt uneasy. The strange things never stopped but we always just brushed it off. Until …….
Our son is born now there’s a 2 year gap where my little lad I’ll refer to him as A, the happings never stopped or eased but we would always just pass it off, how ever when A was about 2 he would always talk to him self in the kitchen and say brother, look daddy brother but not a second later he would scream. Any one whos a parent knows there kids sounds and this sound instantly got my back up am talking as a father hearing my son make this noise I was ready to kill, the anger and rage that I felt inside was something I can’t even put into words, my baby boy was terrified of something and fatherly instincts kicked in.
Every morning while at this flat I would wake up with little bumps or marks across my body, but I always thought it was where I slept or how I slept, but red noticed the same time my lad was doing what he was in the kitchen I was waking up with what looked like chain marks around my wrists and arms and sometimes I awoke with scratches not 4 or 5 like a human hand but 3, just 3 linear scratches across my body.
Covid 2.0 come along, we all get locked down now hear I am with a young family so I did my door badge, I got night work as a security guard and red would refuse to sleep with A until I got home she would always say it felt like something / some one was watching her.
Now red had family down, and said family is a medium (at the time I would have laughed at this as I was very much so on the fence). But one night reds auntie was at her mums house and was doing a reading. During this reading she said she become overtaken by an entity she started pulling this horrible smile that my little lad used to do. (I wasn’t there to confirm this). But the next morning red and I and A are out and about in the car just been for hot chocolate when red gets a phone call from her mum.
Are you with T (me) red says yeah why? Her mum says get T and A to mine right now they both need to be saged with a white feather. So at this point I’m like *** off laughing but then I thought **** it I’ll ride the bus to the next stop. I walk into reds mums and her aunt (who I’ve never ever met doesn’t even know my second name) says to me you would have had a little boy, he would have been around 5 now and his birthday is in July.
Truth be told before I moved to Cornwall I had relations with a lady they should have been forbidden and she fell pregnant, but unfortunately lost the baby. How ever she was pulled to one side by a stranger in the street whom said 10th of July he would have been here.
So this lady reds aunt doesn’t know a thing about me but knew this, knew what faces / smirks A used to do and knew about him screaming from the kitchen and climbing up me in panic. She hadn’t seen or heard any of this no one had.
She proceeded to tell me I had a evil entity attached to my back and that’s why i suffer with back pain, this entity was hiding behind the spirit of my unborn and when A seen him or tried to interact with him he would come out from behind my unborn to scare him. He would use A•s fear and trauma as energy to try and make its self stronger as its end goal was me. It was terrorising my son to get to me.
I went white what the actual **** is going on, I spent the next few weeks thinking I was going insane. But things at the flat was getting worse I contacted Carrol and she said go into every room every storage room / cubard every dark space and say if you are not here with love and light then I command you too leave
A was getting more and more anxious in the flat, around this time we had been accepted for a house and one day he was in the hall way, I was getting the hoover out and he kept slamming the door on the cubard shut saying no daddy I thought he was being cute. I was wrong.
As things started to escalate we tried to reach out for help I’ve gone from a sceptic to a full on believer. We went to a witch shop a couple of towns over, the sell crystals candles etc etc. but when we walked in the woman wouldn’t even look at me, I tried to explain my story but A started messing around so I took him out side and this lady said to red no candles or crystals are going to help him with what he’s got she gave red two business cards for 2 white witches.
So let’s fast forward again at this point reds had enough A is unhappy! But we have a new house to move into so we said we would stay in the flat one last night before we go to the new house the next day. Our last night in the flat didn’t last from the second we walked in it felt so cold so unwelcoming just horrible atmosphere. So we packed up and went and slept on the couch in our new house. That was the last time red or A would step foot in that flat.
I had given my notice to my landlord about moving so I was there cleaning with L that’s reds sister and as we are cleaning we are both in separate rooms, she is in the kitchen I’m in the bedroom I hear her scream and then she ran into the room I was cleaning. Turns out this thing was not happy not happy at all. She was cleaning the cubard under the sink and as she tried to close the door she said it felt like something was pushing against it. She let go of it and it slammed shut. I did actually hear it from the bedroom, I told her to calm down it will be ok and we will work together.
I walked into the bathroom now this flats been empty all day I had had a wee when I first got there but other than that, nothing no one had used the bathroom. But when we walked in there was water everywhere sink was soaking wet, shower tray was soaking and the black and glitter tiles where soaked. We just wanted to get the **** done and get out. That night she left and swore she would never go back. Any who
I get reds mum over to sage the flat and she said she hated being in there, and I have 3 friends they are all into the paranormal, and wanted to explore the flat. I allowed them in as they where down on holiday and I’ll call him S is just like me emotionally dead only had two but after he left that flat he got in our friends car, he broke down in full blows tears and said he’s never felt so empty unloved and lonely. Another of our friends said he saw a long thin figure in the living room all in black with no eyes and was not of this world. He said the reason it had no eyes is because the eyes are a portal to the soul and things not of this plain can’t copy the eyes.
Any way let’s move on I left that flat and every time I left I had to say you are not welcome to follow me or attach to me, you are not welcome in my home or around my family you must stay here or go back to where you belong
Me red and A have lived in our new place a couple of years he’s happy no more screaming and running up me, red is comfortable and I haven’t awoke with chain marks since we started living here.
Red has crystals on all entry and exit points, she had the house saged, but on a whole she is happy and content, I am just never allowed to talk about these events infront of her. Last I heard that thing is still at the flat with my little unborn boy and my A•s grandad who did well to protect A.
This is my story that changed me from a sceptical to a firm believer in paranormal entity’s.
submitted by Terrible_Estimate606 to ParanormalEncounters [link] [comments]
I don’t even know where to start this so I’ll just go from where I feel is relevant, I 31 male moved to Cornwall uk in 2018 then 24 coming up to 25. I moved into a beautiful one bedroom flat with sea views with nothing but a motorbike 1 bag on my back and a starting date for work 18th February 2018.
All was fine everything was going good life was finally looking up I moved from a city to rural countryside breathtaking beaches, beautiful people and I was ready to finally start adulthood. When I moved into my flat I had nothing, absolutely nothing apart from 7 days worth of clean boxers and socks a guitar and some chef whites. The flat was unfurnished apart from a bed frame and a chest of drawers so naturally I would have to buy everything I needed while I was there, I didn’t even have a mattress for my bed. 2018 was a big year for Cornwall as we had the beast of the east, heavy snow (now I like snow and being a northern boy I was used to it but this stuff came down thick and heavy)! As I said I had a motorbike for transport and I was in work when the beast of the east hit and obviously couldn’t ride back home as the snow was about 2 ft deep by the time I left.
So I walk home and as soon as you entered my flat my bedroom was to the right of the front door a cubard directly in front of you my bathroom just to the left and my living room just down the hallway to the left also. In my hall way I had a shoe rack where I always used to put my shoes, now given I had just walked 3 miles in the snow I could swear I put my bike boots on said shoe rack when I got home. Any way I carried on with my evening as normal and played guitar drank a few beers and just generally chilled before getting my head down. I was sleeping on my couch as my mattress hadn’t arrived yet, but the next morning when I woke up my bike boots was in-front of the couch like some one had jumped on them walked up to where I was sleeping and jumped out. Not only that my heater had been pulled out of the alcove it was in and turned on. I passed this off as nothing it was probably just me and I didn’t remember.
Fast forward a few months nearly a year and I’m all settled my flat is great, my work is great life is good. I met a beautiful young lady (that’s now my wife) although we just started as friends. I’m so happy.
How ever I worked on a holiday park as a chef, one day I get a knock on the back door to the kitchen. There was a man that I had been serving all week and he said sorry to bother you but my wife would like a word with you. Now I’m thinking great what have I done now. But she was smiling and happy and said to me is your gf or wife pregnant I had neither at the time, so I responded nope why do you ask? She told me her name it was carrol (forget her second name) she was a head at a spiritual church in wales. She proceeded to tell me I had a little boys spirit following me around and she could see him. I didn’t know how to react, so I just said oh ok really! And took her details added her on Facebook etc etc, now a few months go by things in the flat was getting weird not that I recognised at the time but like things moving / going missing and I just played it off like it was me being tired from work.
Again fast forward a little bit I’m dating my now wife and mother to my children, she’s staying over but she worked evenings till early hours in the morning when i would wait to go pick her up, at this point I had sold my motorbike to buy a car (more practical and I needed one as per the condition where I worked was I had to have a car to collect stock of a morning).
One night she was in work I was sat at my table designing her tattoo for the back of her leg as I love to draw, I used to have lanterns on my table that where on like a metal frame but they could swing. That night I was drawing both lanterns where swinging in unison so I FaceTimed I will call her red (as I don’t wish to identify her by name). While on face time I showed her the lanterns and I stepped away from the table thinking my shading was moving them and the second I did I swear to the almighty lord they stoped dead! Dead centre like they hadn’t even moved. She witnessed this and was like what the ****.
