I struggled with social anxiety throughout most of my childhood and early teenage years. I mostly kept to myself and the people I felt “safe” with. I would avoid eye contact when running into people I knew in hopes they wouldn’t see me, if my parents had visitors over I’d pretend to be “asleep” so I wouldn’t have to socialize. One time I got to my aunt’s house and when I saw the entire house filled with people, I made my mom take me home because the idea of having to say hi to everyone was too much. I remember sitting in classrooms and observing people around me who were so outgoing, friendly, social, and always fantasized about being able to do so myself. I had friends still, but kept my relationships limited to school hours only. I never wanted to hang out with anyone outside of that setting even though I was often invited. I always came up with excuses or blamed it on my parents “being strict” and not letting me, even though I never asked lmao. Social anxiety and all, I always befriended people who were more outgoing than me somehow, I guess opposites attract, and essentially lived vicariously through their “experiences”, but also made me realizing how much I was missing out on. This really helped when I started high school. We started getting invited to parties, hangouts, dinners etc. if it weren’t for my friends, I feel like I would’ve missed out on so much of the “teenage” experience. While my social anxiety had significantly improved at this point, still played it “safe” most of the time. Once again, I’m so grateful to my close friends for understanding me and loving me for who I am. I also started working at a clothing store (Aeropostale) where 99% of the staff was my age. I would have to greet customers, help them out, and little by little, things started getting better. I realized that the more social I became, the more my confidence grew. I was so proud of myself, and hated when people that had known the more “anxious, anti social” version of me pointed out the fact that “I used to be shy”. Throughout college, I always had jobs that required a lot of “socializing” and I had no choice but to step out of my comfort zone. It was terrifying at first, but little by little things got easier. My junior year, I started working at a call center, where I took inbound calls from customers all day long, which meant having to be friendly, patient, and “social”. I remember that I avoided taking that first call for HOURS, but once I did, I realized “it wasn’t THAT bad, and once I started getting the rhythm of things, each call got easier. It was basically like I had no choice but to “put myself out there”, as hard as it was. Ironically, I also majored in “communications” lmao. A few years later I ended up getting diagnosed with ADHD, and I’d be lying if I said medications didn’t help me SIGNIFICANTLY. Suddenly, the constant overthinking and anxiety started to subside, and I truly wonder if there was a correlation between that and my social anxiety. As a 29 year old currently, I have a job that requires me to build relationships, mingle, and network constantly. I’m doing presentations, going to “mixers”, meeting new people every day and it’s no longer so scary. My younger self wouldn’t recognize me today!
Moral of the story: sometimes we have to put ourselves in uncomfortable situations if we want to grow and evolve. Also, the less you care about what people think, the better.

The other night, I cried to the point that my eyelids were swollen the next morning.
There’s nothing that I like about myself. I feel like people think I’m weird. I’m not smart(1000 SAT score), I’m lazy, and I’m not pretty either. I don’t have any passions or hobbies. My room has clothes everywhere and I do my homework at midnight, every night. I used to be able to maintain high A’s; however, I lost so much motivation that my GPA dropped a whole point. I’ll never forget when I tried to drop AP lang, my associate principal looked at my decline in grades and asked “did you give up or something?” I just feel so stupid and I’m angry at myself. I missed school so much that now I’m on credit recovery and I have to make up for the hours I was absent.
My presence is insignificant and it makes no difference if I don’t show up to school, miss the family gathering, or hide in my room upstairs. Even at school with my friends, I feel lonely. I feel like I annoy my friends. School is so mentally draining and I’m counting the days until summer break.
I feel like I’ll never be a functional adult in the future. I have no clue on what I want to do in life and my whole family is pushing this narrative that I need to be a lawyer or doctor; however, I’m so lazy and slow that I can’t even handle junior year of high school.
Sometimes it feels like it would be better if I was never born. My sisters are truly amazing, smart, and dedicated, but I can never be that.
It makes no difference that I am around and frankly, I wouldn’t mind getting in an accident and dying.

Fletch gently pushed open the large and lavishly decorated bronze doors of the university administration building and ambled out into the portico. He set his cup of coffee down on the pedestal of a granite pillar and pulled his cigarette case from the breast pocket of his tan trench coat. The old chief inspector plucked a cigarette from the ornately engraved case with slender fingers and wondered why the Kael let him come at all.
Something felt very off with the whole thing. The more he thought about it, the more he questioned the story he got. Mike Anderson was certainly depressed, but as far as Fletch could tell, he had not displayed any suicidal behavior. And why now? Fletch thought. Things were on the upswing for the kid. His grades were excellent, his family situation was good, and he was out of the house more this term than the last. Fletch scratched his mustache. Why would the seals hide the autopsy and the gun? He brought the cigarette to his lips, snapped the filigreed case shut, and slipped it back into the breast pocket of his coat. Fletch flicked open his lighter and sighed as he lit his cigarette. Murder.
It was a hopeless case. These days, warrants were approved by the seals, and even if they weren't, he doubted that he could get one anyway. His suspicion of foul play was backed by nothing but his instinct.
Fletch watched students hustle and bustle through the plaza in front of him as he puffed away at his cigarette and pondered his theory.
But why kill him now? They could have done it in complete secrecy while he was a POW. And it couldn’t be to keep what happened in Philadelphia under wraps. His death brings more attention to it. And he wasn’t a rebel. So why? Fletch sipped at his coffee as he flicked ash from his cigarette. Vengeance? Did he kill some noble brat during the war?
Fletch scratched at his grey mustache and glanced at his watch. I’ll have to follow that thread. He tossed his half-smoked cigarette into a puddle as he briskly walked down the steps and through the university plaza.
The withered investigator was deep in thought when he entered the parking lot. What do I tell that Enrique chap? He unlocked his car and crawled in. I certainly can’t tell him that his mate’s been clipped with no evidence. Fletch turned the key, and the engine of his little Volvo sputtered to life. It’s no bleeding use. I’ll just tell the lad they weren’t interested in sharing and keep my suspicions to myself.
As he reached for the shifter, Fletch noticed a delightfully thick manilla envelope stuck in the gap between the center console and the passenger seat.
He pulled the envelope from the crack. Gingerly, he opened it and pulled out a small note. It read We’re even now, prick.
Fletch smiled and couldn’t help but mutter, “The game is afoot,” as he flicked through the stack of documents inside.
Isabella poked her head into the large office and saw Professor Dret’la with a ball of dark green yarn on her lap and bone darning needles beset with carvings in her hands.
Isabella was struck with confusion. What? She crochets!?
The professor looked up from her labor, spotted the confused girl outside her door, and called, “Come in.”
Isabella walked into the office and took a seat. She gestured to the yarn in the professor's hands. “What are you making?”
The professor smiled as motherly as one could with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. “It will be a hat for my son. He just received his commission as a junior biologist, so he has to rummage around in freezers to get samples for his whole research team.”
Isabella blinked. This was not characteristic at all for the quick-tempered professor with a penchant for launching chalk across lecture halls at the mildest provocation.
Isabella shook off her shocked expression and gave the tall professor a dimpled cheek smile. “That’s so sweet! I’m sure he’ll love it. One of the best gifts I’ve ever received was a thick wool sweater from my mamma during a training exercise off the coast of Norway.”
The professor, still smiling, sat up straight. “I hope that’s the kind of reception I get.”
The professor’s demeanor hardened as she stowed the yarn and needles in the desk drawer. “Now, let's get down to business.”
Isabella gulped.
“To start, congratulations. You’ve passed our testing and been selected for officer training.”
Isabella asked, “Who else was selected?”
“There are nine others: Robert Rhodes, Elena Pavel, Hal Jellico, Zheng Li, Brooke Halsey, Colow Aden, Magnus Tordenskjold, Bill Lee, and Kazuya Yamamoto.”
Isabella didn’t recognize all the names.
“Should you choose to accept, you will be taking a prep course taught by Colonel Ocidea and I starting next week and lasting all through the summer. If we deem you ready, you’ll ship out for basic training and then off to the Royal Military Academy, where you can earn your commission.” Dr. Dret’la leaned in close to Isabella. “Do you accept?”
Without hesitation, Isabella answered, “Yes.”
“Mike, come over here. You’re going to want to see this.” Calty voiced from her seat in the front of the cockpit.
Mike rolled off the couch and walked into the front of the cockpit as the captain shouted, “Decelerate!” Mike couldn’t help but grab onto the back of Calty’s seat as the FTL drive kicked into gear. The cockpit glass dimmed just before blindingly bright blue jets of fire from the front-facing engines came into view. A bright green circle flickered onto the glass surrounding a marble-sized dot darker than the rest of the now dim screen. The dots and circles expanded at an extreme pace until they took up most of the display. Another dot appeared—minuscule compared to the other—surrounded by a red circle. The growth of the shadowy dots and the circles around them slowed and then stopped entirely as the engines sputtered out.
The HUD faded out of view, and the tint of the glass slowly lightened, revealing a vast planet embraced by blue-green ice with a colossal foundry in its orbit. The planet, a gas giant called Drassus, was orbited by four rings. One was made of containers, and the other three were made up of loose ore gleaming in the nearby star's light. Exhaust chimneys spewing gas and fire sprouted from the otherwise spherical foundry, giving it a sea urchin-like profile, which, together with the weave of pipes bringing fuel from beneath the icy surface of the planet below, made the foundry resemble an old naval mine.
The captain strode up to the front of the cockpit. “One-third ahead and steer 14 degrees left. We’re unloading in bay three.”
Six mech suits and a tug exited a plasma-shielded hanger as the ship came to a halt. The mechs glided to the front of the ship and started dismounting the external cargo bay from the Broken Fin while the tug hitched onto the opposite end of the ten-kilometer-long rack of containers.
A little while later, the tug pulled away with the load of containers, and the comm system blared to life. “Broken Fin, you are cleared to leave. The UO corporation thanks you for your business.”
The captain replied, “Our pleasure. Broken fin out.” as the ship pulled out of the loading bay.
He turned to the navigation officer and said, “Lock in coordinates for jump to Kael Prime.”
The captain went to the central control board and pulled up traffic control. “Tower 1, this is the Broken Fin. We request a jump slot to Kael Prime from Drassus.”
“Broken Fin, request granted. Your departure slot is at 16:33.”
Mike glanced at the top right of the ship's HUD and looked at the time. 16:21.
Better get my stuff together…
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The ship shuddered ever so slightly despite the inertial dampeners as it exited FTL. Mike was lounging on the couch with his bag at his feet. He was ready to get off this tub.
Mike idly watched flames lick at the cockpit window as the ship descended into the atmosphere of Kael Prime. He looked at Dreki, who was sitting on the other couch. His muscles bulged through his clothes despite wearing a white sweater so large it could be mistaken for the sail of an average-sized boat. Mike asked, “Do you know anything about what’ll happen to me now?”
The big Kael shifted in his seat. “Technically, I’m not supposed to tell you anything, but what the hell.” Dreki pulled the collar of his sweater down, revealing an angry white number burnt into his iron-gray skin just below the collarbone. “First, you’ll get branded.” He released his shirt and pointed to a small scar on the side of his head. “Then you’ll get an AR implant.”
“Where will I be getting that?” Mike asked.
“The Imperial Science Academy. We’re going to be staying there for a few days. They’ll run a bunch of tests and get you fitted for equipment there. After that, I’ll drop you off at the spaceport, and you’ll be off to Tlaxcalssus for basic training. After that, I don’t know.”
“Thanks.”
The ship shook as it touched down on the landing pad. “Time to go.” Dreki shouldered his pack and walked out the door. Mike fiddled with the straps of his bag as he followed Dreki down the ramp and to the far side of the ship, away from the rest of the passengers. Mike's nose was immediately assaulted with the acrid smell of sulfur from where the fiery exhausts of engines had melted asphalt. The spaceport was swarming with vehicles and filled with the constant roar of ship engines and a symphony of smaller equipment. Power loaders and mechs loaded and unloaded heavy cargo, shuttles bustled to and fro with passengers, baggage carriers snaked through the crowded landing pads, and vehicles that looked like floating garage doors zipped through the air at ankle height, bringing pilots and crew to their ships. Mike couldn’t help but chuckle a little at the absurdity of it all. Here he was, in the heartland of the enemy, walking through what was essentially a ten-acre parking lot.
Dreki plopped his bags on the ground and yawned as he stretched his arms over his head. “Our skiff will be here in a minute.”
Mike tuned out the beeps and whirrs of the tank-sized forklifts and mechs unloading the ship and gazed out beyond at the horizon. You’re not in Kansas anymore, bub. Mike thought as he studied the skyline of the imperial city basked in the glow of the early evening sun. Some of the buildings wouldn’t look all that out of place on Earth, but the skyline was assaulted with abominations that pissed on the laws of physics as Man understood them. Tusk-shaped skyscrapers defied gravity with their seemingly unsupported curves, and even more absurd were pyramids stacked atop another point-to-point like hourglasses. Any delusion of normalcy that Mike could come up with was shattered.
Dreki picked up his bag and pointed to a slab of black marble speeding towards them at ankle height. “Here’s our skiff.” A railing popped out of the center as the skiff came to a gliding halt. Dreki boarded the skiff and took hold of the rail, and Mike followed suit.
They sped through the spaceport and stopped outside what looked to Mike like a train station. Dreki shouldered his bag and stepped off the skiff. Mike stepped off and quickly fell in pace with Dreki. The big Kael led Mike into a grand station bustling with people. Most were Kael, but there was a smattering of other species. Some stared at Mike, others glanced, but most completely ignored him as he followed Dreki through the hall and onto a platform. Unfamiliar aliens clearly weren’t an uncommon sight here.
The walls of the station were covered with mosaics depicting Kael warriors from the distant past. Dreki noted the human's curiosity and said, “The founders of the clans.” He leveled a massive hand toward an opulent, towering mosaic of a Kael warrior wielding a bronze falx. The imposing figure's body was made of blue gemstones, the eyes rubies, one tusk silver, and the other gold. “That’s the founder of my clan, Drekalla Gold Tusk.”
Mike asked, “How’d he manage that?” As he followed Dreki into a mostly empty train car.
Dreki plopped down on a bench. “He was the war priest of Hroptaug the Conqueror during the unification wars. After the wars were won, Hroptaug granted us the Steam Hills.” Dreki pointed through the train window at the mosaic of another warrior whose body was made of milky white pearls. “That one,” He paused and spat on the floor, “Tiblan the Terror, challenged Drekalla to a duel for most of that land. Drekalla was cutting him to pieces, but the craven poisoned his blade. Just before Drekalla could deliver the final blow, the poison reached his heart, and Drekalla died. The only wound on his body was a cut across his forearm that barely drew blood.” Dreki rolled up his sleeve, showing a scar that reached from his elbow to the middle of his forearm. “Every K’alla is cut the same way to remind us of the blood feud.”
Mike inwardly sighed. Kael and their damned feuds… “How long ago was this.”
“Seven thousand four hundred and fifty-one years ago.”
Mike held back a snort. The absurdity of it all. The first human law codes came about to stop blood feuds, and out here, they have feuds that have lasted longer than Earth's recorded history.
“How’s that feud been going as of late?”
Dreki’s face sagged, “Not good.”
They both grew quiet. Mike shuffled uncomfortably.
Mike glanced at the route display and broke the silence, “What's with the middle city, inner city thing?”
Dreki relaxed slightly. “Oh, so the city used to be a fortification. The inner city is actually a volcanic island. The middle is built over the river, and the outer city was built on the banks.”
“I see.”
The doors closed, and the intercom sounded, “Next stop, the inner city.”
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Dale Robert’s wrinkled face was unreadable, and his highly decorated black and blue dress uniform immaculate as he led a horse through the street. He felt the eyes of thousands of onlookers on him, and he hated it. The pure black horse had a black leather saddle on its back. Two tall, glossy black boots were placed backward in silver stirrups, and the elaborate hilt of Mike’s basket-hilted broadsword jutted from the top of a black leather scabbard buckled to the saddle. Roberts followed the horse-drawn caisson bearing the flag-draped coffin of his old commanding officer. Not much farther now, he thought. The sounds of the cartwheels rolling and the horse’s tack jangling were wholly drowned out by boots stamping the ground in unison. Almost all of the 1800 survivors of the 801st regiment were there, resplendent in their dress uniforms, marching behind Mike one more time. The local police and fire departments joined them.
Roberts was unsure about it all. He felt that the poor kid's family would have preferred a smaller service back home in Colorado instead of this damn near royal procession. And Roberts was damn sure that the seals did not give their permission for this, no matter what the police chief said.
A reporter ducked through the police barricade and tried to ask the marching soldiers questions, but they remained stone-faced as the procession marched nearer to the gates of Philadelphia National Cemetery. Roberts handed the reigns of the riderless horse to another man in uniform and joined seven other members of Charlie platoon in pulling the casket from the cassion. They silently began their march to the grave, closely followed by General McCarthy, the man who was Joint Chief of Staff, and the color guard. Bagpipers began to blare, “Going Home.” Roberts heard the sound of gravpulse engines and looked up in dismay as a Kael gunship broke through the low clouds and descended to just barely above the cemetery. A loudspeaker blared, “Disperse at once.”