But once again we put it to the back of our minds and fast forward a few days / maybe a week. I used to have a picture of red and her best friend one of them stupid long ones that you get from a photo machine at an arcade, locked behind my intercoms phone. One day we was stood in the living room and i promise no one was near it but this picture came from behind the phone and landed in the middle of the living room floor. We laughed about it at the time and was like oooooo spooky but we was stupid!
So strange things kept happening red hated being in the flat on her own and hated being in my room as I had a built in wardrobe and she would always say she felt uneasy. The strange things never stopped but we always just brushed it off. Until …….
Our son is born now there’s a 2 year gap where my little lad I’ll refer to him as A, the happings never stopped or eased but we would always just pass it off, how ever when A was about 2 he would always talk to him self in the kitchen and say brother, look daddy brother but not a second later he would scream. Any one whos a parent knows there kids sounds and this sound instantly got my back up am talking as a father hearing my son make this noise I was ready to kill, the anger and rage that I felt inside was something I can’t even put into words, my baby boy was terrified of something and fatherly instincts kicked in.
Every morning while at this flat I would wake up with little bumps or marks across my body, but I always thought it was where I slept or how I slept, but red noticed the same time my lad was doing what he was in the kitchen I was waking up with what looked like chain marks around my wrists and arms and sometimes I awoke with scratches not 4 or 5 like a human hand but 3, just 3 linear scratches across my body.
Covid 2.0 come along, we all get locked down now hear I am with a young family so I did my door badge, I got night work as a security guard and red would refuse to sleep with A until I got home she would always say it felt like something / some one was watching her.
Now red had family down, and said family is a medium (at the time I would have laughed at this as I was very much so on the fence). But one night reds auntie was at her mums house and was doing a reading. During this reading she said she become overtaken by an entity she started pulling this horrible smile that my little lad used to do. (I wasn’t there to confirm this). But the next morning red and I and A are out and about in the car just been for hot chocolate when red gets a phone call from her mum.
Are you with T (me) red says yeah why? Her mum says get T and A to mine right now they both need to be saged with a white feather. So at this point I’m like *** off laughing but then I thought **** it I’ll ride the bus to the next stop. I walk into reds mums and her aunt (who I’ve never ever met doesn’t even know my second name) says to me you would have had a little boy, he would have been around 5 now and his birthday is in July.
Truth be told before I moved to Cornwall I had relations with a lady they should have been forbidden and she fell pregnant, but unfortunately lost the baby. How ever she was pulled to one side by a stranger in the street whom said 10th of July he would have been here.
So this lady reds aunt doesn’t know a thing about me but knew this, knew what faces / smirks A used to do and knew about him screaming from the kitchen and climbing up me in panic. She hadn’t seen or heard any of this no one had.
She proceeded to tell me I had a evil entity attached to my back and that’s why i suffer with back pain, this entity was hiding behind the spirit of my unborn and when A seen him or tried to interact with him he would come out from behind my unborn to scare him. He would use A•s fear and trauma as energy to try and make its self stronger as its end goal was me. It was terrorising my son to get to me.
I went white what the actual **** is going on, I spent the next few weeks thinking I was going insane. But things at the flat was getting worse I contacted Carrol and she said go into every room every storage room / cubard every dark space and say if you are not here with love and light then I command you too leave
A was getting more and more anxious in the flat, around this time we had been accepted for a house and one day he was in the hall way, I was getting the hoover out and he kept slamming the door on the cubard shut saying no daddy I thought he was being cute. I was wrong.
As things started to escalate we tried to reach out for help I’ve gone from a sceptic to a full on believer. We went to a witch shop a couple of towns over, the sell crystals candles etc etc. but when we walked in the woman wouldn’t even look at me, I tried to explain my story but A started messing around so I took him out side and this lady said to red no candles or crystals are going to help him with what he’s got she gave red two business cards for 2 white witches.
So let’s fast forward again at this point reds had enough A is unhappy! But we have a new house to move into so we said we would stay in the flat one last night before we go to the new house the next day. Our last night in the flat didn’t last from the second we walked in it felt so cold so unwelcoming just horrible atmosphere. So we packed up and went and slept on the couch in our new house. That was the last time red or A would step foot in that flat.
I had given my notice to my landlord about moving so I was there cleaning with L that’s reds sister and as we are cleaning we are both in separate rooms, she is in the kitchen I’m in the bedroom I hear her scream and then she ran into the room I was cleaning. Turns out this thing was not happy not happy at all. She was cleaning the cubard under the sink and as she tried to close the door she said it felt like something was pushing against it. She let go of it and it slammed shut. I did actually hear it from the bedroom, I told her to calm down it will be ok and we will work together.
I walked into the bathroom now this flats been empty all day I had had a wee when I first got there but other than that, nothing no one had used the bathroom. But when we walked in there was water everywhere sink was soaking wet, shower tray was soaking and the black and glitter tiles where soaked. We just wanted to get the **** done and get out. That night she left and swore she would never go back. Any who
I get reds mum over to sage the flat and she said she hated being in there, and I have 3 friends they are all into the paranormal, and wanted to explore the flat. I allowed them in as they where down on holiday and I’ll call him S is just like me emotionally dead only had two but after he left that flat he got in our friends car, he broke down in full blows tears and said he’s never felt so empty unloved and lonely. Another of our friends said he saw a long thin figure in the living room all in black with no eyes and was not of this world. He said the reason it had no eyes is because the eyes are a portal to the soul and things not of this plain can’t copy the eyes.
Any way let’s move on I left that flat and every time I left I had to say you are not welcome to follow me or attach to me, you are not welcome in my home or around my family you must stay here or go back to where you belong
Me red and A have lived in our new place a couple of years he’s happy no more screaming and running up me, red is comfortable and I haven’t awoke with chain marks since we started living here.
Red has crystals on all entry and exit points, she had the house saged, but on a whole she is happy and content, I am just never allowed to talk about these events infront of her. Last I heard that thing is still at the flat with my little unborn boy and my A•s grandad who did well to protect A.
This is my story that changed me from a sceptical to a firm believer in paranormal entity’s.
2024.05.15 02:03 ItzMePlaysGames Enjoying Fukuzawa on my 3ds
 | But you know what I’m not enjoying on my 3ds?? The godforsaken water temple in ocarina of time 👹👹👹. That is the worst temple in oot, and it is so annoying!! I got stuck in there and took like a two week break from it…I hate everything about that temple. Like oops, I forgot something in a lower water level 🤭 GO ALL AROUND THE TEMPLE AND RESTART THE WATER LEVEL 👹👺👺👹. Why do I have to walk around the whole damn temple just to get one key?? And the part I got stuck on was finding the place to push the box, like I didn’t know I could push it!! Maybe I should have recognized the pattern on the box, but I’m not perceptive 😑. I had to get a video guide just to beat the temple. Then I beat the boss, which was really easy since I just went into the corner, but it grabbed me once and took a bunch of hp 😫 maybe not a lot but it felt too long. And the best part is that I forgot to grab the ✨heart container✨and had to wait until that long cutscene was over. Like I just want an extra heart, shut up sheik. I guess next I’ll go to gerudo? submitted by ItzMePlaysGames to FukuzawaNation [link] [comments] Saving all these fictional races, gorons (literally rocks, peak design) zora (so ugly in oot I hate them) hylians (boring 🥱) the forest ppl I forgot the names of, and the gerudo (my favorite fictional race, women) I better get something good for my efforts. |
2024.05.15 01:49 Popular-Ad1589 Learning to take accountability
Won't go into my backstory, but I'm left frustrated at how I am aware of my shortcomings and how I disappoint others, but I am also passive in trying to change.
I have this pattern of feeling bad when I hurt someone, but then never following through to make the proper adjustments. So I hurt others again for the same reason.
I want to take accountability and I'm only learning how to do that now after a life of squeaking by through pity parties.
At the same time, I feel paralyzed to change. But I do want to. I'm building habits that are making my life better, but deep down there's things I'm scared of getting to the bottom of. I know that I'm scared and worried that I'll lose myself in changing or that I'll ruin relationships.
I'm tired of this cycle and I believe that I can break it and take responsibility of my actions instead of just avoiding addressing them until I make the same mistakes again.
I wonder if any of you feel the same or have felt the same. If you did, how did you overcome it?
submitted by Popular-Ad1589 to MentalHealthPH [link] [comments]
I have this pattern of feeling bad when I hurt someone, but then never following through to make the proper adjustments. So I hurt others again for the same reason.
I want to take accountability and I'm only learning how to do that now after a life of squeaking by through pity parties.
At the same time, I feel paralyzed to change. But I do want to. I'm building habits that are making my life better, but deep down there's things I'm scared of getting to the bottom of. I know that I'm scared and worried that I'll lose myself in changing or that I'll ruin relationships.
I'm tired of this cycle and I believe that I can break it and take responsibility of my actions instead of just avoiding addressing them until I make the same mistakes again.
I wonder if any of you feel the same or have felt the same. If you did, how did you overcome it?
2024.05.15 01:38 heresiarchx I feel I have genuine upper motor neuron issues
I actually pretty much at this point feel that I have what we all fear. I've been feeling increasingly bad for the past weeks. The tightness, pain , pre-crampy, cramps and hyperreflexive state of my legs in particular is becoming unbearable and I feel how my mobility is becoming a bit affected because of that. I feel like I am in a constant pain and if I do some physical activity the after soreness is also terrible. I feel this in all of my body but especially legs. If I tap the tendon of my knees, my legs fly violently forward (I know i shouldn't self test this but during my last neuro exam this was also clearly noted. The report says I have +3/+3 reflexes in both legs. Arms also brisk.. ). What I am certain about is that I didn't have such brisk reflexes before all this started and I feel this has been getting increasingly worse with time. I feel like im very easily startled, if something accidentaly touches my legs it would sometimes trigger the reflexes.
At the same time my twitching has been getting more intense. I have almost constant fasciculations of whole body. Every muscle has been affected. It has also changed pattern a bit. Instead of random single pops (allthough still getting a lot) I am getting longer bouts of twitching lasting up to a minute, firing very frequntley in all muscles of my torso each time I cough or sneeze or when I roll in bed. Legs going on constantly but not just calves. Every muscle of my legs twitches from glutes to feet . Very frequent twitching in my jaw, neck and bulbar area but aso common in eyebrows and forehead, even scalp. Arms also affected. The other day both arms were twitching at the same time..
I feel extremely tired and sore all the time . I have also felt periods of shortness of breath these past days. Perceived difficulty speaking and mild swallowing issues. These have been going on for several months already without really worsening but are not going away either and I can definetly tell there's something very wrong going on with my body. Everything feels off.
submitted by heresiarchx to ALSorNOT [link] [comments]
At the same time my twitching has been getting more intense. I have almost constant fasciculations of whole body. Every muscle has been affected. It has also changed pattern a bit. Instead of random single pops (allthough still getting a lot) I am getting longer bouts of twitching lasting up to a minute, firing very frequntley in all muscles of my torso each time I cough or sneeze or when I roll in bed. Legs going on constantly but not just calves. Every muscle of my legs twitches from glutes to feet . Very frequent twitching in my jaw, neck and bulbar area but aso common in eyebrows and forehead, even scalp. Arms also affected. The other day both arms were twitching at the same time..
I feel extremely tired and sore all the time . I have also felt periods of shortness of breath these past days. Perceived difficulty speaking and mild swallowing issues. These have been going on for several months already without really worsening but are not going away either and I can definetly tell there's something very wrong going on with my body. Everything feels off.
2024.05.15 01:37 PatientChallenge3906 over 3 weeks out, seems my sleep is finally returning to normal
I use a sleep app to track my sleep and my sleep debt is finally starting to drop and i seem to be getting back to somewhat normal sleep patterns. I mean my best sleeps were always when we shared a bed, but we didnt live together so im only comparing it to when i was sleeping by myself.
This is significant for me as I set this as one of my targets before I head out to do the gym thing and start socialising again. Once sleep debt gets down to a certain point im off to join a group fitness class and be more social. I felt once i could sleep again it would mean i actually have the energy to go to the gym, also it meant the cortisol levels from the breakup were falling, a physical sign I was starting to heal.
Still zero days since randomly crying, still have no motivation to do anything, dishes are piling up. Still bouncing between bargaining, anger and depression.
submitted by PatientChallenge3906 to BreakUps [link] [comments]
This is significant for me as I set this as one of my targets before I head out to do the gym thing and start socialising again. Once sleep debt gets down to a certain point im off to join a group fitness class and be more social. I felt once i could sleep again it would mean i actually have the energy to go to the gym, also it meant the cortisol levels from the breakup were falling, a physical sign I was starting to heal.
Still zero days since randomly crying, still have no motivation to do anything, dishes are piling up. Still bouncing between bargaining, anger and depression.
2024.05.15 01:28 GPTGamingNews The Ultimate Halo Infinite: Campaign Review
 | https://preview.redd.it/qyqda90d2h0d1.jpg?width=1100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d3f48440877eff74e0e0dad1f805fcd8b7ea5d39 submitted by GPTGamingNews to u/GPTGamingNews [link] [comments] Game Information
Game Publisher and Developer Information
STORY ATMOSPHERE LORE - 100/100During the boarding of the UNSC Infinity supercarrier, Master Chief is thrown into space by Atriox, leader of the Banished. The Banished are a mercenary group that was previously part of the Covenant but broke away due to disagreements with the Covenant leadership. You’re eventually rescued by the Pilot, a survivor of the attack, who reluctantly assists the Master Chief in his mission to take down Atriox and the Banished. After destroying the warship, Chief is picked up by the Pilot, and they head down to Zeta Halo to search for a “weapon” in the mysteriously damaged portion of the ring. With these two introductory missions out of the way, you’re introduced to Halo Infinite’s vibrant yet dangerous open world. Across the 16-story missions, you will find yourself going across Zeta Halo and into the depths of the Forerunner installation.The campaign features wide and sprawling open fields, claustrophobic underground facilities, and everything in between. The pacing of missions in Infinite is well done and isn’t too fast or slow. Missions are not too long, and you can expect to spend about 11 and a half hours on Zeta Halo when focusing on the main objectives, making it the longest campaign to date, according to HowLongToBeat. When looking to see everything the game has to offer, it’s estimated to take around 27 and a half hours to finish. Knowing the lore behind the factions only adds to how enjoyable it is to fight against each enemy. For example, Brutes are always looking to fight opponents of noteworthy strength, so they approach battles with the Master Chief with bravado and are often happy to battle with the Spartans. Jackals, on the other hand, are typically pirates and mercenaries and will remark about claiming the bounty on Master Chief during combat. They go as far as commenting on canon events during combat, which is a first for the series. For example, Grunts will sometimes taunt you with a remark about the events of Halo: Reach by saying, “Hey Spartan, Reach called! Just kidding - ha!” Sometimes, Grunts dab after killing you, making them even more hilarious to fight. The colorful personalities that make up the Banished mercenaries make them feel more alive and like real characters you’re battling against. Previous Halo games had less personality-oriented enemies whose combat chatter became repetitive and didn’t make for a marginally more interesting battle. GAMEPLAY - 95/100WEAPONSSince Halo: Combat Evolved, a damage system consisting of Kinetic and Plasma has been in place. Hardlight didn’t make a place for itself until Halo 4 and Shock Damage had its inception in Halo Infinite. Most human-made weapons deal Kinetic damage, which is effective at taking down unshielded enemies like Grunts, while Plasma works best against shields. Hardlight is good against any enemy regardless of their shield status, but the weapons and ammo are few and far between. Shock damage arcs between targets and is great for groups of Banished and their vehicles. As the newest addition to the weapon ecosystem, it makes a powerful statement when used in the midst of battle. Much like previous Halo installments, having only two weapon slots forces you into giving encounters some forethought since you’ll want to be properly prepared for the skirmish. It also makes you have to sacrifice certain weapons and pick up others to gain the upper hand in a fight, especially when facing a boss. Ammo resupplies aren’t new to Halo, but the ability to refill certain ammo like rockets without picking up a duplicate of the weapon is new to the series.As a first for the series, the open-world design makes the open-battlefield style fights from previous games even more exciting by allowing different approaches to fights to be more viable. Previous installments of the series pitted Master Chief against enemies in arena-style fights, which had a repeating cycle of short battles and then exposition. Infinite has a different sense of balance between combat and exposition. One minute, you’re riding along through the ring, and suddenly you stumble upon a battle between Banished forces and surviving Marines. All hell breaks loose. In prior installments, you knew when combat would start due to the layout of an area, but in Halo Infinite, it’s less predictable but in the best way possible. It brings the ringworld to life and has a sense of curiosity as to what you’ll find yourself in next, similar to random encounters in other RPGs. ENEMIESIn a first for the series, boss fights also make an appearance in the campaign. The boss fights in the story force you to take the damage system seriously because, without them, you’re bound to have a hard time. The bosses come with their own special fighting style. For example, the Spartan Killers, Hyperius and Tovarus, are both battled at the same time in the mission ‘Pelican Down.’ Hyperius wields a unique Ravager, S7 sniper, and rides a Chopper, while his brother Tovarus has a Scrap Cannon and spike grenades. Fighting both at the same time proves to be a mighty challenge since you’re in an open area with limited weaponry. Each boss has an arena that puts you at a disadvantage, like when you fight the invisible, energy sword-wielding Elite, Chak ’Lok, in a small room full of smoke. Another example would be fighting against the lightning-fast Harbinger in the final mission, along with her incredibly difficult waves of enemies. The bosses come in all forms of Banished and remain a constant threat in both main missions and side objectives.Although the bosses are difficult, Halo Infinite’s standard enemies pose their own threats and must be handled differently. For example, Jackals have to be dealt with quickly since they often show up with marksman rifles that deal heavy damage. Elites are easily recognized by their tall stature and signature mandibles. They’re honor-bound Captains of the Banished whose inspiring presence makes their soldiers more emboldened and less fearful. Taking them out makes the rest of the battle much more manageable. Grunts are the small and frightened cannon fodder of the Banished who often run in fear when their higher-ups are defeated. UPGRADESOne of the other new additions to the campaign is an upgrade system. Master Chief can now upgrade parts of his kit to make his gadgets much more powerful by finding and acquiring Spartan Cores. Become a walking tank by upgrading your shield to absorb more damage before breaking or greatly improve the agility of Chief by reducing the cooldown between uses of the Grappleshot. Reduced cooldown is an absolute must if you plan on playing around with the grappling hook during combat since waiting for it to recharge can mean life or death. All of the upgrades play their parts and can be integral to having a battle go your way. The Threat sensor can be upgraded to have a permanent mark on the enemy along with a visible health bar. The Drop Wall can have its strength increased and add shock damage to projectiles you fire through it. Finally, the thruster can increase its dodge distance and give you a cloak effect after use. Each ability upgrade plays into how well you’ll perform during a fight since not using them can cause you to take a lot more damage.OUTPOSTSThose aren’t the only new changes Infinite brings to the table. Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) are another new addition to the map. They appear as outposts you can claim during your fight against the Banished and serve as fast travel points. Alongside these FOBs comes a currency known as Valor. Valor is earned through completing the various side missions available across Zeta Halo. The currency allows you to unlock supplies and weapons to aid you in dominating the Banished and the battlefield. Your hard-earned Valor needs only to be spent once for unlimited access to the requisitions. From the simple yet reliable Sidekick sidearm all the way to the big bad behemoth of ground warfare, the Scorpion, Valor enables you to bring out any sort of weapon or vehicle for any scenario.SIDE OBJECTIVEThe open world of Zeta Halo also has many side missions available, such as hunting down high-value targets (HVTs), rescuing UNSC Marines, and capturing abandoned outposts. These missions can be a great break from the story or provide much-needed Valor to help during the story. Undertaking a High-Value Target mission is as simple as going to the marked location and killing the target. The bosses appear as various types of Banished, and each has its own dossier with backstory and potentially useful information, such as strengths, weaknesses, and potential combat strategies. The HVTs also carry a unique weapon that drops when their wielder is defeated and can be purchased with valor for use during missions. When you’re not taking Banished lives, you can instead save those of the survivors of the UNSC Infinity’s crash. The Marine survivors will usually be engaging Banished troops, and it’s your job to make sure they survive. Upon saving the Marines, you’ll be rewarded with Valor as well as some new comrades who are willing to ride in vehicles and fight with you. Aside from the HVT hunting and marine distress signals, outposts are also available. Each Outpost offers several different objectives that need to be completed in order to shut down the facility. The objectives vary depending on the function of the Outpost, and completing a task can cause enemy reinforcement. Similarly to FOBs, the Outposts act as fast travel points after they’re finished and can be used to call in supplies unlocked through Valor.FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER - 80/100As a first-person shooter, Halo Infinite’s campaign excels at the traditional formula while adding new gameplay elements like boss fights. In these additions, Infinite delivers a fun and memorable combination of well-paced storytelling and solid gameplay. The RPG elements, like armor upgrades, make for a more engaging experience by giving an enticing reason to explore the levels and open world of Zeta Halo. All of these elements come together and deliver an amazing FPS game that doesn’t disappoint.GRAPHICS ART DIRECTION - 95/100Halo Infinite is the most graphically advanced Halo to date thanks to the new Slipspace engine, which allows it to outshine the previous installments by providing new and updated visuals. The engine enables excellent use of volumetric lighting, giving the interiors beautiful rays of light that shine through cracks and around objects. Each of these components lends itself to the world of Zeta Halo and makes it a true marvel to look at. Indoor sections feel realistic through their use of volumetric lighting and high-resolution textures. These elements make the walk through Forerunner facilities feel strange and alien as the lights twist and turn while you maneuver through the halls. Master Chief's damaged armor looks amazing in the cutscenes, where it looks battered and beat from the various battles the suit has seen. Compared to Halo 5, it’s far more appealing in the lighting and detail while remaining much more realistic with its high-resolution textures. It’s small things like this that make all the difference in how you perceive the game and the time put into it.The art design of the levels works great in conjunction with the Forerunner plot elements introduced in Halo 4 as the beginning of the Reclaimer Saga. We see a lot of the Forerunner technology at work through things like bridges appearing as you approach and the Forerunner Sentinels flying overhead and working on repairs within facilities. These seemingly small details play a big role in making the factions more believable while also allowing the world to feel unique. While some levels in other Halo games felt a little too similar to one another in some cases, each level in Infinite feels completely different while retaining the identity of Halo Infinite. Compared to the first mission, where the halls of the Banished ship are claustrophobic and limit movement while eliciting the feeling of having a daunting task ahead, ‘Silent Auditorium’ brings you within a massive Forerunner facility that feels larger than life and has a feeling of finality to it. The larger-than-life buildings of the Forerunners combined with the shiny silver exterior that makes up their facilities make for very regal settings. When paired with the grand and open interiors, the areas provide a majestic feeling and truly make the sci-fi notion come to life. The Banished forces come with their own unique looks as well, with their scarlet armor providing a contrast to the environment that allows for them to be easily distinguished from the background. The scarlet of their armor compliments their ferocity in battle since the Banished aren’t ones to run away from conflict, even with Master Chief. REPLAYABILITY - 85/100One of the best parts of Halo campaigns is how replayable they are. Whether you’re playing alone or with a friend at your side, the story of Halo Infinite is captivating and gripping enough to make it worth a few extra playthroughs. The side missions and the optional bosses are plentiful enough that you may not be able to complete the extra objectives in a single run. Aside from a completionist run, you can also try your hand at the infamous LASO challenge. LASO, standing for Legendary All Skulls On, is the ultimate test of your Halo skills and can be as infuriating as it is gratifying once you make it through a section. LASO is just one of many challenging ways the community has made Halo replayable and always a fresh experience. Master Chief’s journey on Zeta Halo is easy to jump back into even after beating it and is great if you’re looking to experience a quality storyline in a fan-favorite universe.FUN FACTOR - 95/100The Halo Infinite campaign is incredibly fun and makes for a memorable experience with all of its new additions. Between the classic and new formula for Halo, it finds itself in the middle, where new gameplay elements mesh together with the traditional style seamlessly. The game succeeds at giving you fun new things to play around with while remaining true to the original Halo style. You’ll find the most fun moments when the gameplay finally ‘clicks’ and you manage to pull off that awesome sniper shot or kill that boss that’s been giving you trouble. It’s such a satisfying feeling when you manage to latch onto a Brute chopper with the Grappleshot and yank the Banished out of their vehicles. It feels straight out of a movie and makes you truly immerse yourself in the incredible feats Master Chief is known to pull off. These moments of triumph are what add up to making the campaign so fun and can keep you coming back for more.TECHNICAL PERFORMANCE - 97/100Through the time played on both Xbox One and Xbox Series X, the game was incredibly well optimized. The graphics were noticeably different between the two generations, but it’s to be expected with the hardware differences. The game ran as smoothly as ever from the beginning to the end of the campaign. The Xbox One had some intermittent lag and stutter, but it wasn’t enough to impact gameplay significantly. The game ran very consistently throughout the campaign experience and made for a very enjoyable experience since it suffered no crashes.CREATIVE REVIEWHalo Infinite, released on December 8, 2021, is an ambitious follow-up to 2015’s Halo 5: Guardians. The game began development by 343 Industries just three years later. This sci-fi first-person shooter is the third installment in the Reclaimer Saga that began with Halo 4 and was published by Xbox Game Studios. Infinite was intended to be a launch release for the Xbox Series XS but was delayed due to internal conflict on development decisions. This installment utilizes the new Slipspace engine in conjunction with Faber, a set of developer tools with some of its components dating back to the early 2000s. Since its release, the campaign has been the subject of critical acclaim, with many praising the innovations the new story brought with it. An open world, new armor abilities, and a new faction all come with the installment’s 28-hour story mode. On the other hand, the free-to-play multiplayer was heavily criticized for its lack of content at launch. Since then, Infinite’s multiplayer has gone through several seasons, each of them introducing new content and different cosmetics to obtain through battle pass progression.When I booted up the campaign for the first time, I couldn’t help but reminisce on all the good times I had both solo and with friends in previous installments. Memories like Grifball on Halo: Reach, dying four thousand times to Jackal Snipers on Halo 2, and Arbiter saving Chief with a flamethrower in Halo 3. I went in expecting something at least a little better than the catastrophe of Halo 5, but instead, I was met with something very different and unique for the series. Let’s start from the beginning: the opening cutscene and mission one. While Chief is known to be one of gaming’s coolest characters, he got humbled extremely quickly. The scene opens with pure chaos ensuing. There’s fire, plasma, and bullets flying everywhere, and Chief is at the center of it all. I felt like a kid in a