I'm a junior sound editor working on adding foley for some shows, and I'm curious to know how hard you guys go on cloth movement? Do you add cloth for every little movement a character makes? Or do you only add it for larger, more exaggerated motions?
Right now, my boss wants it on everything -- pretty much every walk, every subtle arm movement, etc., so it takes me many many hours to do. And honestly, some of the cloth I've been adding, I don't think I would every hear it in the real world like that, but my boss seems to like it, so I just continue doing it.
Finally, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on why this is important? Like I get adding cloth to exagerated movements, like running, fighting, fast hand motions, etc., but why the subtle, almost inaudible cloth? Honestly, I can barely hear any of the cloth in the mix once it's edited together, so I'm really eager to hear justification for the many hours I put into something that is almost completely inaudble in the final mix, Lol...

Here we are again in the shit stew that is the Fallowveil trailer park. We’ve got soul eating strippers, jobs that kill us, and plenty of weirdos, both the trailer trash and the potentially paranormal variety. It’s the place where even your own computer sometimes threatens to kill you. I can’t tell if I should be worried, or annoyed that all my neighbors have such irresponsible web habits. I know it’s not me that brings in all these machine wiping viruses.
So even though I got a system error that literally said “you’re useless and you should die” I’m less interested in that. Stupid thing. Like I don’t already know I’m useless. That’s not what I’m depressed about.
Well… I suppose it's tangentially related.
I hope anyone reading will forgive me. I’m feeling the sting of rejection right now. It was really stupid of me to ask. Especially now. Nobody here really likes me. They’ve only been nice to me as a courtesy because I was almost involved in a god damn shootout. And my idiot self decided that was the perfect time to push one of my few friends all the way away. Never ask your friends out on dates. It ruins everything.
So there’s this woman. I’ve talked about her in the past. Trista Ramone. She lives in the far back corner of the trailer park. You can instantly tell which unit is hers because she’s covered every square inch of the property with gardens and a rabbit hutch. The place usually has beads and colorful flags hanging on its walls as well. She’s kind of a right winger’s nightmare. I know some of those flags represent various lgbtq plus communities.
She and I have been friendly in the past. We’re both night shift workers. We crossed paths quite a bit going to and from work so we struck up a friendship over the years.
Let’s just ripped the band aid off. Recently I’ve started thinking I had… stronger feelings for Trista. I got stupid and decided to tell her about them. She wasn’t interested. I get why. We have very different lifestyles. I like meat, and she thinks the meat industry is murder. I’m not willing to give up meat, and she’s not willing to give up her beliefs. It's as simple as that. Now things are incredibly awkward with one of my closer friends and I’m still spiraling into self loathing, where I belong.
She swore up and down that she absolutely still wants to be friends with me, but I’m not sure I believe her. The look she gave me when I told her I’d like to ask her out. It looked like sadness, but a small part of me is convinced it was pity, or worse, disgust and loathing, and that small part gave me ever shuts the fuck up. But anyway, she gave me permission to write about her.
She is one of the creepy fixtures of our little neighborhood after all. She told me to make her seem as insane and scary as I possibly could and that she should get to kill me at the end. She also handed me a few of her high school yearbooks, advised me to chat with another neighbor of ours who she went to school with, and to only use creepy rumors for the rest.
Part of me is really willing to describe her as awful, but that’s just my anger. I don’t like that part of me. Trista’s not a bad person at all. She’s just weird and she doesn’t want to date me. God damn it, Petunia’s right. I need therapy.
So, I’ve told the story of the sexy, scary lady living in a polycule here in the trailer park. I think she’s got a bigger heart than she lets on. I’ve talked about the stories surrounding the Schroeder Slaughterhouse. Now let’s talk about the hippy everyone thinks is a vampire.
She’s a taller woman, maybe five-seven or eight, and she’s skinny. Her typical wardrobe is… interesting. Try to imagine your typical new-age hippy/stoner girl, wearing colorful sarongs, crop-tops, beanies, baggy sweaters, T-shirts with colorful sayings on them, sandals, boots woven from some sort of exotic plant, beaded necklaces, bracelets, a few too many piercings and some intricate tattoos. Can you picture that kind of person? Well, take that and dip them in “goth” dye. Everything is black, and contrasts to her pale white complexion, her eyes are this unusual violet color, and then make the woman wearing all that seem kind of depressed about something. That’s the look Trista has going on. Like if Wednesday Addams was forced to dress up for Hippy Day.
I’ve heard people call her an emo vampire, but as a former emo myself, she doesn’t fill out all the criteria. She doesn’t typically wear any super tight pants or cake on the eyeshadow. I guess she’s just Trista. It might sound weird (and it is) but the whole thing suits her. Her style, tattoos, and complexion all create this image of skinny vampiric waif with a mysterious past and a freaky sarcastic attitude and I found the whole thing… kinda hot.
Trista keeps to herself. She’s made the most out of her little corner of the trailer park. Like I said, she decked out her unit with garden squares, and a Rabbit pen. No idea why she’s allowed to do that. A lot of these places don’t allow pets. I heard she was also trying to put in a beehive too, but her neighbors are fighting her on that one. Our park is a bit too condensed for bees. She has a permit to grow hemp, but of course it’s not for recreational use. She treats it and uses it to weave things like handbags, clothes, and other stuff. There’s a consignment store in town that sells all kinds of things Trista has crafted herself. So she’s handy and self sufficient too. She paints, she carves wood, she weaves, she crochets, she sews, and who knows what else. She’s so good at her little crafts that apparently she’s able to support herself just selling them and working part time at the Moonlight Inn outside of town.
She’s also relatively friendly. I almost feel bad calling her weird, but here’s the thing, I’ve seen some REALLY weird shit. People jokingly call her a vampire, and she seems to embrace that, but part of me seriously wonders. The big clue is, like I mentioned, she’s completely nocturnal. She’s always asleep during the day, and every blind and curtain is drawn tight. The one time she came out during the day, she had on this full body suit with a helmet with UV glass and everything. Even then, she only showed up to give Petunia a hug, before leaving again.
That was the first time I saw Trista, come to think of it. I was kind of intrigued. It was kind of hard not to be when someone shows up to a community cookout in a freaking astronaut suit. I approached Petunia after she left.
“Who the heck was that?” I wondered.
“MASON! I’m so glad you could make it! You’ve been here about three months now! How’d that job interview go?”
“Oh. It went well. I might be doing janitorial work soon.”
“Night shift?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“If it’s the night shift, you’ll definitely meet the person who just left. That’s Trista. She’s the girl with the rabbits in the far corner. Poor girl. She’s got a really bad skin condition. Can’t let sunlight touch her.”
“Oh. Is she like… albino or something?”
“No, she’s got pigment. I don’t remember what the condition is called. I guess it started in high school or something. You’d have to ask her. And hey! If you work the night shift, you’ll probably get to chat with her!”
Petunia wasn’t wrong. I started working as a nighttime janitor for a number of local businesses. That was when I first started noticing the pale goth hippy. She rides around on a moped, with her dark hair and her sarong barely billowing behind her. I couldn’t see her face through the helmet, but she waved to me as she passed by.
The next time I saw her, she was jogging, but here’s where it gets weird. When I first stepped outside, all I saw was a blur. It actually startled me as I whipped toward it, but then there was this skinny tattooed pixie, somehow still looking like a stonehippy/vampire in jogging gear. I swear she was moving inhumanly fast when I first noticed her. That was when we introduced ourselves. She actually jogged over to say hello.
“Hey! You’re the new guy right?”
“Oh, uh, yeah. My name’s Mason!” I reached out to shake the pretty girl’s hand, like an awkward loser. She smirked and shook my hand. Her grip was weirdly strong, and a bit cold.
“I’m Trista. I’m the weirdo in the back with the rabbits.”
“Trista… oh, are you the one who has a thing with sunlight? I think Petunia mentioned you.”
“Yup! That’s me. Xerodoma pigmentosum. Sunlight hurts. I hate that it hurts.” She lamented.
“That’s gotta be rough,” I said sympathetically.
“You get used to it. You work at night?”
“Yeah. Works better for me.”
“I get that.”
And so on and so on. She’s pretty cool, with a bit of hilarious snark in there. And she secretly procured recreational weed she was willing to share. I kept working the night shift just hoping for another chance to talk to her and possibly buy a joint. Eventually she invited me over to share a joint. The inside of her place was actually pretty sparse and spartan compared to the outside. Though she was a fan of hanging beads. Most of the main room was taken up by her various crafting projects and supplies. Hemp weaves, some paintings, and even a wood carving of what I think was a rabbit, but it wasn’t anywhere near complete.
I followed her to her kitchen where she reached into the very back of her pantry and pulled out a shoebox. Inside was her stash, but there was something else which I found very strange. It was a pack of syringes and a thing I assume is to sterilize syringes. I know what you’re thinking, and that was my first thought too. It’s a poor neighborhood, the woman already smokes weed illegally, it’s not that big a shock that maybe she was involved in other drugs too. I decided not to ask at the time. We shared our joint, and we laughed, a lot. She made fun of me for being a lightweight, while I got completely hypnotized staring at the patterns of a shawl she had woven.
Months went by and we got closer, but I couldn’t forget those syringes. After a while I got worried. I’ve seen what heroine does to people. So the next time I went over to smoke and eat (vegan) pizza with her, I asked.
“Trista? Are you using anything other than weed?”
“Drugs?”
“Yeah.”
“No. Why?”
“You can tell me if you are.”
“Mason, sweetheart, I’m a stoner. I don’t fuck around with anything else and I never have.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay. Can I ask what that set of syringes are for?”
“Oh. In my stash box? Those are… part of my condition. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh. Is it like… embarrassing?”
“Yeah. So don’t ask. Can we just watch a movie?”
So I don't ask anymore. But I still have no idea what she does with those syringes. Based on what I read about that Xerodoma Pigmentosum thing she says she has, I have no clue what she would need to inject herself with.
Another time she asked me to check on her rabbits for her during the day, as her usual “sitter” had something come up. All I had to do was chop up the lettuce and carrots she left out. As I was enjoying the adorable fluffy faces, one of Trista’s neighbors, a woman named Bridget, poked her head outside her door.
“Hey. Do you know what Trista injects those rabbits with?”
“I… what?”
“I’ve seen her use syringes on those rabbits. She said she was just giving them medicine, but I swear I see her inject them every week.”
“I… I wouldn't know. She just asked me to feed them.”
“I love Trista, but that always seemed so weird. She has to know vaccines are a hoax!” I tuned the woman out after that one. My mind was on that set of syringes. Why would she be using them on rabbits? These things were her pets.
I was starting to crush on her by then. But I couldn’t help feeling weirded out by that. I was actually going to confront her, but the next time I came to visit, she was literally inside the Rabbit hutch, on her back, squealing with delight as her rabbit friends nuzzled and played with her.
“Bonnibelle! That tickles! Marcy! No chewing. Finn? Watch where you’re sticking that foot! Jake? Where are you? EEEEE Lumpy! Not the neck!”
It was as silly and adorable as it sounds. She was forced to whip herself upright when two of her little friends tried to burrow under her dress. She finally stood up with a laugh, cradling a rabbit in her arms and cooing at it.
There was just no way in hell this woman was doing anything that would hurt these animals. Bridget is a paranoid antivax weirdo anyway. If Trista was using syringes on the rabbits, I was convinced it was only for their benefit.
So life went on. I got more and more reclusive over the years. Petunia, Trista, and my next door neighbor Fred were the only things keeping me remotely connected to the outside. And so we get to now. So let’s see. What are the stories about the weird vampire woman?
Well, there’s the fact that she jogs at night, solo, in a poor neighborhood. Petunia keeps the shitty people contained and behaving for the most part, but I still wouldn’t exactly call it safe, especially for a young skinny woman. But she does it without a care in the world.
There’s one strange event that some people like to connect to this. I never knew this guy, but from what I hear he was a total weirdo who leered at anyone even remotely female. And this is despite the fact he was married. His name was Josh.
I remember him a bit. He’s the guy that Petunia chased away from one of her barbecues. Supposedly he was heard saying inappropriate things to the groups of ten year old girls that were playing in the bounce house Petunia rented. Telling them how pretty they were. Trying to coax them to take off their jackets. Police reports were filed but ultimately nothing could be proven. The guy's wife, Carole, always defends him for some reason.
But anyway, I remember hanging out with Trista one night a little over a year ago. She hadn’t gone jogging like she normally did. I asked her what was up with that.
“That weirdo, Josh has started catcalling when I pass his place. It weirds me out.”
“There aren’t other people who do that at night? I’m still shocked you jog alone.”
“Not like this. I can flip off a wolf whistler. But this guy… he keeps trying to get me to stop and talk to him, and when I don’t? He shouts about my ass. I’m gonna have to talk to Petunia about that shithead, if anybody can reign him in, it’s her.”
I’m gonna guess she never got a chance. Two days later, the whole town was awoken by sirens. I was getting ready for my shift when I heard them. I walked down the road a bit to see if I could figure out what was going on. The cops were heading toward the other side of the park, so I couldn’t see much. But I did notice Trista, in her jogging gear, skulking in the shadows. I wondered if she was in trouble. But before I could call out to her, she sprinted straight to Petunia's house and banged on the door. Petunia welcomed her inside, and that was all I saw. I still wasn’t sure what was going on, so I just shrugged and headed to work, figuring I’d text Trista later.
I didn’t learn till later that Josh was found dead. He was lying prone, face down, partly hidden by bushes at the edge of the park. His neck was cut open. He’d bled out rapidly. He had a knife in his hand, and officially it’s believed he fell on it and accidentally killed himself. There was a cocktail of drugs in his system so most people accept that explanation. But others swear they saw Trista out for her jog around the same time Josh would have been bleeding to death. She got questioned, and she swore she didn’t see anything. Without evidence, there was nothing else that could be proven.
Trista’s a friend. I know that guy was being creepy to her. So I’m happy to take her word for what happened, even if my seeing her going to Petunia’s pokes a bit of a hole in that. I can’t be sure it was Trista though. So I’m not saying a word. But if a certain creep attacked a certain lady who is rumored to be a vampire, it’s not that surprising to me that he ended up dead after bleeding to death. I’m not all that broken up about it.
I’m not the one spreading that story. Josh’s wife was the one who started the rumor. So now some people are even more convinced that the weird nocturnal hippy chick is secretly a vampire.
She’s no killer. No matter what they say. She would only have defended herself.
So that’s all the stories I’ve heard that have any credibility to them. There’s more people who swear she and Petunia perform weird rituals, and people who saw her moving “inhumanly fast” and such.
But now I have to share what I found in the yearbooks Trista gave me. I wasn’t really expecting much. I checked her senior yearbook out first. She looks about the same. Pale, goth, hippy, and sort of sad. She kind of looks even sadder in these photos if I’m being honest, but that’s high school for you. She graduated in the top half of her class, no sports or extracurriculars. I’m left wondering how she managed to go to school at the time of sun was so bad for her. I’ll have to ask her about that. So nothing really new there.
It was the yearbook from her junior year where things got really interesting. I was in shock when I found her. Trista is somehow impossible to miss, but unrecognizable all at once. She’s full of color! She wore more typical tie dye hippy attire. Bright vibrant pinks, reds, blues, greens, and yellows, in every photo, and holy shit was she busy. Captain of the soccer team, first chair flutist, president of the “green living” club and the “vegan alliance,” top ten in her class, it was all incredible. I think the main reason I didn’t recognize her was her skin. It was tan, as though she were out in the sun a lot. Furthermore there were photos of her playing sports and standing outside in bright sunlight.
It was like her disease wasn’t there, which confused me. She told me it was something called Xeroderma Pigmentosa. But that’s a genetic condition. She would have had that from birth.
I sent her a text, wondering about this.
- Hey! Just went through your yearbooks. What happened? You had color? Did you discover Linkin Park?
- My disease happened. Right at the end of Jr. year. That’s why I wasn’t there for the final class photo.
- But your disease is genetic… isn’t it?
- I guess it was dormant in me.
- So it just… happened?
- Pretty much.
- I’m sorry.
- I got over it. Mostly. It was hard. My parents were both hardcore vegan naturalists and we lived in a place that was all natural light and such, so I had to live in a shed for a bit while they built a space for me. But in my family? We kinda lean into whatever life throws at us. It took months of depression to come to terms with it. All of a sudden I couldn’t be out in the sun, and I had new dietary needs that absolutely required non-vegan sources. So I leaned into it. I was a vampire now. I can dig dark colors and “vampire style.” I could make it my own by avoiding leather. And I’d be as vegan as I possibly could.
- You’re kind of awesome.
- Damn straight. So I learned to love the night too and now, here I am.
I gained new respect for her after that. Frankly I feel kinda shitty about making fun of her for being a vampire. There might not be anything paranormally weird about her after all.
She sent me one more text telling me I should talk to a guy named Frankie. She’d gone to school with him. He’s a decent enough guy. Works in the Bicounty mall in town.
I had to wait a day or two for another of Petunia’s get togethers to talk to him.
“Hey!” I said awkwardly as I tried to figure out how to strike up conversation with someone I haven’t really spoken to in a long time. “Frankie, right?”
“Oh. Yeah. Been a while. How are you Mason? You okay after that whole thing at Red Nights?”
“I’m trying to be. Look, I’ll cut to the chase. You went to school with Trista Ramone, right?”
“Ol’ Boho Ramone? Yeah. We were sort of friendly. But I was a jerk to vegans back then. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve been hanging out with her. She’s being all mysterious.” He chuckled at that. “She said I should talk to you to learn more about her… weirdness? Everyone thinks she’s a vampire now.”
“She’s totally a vampire. I have no idea what else to call her?”
“Why do you say that?”
“What did she tell you about school?”
“Nothing. She just showed me two yearbooks. Between Junior and Senior year she went from colorful club president, to lonely vampire, because of her disease.”
“Nah man. I don’t want to talk bad about her. But she was kind of a bitch, junior year. She wasn’t just a colorful vegan. She was one of those “holier than thou” types who scoffed and talked down to anyone who dared to eat meat. Her “hippy” thing meant she never hung out with the popular girls but still, she acted like she owned the place at times. I was friends with this weird guy named Steven Jones. He was just kind of a weirdo. Skulking around in the background, you know? He HATED Trista. For a while I totally understood. I thought she was kinda stuck up. But this guy was like… irrationally enraged by that girl’s existence. I guess he tried to ask her out when he was a freshman and she politely declined. But he took that shit personally.”
“Huh. So like… why’s that matter?”
“Because Steven kept saying to anyone who gave him a second look, that he was gonna ‘ruin’ her. Never elaborated. But then the last month of school rolls around, Trista gets assaulted by an unknown assailant and a week later she’s got this new disease. Meanwhile, Steven spent a week strutting around the school looking smug, and saying ‘she got what she deserved.’ Then he disappears too. Teachers said he moved away.”
“She was assaulted?”
“Yeah. Someone in a face wrap tackled her while she was at one of her protests at the meat factory. The dude freaking BIT her.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. I was there. I came to the protest. I’ll admit I was trying to hit on Trista or one of the other girls there. But yeah. Dude dressed in all gray with a face wrap just charged in and went right for Trista. Knocked her down, bit her like a freaking zombie, then ran away before anyone could stop him. Didn’t even take his face wrap off. It was freaky, man.”
“What the actual fuck.”
“That’s what we all said. Trista needed a stitch. But while she was at the hospital, I guess she started getting more symptoms. She was out for the rest of the year. From then on, she was like she is now. Total vampire.”
“Was Steven a vampire?”
“I dunno. Probably. Little dickhead is what he is. Must have been him that attacked Trista, but nobody could prove it. Bite mark didn’t match or something. So why are you asking? You hang out with her at night right? You asking her out or something?”
“Oh. No. Just a friend.”
That was all I really learned from Frankie. It’s quite a story, and it’s full of unknowns that Trista refuses to explain. So I guess I’ll let readers be the judge. Is she a “real” vampire? Or just a weirdo? All I know is, she’s totally standing behind me right now and now I’m dead. Bleh.
I did come back to life to talk to Trista once I finished writing this. She enjoyed it. I may as well include that interaction.
I went to her place on my night off. She read my take on her and what the neighbors thought and she grinned. “Ha! I’m a total monster!” She chuckled. “So. What do YOU think, Mason? Am I a vampire?” She cocked an eye and playfully gnashes her teeth at me, making a pleasant little click.
I sighed. “No idea. You’re Trista. And… you’re my friend. I’m sorry if I made things awkward.”
She looked surprised by that. “Aw. Thanks Mason. You’re my friend too. It’s okay. I’m flattered.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“So we’re cool?”
“Absolutely not. We’re both weird shut ins.” She laughed. It was good to hear her laugh. It made me happy.
“Yeah but I got the ‘mysterious vampire’ thing going.”
“You have dirt in your hair from rolling around with bunnies. And you’re a vegan.”
“Bite me.”
“Says the vampire.”
“You know, if I were a vampire, I could have bitten you when we both went to the slaughterhouses a few weeks ago.”
“That just makes me stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, Mason. You’re not a loser either.”
“So. You know of any other good spooky town stories that I can do next?
“Oh, sure. You ever heard the tale of Salome? She was a witch who would mash up the seeds of a Sinapis Alba plant to make a diabolical potion she’d dump on herself. They called her the ‘Witch of the Sands.’”
I’m embarrassed to admit it took me four days to realize Trista was just fucking with me. I only figured it out when I looked up Sinapis Alba and learned that mashing the seeds just makes mustard. “Salomi the sand-witch.” Well played, vampire hippy…
Sexy Neighbor
Haunted Slaughterhouse