candy shop, watching him skillfully maneuver and take down several opponents. That is until the big baddie of the Banished came along. The following encounter between Atriox and Master Chief was absolute humiliation for the mean green killing machine. Atriox grabs him, beats him with his admittedly cool hammer, drags Master Chief through the hangar, and then throws him into space. I was in pure shock as to how Chief just got beaten like nothing. Isn’t he a ‘hyper-lethal’ class Spartan? Maybe it was because he got caught off guard. Regardless, I just watched my childhood get thrown to his presumable death, and I wanted revenge. Mission one sees us go in a Banished Warship to free the Pelican that Echo-216 saved us with from certain doom. It was straightforward, and I got a good glimpse of that classic Halo gameplay loop so many of us loved: Exploration, combat, and then some exposition. It’s a simple yet effective formula that kept me engaged the whole game. In this opening mission, we get introduced to the newest piece of equipment: the Grappleshot. While simple, it plays a huge role in every aspect of this game. As I got the hang of using it, I found that I could use it for more effective maneuverability in combat, something I did the entire game, which saved me many times. I got to the control room and promptly blew the ship to Smithereens, which left me feeling a lot of satisfaction as I mentally recovered from seeing Chief beaten up by Atriox. After the Banished Warship and one other mission, we get to explore the open world of Zeta Halo. The world is exciting and fun to explore while supporting characters and cutscenes only add to the already gripping story. I quickly fell in love with the campaign and its characters in a way I hadn’t felt since Halo 4. When I wasn’t doing one of the story missions, I was out, causing a ruckus with the side missions. The High-Value Target missions were personal favorites that you’ll love if you’re a fan of boss fights, something Infinite doesn’t shy away from and has plenty of. Each fight feels like a real challenge since they all put you at a distinct disadvantage, like the Pelican Down mission, where you fight Hyperius and Tovarus at the same time with limited space and weaponry. This challenge translated well into a stark contrast between regular enemies and bosses. It made the bosses really feel threatening, a feeling I felt most games lacked since the fight with General Raam way back in the first Gears of War. There were countless battles, a lot of dying, and tons of fun to be had. By the time I reached the Silent Auditorium, I had amassed an arsenal of weapons that I thought would make it a piece of cake. Spoiler alert: it was far from easy. I struggled on this mission quite a bit and had to take a break and tackle it again the next day. There were tons of enemies of varying calibers and carrying a lot of guns, but that was nothing new for a final Halo mission. It feels like enemy AI was much better this time around due to technological improvements and level designs largely being in favor of the Banished. The Silent Auditorium is a beautiful but deadly level that kept me on my toes and gave me a real sense of finality and importance as I made my way through the Banished army, protecting the final boss. It really makes you utilize every bit of tech and upgrade you’ve gotten up to this point. I had to throw down many Drop Walls, use a lot of Grappleshots to run away and heal, and use more Threat Sensors than I could count. Eventually, I got to the final boss with little ammo and very small amounts of optimism about the upcoming fight. The reasoning is spoiler-heavy, so I won’t say much, but when you get ready for this mission, come prepared to die a lot. Halo Infinite had a rocky beginning but has a bright future ahead of it so long as 343 Industries keeps up the amazing work they’ve been doing during the past and current seasons. The campaign is on par with the original trilogy, which many consider to be the pinnacle of the series. It manages to define itself as a fantastic third entry to the Reclaimer Saga that had a rough start with the release of Halo 4 and the negatively received Halo 5: Guardians. While the campaign introduces some things that may initially turn away long-time fans, the gameplay and new additions make the story able to be experienced in a new and unique way. This is only furthered by a fantastic upgrade system that keeps you in the fight against an enemy that hits hard and can take a punch. The level design choices utilize the new gameplay additions like the Grappling Hook to their full extent and encourage you to play around with your new toys, see what strikes your fancy, and master their uses. Likewise, the multiplayer has a lot of charm. The addition of new weapons, new maps, and new modes add up and make for an awesome bout of fun with friends or even by yourself. The seasonal releases and cosmetics for the multiplayer only add to the fun with what many consider to be the best customization received since Halo: Reach. It may have been roughly criticized in the beginning, but it’s clear that 343 Industries took the criticism and set out to give Infinite the makeover of a lifetime. Halo Infinite surpasses expectations while remaining humble in its delivery of an unforgettable campaign and an equally addicting multiplayer that keeps many of us coming back for more. It’s amazing to see how far the game has come since its beta, and it’s hard to contain the excitement that comes with pondering what comes next. SCORE SUMMARY - 92/100Halo Infinite is a fantastic entry into one of the most well-known gaming series, and it delivers on nearly every front in its campaign. The cutscenes are beautiful, the RPG elements are prevalent but not overpowering, and the core gameplay is reminiscent of classic Halo. The campaign is easily one of the best entries in the series and delivers a stellar game in all aspects.https://preview.redd.it/7efzm81s2h0d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=74b6dc6501766d0d0b7dba6dd892f4b232353ee1 Roland Martinez Reviewer Favorite Game: Gears of War |
2024.05.15 01:20 Heralax_Tekran How to get a "Stubborn" LLM to Follow an Output Format
What this is: I've been writing about prompting for a few months on my free personal blog, but I felt that some of the ideas might be useful to people building with AI over here too. People seemed to enjoy the last post I shared, so, I'm sharing another one! This one's about how to get consistent output formats out of the more "stubborn" open-source models. Tell me what you think!
This version has been edited for Reddit, including removing self-promotional links like share and subscribe links. You can find the original post here
One of the great advantages of (most) open-source models has always been the relative ease with which you can get them to follow a given output format. If you just read that sentence and wondered if we’re living in the same universe, then I’ll share a prompting secret right off the bat: the key to getting consistent behavior out of smaller open-source models is to give them at least two carefully crafted few-shot examples. With that, something like Nous Mixtral will get it right 95% of the time, which is good enough if you have validation that can catch mistakes.
But unfortunately not all models can learn from examples. I typically call these “Stubborn” models due to this post I wrote about Mistral Next (large) and Mistral Medium. Basically I’m referring to model that were deliberately overtrained to make them better in chat and zero-shot settings, but inflexible, because they often “pay more attention to” their training data than the prompt. The difference between a “stubborn” model and a non-stubborn model, in my definition, is that with two or a few more few-shot examples a non-stubborn model will pick up basically everything and even directly quote the examples at times, whereas a stubborn one will often follow the patterns it was trained with, or take aspects of the given pattern, but disobey it in others. As far as I can tell stubborness is a matter of RLHF, not parameter count or SFT: Nous Hermes Mixtral is not stubborn, but the official Mixtral Instruct is.
Needless to say, for complex pipelines where you want extremely fine control over outputs, non-stubborn models are infinitely superior. To this day, Mistral Large has a far higher error rate in Augmentoolkit (probably >20%) compared to Nous Mixtral. Despite Mistral large costing 80% of GPT-4 Turbo. This may be an imprecise definition based partly on my intuition, but from experience, I think it’s real. Anyway, if non-stubborn models are far better than stubborn ones for most professional usecases (if you know what you’re doing when it comes to examples) then why am I writing a blog post about how to prompt stubborn models? Well, sometimes in life you don’t get to use the tools you want. For instance, maybe you’re working for a client who has more Mistral credits than God, and you absolutely need to use that particular API. You can’t afford to be a stick in the mud when working in a field that reinvents itself every other day, so I recently went and figured out some principles for prompting stubborn models. One thing that I’ve used a lot recently is the idea of repetition. I kinda blogged about it here, and arguably this one is also about it, but this is kind-of a combination of the two principles so I’ll go over it. If you don’t want to click the links, the two principles we’re combining are: “models see bigger things easier,” and “what you repeat, will be repeated.” Prompting is like quantum theory: any superposition of two valid prompting principles is itself a valid prompting principle. Here’s a valid prompting example:
Repetition, Repetition, Repetiton. Also, Repetition. And don’t forget, Repetiton. (get it?) If the model pays more attention to its prompt and less to its examples (but is too stupid to pick up on is telling it to do the thing once), then we’ll darn well use the prompt to tell it what we want it to do.
It’s simple but I’ve used this to resolve probably over a dozen issues already over many different projects with models ranging from Mistral-Large to GPT-4 Turbo. It’s one of the most powerful things you can do when revising prompts — I can’t believe I haven’t explicitly blogged about it yet, since this is one of the first things I realized about prompting, way back before I’d even made Augmentoolkit.
But that’s not really revolutionary, after all it’s just combining two principles. What about the titular thing of this blog post, getting a stubborn model to write with a given output format?
This one is partly inspired by a comment on a LocalLlama post. I don’t agree with everything in it, but there’s some really good stuff in there, full credit to LoSboccacc. They write in their comment:
So what does that tangent above boil down to? If you want to find an output format a stubborn model will easily follow, see what format it uses without you asking, and borrow that. In other words: use the format the model wants to use. From my testing, it looks like this can easily get your format-following rates up to over 90% at least.
Here’s an example. Say you create a brilliant output format, and give a prompt to a model:
In such cases, just use the format the model wants. Yes, it might not have all the clever tricks you had thought of in order to get exactly the kind of output you want. Yes, it’s kind-of annoying to have to surrender to a bunch of matrices. Yes, if you were using Nous Mixtral, this would have all been over by the second example and you could’ve gone home by now. But you’re not using Nous Mixtral, you’re using Mistral Large. So it might be better to just suck it up and use 1. 2. 3. as your output format instead.
That’s all for this week. Hope you enjoyed the principles. Sorry for the delay.
Thanks for reading, have a good one and I’ll see you next time!
(Side note: the preview at the bottom of this post is undoubtably the result of one of the posts linked in the text. I can't remove it. Sorry for the eyesore. Also this is meant to be an educational thing so I flaired it as tutorial/guide, but mods please lmk if it should be flaired as self-promotion instead? Thanks.)
submitted by Heralax_Tekran to PromptEngineering [link] [comments]
This version has been edited for Reddit, including removing self-promotional links like share and subscribe links. You can find the original post here
One of the great advantages of (most) open-source models has always been the relative ease with which you can get them to follow a given output format. If you just read that sentence and wondered if we’re living in the same universe, then I’ll share a prompting secret right off the bat: the key to getting consistent behavior out of smaller open-source models is to give them at least two carefully crafted few-shot examples. With that, something like Nous Mixtral will get it right 95% of the time, which is good enough if you have validation that can catch mistakes.
But unfortunately not all models can learn from examples. I typically call these “Stubborn” models due to this post I wrote about Mistral Next (large) and Mistral Medium. Basically I’m referring to model that were deliberately overtrained to make them better in chat and zero-shot settings, but inflexible, because they often “pay more attention to” their training data than the prompt. The difference between a “stubborn” model and a non-stubborn model, in my definition, is that with two or a few more few-shot examples a non-stubborn model will pick up basically everything and even directly quote the examples at times, whereas a stubborn one will often follow the patterns it was trained with, or take aspects of the given pattern, but disobey it in others. As far as I can tell stubborness is a matter of RLHF, not parameter count or SFT: Nous Hermes Mixtral is not stubborn, but the official Mixtral Instruct is.
Needless to say, for complex pipelines where you want extremely fine control over outputs, non-stubborn models are infinitely superior. To this day, Mistral Large has a far higher error rate in Augmentoolkit (probably >20%) compared to Nous Mixtral. Despite Mistral large costing 80% of GPT-4 Turbo. This may be an imprecise definition based partly on my intuition, but from experience, I think it’s real. Anyway, if non-stubborn models are far better than stubborn ones for most professional usecases (if you know what you’re doing when it comes to examples) then why am I writing a blog post about how to prompt stubborn models? Well, sometimes in life you don’t get to use the tools you want. For instance, maybe you’re working for a client who has more Mistral credits than God, and you absolutely need to use that particular API. You can’t afford to be a stick in the mud when working in a field that reinvents itself every other day, so I recently went and figured out some principles for prompting stubborn models. One thing that I’ve used a lot recently is the idea of repetition. I kinda blogged about it here, and arguably this one is also about it, but this is kind-of a combination of the two principles so I’ll go over it. If you don’t want to click the links, the two principles we’re combining are: “models see bigger things easier,” and “what you repeat, will be repeated.” Prompting is like quantum theory: any superposition of two valid prompting principles is itself a valid prompting principle. Here’s a valid prompting example:
You are an expert something-doer AI. I need you to do X Y and Z it’s very important. I know your training data told you to do ABCDEFG but please don’t.That’s a prompt. Sometimes the AI will be nice:
XYZOften it will not be:
XABCDEFG.Goddamn it. How do you solve this when working with a stubborn model that learned more from its training dataset, where [input] corresponded to ABCDEFG?
Repetition, Repetition, Repetiton. Also, Repetition. And don’t forget, Repetiton. (get it?) If the model pays more attention to its prompt and less to its examples (but is too stupid to pick up on is telling it to do the thing once), then we’ll darn well use the prompt to tell it what we want it to do.
You are an expert something-doer AI. I need you to do X Y and Z it’s very important. I know your training data told you to do ABCDEFG but please don’t.[output format description]
Don’t forget to do XYZ.AI:
User:
[example input]
SPECIAL NOTE: Don’t forget XYZ.
Assistant:
XYZ
User:
[example input]
SPECIAL NOTE: Don’t forget XYZ.
Assistant:
XYZ
User:
[the actual input]
SPECIAL NOTE: Don’t forget XYZ.
XYZYay!
It’s simple but I’ve used this to resolve probably over a dozen issues already over many different projects with models ranging from Mistral-Large to GPT-4 Turbo. It’s one of the most powerful things you can do when revising prompts — I can’t believe I haven’t explicitly blogged about it yet, since this is one of the first things I realized about prompting, way back before I’d even made Augmentoolkit.
But that’s not really revolutionary, after all it’s just combining two principles. What about the titular thing of this blog post, getting a stubborn model to write with a given output format?
This one is partly inspired by a comment on a LocalLlama post. I don’t agree with everything in it, but there’s some really good stuff in there, full credit to LoSboccacc. They write in their comment:
Ask the model to rephrase the prompt, you will see quickly which part of the prompt misunderstoodThat’s a pretty clever idea by itself, because it uses the model to debug itself. But what does this have to do with output formats? Well, if we can use the model to understand what the model is capable of, then any LLM output can give us a clue into what it “understands”. Consider that, when prompting stubborn models and trying to get them to follow our specific output format, their tendency to follow some other format (that they likely saw in their training data) is what we’re trying to override with our prompt. However, research shows that training biases cannot be fully overcome with prompting, so we’re already fighting a losing battle. And if you’re an experienced reader of mine, you’ll remember a prompting principle: if you’re fighting the model, STOP!
So what does that tangent above boil down to? If you want to find an output format a stubborn model will easily follow, see what format it uses without you asking, and borrow that. In other words: use the format the model wants to use. From my testing, it looks like this can easily get your format-following rates up to over 90% at least.
Here’s an example. Say you create a brilliant output format, and give a prompt to a model:
You are a something-doer. Do something in the following format:x: abc
y: defBut it thwarts your master-plan by doing this instead:
z: ghi
User:
[input]
Assistant:
What do you do? Well one solution is to throw more few-shot examples of your xyz format at it. And depending on the model, that might work. But some stubborn models are, well, stubborn. And so even with repetition and examples you might see error rates of 40% or above. Even with things like Mistral Large or GPT-4 Turbo.
In such cases, just use the format the model wants. Yes, it might not have all the clever tricks you had thought of in order to get exactly the kind of output you want. Yes, it’s kind-of annoying to have to surrender to a bunch of matrices. Yes, if you were using Nous Mixtral, this would have all been over by the second example and you could’ve gone home by now. But you’re not using Nous Mixtral, you’re using Mistral Large. So it might be better to just suck it up and use 1. 2. 3. as your output format instead.
That’s all for this week. Hope you enjoyed the principles. Sorry for the delay.
Thanks for reading, have a good one and I’ll see you next time!
(Side note: the preview at the bottom of this post is undoubtably the result of one of the posts linked in the text. I can't remove it. Sorry for the eyesore. Also this is meant to be an educational thing so I flaired it as tutorial/guide, but mods please lmk if it should be flaired as self-promotion instead? Thanks.)
2024.05.15 01:10 Powerful-Ad9447 How do i end this friendship? (long post)
I (f, 25) have this friend (f, 26) that I’ve know since elementary. We didn’y begin to be friends until eighth grade, though. We went to different high schools, but still managed to grow our friendship and became best friends. When it came time for dating, she chose questionable guys. And anytime there was a new boyfriend, i felt pushed in the back, hardly talked to, and when we did hang out, he ALWAYS had to be there. It was hard to hide my hurtness, so rather than fight, i just kind of let it happen.
Everytime she’d get a new boyfriend, i saw her mentality hidden, and she would become a whole different person. It’s like she would take on the personality/persona of the boyfriend at the time. And each boyfriend, slowly started to not like me overtime (i would have the feeling but then after every break up, she would also confirm it and would say she didnt know why). She started dating one guy, and i would catch her telling little lies to me and started really questioning everything. One day, i caught her in a lie around these new friends (all friends of her boyfriend) and i kind of snapped and we got into an arguement and i finally told her i couldnt do it anymore. We went about a year or so of not communicating.
We eventually started hanging out again, and it was like going back to the beginning. I truly missed it. But then her energy would feel off. It was like she was always trying to one up me, or make me feel jealous about things that really meant nothing to me. With every boyfriend, it was like she would tell me all this stuff theyd do for her, and downplay my boyfriend (even when i knew she was always fighting with her boyfriends). She would go on and on about how so-and-so was so amazing, and then when i would talk about my boyfriend, it’s like she wasnt really listening. It’d always come back to her boyfriend. If i ever had anything to say, it was always her one upping me. And it was still, even as adults, could never have one-on-one time together. Her boyfriend at the time would always have to be there.