Y’all, I’m really not sure what’s still around. This list is somewhat edited, but please still make sure to check on all the regular events before you make big plans – I may have missed something.
Events are listed by the day. Events that happen every week appear first, one time stuff after that. If you have anything you’d like people to know about, comment here or message me and I’ll add it in. If you’d like further info about any of the events, look it up! I usually don’t have any extra to add.
Large Scale, Ongoing, and Multi-Day Events

Local Running, Walking, and Biking Info: https://troubleafoot.blogspot.com/
Guided Paddling Outings all around the area: https://www.facebook.com/hsmithoutdoors
Tallahassee Film Society Showings: https://www.tallahasseefilms.com/tickets/
Book Clubs for all tastes: https://www.facebook.com/midtownreadeevents
Live Theater:

• Making Light Productions: https://www.makinglightproductions.org/
  
• Theatre Tallahassee: https://theatretallahassee.org/
  
• Mickee Faust Club: https://www.mickeefaust.com/
  
• Monticello Opera House: https://www.monticellooperahouse.org/
  
• FSU School of Theatre: https://theatre.fsu.edu/productions/
  
• Young Actors Theatre: https://www.youngactorstheatre.com/
  
• Quincy Music Theatre: https://quincymusictheatre.com/
  
• Tallahassee Hispanic Theater: https://tallahasseehispanictheater.wordpress.com/
  

OutdooFarmer’s Markets:

• Lake Ella Grower's Market: Wednesday and Saturday, 11am-2pm. You can always find organic vendors, and foragers: The Holistic Cannabis Community, Artzi Farms, Hickory Nut Gifts, and others. Including Pita Queen! Farmer's Market Nutrition Program Coupons gladly accepted!
  
• Tallahassee Downtown Market: Saturdays, 10am-2pm, Park Ave Parks. Vendors display their arts and fine crafts, jewelry, handmade soap, pottery, Fresh from Florida produce, hand-raised beef and pork, fresh baked bread, jams and jellies, and honey. Live music from different local musicians every Saturday.
  
• Frenchtown Heritage Market: 524 N MLK Jr Blvd. Third Saturday of the month 10am to 2pm. Come grow community and support your local farmers and makers, while you get your groceries for the week! Don’t forget! We match SNAP/EBT, so you DOUBLE your money to go towards locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables! If the guy with the pineapple is there, get it. This is currently only happening on the third Saturday of the month for the next few months while road work is completed.
  
• Tallahassee Farmers Market: 2904 Kerry Forest Pkwy, Saturdays, 8am to Noon. Come see us at Tallahassee's longest-running farmers market! We are a year-round market, featuring local farms and vendors that provide the best seasonal produce, meats, baked goods, and more. We welcome you and your whole family (leashed pets included) to come out and meet your local farmers! Ample parking is available between our lot and the shopping center lot next door (by Red Elephant). Come early for the best selection.
  

THURSDAY, 5/16

• The Hub at Feather Oaks: Bingo. 6pm
  
• Dreamland BBQ: Weekly Open Blues Jam. If you'd like to sing, please bring your own mic. 6pm
  
• Honest Living Vape: Chess-Master Thursdays . Beginners and experts, join us every Thursday from 6-9 for Chess-Master Thursdays. All ages. Bring your board or play ours! Tournaments coming soon! 6pm
  
• Lake Tribe: Trivia. 7pm
  
• Takko Market Square: Bingo Night. 7pm
  
• The Getaway Grille and Bar: Karaoke with Jared Walker. 7pm
  
• Amicus Brewing: Trivia. 7pm
  
• Smitty's Taphouse: Trivia Lab Thursdays. Teams of 6 or fewer players can compete for $30 / $20 / $10 Prizes + The Golden MacGuffin prize table! New format! Interactive smartphone answering for your comfort and safety! 6 Fun Rounds - 42 Total Questions. 7:30pm
  
• Studio D: Bachata Fever. We always have a bachata workshop at 8 pm before Bachata Fever. We dance afterwards to the sounds of DJ Bacharod. The class is at 8 pm and Bachata Fever will start at 930 pm. Many times people are learning in class and may feel uncomfortable social dancing while they are still learning moves. We have a welcoming environment so stay and have fun and dance with everyone. That is how we learn. 8pm/Class $5/Bachata Fever $5.
  
• The Sound Bar: Comedy Night. 8pm
  
• Finnegans Wake: Open Mic. 8:30pm
  
• Brass Tap in Midtown: Karaoke with DJ Rah. 9pm
  
• 926: Karaoke. 9pm
  
• Bird’s: Karaoke with Nathan. 9pm
  

• Fire Bettys: Slasher Bash. This week we'll be showing: "Zombeavers". Prepare for an evening of horrific hilarity with comedy narration and devilish drinking games!🍻 Hosted by local comedians. 8pm/21+
  
• Blue Tavern: Seep's Gumbo Nation ft. Shanice Richards. 8pm
  

FRIDAY, 5/17

• Blue Tavern: Happy Hour with Steve Malono. 5pm
  
• Lake Tribe Brewing: Flannel Fridays with Live Music. 6pm
  
• Hobbit West: Friday Night Dart Tournament. Anyone can Enter! Sign ups at 7:30, Darts fly at 8:00/$10 entry fee
  
• Ouzts Too: Karaoke with DJ Nathan. Best karaoke DJ in town. 8pm
  
• Just One More: Karaoke with DJ Rah. 9pm-11pm/21+
  
• 926: The Hot Friday Night Party and Drag Show. 9pm/$5/18+
  

• The Hub at Feather Oaks: Rachel Hillman. 5:30pm
  
• Lake Tribe: Ben Wentworth. 5:30pm
  
• Amicus Brewing: The Tanglers. 6pm
  
• The Getaway Grille and Bar: One Year Anniversary Celebration Featuring Queen of Hearts Band. 6pm
  
• Southwood Golf Club: The Rhythm Remedy. 6:30pm
  
• Goodwood: The Big Bash Havana Nights presented by Brent Hartsfield. The Big Bash is Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Big Bend's signature fundraising gala of the year and directly supports the agency's youth mentoring programs. Guests will enjoy Cuban Cuisine, champagne mojitos, cigars, flights, classic cars, photo opportunities, silent auction vacation packages, LIVE music and dancing, and an exciting LIVE salsa dance performance from 12 community volunteers! The event is a tremendous networking opportunity for Tallahassee's top business professionals, local community leaders and philanthropists to come together to enjoy an evening to celebrate the achievements of Big Brothers Big Sisters. 7pm
  
• Blue Tavern: Wil Fulkerson Jazz Night. 8pm
  
• House of Music: Belly Dancing: Journey From The Nile To The Tigris. Habibi, join us on a groovy carpet ride across ancient deserts: Disco Iskandar embarks on a voyage of belly dance, folklore, cinema, and history in a theatrical dance production, JOURNEY FROM THE NILE TO THE TIGRIS. Highlighting the prominence of belly dance in films of the Middle East from the 1940s through the 1970s, we present a live showcase exhibiting dances from Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, and beyond. It goes so much deeper than you think. Hookahs! Swords! Rhinestones, literally everywhere! This cross section of entertainment and education is the culmination of years of obsessive learning, two national tours, and travels to Egypt & Lebanon. JOURNEY FROM THE NILE TO THE TIGRIS is a trip unlike any other-- where the Middle East meets Vegas. This show’s cast is Gabi Corazon, Gia Bee, Liz Azi, Olya Clark, Vania Ojeda, director Veronica Lynn, and special guest star Omaris! 8pm/$15/21+
  
• The Sound Bar: The Old Schoolers. 8pm
  
• Vino Beano: Your Scumbag Neighbors. 8pm
  
• The Bark: Medians, No Yeah, Sleep John B, and Cloud Storage. 8pm
  

SATURDAY, 5/18

• Brinkley Glen Park: Invasive Plant Removal. Join Master Gardener Volunteers at this weekly invasive plant removal event. This is a great way to learn to ID our invasive plant species and how to remove them. We recommend wearing long pants and sleeves, closed-toed shoes, gloves, a hat and mosquito spray. Bring gardening tools such as hand clippers, loppers, trowels, etc. if you have them. We are removing coral ardisia bushes and berries, nandina, tung trees, Tradescantia flumenensis, cat's claw vine, winged yam, Japanese climbing fern, skunkvine and more. Directions: The best way to get there is to take Meridian Rd to Waverly Rd, go to the next intersection and turn left onto Abbotsford Way, then turn left at the next road called Woodside Dr. At the stop sign turn left onto Lothian. Lothian ends in a cul-de-sac and there is a sign that says Brinkley Glen Park. 8:30am-11:30am
  
• Gamescape: Saturday Gaming. Gamescape has relocated from Railroad Square to the Huntington Oaks Plaza (Suite 302, next to the Library) at N Monroe St and Fred George Rd. Open gaming tables are available. Noon-6pm
  
• Duke’s and Dottie’s: Line Dancing Plus Lessons. 7pm/21+
  
• Bird’s Oyster Shack: Laughterday Night Fever. * Join us every Saturday at Bird's Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack for a free comedy show!* 8:30pm
  
• 926: Latin Night. Dance to the irresistible beats of Zeus and prepare to be dazzled by a spectacular drag show at midnight. It's more than a party, it's an experience. 9:30pm/$10 21+, $15 under 21
  

• Crawfordville: Big Bend Biodiversity Tour. See why our area is so ecologically incredible! Get up close and personal with creatures and plants galore. Join expert guide and outdoor educator, Ryan Means for this limited opportunity to tour the Apalachicola Lowlands Preserve. The day-long trip stops at points along the way to the privately-owned preserve nestled deep in the Apalachicola National Forest near Sumatra, FL. Explore the longleaf pine ecosystem, pitcher plant bogs, ephemeral wetlands, and blackwater streams - home to some threatened and endangered species. Learn what makes the Florida Panhandle one of the five richest biodiversity hotspots in North America. Perfect tour for photographers, outdoor enthusiasts and ecologists. $75 tour fee includes round-trip transportation (from 46 Kinsey Rd, Crawfordville, FL) , complimentary beverages, and supports efforts to preserve the incredible biodiversity of the Southeastern Coastal Plain. Spaces limited. Register here: https://coastalplains.networkforgood.com/events/71083-big-bend-biodiversity-tour for full details. 8am
  
• Dreamland BBQ: Rock Type One to None. Let's rock to find a cure for Type 1 Diabetes! The Unicorn Wranglers are back on Saturday, May 18th at Dreamland BBQ in Tallahassee, Florida for the 2024 "Rock One to None" show. This show is benefiting the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund (JDRF) and will feature musical guests Midnight Caravan, Fallen Timber, and the Unicorn Wranglers. The show starts at 4 pm and runs until 7 pm at Dreamland BBQ in Music Alley, and is open to all ages. While the show is free, we encourage all rockers attending to donate to the cause. You can contribute at the show by visiting our donation station or by heading over to our online Unicorn Wranglers team page. Together, as one big mosh pit, we can help cure Type 1 Diabetes. 3pm
  
• The Hub at Feather Oaks: Ethan Kyllonen. 4pm
  
• Amicus Brewing: Beza Alford and Rev. Dr. Sheldon Steen. 5pm
  
• Lake Tribe: Flamingo Party. 6pm
  
• The Getaway Grille and Bar: Billy Rigsby Band. 6pm
  
• Vino Beano: Brett & "Dangerous" Dave. 6pm
  
• Salty Dawg: Hot Mess. 6:30pm
  
• La Tiendita: Rhys Bennett & the Gringos as Vontade. Join us for an energetic evening filled with the vibrant sounds of Latin music, Brazilian beats, and jazz rhythms. Our local band, Rhys Bennett & the Gringos, will transform into the versatile ensemble Vontade, treating you to a delightful mix of rancheras, bossa nova, and more! Whether you're a seasoned dancer or a newcomer to the dance floor, you're in for a fantastic time at one of Tallahassee's hidden gems. Immerse yourself in a night of cultural fusion and musical celebration that is sure to create lasting memories! 6:30pm
  
• The Sound Bar: Tillman & Taff. 7pm
  
• Island Wings: Midnight Caravan. 7pm
  
• The Bark: Saturnalia, Brass Wizard, Van Season, and Psycho Tropical. 8pm
  
• Fire Bettys: 80's Video Dance Party. 8pm
  
• Just One More: One Eyed JAK. 9pm
  

SUNDAY, 5/19

• Bicycle House: Sunday Ride. Ride at 10:30 AM from Bicycle House. We will ride the Cascades trail to the St Marks trail and down to Wakulla station and return, about 31 miles. Ride speed is 12 to 14 mph, with periodic regroups. Vernon Bailey is the ride leader. Vernon is a new CCC member who’s been biking for 50 years enjoys riding with small groups and weekend touring. 10am
  
• E Peck Greene Park (Behind the LeRoy Collins Library): Food Not Bombs Free Mealshare. We offer free vegetarian/vegan food, water, coffee, personal care & hygiene products, bus passes, and clothing when we have some available to those in need. Contact foodnotbombstally@gmail.com to find out about getting involved. Noon-2pm
  
• LeRoy Collins Library: Tallahassee Go Club Meetings. Come play the captivating ancient game of Go, also known as Baduk, with some friendly games and discussions. Beginners welcome. Visit https://www.tallahasseegoclub.com for more information. 1pm
  
• Gamescape: Pokémon League. Come learn, play, and trade with the Pokémon Trading Card Game and the Pokémon video games! We LOVE seeing new players, so come learn how to play! We play both the Trading Card Game and the Video Game casually and competitively. The store offers lots of different seating arrangements to meet our group's needs, as well as food, drinks, and Pokémon products for purchase. We are also hold regular, officially sanctioned tournaments for Pokémon Trading Card Game and Video Game Competitions! 2-4pm
  
• The Plant: Open Jam. All instruments, all players welcome. 4pm-9pm
  
• Pedro’s: Mariachi Clasico. 6pm
  
• Fermentation Lounge: Open Mic Night Hosted by Conor Churchill. 7pm
  

• Ology Powermill: Marauders Market. Noon
  
• The Hub at Feather Oaks: The Barber Bros. 1pm-4pm
  
• Goodwood: Ice Cream Social. Get ready for a spectacular day of family fun at Goodwood Museum & Gardens! Treat your taste buds to a family fun day of FREE ice cream, FREE crafts for the kids, FREE activities, and more, all on the beautiful Goodwood grounds. Family-friendly musical entertainment will be provided by The Safari Man, who will have everyone tapping their feet and dancing along to his whimsical tunes. 1pm
  
• Common Ground Books: Contemporary Queer Poetry Book Club: Time is a Mother. This month, we’ll be reading “Time is a Mother” by Ocean Vuong. “In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother's death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Vivid, brave and propulsive, Vuong's poems contend with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the value of joy in a perennially fractured American spirit. The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time is a Mother is a return and a forging-forth all at once.” 6pm
  

MONDAY, 5/20

• Just One More: Bingo. 5pm-6:30pm
  
• The Getaway Grille and Bar: Margarita Monday, Open-Mic Night hosted by The Saltwater Cowboy. 5:30pm-8pm
  
• American Legion Hall: Cha Cha - Weekly Lessons. 6:15pm/$5
  
• Hangar 38: Bingo. 6:45pm
  
• Vino Beano: Tipsy Trivia. 7pm
  

TUESDAY, 5/21

• Blue Tavern: Happy Hour. 5pm
  
• The Getaway Grille: Tuesday Night Bikes and Trikes. 6pm
  
• Crafty Crab: BOOMIN' Karaoke. 7pm
  
• Gamescape: Hobby Night. Slay the grey together! Join your fellow gamers and turn your pile of grey miniatures into a battle ready army. Need some painting tips? Feel free to ask at hobby night. You can bring any miniature for any game to paint. 7pm
  
• Ology Midtown: Jazz Jam Sessions. 7pm
  
• Island Wings: Trivia. 7pm
  
• Brass Tap in Midtown: Trivia. 1st Tuesday of the month is General Knowledge with rotating themes the rest of the month. 7pm
  
• House of Music: Tuesday Trivia & Karaoke. 7pm
  
• American Legion Hall: Tallahassee Swing Band Tuesday Night Dance. 7:30pm
  
• Fire Bettys: Comedy Night. 8pm
  
• Poor Pauls: Trivia. 8pm/21+
  
• Blue Tavern: Bluesday Tuesday with Bill Ricci. Every Tuesday is Blues Day @ the Blue Tavern and Blues Meets Girl is a Tallahassee favorite. This perfect, intimate venue provides just what you need for both a mid-week break and authentic blues music experience. 8pm/$5
  
• 4th Quarter: Professor Jim's Tuesday Night Trivia. Popular for a reason! 8pm
  
• Argonaut Coffee: Trivia Tuesday. 8pm
  
• The Sound Bar: Karaoke. 8pm
  
• Fire Betty’s: Open Mic Comedy Night. 8pm/21+
  
• 926: Tacos and Trivia. 9pm
  

• Tallahassee Junior Museum: Basic Blacksmith Skills Program. Light your curiosity at our upcoming Basic Blacksmith Skills Program! Join our resident blacksmith, Michael Murphy, as he shares his history of being a Smitty. Participants will be able to keep the fire going, sling a hammer, and throw knives during this two hour lecture program. This is an outdoor event. Must preregister online at tallahasseemuseum.org/events. This program is free for members and regular admission price for non-members. 10am

WEDNESDAY, 5/22

• Sugar and Spice Tally: Game Night. Join us every Wednesday Night for community game night. Bring your own or use ours! Let me know if you need to reserve space for a large group. Free to attend! 5pm
  
• Goodwood: Wonderful Wednesday. 6pm/$5
  
• Level 8 Rooftop Lounge: Trivia. 6pm
  
• La Florida Coffee & Wine: Trivia Night. 6pm
  
• The Great Games Library: Open Game Night. 6pm/free
  
• American Legion Hall: Sue Boyd Country Western and More Dance Class. Session 2 - Beginner 6:30 to 7:45 pm What: East Coast Swing and Waltz. Cost: $8.00 per person. Wear comfortable shoes you can turn in. 7:45 to 8:15 - Practice dance with paid admission. 8:15 to 9:30: Intermediate - 2 Step and WCS. $8.00 per person or $13.00 for both classes. Vaccines are required. Face masks are optional. Changing partners is optional. 6:30pm
  
• Perry Lynn’s Smokehouse in Quincy: Wed Night Open Mic w/ Steven Ritter and Friends. 6:30pm
  
• Hangar 38: Trivia. 6:45pm
  
• Proof: Trivia. 7pm
  
• Vino Beano: Wine Bingo. 7pm
  
• Fermentation Lounge: Trivia. 7pm
  
• Blue Tavern: Wednesday Open Mic with Doc Russell. The open mic night that has run continuously for almost 20 years, once housed at the Warehouse, lives on at the Blue Tavern. Doc Russell continues as the host with the most. Sign up starts at 7:45pm/free to attend
  
• House of Music: Bar Bingo! Free to Play & Late Night Karaoke. 7pm
  
• Fire Betty’s: Karaoke! 8pm/21+/free
  
• Dukes and Dotties: College Night and Line Dancing Lessons. 8pm
  
• Finnegans Wake: Trivia. 8pm
  
• The Sound Bar: Open Mic Night. 8pm
  
• The Bark: Karaoke with DJ Nathan. Best karaoke DJ in town. 9pm
  
• Peppers: Karaoke. 9pm
  
• 926: Dragged Out Wednesday. 10pm
  

This is my first time posting so I’m sorry if it doesn’t make much sense or I’m trauma dumping a lot also a couple trigger warnings, I’m not sure where to start off with. Me and my mom used to be pretty close I’d say up until I started high school. Middle of eighth grade I moved to a new city so I was back to trying to find some friends. I’ve been moving around since I could remember, I used to live in Germany where I moved twice, then moved to the US around the Silicon Valley, moved again, and again and again now we’re here. I wouldn’t be explaining this part of my life if I felt like it didn’t have any weight in this situation. Middle school I found a friend, me and her got pretty close, stuck through Covid together. My mom hated her and not even two years into our friendship my mom started accusing her of stealing from us, being a bad influence and overall just being trashy. Her parents were in the middle of getting a divorce and she had a lot of things going on in her life. I dyed my hair red during this time too while being friends with her, she probably was a huge influence on me but that’s also because it was covid and I was bored and who doesn’t start irrationally bleaching and coloring their hair at 14. I think my mom thought she was a bad influence on that part too because she's the one that first started off coloring her hair like purple and pink etc. My mom never of course said anything to my friend but she made sure I would hear of her disapproval concerning her bad influence in my life. I stopped being friends with her freshman year since my parents banned me from having her over or going to her house, I couldn’t drive neither could she and hanging out at each other's houses was pretty much what we did 80% of the time. I was so frustrated and felt trapped because the only friend I really cared about was someone I wasn’t allowed to associate with anymore. I told her I was done being friends with her over text and blamed it on me just being in a dark place and breaking it off. She was confused and called me a week later about something personal but I just dismissed it. Granted there were other things going on in our friendship but I felt terrible about it especially since her parents were going through that divorce and I just left during such a sensitive time. I hate to admit it but I felt so much better since I started making new friends quickly and started sitting with a new group the next day. Mostly guys and other two girls, it worked out fine for the next year. Junior year my grades started dropping so my parents got stricter, started taking my phone, looking through it, screen time etc. I felt like it was a huge invasion of privacy since my mom would look through my texts. Me and my mom also started arguing weekly about whatever it was but when I mean arguing I mean like full on yelling for two hours down in the living room with no stopping. I can’t do anything about it because whenever I say something remotely disproving her so called “facts'' since she always speaks with so much authority on subjects she wouldn’t even know about I’m the one that has to quiet down from my fathers perspective, and I know this will be mostly about my mom but me and my dad have always been close even when we’re fighting within a week we at least make it up. We play the same sports, have the same humor etc. I understand this might look like us disregarding my mom and I know she cares and loves me yet in certain circumstances she doesn’t show it so of course there’s going to be reasons as to why I’m closer with my dad than her. For example I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 4th grade and of course I wouldn’t expect anyone to know that when you're low you need carbs or when your blood sugar is high you need insulin but my mom to this day still does not understand it. I wouldn’t care even if it’s my friend but as my mom you take so much authority over my life and who I can’t or can hangout with but you don’t know the basics of how I have to manage my life behind closed doors in the house that you and I live in every day. That might sound overdramatic but it’s just something I think about. Also growing up, I’m an only child by the way, I would always play by myself whenever we went on vacation for example to the beach etc. it was always my dad that came and played with me in the sand while at sharing his time with me and my mom so my mom wouldn’t gets upset over him leaving her to go play with me. Even now I notice how my mom would always make snarky comments regarding how my dad always treats me like a princess and cares too much over me. Anywho, since I know this is getting pretty long I’ll try to sum it up a bit more. I started liking one of the guys from that group, I would text him on a daily basis just about whatever. We were pretty awkward in person since I’ve never really talked to that many guys and I don’t think he really had much experience either so we stuck it to mostly phones, everyone else in the group also didn’t know. Once my mom went through my phone on one occasion that night, because she would collect it on some nights and read through my messages in bed she saw one message from that guy calling my mom bipolar and me responding with something like it’s fine like I still love her she freaked out. She told me to never talk to him again and that I’m a brat for talking about my family issues outside of the family etc. I honestly had nobody to talk to. The other two girls in the group didn’t really talk to me at this time, I later became really close with one of them though more on that later and I had no other friends in that town so it was really only him. He had a plethora of family issues that I couldn’t even imagine so I felt like he understood where I was coming from at times better than other kids with American parents. Not sure I mentioned but my parents were both born in Eastern Europe and grew up during heavy communism so that definitely affected them and their parenting style. Anywho, my mom sent me a paragraph to show to him, basically telling him to never talk to me again and that he has to apologize to her etc. After a couple months I think he took me out on a date. I'm not sure what to make of it since it was pretty casual. We just got ice cream. I told my parents that he was only picking me up so we could meet with the rest of the group when of course we’re not. The rest of the guys saw us downtown and found out about it. That kinda really sucked since I’m pretty sure one of them liked me so he got really mad and it kind of ruined the group dynamic. The guy I liked stopped talking to me a couple months in since I couldn’t really do much or go anywhere and dating as a result would be hard so he stopped really talking to me it was pretty off and on since I would get mad stop texting him and then he would try to get back texting at me and once I showed him I cared he’d stop. I was so mad at him and the situation that I refrained myself from talking to him, two weeks later he killed himself. I found out because one of the guys from the group faced me and told me. I went downstairs and started crying and formed the sentences explaining it the best I could, pushing a couple words out at a time. In that very moment I felt so hurt and vulnerable by what just happened my mom responded by just looking at me and saying that he had it coming for him since he probably vaped and drank. My dad ran downstairs since he probably heard me crying and the first thing he did without asking me any questions was hug me. For the first time ever he told my mom to shut up since her trying to ask me questions about how he died just made me sob harder. Over the next week my mom was pretty lenient about letting me go out. The next week she started asking what happened to him. Me and my mom were not close at all anymore at this time. You see mothers and daughters talking about guys or what dress they’re gonna wear to the prom etc in the movies. Me and my mom are not like that. On top of that I was overwhelmed with what happened and as someone does overthinking how things could have played out differently. Anyway I refused to tell her anything saying I was too uncomfortable and over the course of the next couple months of senior year she would get progressively mad and irritated at me to the point of arguing and yelling at me for not trusting her and telling her how he killed himself. I to this day told her nothing but she stopped asking. I don’t know how my dad feeds into this since he’s always so Switzerland about everything when I know I’m right in an argument between me and my mom, however when my mom has leverage he takes her side. Anyway, the beginning of senior year was rough. I hated being in that house and really started seriously considering the only options I felt like I had at the time. I started becoming closer to that one girl from the group earlier, spoiler alert my mom strongly dislikes her now too since she’s a liar and since she’s close with her mom but not her dad that means her parents are having marital issues and therefore her mom is a cheater etc. I don’t understand how she goes from one topic to another and sorts these things into her head. She’s my only friend that I’m really close with and I have been for the past these almost two so hearing this is very disheartening since I’m sending off senior year and I can’t do this again being so close to the end of the year. I forgot to mention but during homecoming I drank for the first time and I had one of my guy friends with his girlfriend and that friend that I’m not friends with drop me off. When he dropped me off he didn’t wave to my mom so she now thinks he’s a bastard in her words and disgusting and she deserves and apology for all the times he’s been over to my house etc. which I honestly think is insane because how do you always have so many issues over my friends and why are you so obsessed with 16 year olds, like you really have beef with high school kids as a 50 year old. Anyway the reason I bring that up is because I invited him over a couple weeks ago for some drills to help one of my other friends with mma since me and him used to wrestle and my mom got mad despite him not being there for me but for my other friends benefit. I’m not sure if this makes any sense. I'm trying to explain the issue best I can without saying too much. Anyway my friend, the one that I’m friends with now, the girl and that guy from the group that didn’t wave at my mom are both Latin so my mom started calling them cheaters and dirty etc when they had nothing to do with anything. This argument spiraled over me asking my mom if I can have a sleepover with those friends since we want to bring a new series on Netflix. Also during prom I asked my parents for 10 dollars since I already had twenty in my account and I wanted to buy hair stuff for prom. They gave me the 10 and I said how I was going to catch a ride with friend A so that when friend A picked me up but friend B that I did not mention in the plan picked me up my parents started calling and texting me. To give some background friend B has been close with me since freshman year, probably the only friend my mom has liked and also the only white friend I have not sure if that has anything do with it but there’s that. She’s really sweet and has been invited over multiple times to my house by my parents, they do really like her. Anywho yet since I didn’t mention that friend B was driving the car since my parents didn’t recognize the new car and knew it wasn’t friend A driving yet assumed it was indeed friend B but since I didn’t mention that they took all the money I had in my account which was only 30 dollars but it was what I needed to get my nails and hair gloss and hair spray for prom, I just started breaking down in the middle of target. I was so excited to get my stick on nails etc since I couldn’t afford to get the acrylics since I was paying for all my prom stuff for the most part. By the way I know that the 10 dollars was initially there so I understand taking away that but the other 20 I made selling my clothes on mercari and I had nothing else like no other cash nothing that was the money I worked on to get my prom stuff. It was mostly my dad actually that got mad at this point taking my money etc and than following a got a text from my mom saying I got what I was coming for by acting the way I have been. There were 3 others with me while I was at target so having three of my friends see me breakdown from me only having 14 cents left in my account was so humiliating. I ended up looking great at prom neither less so don’t even worry about that, my hair looked great and I found some old stick-ons in my laundry room and painted them white lol a couple of them popped off during prom but whatever. This has been really long and thanks to whoever spent their time reading through all of this I’m sorry if the read is a bit of a struggle but I just don’t know what to think or do of this situation. Keep in mind I’m 18 now, never have had a boyfriend, never have do anything, kissed, even held hands romantically etc. it’s one thing you know to not care about any of that but the thing is I do and I want to experience being a teenager and going out and going on dates and not worry about my mom flipping out on one of my friends. While we were in Italy one of the tour guys told her to move on the bus to make more room for others and she started cussing him out telling him to f himself etc for telling her a paying customer where to sit. Everyone started staring at us. I did not want to be there. I just kept my head down the entire time and didn’t really talk to my mom out of embarrassment for the next two days. Also after that prom incident I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere after as a result of go to friend B's birthday bash the next day so my mom texted her without my knowledge and told her not to tell me about how I’ve been acting up and one day I’ll learn when I’m her age but it will be too late and that I don’t know what I’m doing and finishing off my apologizing on my part for my behavior and I’m the reason why I can’t go to her party. Which I find so infuriating because one of the main reasons why I don’t tell my mom anything about my personal life is because I simply don’t want her to have that control of knowing what my life is like, I probably tell the teacher I TA for more than my own biological mother. The fact that she preached family issues in the family so heavily and that you should never talk about issues to others yet goes behind my back and tells my friend that my indecent behavior is the reason why I can’t go is so beyond me because where did your ideals go that you preached so heavily about. Every time I’m around my mom especially when she has her flares of anger I just start shaking like you know when you drink something with a lot of caffeine in the morning and you don’t eat anything so mid way through the day you just start getting jittery and anxious, kind of like that. Ok I think I’m done anyway thank you for tuning in cause I really have to start studying for human geo, thanks for reading up until here 🙂.