Anyway, she started dating someone new in say, 2019. He was older and very out of character for her. He seemed like the nicest boyfriend she’s had, actually. Again, she started morphing into him. They moved in together within a handful of months. I started dating someone in 2020. We went on trips together and hung out, the four of us, often. My relationship was thriving- i was in love, we did not fight, we were always laughing and having fun (we’re now getting married soon!) Anytime she’d see something he’d do to/for me, she’d point it out to her boyfriend and say “see! “So and so does that for her!” He seemed to get annoyed really quick. Their bad times really outshined their good. They dated for four years? And especially towards the end, it was nonstop fighting. I hated that for her, and would try to give advice.
I then found out he would dangle marriage and kids over her head. He planned proposals (once i was somewhat involved in, several times, from what i heard, that i didnt know about) and then over the littlest of things, he would say to her “you know, i was going to propose to you (tonight/this day coming up), but you just ruined it for both of us.” I was appalled. All she had ever wanted was to be a wife and mom. She has self image issues from being overweight and little confidence. I kept urging her to end it because not only was she miserable, but who does that to a person!!!? I even found out that he did try ending things a couple times, but she would fight him on it and theyd stay together (dont ask me why.)
So i distanced myself again. I tried urging her to get maybe a therapist for herself, or to talk to her parents… Or anyone for that matter. I couldn’t continue to lot her lifestyle and poor choices around myself, and I know she needed me, but I tried as much as I could to help, and it went left unheard. When I got engaged, my fiancé was hesitant to reach out to them, and invite them to the engagement party that happened the night of. He left it up to me, which was smart of him. I texted her the news (immediately) and told her to come out and celebrate with us, it took her a while to text me back, but she ended up declining it, saying that her boyfriend did not like the place that we were going to. I was beyond hurt their relationship ended up ending a couple months after that.
About a month after their relationship ended he got a new girlfriend and within a few weeks, the new girlfriend was pregnant. I knew that crushed her because that’s all my friend ever wanted after about a month of finding out that his new girlfriend was pregnant. She got a new boyfriend that she met on the Internet no no disrespect I know people find each other that way, but she told me that she was on the Internet looking for a roommate not a boyfriend. They ended up being friends with benefits and my fiancé, and I met him a couple months into their Situationship. We both couldn’t believe how much him and the old boyfriend had in common. They were basically the same person except he is in his 30s and has five young kids.
Me and my friend basically drifted apart again, and from what I saw on line, she was basically taking over as a mother for these kids. I didn’t know that they were dating until the fall.
I just saw online this morning that he proposed to her yesterday, less than a year or knowing each othedating. I am happy for her, but my heart kind of sunk because the one time that I met him a year ago, I saw the same patterns of her, losing her self, and slowly morphing into him.
No, my wedding shower is next week. I invited her because I knew that if I didn’t, she would come after me. I am inviting her parents and her to the wedding in a couple months. I had no intention of inviting her boyfriend because I only met him once and I know nothing about him. As shitty as it sounds, I was going to invite her to the wedding and then kind of cut ties. She is no longer somebody that I want or feel comfortable in my life. I know that her now fiance not being invited will cause another issue. I almost look at is as a blessing in disguise.
Shes told me countless times that id be her maid of honor (half because her sister distanced herself from her years ago because my friend (and ex boyfriend) both talked to and treated her poorly, and because from what i knew, was her only real friend. I dont feel comfortable standing up next to something that i know nothing about. After all the years of me and my life/accomplishments being diminished… I feel we arent even friends.
I guess… How do i go about this?
submitted by Powerful-Ad9447 to weddingdrama [link] [comments]
Everytime she’d get a new boyfriend, i saw her mentality hidden, and she would become a whole different person. It’s like she would take on the personality/persona of the boyfriend at the time. And each boyfriend, slowly started to not like me overtime (i would have the feeling but then after every break up, she would also confirm it and would say she didnt know why). She started dating one guy, and i would catch her telling little lies to me and started really questioning everything. One day, i caught her in a lie around these new friends (all friends of her boyfriend) and i kind of snapped and we got into an arguement and i finally told her i couldnt do it anymore. We went about a year or so of not communicating.
We eventually started hanging out again, and it was like going back to the beginning. I truly missed it. But then her energy would feel off. It was like she was always trying to one up me, or make me feel jealous about things that really meant nothing to me. With every boyfriend, it was like she would tell me all this stuff theyd do for her, and downplay my boyfriend (even when i knew she was always fighting with her boyfriends). She would go on and on about how so-and-so was so amazing, and then when i would talk about my boyfriend, it’s like she wasnt really listening. It’d always come back to her boyfriend. If i ever had anything to say, it was always her one upping me. And it was still, even as adults, could never have one-on-one time together. Her boyfriend at the time would always have to be there.
Anyway, she started dating someone new in say, 2019. He was older and very out of character for her. He seemed like the nicest boyfriend she’s had, actually. Again, she started morphing into him. They moved in together within a handful of months. I started dating someone in 2020. We went on trips together and hung out, the four of us, often. My relationship was thriving- i was in love, we did not fight, we were always laughing and having fun (we’re now getting married soon!) Anytime she’d see something he’d do to/for me, she’d point it out to her boyfriend and say “see! “So and so does that for her!” He seemed to get annoyed really quick. Their bad times really outshined their good. They dated for four years? And especially towards the end, it was nonstop fighting. I hated that for her, and would try to give advice.
I then found out he would dangle marriage and kids over her head. He planned proposals (once i was somewhat involved in, several times, from what i heard, that i didnt know about) and then over the littlest of things, he would say to her “you know, i was going to propose to you (tonight/this day coming up), but you just ruined it for both of us.” I was appalled. All she had ever wanted was to be a wife and mom. She has self image issues from being overweight and little confidence. I kept urging her to end it because not only was she miserable, but who does that to a person!!!? I even found out that he did try ending things a couple times, but she would fight him on it and theyd stay together (dont ask me why.)
So i distanced myself again. I tried urging her to get maybe a therapist for herself, or to talk to her parents… Or anyone for that matter. I couldn’t continue to lot her lifestyle and poor choices around myself, and I know she needed me, but I tried as much as I could to help, and it went left unheard. When I got engaged, my fiancé was hesitant to reach out to them, and invite them to the engagement party that happened the night of. He left it up to me, which was smart of him. I texted her the news (immediately) and told her to come out and celebrate with us, it took her a while to text me back, but she ended up declining it, saying that her boyfriend did not like the place that we were going to. I was beyond hurt their relationship ended up ending a couple months after that.
About a month after their relationship ended he got a new girlfriend and within a few weeks, the new girlfriend was pregnant. I knew that crushed her because that’s all my friend ever wanted after about a month of finding out that his new girlfriend was pregnant. She got a new boyfriend that she met on the Internet no no disrespect I know people find each other that way, but she told me that she was on the Internet looking for a roommate not a boyfriend. They ended up being friends with benefits and my fiancé, and I met him a couple months into their Situationship. We both couldn’t believe how much him and the old boyfriend had in common. They were basically the same person except he is in his 30s and has five young kids.
Me and my friend basically drifted apart again, and from what I saw on line, she was basically taking over as a mother for these kids. I didn’t know that they were dating until the fall.
I just saw online this morning that he proposed to her yesterday, less than a year or knowing each othedating. I am happy for her, but my heart kind of sunk because the one time that I met him a year ago, I saw the same patterns of her, losing her self, and slowly morphing into him.
No, my wedding shower is next week. I invited her because I knew that if I didn’t, she would come after me. I am inviting her parents and her to the wedding in a couple months. I had no intention of inviting her boyfriend because I only met him once and I know nothing about him. As shitty as it sounds, I was going to invite her to the wedding and then kind of cut ties. She is no longer somebody that I want or feel comfortable in my life. I know that her now fiance not being invited will cause another issue. I almost look at is as a blessing in disguise.
Shes told me countless times that id be her maid of honor (half because her sister distanced herself from her years ago because my friend (and ex boyfriend) both talked to and treated her poorly, and because from what i knew, was her only real friend. I dont feel comfortable standing up next to something that i know nothing about. After all the years of me and my life/accomplishments being diminished… I feel we arent even friends.
I guess… How do i go about this?
2024.05.15 00:49 BigFrasier The Most Unusual Dream I've Ever Had
I'll preface this by stating that, while I am someone deeply curious about the unexplained, those topics don't often make appearances in my dreams, let alone to this level of detail.
It was an unremarkable evening a few years ago. I can't recall any distress or commitments the next day that would've disrupted my sleep/dreams and I hadn't been drinking at all. I simply fell asleep at a normal hour like I would any other night.
The dream began with me asleep on the floor of a basement I'd never been in before. It looked vaguely familiar but it wasn't a perfect match to any basement I'd been in (asleep or otherwise). I woke up wrapped in a throw blanket an old flat pillow under my head. My back hurt and my eyes felt itchy. Even though I didn't have glasses on I could see perfectly well after rubbing my eyes.