I, (18F) moved in with my boyfriend (19M) a couple of months after I turned 18, and my parents were furious and hurt. There’s a lot to unpack with this one, so bear with me.
My parents (40F and 42M) are very religious and were somewhat strict while I was growing up. I have two younger brothers, one 17 and one 8 (this will be important later). For context, my father is a pastor at a local church and my parent’s religious beliefs are the reasoning behind most if not all of their actions. Growing up, I was never a stereotypical girl. I didn’t have many female friends and was usually not accepted in groups with guys as I was a girl and we were kids. I was extroverted as a child but due to being repeatedly rejected by kids my age, I became more introverted. I was a major nerd who loved superheroes and I wanted to play sports. Again, for context, the town I grew up in was very conservative and my parents are very conservative themselves. Girls liked girl things- even if they claimed that’s not how they felt, it’s how they acted. However, as a kid, I did not realize this. I played soccer and basketball growing up, regardless of how “weird” it made me because I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. I was probably around 9 or 10 at this point. It was around this time my parents started having issues with my hobbies. I remember my parents trying to convince me to be a cheerleader because I would “like it more,” but I insisted on playing basketball. (This basketball/cheer program was through our church by the way). Because I was still young, they let it slide, but to this day I remember them being annoyed with it. This is also around the time dieting was introduced to me as well as calorie counting. I have always struggled with my weight and so has my mother, so they were very adamant on making sure I was being “healthy.” I didn’t understand it, but as a child, the only thing I was worried about was making my parents happy. A lot of discipline I received revolved around emotion. What I was doing was right or wrong and if I did something wrong, I felt terrible and awful and would often come crying to my parents about the mistakes I made, fearful of their disappointment and anger if they found things out themselves. They also made everything a moral dilemma- everything was about God and religion and as a kid, it really messed with my head. I would blame myself for everything that went wrong, seeing it as God’s punishment for my behavior. When I was 9, I went so far as to blame my grandmother’s death on myself because I was hanging out with boys instead of girls. This made me to be more of an introvert and my now anxiety disorder is much much worse.
About a year later, my parents sat down with me and my brother and told us they wanted to adopt. At first, I was very excited. I loved the idea of having another brother or sister. And I wouldn’t trade my 8 year old brother (let’s call him Scott) for anything, but adopting kids is part of what triggered a huge change in my parent’s behavior. Also- I had started getting older. I loved playing video games, watching cartoons and writing. However, these weren’t the things they wanted me to like I guess, because I started to feel their judgment become more clear and apparent as I got older. Now, I assume this is because as a kid, I just did what I was told, or my oddities were assumed to fade over time, but that is not the case anymore. Anyways, entering middle school, our family fostered a little girl, let’s call her Ally. A young woman in our church had told us that Ally’s family was out of the picture, and as her aunt, she couldn’t take her in as she was already a single mom and planned on adopting her brother, but couldn’t handle all three alone. So my family stepped in- however, we had come to find that her father was still in the picture and was actively fighting for custody. And Ally was a bit of a handful. My parents have admitted that they expected to swoop in, save a child from a hard life and be the heroes, and when things were harder than that they were very upset. Ally was about three- she remembered her mom (who was in jail i believe), her sisters, her grandma and grandpa, as well as her dad. She didn’t want our family, she wanted hers. She didn’t listen to my parents and rejected their parenting. This is what started to make my parents snap. I understand it was hard for them, but now that I’m older, I get it. She was a little girl who wanted her family. But they took her rejection very seriously and were constantly unhappy with her and made sure she knew it. Children not listening immediately was newer to them as my brother and I both did pretty much whatever they asked, and they did not take well to being told “no” by a child. 8 months after living with Ally, she was taken in by her grandparents to live with them and her sisters. The next day, my parents took my brother and I on a small trip. I’m not sure if it was to cheer us up or to celebrate. I was quite sad though- I had started to really care about Ally and had convinced myself that “God would take care of things” and I would have a sister. But I was angry- God took someone away from me and I was doing everything right. Why was he punishing me? Nothing made sense. Yet, only a year later, my parents were considering taking in another child. I wanted nothing to do with it- God had already taken one sibling away from me. I couldn’t do it again. In the end, I agreed and soon became attached to this little boy, who was two when we met him. This was Scott. I immediately became attached- and I love this kid more than I can describe- he’s my little brother and I would do anything for him.
This is where things start to go further downhill. Scott has a lot of trauma and mental issues, one of those issues being oppositional defiant disorder. That basically means that listening to any form of authority is near impossible for him, and causes him to lash out and act younger than he is. This is probably due to a number of reasons, as he was severely neglected and abused as an infant and his birth mother was on several different substances while pregnant with him, to the point where he was born high on several illegal drugs. He was left in a car seat for most of his infant life, so the back of his head is slightly flattened due to this. My parents are very obedient/disciplined-based parents, so his behavior rocked their world. In my opinion, the way they handled things with Scott was borderline abusive. There were several occasions where he would say he hated them (as young children do when they're mad) and they would flip. Telling him that if he didn’t want them that was fine. They didn’t need him. He could run back to his other parents, but his mom was in jail and his dad didn’t want him, so good luck with that. If we were in the car when this happened, they would threaten to leave him on the side of the road and good luck finding his way home. Once my mother literally pulled to the side of the road, placed him outside the car and started driving so he would “think they would leave him if his actions didn’t change,” but she turned around to get him. Because they would “never actually abandon or hurt him,” their actions were justified and perfectly fine. They would tell him he was acting like a baby when he started to cry and scream. “Little baby Scott, do you need a diaper?” Is how they would tease him when he became older, which just made his tantrums worse. They would tell him how disappointed they were with him and that he should be ashamed of himself and the way he acted because they gave him everything. They would call him, to his face, “an ungrateful manipulative piece of shit.” Because according to my parents, he could control his actions 100% and was choosing to act out to make their lives difficult. While I understand that this was hard for them, in my opinion, this in no way excuses their behavior. One time, Scott was crying and was upset (who knows why, but the kid had a lot of trauma and mental issues so it didn’t bother me too much), and my mother picked him up and put him in his room. She told him that every time he tried to leave his room, she would take away one of his stuffed animals. (He had several that he loved very much). Because this sounded so terrible to him, he ran after her trying to say it wasn’t fair. So she went into his room and took a stuffed animal. This cycle continued while he cried and begged for her to stop, because he just didn’t get it that she was going to keep doing this over and over and his trying to convince her was making it worse. Eventually, there were none left, and she told him if he didn’t stop crying she was going to throw them all away. I don’t remember what happened after that, but I do know that several of them were thrown away, if not at that time than others. There are many other instances of things like this and worse occurring, but we’d be here for a while if I tried to recount them all. Moving forwards to closer when I was moving out-
Now, several years later, when I turned sixteen, I had come to terms with the fact that I was bisexual. This went against everything my family was for, and I knew exactly how they viewed queer people. So, I started learning about different branches of Christianity and felt like I knew a God who loved me as I was and was happy in my decision to switch denominations. (My parents were baptists, and I wanted to be non-denominational). A few months after this, I decided to tell my parents the truth. I had done my best to give them hints, but I wanted to be honest with them because I trusted that they would love me and be there for me no matter what. When I told them I wanted to talk to them about something, they pushed and pressed and I had been trying to wait to talk to them until the next day. I had been seeing my high school counselor, and she suggested giving them a heads-up before springing that conversation up on them. However, after telling them to wait, they went through my phone and saw that I had researched different denominations and read different sermons on queer-accepting faith. They were livid. To be clear- I had a friend over while this was happening. We were watching a movie and joking about how I lost my phone and couldn’t show them this picture I wanted to. Then, I was called upstairs. I had apparently betrayed my parents and, “how could I do this to them, when I had someone over?” My father demanded I send my friend home, but my mother convinced him for one more hour. I was told not to tell my friend anything they had said and to act like things were fine, but I couldn’t. I went back downstairs where we were hanging out and started sobbing. I felt like my whole world was falling apart. Everything was over- and the people I thought would love me no matter what made me so afraid and sad, I was completely broken. My friend did their best to comfort me and even felt weary to leave me alone with my family but I told them I’d be okay, and asked that they update our friends about the situation. That night was hellish. So many conversations, them trying to understand what I felt, but not taking me particularly seriously either. That night turned into weeks of books, slideshows, conversations, and prayers. It felt like at-home conversion therapy. Eventually, I was given a choice “put my convictional flag in the ground or loose their trust.” As the petrified 16 year old, I chose to lie. I put my “flag” in the ground and did my best to, “earn back their trust” and repair their reputation that I had tarnished. The next couple months were a blur. I felt so terrible about myself. I didn’t know what I thought or believed and I became extremely hyper anxious and depressed. I had lost all sense of privacy and I did trust my parents further than I could toss them. My 17 year old brother (he was 14 at the time, let’s call him James) was 100% on board with my parents. My life felt like a living nightmare. My parents had it so that all my texts sent or received from my phone would go directly to theirs, so I couldn’t even confide in my friends without getting into trouble (which had happened and was how I found out that they did that because I deleted the texts immediately after sending/receiving things).. Everything felt like it was about me and how I needed to earn back their trust and how I was a terrible betrayer who they were not proud of in the slightest. I had gone to get a pixie cut (with their approval) and after they told me I was disgusting and repulsive and would never find a man to love me. I was heartbroken and felt so alone and unloved in my house, while I had to watch my younger brother be treated the way he was by my parents.
Luckily, I had a lot of friends and our school counselor who had been there for me through everything. They showered me with support and love and made sure I had a safe space to exist and truthfully I think they’re the only reason I didn’t do anything drastic and am still here today. It was hard though because James went to the same school as me and would tell my parents if I was with anyone he knew was queer or queer accepting. This caused me to be very very paranoid about who I was with, when, where, etc. Constantly covering my tracks, having an excuse set up and ready to bolt if I saw anyone I knew. What made things equally hard is that the church my father works at is quite big in our area. So if someone from our church or someone who knew my family saw me with anyone they labeled as “queer” or “gay,” they would tell my family as well. For the most part, I didn’t feel safe anywhere. I was constantly alert and on guard, even when I was asleep as my parents had woken me up before to confront me about someone I was friends with at school.
Fortunately for me, despite everything being such a mess, I am quite academically smart. I got a job the second I turned sixteen as I had heard the horror stories of queer kids being kicked out and wanted to be prepared. I had been saving money, taking college classes (we have a state program that pays for the classes while you’re in high school), and putting on a show for my family for quite some time. After saving some money, I paid my parents for an older car that they had paid off ten or so years ago. After my brother turned 16, he claimed it was too hard to share a car with me, so while I was away visiting a friend they bought him a car and told us that they expected each of us to pay them one thousand dollars before we graduated high school and that when we did so, they would sign over our respective cars to us. To be clear, I contributed to insurance and paid for my own gas, as well as contributing to my phone bill and money for food. Meanwhile, my brother had no job, and was constantly asking my parents for money to go out with friends. He had also taken up golfing, which as most people know is extremely expensive, and my parents funded everything. James had actually admitted to asking for more money than he needed and save the leftovers for whatever he wanted. I was also expected to chauffeur him to golf events and to get togethers with his friends, and my parents would in return give me some gas money. Another thing to note is that the only reason I was contributing to our phone bill is because James wanted unlimited data and my father said it was unreasonable unless we both contributed financially. I refused as I was trying to save money (as I would have with the car situation), however things per normal went James’s way. However, because he did not have a job, he was not expected to pay anything and would not be charged for the months and years that he did not contribute to. I did my best not to let these things get to me and to keep a level head. I paid my parents for the car because I already had over two thousand dollars saved as a seventeen year old high school student due to my hard work.
I focused on my classes and joined theater to help fill the hours in between school and work. I was much more active my sophomore year but when James also decided to join theater I retreated a bit as my once safe space to freely exist was no longer safe. I joined the stage crew but honestly that was also very enjoyable and lethargic for me and I enjoyed it a lot. Anyways, I was mostly a straight A student besides the stray Bs and one or two Cs (psychology and AP government screwed me over) and was working 15 or so hours a week. This is on top of my commitments to the church which were most of my Sundays and my Wednesday evenings. The funny thing is though- James missed more church than I ever did yet because my absence was because of work and not golf, I was the one consistently reprimanded for my lack of attendance and socialization whilst I was there. Yet because James could never do anything wrong and was a very extroverted person his lack of attendance wasn’t as serious as my own. I had one close friend through our church, let’s call her Grace (now 18F) and she actually knew about everything and was very supportive of me. I also had some other friends who really only showed up to church so I didn’t have to go through the torture alone which I don’t know if I could ever repay them for. Besides the people I was comfortable with though, I was pretty much a loner there and this heavily displeased my parents as it made them look bad and messed with their reputation. I never realized how much appearances meant to them until all of the shit that happened took place. As I mentioned before, our church is very conservative and traditional, and many sermons and lessons revolved around gender roles and the sinfulness of the world in terms fo the LGBTQ community. I consistently felt targeted because of my looks and my personality and stopped feeling comfortable there a very long time ago.
Now that more context is in place, fast forward to the end of my junior year. I had at this point finished all my high school requirements for graduation and was given an incredible opportunity to go to our local college full time for my senior year. I was very excited and happy because not only did it give me more freedom but it also meant I would get more than a year of my college education paid for by the state.
It was also around this time when I met my now boyfriend, let’s call him Dean. We were coworkers and had begun to get to know each other. We had a lot in common and while were different people personality wise, we enjoyed each other’s company quite a bit. By some miracle, I convinced my parents to allow me to hang out with him outside of work by claiming he was just a friend and saying that he was a Christian (which is by no means true). They were extremely skeptical but allowed us to hang out. We had an incredible time- and by the end of our first date he asked me to be his girlfriend which I happily accepted. I was so happy, but when I got home, things spiraled out of control. I told my parents about our time, and they were extremely unhappy as they felt fooled (which they were to be fair) and told me I was not allowed to see him ever again. I was devastated and they said a lot of very uncalled for things and but I understand why they were angry. To be clear, they knew I had a romantic interest in Dean and that this hangout was to see if we would be compatible partners and get to know each other better. They did not call it a date though because they weren’t comfortable with it, even if it was a date and they kinda knew it. So while they were on some level “fooled,” I feel that their anger and harshness wasn’t called for as they knew the intentions of our hanging out. The next morning my father demanded to see my phone. This is when I started to panic. You see, they had stop tracking my texts and I had openly flirted with Dean over text. Nothing that explicit and no photos of any kind. But the flirting would be enough for them to tear my world apart and I knew it. They had gone through my personal conversations before and made me feel terrible because of it and I refused to let them do it again. So I deleted everything. The entire conversation chain, I removed it from my phone 100%. My parents absolutely lost their shit. They had been manipulating and gaslighting me for years, doing anything and everything to keep their control and with my actions I showed them they couldn’t control me forever and things went very downhill. I lost all my privacy and was once again told how I had betrayed them and I was terrible and couldn’t be trusted. Again- I partially understand their anger here because I had directly disobeyed a command. But at the same time, I feel as a young woman I should be allowed some sense of privacy and the ability to talk to people without being constantly monitored. I don’t feel like I did anything wrong and would happily do it again in a heartbeat if it meant I’d be where I am today. Regardless of this, my life became a living hell once again, and my parents compared this to when I came out, “which was maybe the worst night of their lives.” They stripped me of all my privileges even if I didn’t have many to begin with. They made me feel absolutely miserable and awful about myself and I was monitored like never before. I would be working and receive texts upon texts of how I was so terrible and how could I do this to them because they had done everything for me and I’m a terrible daughter who should be ashamed of myself for the deceit and malicious nature of my actions. Again- this was because they could not read the messages between me and my now boyfriend. I understand them being mad but they took it to a completely inappropriate level. I shared everything happening with my friends and counselor and they supported me and assured me I did nothing wrong and they would be there for me which helped but as my home was now a living hellscape it was hard to hear it. I found a way to tell Dean about things and at first he felt guilty but I assured him that their actions were not his fault but theirs. He then asked me if I wanted to pause our relationship but I told him honestly that they had taken so many things I cared about over the years and I refused to let them take this. I did tell him however I understood if he didn’t want to put up with all the complicatedness of my family but he told me he cared for me and would be there so long as I was okay with it. He also told me if things ever got really bad at home, regardless of the fact we had just started dating, he had spoken to his family and they offered me a place to stay if I needed/wanted it. This really touched me, but I reassured him that it was not his job to offer that, but I appreciated the offer.
This begins our relationship and we were very happy. We had found a way to communicate over email, and we were able to hide our relationship with my family. Luckily for me, over the years I had made a habit of hanging out at the park by myself so it was not strange for me to head to the park for a couple of hours. There, I would leave my car and phone (my phone had a tracker on it) and Dean and I would hangout multiple times a week and it was heaven. At this point, we’ve only been dating for a year but I can admit without any doubt that I am in love with this man and he is in love with me. During the school year, it became easier for us to hang out in between classes as we both went to the same college (I am older for my year in school and he is younger, so he was a sophomore in college while I was a senior in high school. However, we are barely a year apart in age for anyone who is concerned). However, in order for us to communicate and hang out, I had to be extremely diligent and was consistently covering my tracks while “once again, earning my parents trust and repairing our relationship.” Because of course their actions were completely justified and I was the one in the wrong, per normal. Anyways, every day, I was editing search histories, erasing messages, and looking over my shoulder. Our church had a program on campus where Dean and I went to school, so being together in public was risky as my father’s friends and coworkers were always on campus and I knew I would be screwed if we were caught together. We had a couple of close calls over the months but it was all worth it because I hadn’t been that happy in years.
Now, to the day I left and why. You see, my parents' behavior towards Scott was becoming more aggressive and worse over time. They also had, in my opinion, a drinking problem. Considering they didn’t deny it when I called them out, they may agree. They would behave more hostile after several drinks and it was happening so consistently I was constantly walking on eggshells. Between the way they treated Scott, the way they treated me and the constant stress I was under trying to balance my life in fear of the repercussions, things became too much. When things weren’t going to shit, I was consistently expected to either babysit my brother and do chores while being a full time college student and working a part time job WHILE attending church multiple times a week and keeping up with my responsibilities as a senior. This is on top of the stress my parents' behavior caused, meanwhile James was expected to do almost nothing in comparison. Don’t get me wrong- he didn’t do anything, but he had almost no responsibilities outside of school and his extracurriculars which were exclusively funded by my parents. Yes he helped with dishes during the week and would keep his space tidy. But as my schedule became much more flexible due to my school schedule, my expectations around the house became much higher than his. Even though I paid 200 a month on gas, 50 a month for insurance and 50 a month for the phone bill, and he paid nothing for his car, insurance, phone, gas, nothing. So you would think he would be expected to help in the house more but no. Also, James’s behavior towards Scott mimicked my parents and so all babysitting responsibilities fell on me as they couldn’t be trusted alone together. I was rarely if ever paid for my cleaning or babysitting services as it was my responsibility as their eldest child. They would also consistently judge me for my weight, cloths, hair, hobbies, etc. Why did I think it was a good idea to get fast food? I clearly didn’t need it. They would “outfit check me” to make sure the outfits I wore were feminine enough because the way I look effected their reputation and I couldn’t be trusted. I was not allowed to cut my hair after their tantrum over it. As for my hobbies, I stopped playing sports in middle school as I am very short (currently 5 foot even) and was unable to keep up with my peers. However my interest in video games and cartoons wasn’t feminine enough and they proceeded to compare me to my best friend Grace because she was skinnier and liked more feminine things than I did which hurt a lot. Another thing for context, I have PCOS. It’s an endocrine disorder that heavily effects your metabolism and hormones, which in turn severely effected my weight, however my parents never acknowledged it and again made everything my fault. So from what I wore, what I ate, who I hung out with and what I enjoyed doing was constantly criticized, scrutinized and eventually controlled by my family for years. On top of everything else, I was done. I was 18, I had resaved the thousand I paid my family and knew I was at a place where I didn’t need them and was tired of being treated like shit. So I left.
The night I moved out was a total shit show. I had rallied Dean and my other friend, let’s call them Rita (18NB), and they helped me form a plan. When I returned home, Dean and Rita would be on their way. I would pack everything that belonged to me or I felt they would let me take, and prep the bags outside. After Rita arrived I went to try and explain to my parents that I would be leaving and explain calmly why. In a perfect world, we would have had a long deep talk, and things would have ended alright. That is far, far from what happened. They immediately starting screaming, and took my phone and car keys as both belonged to them, which I calmly handed over. Rita was there for emotional support, and put themselves between me and my parents as they got more angry and seemed to be turning aggressive. After that, my father called the police and claimed that there was an intruder in their home trying to take their child. Yeah. Complete bullshit- which to this day I’m surprised they were never charged with falsifying a 911 call. They screamed at Rita to get out of their home and was screaming that I was throwing away everything and I needed to reconsider. I ignored them and attempted to calmly walk out, and my parents attempted to barricade the doors while harassing Rita to leave. Because Rita is incredible and one of my closest friends now, they refused to leave without me which was very calming. While my parents were distracted yelling at them, I slipped out through the garage. My mother saw this and then grabbed me, attempting to drag me inside by my arm. Rita saw this and assisted me in getting her off me, and after doing so we continued to walk towards Dean’s car where he was waiting for us. He figured it would be best if my family didn’t see him for the time being as they would definitely lose their minds at seeing his face. My parents continued screaming and then the cops arrived. They were quite confused at first because they had been sent to deal with a potential kidnapping, only to see two grown adults throwing a tantrum because their adult child didn’t want to live with them anymore. That night was honestly so insane I could write three more pages about everything they said and did. The most notable events were first when my mother tried to explain to the police that because I was her child, she was allowed to put her hands on me, which they humorously informed her was not the case. The next was when James came home from theater rehearsal, to which my parents told them that I was abandoning our family. He was an emotional wreck through all of it, and to this day has told me that until I “fix” things with our parents he is not okay with having any form of relationship with me. Throughout all of this Scott was in his room, and I was allowed to give him one last hug before leaving. The final and most notable thing, was as the cops allowed my boyfriend, Rita and I to leave, my father threatened violence towards my boyfriend and accused him of "taking advantage of his underage daughter," which is just ridiculous as we are practically the same age, and anything we had done together was consensual and reserved for after I turned 18. Another thing my parents did was go through each bag I had packed and took everything they felt belonged to them, including the laptop provided to me by my high school, which they hilariously were made to give back to me several days later as it was not theirs and they had no right to take it. They tried claiming they were giving it to me out of the kindness of their hearts, but that bullshit meant nothing as after I informed the school of their behavior, the school assured me they would be made to give it back. Another thing they threatened to do as I left was pull me out of high school, which I was assured by the police they were not capable of doing as I was 18. The police were for the most part annoyed with my parents, tired of their bs and told me I seemed to be a capable young woman and wished me the best of luck. My parents had tried to ask the police to say I was mentally unstable for the time being so I wouldn’t be allowed to leave, as their “she’s still in high school” excuse didn’t do anything. You see, as my father is an influential church figure and had friends in the police force, he thought they would be on his side but was sorely mistaken as the chief told him they wouldn’t be doing him any favors. And with that, I was free.
My boyfriend's family has been nothing but unconditionally kind and supportive and have accepted me as part of their family which has been a huge blessing in all of this. I am in contact with my father’s sister and his father, my aunt and grandpa, and as I have expressed my unhappiness at home, they are supportive of me as well. However, as my aunt lives further away and my grandpa is not in the best place to have me live with him, I have been with my boyfriend's family since I left home in October. I have a lot more I could say but I already feel like there are way too many parts here and so for now I’ll leave it at this. So yeah, AITA for moving out after I was treated like shit for years while witnessing the mistreatment of my sibling?