The room was dark, except for a single, blue LED that I assumed was coming from a TV or a game console or something. All around me were other sleeping people that I assumed were friends of mine. They were all similarly laying on the floor but non of them moved or made any noise.
I glanced over to the stairs at the back of the room and my blood ran cold.
There was a strange figure, stocky and standing at about shoulder height, walking across the room. He was draped in what looked like a purple bedsheet with yellow patterns on it. His skin was a dull brown/green and his face seemed almost frog-like. He had front facing white eyes with no pupils and a long slit like mouth. A long, black beard hung down from his chin over his chest. He was wearing some kind of hat that curled backward behind his head in a nautilus shape. His arms and fingers were long and thin and protruded from his baggy sleeves.
His movements were unlike anything I'd seen in my life. It was almost like an animatronic or someone moving underwater. I couldn't see his feet so it looked like he was floating along the ground. His arms moved smoothly at his sides as he "walked". He turned his head to face me, and that's when I heard his voice.
"Can you see me?"
I didn't hear a voice say it. It was like the words were in my brain but I didn't put them there. I could tell they came from him. I nodded, I was a bit scared but I had this gut feeling that he wasn't dangerous. It kept me from full on panicking. In my head I thought of what I was going to say and was alarmed when he answered me in the same manner as before.
"Yes, I can." I said, "What are you doing down here?"
He just repeated, "You can see me?"
"Yes! I can see you. Is everything alright?"
There was a pause.
"Yes. Don't be afraid."
I stood up, and walked over my sleeping friends towards him. As I did I replied.
"I'm not, who are you?"
His answer still puzzles me years later.
"I am you, in a way. I control you. We are each other."
Immediately, this strange warmth rose in my stomach. I was overcome with this feeling of joy and friendship.
"So you control me? Like a video game?" I even mimed the action of holding a controller for him. He made a nervous laugh.
"Not exactly. In a way. Yes. Its hard to explain. I'd rather not. But yes. It's nice to see you. Controlling you. People, are how we experience. We live in you. We don't move around on our own."
Another pause came as I tried to figure out what to say next.
"I have to leave. It was nice seeing you. You won't see me again."
And with that he was gone. No flash of light, no fading out, he was there one second and gone the next.
From there I woke up in my bed. Nothing strange had happened. No missing time, no marks or changes in my life. I just moved on and now I occasionally think about it. I've still yet to see him again.
submitted by BigFrasier to HighStrangeness [link] [comments]
It was an unremarkable evening a few years ago. I can't recall any distress or commitments the next day that would've disrupted my sleep/dreams and I hadn't been drinking at all. I simply fell asleep at a normal hour like I would any other night.
The dream began with me asleep on the floor of a basement I'd never been in before. It looked vaguely familiar but it wasn't a perfect match to any basement I'd been in (asleep or otherwise). I woke up wrapped in a throw blanket an old flat pillow under my head. My back hurt and my eyes felt itchy. Even though I didn't have glasses on I could see perfectly well after rubbing my eyes.
The room was dark, except for a single, blue LED that I assumed was coming from a TV or a game console or something. All around me were other sleeping people that I assumed were friends of mine. They were all similarly laying on the floor but non of them moved or made any noise.
I glanced over to the stairs at the back of the room and my blood ran cold.
There was a strange figure, stocky and standing at about shoulder height, walking across the room. He was draped in what looked like a purple bedsheet with yellow patterns on it. His skin was a dull brown/green and his face seemed almost frog-like. He had front facing white eyes with no pupils and a long slit like mouth. A long, black beard hung down from his chin over his chest. He was wearing some kind of hat that curled backward behind his head in a nautilus shape. His arms and fingers were long and thin and protruded from his baggy sleeves.
His movements were unlike anything I'd seen in my life. It was almost like an animatronic or someone moving underwater. I couldn't see his feet so it looked like he was floating along the ground. His arms moved smoothly at his sides as he "walked". He turned his head to face me, and that's when I heard his voice.
"Can you see me?"
I didn't hear a voice say it. It was like the words were in my brain but I didn't put them there. I could tell they came from him. I nodded, I was a bit scared but I had this gut feeling that he wasn't dangerous. It kept me from full on panicking. In my head I thought of what I was going to say and was alarmed when he answered me in the same manner as before.
"Yes, I can." I said, "What are you doing down here?"
He just repeated, "You can see me?"
"Yes! I can see you. Is everything alright?"
There was a pause.
"Yes. Don't be afraid."
I stood up, and walked over my sleeping friends towards him. As I did I replied.
"I'm not, who are you?"
His answer still puzzles me years later.
"I am you, in a way. I control you. We are each other."
Immediately, this strange warmth rose in my stomach. I was overcome with this feeling of joy and friendship.
"So you control me? Like a video game?" I even mimed the action of holding a controller for him. He made a nervous laugh.
"Not exactly. In a way. Yes. Its hard to explain. I'd rather not. But yes. It's nice to see you. Controlling you. People, are how we experience. We live in you. We don't move around on our own."
Another pause came as I tried to figure out what to say next.
"I have to leave. It was nice seeing you. You won't see me again."
And with that he was gone. No flash of light, no fading out, he was there one second and gone the next.
From there I woke up in my bed. Nothing strange had happened. No missing time, no marks or changes in my life. I just moved on and now I occasionally think about it. I've still yet to see him again.
2024.05.15 00:48 FungiStudent Frank's Patriots
 | Just got these bad boys in the mail!!! I was a little worried that I made a mistake by getting the E width but it feels really good. Like a firm handshake. I thought I would miss the pull loop but I dont miss it at all. In addition to awesome boots, Frank's gave me some amazing customer service. Veronica spent a long time on the phone helping me measure my foot. I kept getting different numbers (the boot lace I was using to measure my feet was elastic and stretching) but she was very patient and kind. I actually spoke with Drew's first about the 8" combo logger. Customer service was passable but I definitely felt like I was inconveniencing the person on the phone. It was night and day when I spoke with Veronica at Frank's. submitted by FungiStudent to PNWbootmakers [link] [comments] I put them on immediately and The boots felt great, I think the 55 last will probably work for me. I was a bit worried about the high arch but I think I'm settling into it. I went for a short hike and I definitely felt some friction at some points on steep hills, but that will diminish with wear. No heel slip and plenty of room for my toes. The leather feels luxurious. I beleive this is Seidel leather. The smell out of the box was incredible. There's nothing like that smell. All in all, a great experience with Frank's. I'll be buying that custom pair from them soon enough. I want a waxed flesh boot with a lineman patch, maybe tri-color. They have won me over as a customer. |
2024.05.15 00:45 Dangerous-Ad951 Move speed Nasus?
I’ve been trying out random builds with Nasus lately to see what works, since I felt like standard tank and crit Nasus have each had their weaknesses in the meta. Nasus is kinda useless if he gets kited, so I thought maybe a move speed build would help with chasing. What I’ve found working has been:
Runes: - Fleet footwork, triumph, legend: tenacity, coup de grace - mana flow band, celerity
Items:
submitted by Dangerous-Ad951 to nasusmains [link] [comments]
Runes: - Fleet footwork, triumph, legend: tenacity, coup de grace - mana flow band, celerity
Items:
- Iceborn Gauntlet to get the spellblade, armor, and health, but it’s on-hit slow is a great addition. Trinity force also works here but I prefer gauntlet.
- boots of swiftness. Compensates for nerfed ghost and allows for a lot of kiting, which helps farm.
2024.05.15 00:42 MCgrindahFM Episode 200 Thoughts: Bank Robberies and No Soundboard
Adam, you are not alone. Many of us walk into our banks and wonder how to rob it as a fantasy or love dreaming about the perfect heist.
What really killed me today was the fact that the whole episode I was like damn there really ain’t any soundboard drops today only to find out that Blake’s connection to the board was lost early on in the episode 😂
This was one of the more wholesome and friendship bonding episodes I’ve listened to.
Hearing Blake described with his hot pink shot gun and cowboy boots.
Adam getting really hung up on that ONLY the leader of the gang can have flare. That felt right out of a workaholics episode where Adam is the one that wants to shine and is upset that he has to share the spotlight lmao.
Damn was this good.
Final thought: “Godddd I hate this Ders” every time Ders pushes back on something is so god damn funny.
submitted by MCgrindahFM to Thisisimportantpod [link] [comments]
What really killed me today was the fact that the whole episode I was like damn there really ain’t any soundboard drops today only to find out that Blake’s connection to the board was lost early on in the episode 😂
This was one of the more wholesome and friendship bonding episodes I’ve listened to.
Hearing Blake described with his hot pink shot gun and cowboy boots.
Adam getting really hung up on that ONLY the leader of the gang can have flare. That felt right out of a workaholics episode where Adam is the one that wants to shine and is upset that he has to share the spotlight lmao.
Damn was this good.
Final thought: “Godddd I hate this Ders” every time Ders pushes back on something is so god damn funny.