I, (18F) moved in with my boyfriend (19M) a couple of months after I turned 18, and my parents were furious and hurt. There’s a lot to unpack with this one, so bear with me.
My parents (40F and 42M) are very religious and were somewhat strict while I was growing up. I have two younger brothers, one 17 and one 8 (this will be important later). For context, my father is a pastor at a local church and my parent’s religious beliefs are the reasoning behind most if not all of their actions. Growing up, I was never a stereotypical girl. I didn’t have many female friends and was usually not accepted in groups with guys as I was a girl and we were kids. I was extroverted as a child but due to being repeatedly rejected by kids my age, I became more introverted. I was a major nerd who loved superheroes and I wanted to play sports. Again, for context, the town I grew up in was very conservative and my parents are very conservative themselves. Girls liked girl things- even if they claimed that’s not how they felt, it’s how they acted. However, as a kid, I did not realize this. I played soccer and basketball growing up, regardless of how “weird” it made me because I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. I was probably around 9 or 10 at this point. It was around this time my parents started having issues with my hobbies. I remember my parents trying to convince me to be a cheerleader because I would “like it more,” but I insisted on playing basketball. (This basketball/cheer program was through our church by the way). Because I was still young, they let it slide, but to this day I remember them being annoyed with it. This is also around the time dieting was introduced to me as well as calorie counting. I have always struggled with my weight and so has my mother, so they were very adamant on making sure I was being “healthy.” I didn’t understand it, but as a child, the only thing I was worried about was making my parents happy. A lot of discipline I received revolved around emotion. What I was doing was right or wrong and if I did something wrong, I felt terrible and awful and would often come crying to my parents about the mistakes I made, fearful of their disappointment and anger if they found things out themselves. They also made everything a moral dilemma- everything was about God and religion and as a kid, it really messed with my head. I would blame myself for everything that went wrong, seeing it as God’s punishment for my behavior. When I was 9, I went so far as to blame my grandmother’s death on myself because I was hanging out with boys instead of girls. This made me to be more of an introvert and my now anxiety disorder is much much worse.
About a year later, my parents sat down with me and my brother and told us they wanted to adopt. At first, I was very excited. I loved the idea of having another brother or sister. And I wouldn’t trade my 8 year old brother (let’s call him Scott) for anything, but adopting kids is part of what triggered a huge change in my parent’s behavior. Also- I had started getting older. I loved playing video games, watching cartoons and writing. However, these weren’t the things they wanted me to like I guess, because I started to feel their judgment become more clear and apparent as I got older. Now, I assume this is because as a kid, I just did what I was told, or my oddities were assumed to fade over time, but that is not the case anymore. Anyways, entering middle school, our family fostered a little girl, let’s call her Ally. A young woman in our church had told us that Ally’s family was out of the picture, and as her aunt, she couldn’t take her in as she was already a single mom and planned on adopting her brother, but couldn’t handle all three alone. So my family stepped in- however, we had come to find that her father was still in the picture and was actively fighting for custody. And Ally was a bit of a handful. My parents have admitted that they expected to swoop in, save a child from a hard life and be the heroes, and when things were harder than that they were very upset. Ally was about three- she remembered her mom (who was in jail i believe), her sisters, her grandma and grandpa, as well as her dad. She didn’t want our family, she wanted hers. She didn’t listen to my parents and rejected their parenting. This is what started to make my parents snap. I understand it was hard for them, but now that I’m older, I get it. She was a little girl who wanted her family. But they took her rejection very seriously and were constantly unhappy with her and made sure she knew it. Children not listening immediately was newer to them as my brother and I both did pretty much whatever they asked, and they did not take well to being told “no” by a child. 8 months after living with Ally, she was taken in by her grandparents to live with them and her sisters. The next day, my parents took my brother and I on a small trip. I’m not sure if it was to cheer us up or to celebrate. I was quite sad though- I had started to really care about Ally and had convinced myself that “God would take care of things” and I would have a sister. But I was angry- God took someone away from me and I was doing everything right. Why was he punishing me? Nothing made sense. Yet, only a year later, my parents were considering taking in another child. I wanted nothing to do with it- God had already taken one sibling away from me. I couldn’t do it again. In the end, I agreed and soon became attached to this little boy, who was two when we met him. This was Scott. I immediately became attached- and I love this kid more than I can describe- he’s my little brother and I would do anything for him.
This is where things start to go further downhill. Scott has a lot of trauma and mental issues, one of those issues being oppositional defiant disorder. That basically means that listening to any form of authority is near impossible for him, and causes him to lash out and act younger than he is. This is probably due to a number of reasons, as he was severely neglected and abused as an infant and his birth mother was on several different substances while pregnant with him, to the point where he was born high on several illegal drugs. He was left in a car seat for most of his infant life, so the back of his head is slightly flattened due to this. My parents are very obedient/disciplined-based parents, so his behavior rocked their world. In my opinion, the way they handled things with Scott was borderline abusive. There were several occasions where he would say he hated them (as young children do when they're mad) and they would flip. Telling him that if he didn’t want them that was fine. They didn’t need him. He could run back to his other parents, but his mom was in jail and his dad didn’t want him, so good luck with that. If we were in the car when this happened, they would threaten to leave him on the side of the road and good luck finding his way home. Once my mother literally pulled to the side of the road, placed him outside the car and started driving so he would “think they would leave him if his actions didn’t change,” but she turned around to get him. Because they would “never actually abandon or hurt him,” their actions were justified and perfectly fine. They would tell him he was acting like a baby when he started to cry and scream. “Little baby Scott, do you need a diaper?” Is how they would tease him when he became older, which just made his tantrums worse. They would tell him how disappointed they were with him and that he should be ashamed of himself and the way he acted because they gave him everything. They would call him, to his face, “an ungrateful manipulative piece of shit.” Because according to my parents, he could control his actions 100% and was choosing to act out to make their lives difficult. While I understand that this was hard for them, in my opinion, this in no way excuses their behavior. One time, Scott was crying and was upset (who knows why, but the kid had a lot of trauma and mental issues so it didn’t bother me too much), and my mother picked him up and put him in his room. She told him that every time he tried to leave his room, she would take away one of his stuffed animals. (He had several that he loved very much). Because this sounded so terrible to him, he ran after her trying to say it wasn’t fair. So she went into his room and took a stuffed animal. This cycle continued while he cried and begged for her to stop, because he just didn’t get it that she was going to keep doing this over and over and his trying to convince her was making it worse. Eventually, there were none left, and she told him if he didn’t stop crying she was going to throw them all away. I don’t remember what happened after that, but I do know that several of them were thrown away, if not at that time than others. There are many other instances of things like this and worse occurring, but we’d be here for a while if I tried to recount them all. Moving forwards to closer when I was moving out-
Now, several years later, when I turned sixteen, I had come to terms with the fact that I was bisexual. This went against everything my family was for, and I knew exactly how they viewed queer people. So, I started learning about different branches of Christianity and felt like I knew a God who loved me as I was and was happy in my decision to switch denominations. (My parents were baptists, and I wanted to be non-denominational). A few months after this, I decided to tell my parents the truth. I had done my best to give them hints, but I wanted to be honest with them because I trusted that they would love me and be there for me no matter what. When I told them I wanted to talk to them about something, they pushed and pressed and I had been trying to wait to talk to them until the next day. I had been seeing my high school counselor, and she suggested giving them a heads-up before springing that conversation up on them. However, after telling them to wait, they went through my phone and saw that I had researched different denominations and read different sermons on queer-accepting faith. They were livid. To be clear- I had a friend over while this was happening. We were watching a movie and joking about how I lost my phone and couldn’t show them this picture I wanted to. Then, I was called upstairs. I had apparently betrayed my parents and, “how could I do this to them, when I had someone over?” My father demanded I send my friend home, but my mother convinced him for one more hour. I was told not to tell my friend anything they had said and to act like things were fine, but I couldn’t. I went back downstairs where we were hanging out and started sobbing. I felt like my whole world was falling apart. Everything was over- and the people I thought would love me no matter what made me so afraid and sad, I was completely broken. My friend did their best to comfort me and even felt weary to leave me alone with my family but I told them I’d be okay, and asked that they update our friends about the situation. That night was hellish. So many conversations, them trying to understand what I felt, but not taking me particularly seriously either. That night turned into weeks of books, slideshows, conversations, and prayers. It felt like at-home conversion therapy. Eventually, I was given a choice “put my convictional flag in the ground or loose their trust.” As the petrified 16 year old, I chose to lie. I put my “flag” in the ground and did my best to, “earn back their trust” and repair their reputation that I had tarnished. The next couple months were a blur. I felt so terrible about myself. I didn’t know what I thought or believed and I became extremely hyper anxious and depressed. I had lost all sense of privacy and I did trust my parents further than I could toss them. My 17 year old brother (he was 14 at the time, let’s call him James) was 100% on board with my parents. My life felt like a living nightmare. My parents had it so that all my texts sent or received from my phone would go directly to theirs, so I couldn’t even confide in my friends without getting into trouble (which had happened and was how I found out that they did that because I deleted the texts immediately after sending/receiving things).. Everything felt like it was about me and how I needed to earn back their trust and how I was a terrible betrayer who they were not proud of in the slightest. I had gone to get a pixie cut (with their approval) and after they told me I was disgusting and repulsive and would never find a man to love me. I was heartbroken and felt so alone and unloved in my house, while I had to watch my younger brother be treated the way he was by my parents.
Luckily, I had a lot of friends and our school counselor who had been there for me through everything. They showered me with support and love and made sure I had a safe space to exist and truthfully I think they’re the only reason I didn’t do anything drastic and am still here today. It was hard though because James went to the same school as me and would tell my parents if I was with anyone he knew was queer or queer accepting. This caused me to be very very paranoid about who I was with, when, where, etc. Constantly covering my tracks, having an excuse set up and ready to bolt if I saw anyone I knew. What made things equally hard is that the church my father works at is quite big in our area. So if someone from our church or someone who knew my family saw me with anyone they labeled as “queer” or “gay,” they would tell my family as well. For the most part, I didn’t feel safe anywhere. I was constantly alert and on guard, even when I was asleep as my parents had woken me up before to confront me about someone I was friends with at school.
Fortunately for me, despite everything being such a mess, I am quite academically smart. I got a job the second I turned sixteen as I had heard the horror stories of queer kids being kicked out and wanted to be prepared. I had been saving money, taking college classes (we have a state program that pays for the classes while you’re in high school), and putting on a show for my family for quite some time. After saving some money, I paid my parents for an older car that they had paid off ten or so years ago. After my brother turned 16, he claimed it was too hard to share a car with me, so while I was away visiting a friend they bought him a car and told us that they expected each of us to pay them one thousand dollars before we graduated high school and that when we did so, they would sign over our respective cars to us. To be clear, I contributed to insurance and paid for my own gas, as well as contributing to my phone bill and money for food. Meanwhile, my brother had no job, and was constantly asking my parents for money to go out with friends. He had also taken up golfing, which as most people know is extremely expensive, and my parents funded everything. James had actually admitted to asking for more money than he needed and save the leftovers for whatever he wanted. I was also expected to chauffeur him to golf events and to get togethers with his friends, and my parents would in return give me some gas money. Another thing to note is that the only reason I was contributing to our phone bill is because James wanted unlimited data and my father said it was unreasonable unless we both contributed financially. I refused as I was trying to save money (as I would have with the car situation), however things per normal went James’s way. However, because he did not have a job, he was not expected to pay anything and would not be charged for the months and years that he did not contribute to. I did my best not to let these things get to me and to keep a level head. I paid my parents for the car because I already had over two thousand dollars saved as a seventeen year old high school student due to my hard work.
I focused on my classes and joined theater to help fill the hours in between school and work. I was much more active my sophomore year but when James also decided to join theater I retreated a bit as my once safe space to freely exist was no longer safe. I joined the stage crew but honestly that was also very enjoyable and lethargic for me and I enjoyed it a lot. Anyways, I was mostly a straight A student besides the stray Bs and one or two Cs (psychology and AP government screwed me over) and was working 15 or so hours a week. This is on top of my commitments to the church which were most of my Sundays and my Wednesday evenings. The funny thing is though- James missed more church than I ever did yet because my absence was because of work and not golf, I was the one consistently reprimanded for my lack of attendance and socialization whilst I was there. Yet because James could never do anything wrong and was a very extroverted person his lack of attendance wasn’t as serious as my own. I had one close friend through our church, let’s call her Grace (now 18F) and she actually knew about everything and was very supportive of me. I also had some other friends who really only showed up to church so I didn’t have to go through the torture alone which I don’t know if I could ever repay them for. Besides the people I was comfortable with though, I was pretty much a loner there and this heavily displeased my parents as it made them look bad and messed with their reputation. I never realized how much appearances meant to them until all of the shit that happened took place. As I mentioned before, our church is very conservative and traditional, and many sermons and lessons revolved around gender roles and the sinfulness of the world in terms fo the LGBTQ community. I consistently felt targeted because of my looks and my personality and stopped feeling comfortable there a very long time ago.
Now that more context is in place, fast forward to the end of my junior year. I had at this point finished all my high school requirements for graduation and was given an incredible opportunity to go to our local college full time for my senior year. I was very excited and happy because not only did it give me more freedom but it also meant I would get more than a year of my college education paid for by the state.
It was also around this time when I met my now boyfriend, let’s call him Dean. We were coworkers and had begun to get to know each other. We had a lot in common and while were different people personality wise, we enjoyed each other’s company quite a bit. By some miracle, I convinced my parents to allow me to hang out with him outside of work by claiming he was just a friend and saying that he was a Christian (which is by no means true). They were extremely skeptical but allowed us to hang out. We had an incredible time- and by the end of our first date he asked me to be his girlfriend which I happily accepted. I was so happy, but when I got home, things spiraled out of control. I told my parents about our time, and they were extremely unhappy as they felt fooled (which they were to be fair) and told me I was not allowed to see him ever again. I was devastated and they said a lot of very uncalled for things and but I understand why they were angry. To be clear, they knew I had a romantic interest in Dean and that this hangout was to see if we would be compatible partners and get to know each other better. They did not call it a date though because they weren’t comfortable with it, even if it was a date and they kinda knew it. So while they were on some level “fooled,” I feel that their anger and harshness wasn’t called for as they knew the intentions of our hanging out. The next morning my father demanded to see my phone. This is when I started to panic. You see, they had stop tracking my texts and I had openly flirted with Dean over text. Nothing that explicit and no photos of any kind. But the flirting would be enough for them to tear my world apart and I knew it. They had gone through my personal conversations before and made me feel terrible because of it and I refused to let them do it again. So I deleted everything. The entire conversation chain, I removed it from my phone 100%. My parents absolutely lost their shit. They had been manipulating and gaslighting me for years, doing anything and everything to keep their control and with my actions I showed them they couldn’t control me forever and things went very downhill. I lost all my privacy and was once again told how I had betrayed them and I was terrible and couldn’t be trusted. Again- I partially understand their anger here because I had directly disobeyed a command. But at the same time, I feel as a young woman I should be allowed some sense of privacy and the ability to talk to people without being constantly monitored. I don’t feel like I did anything wrong and would happily do it again in a heartbeat if it meant I’d be where I am today. Regardless of this, my life became a living hell once again, and my parents compared this to when I came out, “which was maybe the worst night of their lives.” They stripped me of all my privileges even if I didn’t have many to begin with. They made me feel absolutely miserable and awful about myself and I was monitored like never before. I would be working and receive texts upon texts of how I was so terrible and how could I do this to them because they had done everything for me and I’m a terrible daughter who should be ashamed of myself for the deceit and malicious nature of my actions. Again- this was because they could not read the messages between me and my now boyfriend. I understand them being mad but they took it to a completely inappropriate level. I shared everything happening with my friends and counselor and they supported me and assured me I did nothing wrong and they would be there for me which helped but as my home was now a living hellscape it was hard to hear it. I found a way to tell Dean about things and at first he felt guilty but I assured him that their actions were not his fault but theirs. He then asked me if I wanted to pause our relationship but I told him honestly that they had taken so many things I cared about over the years and I refused to let them take this. I did tell him however I understood if he didn’t want to put up with all the complicatedness of my family but he told me he cared for me and would be there so long as I was okay with it. He also told me if things ever got really bad at home, regardless of the fact we had just started dating, he had spoken to his family and they offered me a place to stay if I needed/wanted it. This really touched me, but I reassured him that it was not his job to offer that, but I appreciated the offer.
This begins our relationship and we were very happy. We had found a way to communicate over email, and we were able to hide our relationship with my family. Luckily for me, over the years I had made a habit of hanging out at the park by myself so it was not strange for me to head to the park for a couple of hours. There, I would leave my car and phone (my phone had a tracker on it) and Dean and I would hangout multiple times a week and it was heaven. At this point, we’ve only been dating for a year but I can admit without any doubt that I am in love with this man and he is in love with me. During the school year, it became easier for us to hang out in between classes as we both went to the same college (I am older for my year in school and he is younger, so he was a sophomore in college while I was a senior in high school. However, we are barely a year apart in age for anyone who is concerned). However, in order for us to communicate and hang out, I had to be extremely diligent and was consistently covering my tracks while “once again, earning my parents trust and repairing our relationship.” Because of course their actions were completely justified and I was the one in the wrong, per normal. Anyways, every day, I was editing search histories, erasing messages, and looking over my shoulder. Our church had a program on campus where Dean and I went to school, so being together in public was risky as my father’s friends and coworkers were always on campus and I knew I would be screwed if we were caught together. We had a couple of close calls over the months but it was all worth it because I hadn’t been that happy in years.
Now, to the day I left and why. You see, my parents' behavior towards Scott was becoming more aggressive and worse over time. They also had, in my opinion, a drinking problem. Considering they didn’t deny it when I called them out, they may agree. They would behave more hostile after several drinks and it was happening so consistently I was constantly walking on eggshells. Between the way they treated Scott, the way they treated me and the constant stress I was under trying to balance my life in fear of the repercussions, things became too much. When things weren’t going to shit, I was consistently expected to either babysit my brother and do chores while being a full time college student and working a part time job WHILE attending church multiple times a week and keeping up with my responsibilities as a senior. This is on top of the stress my parents' behavior caused, meanwhile James was expected to do almost nothing in comparison. Don’t get me wrong- he didn’t do anything, but he had almost no responsibilities outside of school and his extracurriculars which were exclusively funded by my parents. Yes he helped with dishes during the week and would keep his space tidy. But as my schedule became much more flexible due to my school schedule, my expectations around the house became much higher than his. Even though I paid 200 a month on gas, 50 a month for insurance and 50 a month for the phone bill, and he paid nothing for his car, insurance, phone, gas, nothing. So you would think he would be expected to help in the house more but no. Also, James’s behavior towards Scott mimicked my parents and so all babysitting responsibilities fell on me as they couldn’t be trusted alone together. I was rarely if ever paid for my cleaning or babysitting services as it was my responsibility as their eldest child. They would also consistently judge me for my weight, cloths, hair, hobbies, etc. Why did I think it was a good idea to get fast food? I clearly didn’t need it. They would “outfit check me” to make sure the outfits I wore were feminine enough because the way I look effected their reputation and I couldn’t be trusted. I was not allowed to cut my hair after their tantrum over it. As for my hobbies, I stopped playing sports in middle school as I am very short (currently 5 foot even) and was unable to keep up with my peers. However my interest in video games and cartoons wasn’t feminine enough and they proceeded to compare me to my best friend Grace because she was skinnier and liked more feminine things than I did which hurt a lot. Another thing for context, I have PCOS. It’s an endocrine disorder that heavily effects your metabolism and hormones, which in turn severely effected my weight, however my parents never acknowledged it and again made everything my fault. So from what I wore, what I ate, who I hung out with and what I enjoyed doing was constantly criticized, scrutinized and eventually controlled by my family for years. On top of everything else, I was done. I was 18, I had resaved the thousand I paid my family and knew I was at a place where I didn’t need them and was tired of being treated like shit. So I left.
The night I moved out was a total shit show. I had rallied Dean and my other friend, let’s call them Rita (18NB), and they helped me form a plan. When I returned home, Dean and Rita would be on their way. I would pack everything that belonged to me or I felt they would let me take, and prep the bags outside. After Rita arrived I went to try and explain to my parents that I would be leaving and explain calmly why. In a perfect world, we would have had a long deep talk, and things would have ended alright. That is far, far from what happened. They immediately starting screaming, and took my phone and car keys as both belonged to them, which I calmly handed over. Rita was there for emotional support, and put themselves between me and my parents as they got more angry and seemed to be turning aggressive. After that, my father called the police and claimed that there was an intruder in their home trying to take their child. Yeah. Complete bullshit- which to this day I’m surprised they were never charged with falsifying a 911 call. They screamed at Rita to get out of their home and was screaming that I was throwing away everything and I needed to reconsider. I ignored them and attempted to calmly walk out, and my parents attempted to barricade the doors while harassing Rita to leave. Because Rita is incredible and one of my closest friends now, they refused to leave without me which was very calming. While my parents were distracted yelling at them, I slipped out through the garage. My mother saw this and then grabbed me, attempting to drag me inside by my arm. Rita saw this and assisted me in getting her off me, and after doing so we continued to walk towards Dean’s car where he was waiting for us. He figured it would be best if my family didn’t see him for the time being as they would definitely lose their minds at seeing his face. My parents continued screaming and then the cops arrived. They were quite confused at first because they had been sent to deal with a potential kidnapping, only to see two grown adults throwing a tantrum because their adult child didn’t want to live with them anymore. That night was honestly so insane I could write three more pages about everything they said and did. The most notable events were first when my mother tried to explain to the police that because I was her child, she was allowed to put her hands on me, which they humorously informed her was not the case. The next was when James came home from theater rehearsal, to which my parents told them that I was abandoning our family. He was an emotional wreck through all of it, and to this day has told me that until I “fix” things with our parents he is not okay with having any form of relationship with me. Throughout all of this Scott was in his room, and I was allowed to give him one last hug before leaving. The final and most notable thing, was as the cops allowed my boyfriend, Rita and I to leave, my father threatened violence towards my boyfriend and accused him of "taking advantage of his underage daughter," which is just ridiculous as we are practically the same age, and anything we had done together was consensual and reserved for after I turned 18. Another thing my parents did was go through each bag I had packed and took everything they felt belonged to them, including the laptop provided to me by my high school, which they hilariously were made to give back to me several days later as it was not theirs and they had no right to take it. They tried claiming they were giving it to me out of the kindness of their hearts, but that bullshit meant nothing as after I informed the school of their behavior, the school assured me they would be made to give it back. Another thing they threatened to do as I left was pull me out of high school, which I was assured by the police they were not capable of doing as I was 18. The police were for the most part annoyed with my parents, tired of their bs and told me I seemed to be a capable young woman and wished me the best of luck. My parents had tried to ask the police to say I was mentally unstable for the time being so I wouldn’t be allowed to leave, as their “she’s still in high school” excuse didn’t do anything. You see, as my father is an influential church figure and had friends in the police force, he thought they would be on his side but was sorely mistaken as the chief told him they wouldn’t be doing him any favors. And with that, I was free.
My boyfriend's family has been nothing but unconditionally kind and supportive and have accepted me as part of their family which has been a huge blessing in all of this. I am in contact with my father’s sister and his father, my aunt and grandpa, and as I have expressed my unhappiness at home, they are supportive of me as well. However, as my aunt lives further away and my grandpa is not in the best place to have me live with him, I have been with my boyfriend's family since I left home in October. I have a lot more I could say but I already feel like there are way too many parts here and so for now I’ll leave it at this. So yeah, AITA for moving out after I was treated like shit for years while witnessing the mistreatment of my sibling?

I'm gonna keep posting these until/unless someone stops me. Here's the names I would use for the 1980's Rivals + a bonus at the bottom. Across the board the 80's rivals have pretty good names, but most of them don't reflect on the characters of the girls. If I had been in charge of naming them, this is what I would come up with

Sumire Saitozaki

I like her name! In Japanese flower symbolism, violets (the Japanese word for which is sumire) represent sincerity and love, which works for a girl who's main defining characteristic is that she was in love with a boy. Saitozaki isn't a real name, but I constructed it from other names. Anyways, I would write it 寿 (su) meaning long life or longevity, 海 (umi) meaning ocean, 怜 (rei) meaning clever or affection, 佐 (sa) meaning to help or aide, 糸 (ito) meaning string, 崎 (zaki) meaning cape (the geographic feature, not the clothing item). 寿 meaning long life is meant to be ironic, 佐 is to reflect how she is the tutorial for the player and thereby helps them learn the game, and 糸 made me think of the red string of fate.

Kaguya Wakaizumi

Another good name! Sumire and Kaguya's are my favorite names of the 80's rivals. Both are real names, but Kaguya I combined kanji from different spellings. I'd write it 加 (ka) meaning to add or include, 紅 (gu) meaning red, 夜 (ya) meaning night, 若 (waka) meaning youth, 泉 (izumi) meaning spring or fountain. 加 was chosen because you help add her to the rainbow girls. It's a very dumb joke but I don't care.

Moeko Rakuyona

And here's where I started changing names again. Along with reflecting their personalities, I tried to reference their canon eliminations. Moeko became Renka Moekui, written 恋 (ren) meaning love, 火 (ka) meaning fire, 燃 (mo) meaning burn or ignite, 杭 (kui) meaning stake or pile. A pretty fiery name for our fiery tomboy. I also like that I flipped her english initials

Honami Hodoshima

Best girl of 80's mode, you can't change my mind. I renamed her Yumiko Tsubutaki: 読 (yo) meaning read or understand, 子 (ko) meaning girl or child, 潰 (tsubu) meaning crush or flatten, 滝 (taki) meaning rapids or waterfall. 読 is because she's a bookworm and 潰 is because she's canonically crushed by a bookcase

Sumiko Tachibana

Not my fave rival tbh, sporty girls aren't really my thing. But I came up with Sukone Dokujima, 健 (suko) meaning healthy or strong, 音 (ne) meaning sound, 毒 (doku) meaning poison, 島 (shima) meaning island

Ritsuko Chikanari

I do like Ritsuko though, she's so obnoxious, it's great. I decided to keep her first name because there were some great kanji that I could use to construct it, so she's Ritsuko Kozai. 璃 (ri) means jewel or crystal, 月 (tsuki) means moon, 子 (ko) means girl or child, 古 (ko) means old or ancient, 財 (zai) means money. 古財 is obviously meant to reflect her old money status, and 璃 just sounds fancy to mean- like she's a precious gemstone or something

Ai Doruyashi

I wanted to keep the pun, I really did, but no Japanese surnames I could find start with doru. If you haven't noticed before, aidoru is the english word idol, which is of course Ai's goal. I ended up constructing a brand new name from a few different names to make Ai Torurai: 愛 (ai) meaning love or affection, 伊 (i) being a third person pronoun (ie, him), 都 (to) meaning capital city, 丸 (maru) meaning round or circle, 電 (rai) meaning electricity. T's and d's sound similar so we get the near pun of aitoru

Teiko Nabatasai

Second best girl, you still can't change my mind. I named her Toshino Nadaka: 聡 (sato) meaning wise or quick learner, 乃 (no) being a second person pronoun (ie, you), 名 (na) meaning family name or reputation, 高 (taka) meaning high or excellent. Since her canon elimination is lowering her reputation, I wanted her name to reference being of high reputation or standing

Komako Funakoshi

For the resident yamato nadeshiko, I wanted a name that reflected her traditional attitude. I came up with Koyori Fukuwa: 心 (kokoro) meaning heart or spirit, 和 (wa) meaning peace or harmony, 福 (fuku) meaning good fortune and 和 (wa) again. The reason 和 is in both her names is that it's a character used to represent a very fundamental part of Japanese culture. I don't think I'm the right person to explain it as I only kinda understand it, but here's a website that talks about it. But it's very common to see 和 in words related to Japan, especially old or archaic words. With Komako/Koyori being an old fashioned girl, I thought it fit to have it in both names.

Chigusa Busujima

Busu is a word for ugly, and Chigusa was bullied for having an "ugly" name, according to dev. I wanted to keep that, and I also just like her first name, so I named her Chigusa Shikocha: 千 (chi) meaning one thousand, 草 (kusa) meaning grass or weed, 醜 (shiko) meaning ugly or unattractive, 茶 (cha) meaning tea or tea ceremony

Sonoko Sakanoe

I do like her name phonetically, but the spellings don't have much to do with her character. So, Satomi Sakagari: 悟 (sato) meaning to perceive or enlightenment, 実 (mi) meaning truth, 坂 (saka) meaning hill or incline, 狩 (kari) meaning hunt or chase. Obviously as a junior detective, she needs to be perceptive, so 悟, and she's trying to discover the truth, so 実. 狩 is because she's hunting Ryoba and 坂 is because... I dunno. It's a real name that contained 狩 and that's all I was looking for, with bonus points for keeping the alliteration. I guess you could argue it references the hill with the cherry tree?

Bonus Round: Ui Tunesu

Her name is derived from the Japanese pronunciation of the english word witness- wiitonesu- because she's based on the very old Witness-chan character. Ui is a real name but Tunesu isn't. In fact, tu isn't a naturally occurring sound in Japanese. I would name her Umi Tsunemi: 宇 (u) meaning space or universe, 見 (mi) meaning to see or look at, 常 (tsune) meaning always or usual, 察 (mi) meaning intuition or perception. 見察, as a bonus, is the word for witness

I’m a transmasc desperately trying to find where to get suit vests that fit properly. I’ve already tried Amazon and a lot of the big brands, nothing fits like it should.
I’m petite (5’2 in. or 157 cm, 115 lbs, and I usually wear women’s Smalls or XS if I want a snug and fitted look) so it’s hard to find masculine clothing that fits like it should. Tried a man’s small and it predictably did not work—the waist adjuster helped but there was way too much excess fabric bulging for it to look even remotely elegant.
I’d get a women’s sized suit vest but almost all of them are tailored to enhance the appearance of breasts, aren’t sturdy/quality, or just don’t look masculine in general. I tried looking for junior boy’s sizes but it’s very confusing, not to mention they all look childish or don’t have the features I want, as expected.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
TLDR: Petite transmasc guy can’t find suit vests that fit anywhere, needing suggestions!

When I was three years old I was in a really bad car accident. I didn't know it at the time, but that singular event would come to define everything about my life moving forward. What I remember about the accident is mostly a collage of backdated comments I was able to reel out of my father in the following years. He was driving me and my mom in his old '91 Chevy Tahoe through the twisting backroads of Southern Illinois, weaving his way through the gnarled branches of oak trees which interlocked into a braided ceiling overhead. A fog had rolled in, giving the impression that we were driving through a cloudy tube. Everything was simultaneously bright and opaque. I didn't mind though, as I was in the back seat working on a coloring book. My mom was in the front, talking with my dad or turning around to entertain my completed pictures.
Although I was of the age where my memory was just beginning to mature, I still recall two things very clearly from the accident. First was the sensation of breaking. I remember feeling the way a plate must feel to be dropped: weightless at first, then suddenly meeting a much larger, more solid object—the air popped like a firecracker, and the entirety of my body shattered into hundreds of fractals. And then I remember a hand. It was my dad's hand pulling me from the wreck.
I ended up hospitalized for weeks after the crash. My mom was less lucky. The impact had killed her instantly.
As I've alluded to, I was young, and at the time I didn't fully understand the implications of what had happened. I knew something was missing, but it was like a word on the tip of my tongue, or the forgotten vanilla in a cherished cake recipe—coloring my experience, but not the whole of it. Not like my dad. For him, it was the whole fucking cake. He had somehow made it out with only a few scratches. I'm sure he had a really bad case of survivor's guilt, and frankly, looking back, I wouldn't have blamed him if he slumped into despair and spent his days drinking away his sorrow. But he wasn't that type of man. He got help. It took him years before he was able to recall anything that happened that morning, and most of it is still repressed, but he shared with me what he could. Or at least that's what I had thought.
My dad was a Middle School teacher since before I was born, and he kept his job until very recently. As a result, we didn't have much by way of resources. I grew up on Disney Channel and TV dinners for the most part, but I didn't mind. When I became of school age, his job actually made caring for me pretty convenient. Since our Elementary and Middle schools were connected, he was able to drive me there and back each day.
It was around third or fourth grade that I realized I was different. I didn't understand the other children or even the adults most of the time. They would say things then immediately change their mind, or they would talk about something and in the next breath forget its existence entirely. I remember one day at lunch, I had just gotten my tray of hot food and sat down with some friends. One of the kids, Alex, was talking about a stuffed bird he had won for getting first place in Mr. Curtis's pop-up math competition. We were all admiring its blue wings and white belly and sharp black beak and beady eyes. I left mid-conversation to get a chocolate milk. When I came back, I asked to see the bird again, and Alex said "what bird?" I was perplexed. "The bird—the bluejay you were just showing us." I remember all of the other kids looking at me like I was crazy. I figured they were all playing a trick on me, so I got up and went over to Alex's seat and crouched down, looking under the table, then I sprung up and tried to open his lunchbox. "What are you doing!?" he yelled. I felt so confused and embarrassed that I ran to the bathroom to cry.
And then there was another time a group of kids were laughing about a joke one of the girls, Taylor, had made about our homeroom teacher's face looking like a seal. I knew it was mean, but at the time I just wanted to fit in so I played along, but when I made a comment about her resemblance to the semi-aquatic animal, they all looked at me confused. "What are you talking about? We never said that…"
These misattributions kept happening, and it led to me being ostracized from most of the little childish cliques that popped up. I developed a quasi-standoffish temperament which I used as a shield against a chaotic world that I didn't understand. My dad eventually had me tested for ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), but I passed the test. He asked if I wanted to move to a different town with different schoolmates, thinking that perhaps I was getting bullied, but I told him it was fine. Somewhere deep down I felt like no matter where I went, this problem would follow me.
You may think that I was simply coping with the absence of my mom, and while I'm sure that her absence has left certain holes in my life, kindly, no, that wasn't what was happening. You see, at first I didn't notice the instances of what I'll call "blinking". I simply thought that I was misremembering things: objects, words, events. They were all little things anyway. A bird, a joke, my pencil box. It wasn't until sixth grade that I realized the magnitude of the phenomenon.
I was in my dad's 6th grade Social Studies class and we had just been assigned our "Ancient Civilizations" project which involved creating a diorama of our chosen civilization and presenting its features to the class. My friend at the time, Claire, had taken my first choice of Ancient Rome (which we had a heated argument about at lunch), so I was left with Ancient Egypt. At the time, all I pictured for Egypt was a plate of sand. However, my dad and I went through some illustrated history books and pictures on the internet and he really built up the project for me.
Over the course of a couple months, he helped me shape three pyramids out of small wooden planks and a bunch of tan clay. We placed them in the center of a giant square shoebox lid which served as the container for the diorama. Then he bought some small wooden mannequin puppets and we dressed them up in cloth clothes (mostly kilts and tunics) and colored their eyes, mouths, and hair. We added a few obelisks and some small box-huts which were collected into a little village around the Nile. Finally, we added a light glaze of glue where we felt would be necessary and then covered the whole project with golden glitter.
As we worked on each part of the diorama, my dad helped me understand what we were adding and why it was important to Ancient Egypt. I loved the way he talked about history. He spun everything into a miraculous story. To this day, I don't think I've ever had a teacher who came close to his level of charisma and creativity. As a result, I became really proud of my diorama. I memorized all the little details and rehearsed my speech in front of the mirror for hours leading up to the last couple weeks of class. And then, two days before I was supposed to give my presentation, everything fell apart.
First, I need to apologize for deceiving you about an aspect of my story. I thought it might help you to understand what I was going through at the time. What I'm about to tell you is going to sound insane. I get that. But please hear me out. The truth is that I was never assigned to present on Ancient Egypt; everything else about Clair taking my first pick and dad helping me with the whole project and my excitement leading up to the presentation was all true, but it wasn't a project on Ancient Egypt, it was a project on Ancient Sidovan, which was a civilization located on the eighth continent called "Catalan" (the same name as the spoken language, but unrelated) which was due West of Australia in the Indian Ocean.
I know this sounds incredible, and if you want to believe it's all in my head, I get that, but I remember clearly all sorts of facts about it: the Malagasy, the same people who populated Madagascar, were the first peoples to discover Catalan and settle it. However, about five hundred years later, Indian ships would arrive and create the civilization known as Sidovan. A pidgin language formed between the indigenous population and new arriving Indians called "Hiesa" (pronounced: Hai-E-suh or Hai-ʔ-suh). Catalan had a warm climate with plenty of natural resources, but Sidovan had a dense enough population to require agricultural production. They grew rice, grain, sugarcane, vegetables, and even tobacco.
I remembered all of these facts and more. My diorama reflected the main features of the Sidovan civilization. And then two days before my presentation, I woke up and my diorama was entirely different. The hilly grasslands were traded out for sandy dunes. The Hindu statues and stone palaces became clay pyramids and large spear-like pillars. And everything was covered with the ickiest yellow glitter I had ever seen. Tears stung my eyes as I trampled over to my dad's room and banged on his door. "Dad! What did you do!?" I yelled.
"Honey?" He responded, rushing over to the base of the stairs. "What's wrong?"
"The diorama. It's ruined!"
"It's what?" he asked and ran up the stairs, leading me to my room. He looked over it for a few seconds, checking to see if everything was intact, then said, "I don't see it, honey. Where is it ruined?"
I was completely dumb-struck. What did he mean he didn't see it? "All of it!" I shouted. "The whole thing is wrong. Where's the grass and the stone buildings and the lady with the four arms and the elephants? Where is my project!?"
My dad looked at me in silence. "Lauren, baby, what civilization do you think you were working on?"
"Ancient Sidovan, of course! We've been working on this for months now! Dad, please tell me you remember."
He knelt down and put his hands on my shoulders. "Honey, your project was on Ancient Egypt. There is no Ancient Sidovan."
"Y-you're lying." I protested. "Books, you have books. On your bookshelf."
He took me into his study and showed me all of his books. None of them were on Ancient Sidovan. He even turned on his computer and typed in the name of the civilization, but all that came up was a near match "Sidon". I remember feeling the sudden urge to puke. My entire body felt like it was pumping battery acid instead of blood. "I—I don't," I started but suddenly my head felt very light, and I fainted.
When I woke up, I was in the hospital. I had lost consciousness for over half an hour, enough time for my dad to call 9-1-1 and have the ambulance transport me to the nearest ER. They ran all sorts of tests on me, but they all came back fine. After a couple hours of IV fluids and monitoring, they released me with my dad.
I ended up skipping the rest of school that week. My dad didn't make me present my diorama. In fact, he never brought the subject up again. Part of me was glad. I just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened. But another part of me couldn't move past what was clearly the most absurd thing to ever happen to me. About a week after the incident, I tried to broach the subject, but when I asked my dad about it, he didn't seem to remember our conversation at all. He said I had fallen ill and that's why I needed to go to the ER and miss class. I felt like I was going crazy. If I was older, I probably would have voluntarily checked myself into a psychiatric ward. But I was young and helpless and alone, and I decided that if I just ignored the changes well enough, I could still get along. This proved difficult though, as the blinking would only exacerbate in the coming months.
Up until the time of the project, I hadn't been able to directly observe the phenomenon. It was always in retrospect that things disappeared. It was during the summer after sixth grade that this changed. I still remember the first time it happened. I had just gotten out of the shower and was drying my hair in front of the mirror. After it was dried, I threw on my clothes then went to tie my hair up in a ponytail, but as I went to set the elastic tie, I felt its weight dissipate in my hand. I gasped and held my hand out. The circular black band was gone.
Fast forward to seventh grade and the blinking had spiraled out of control. Reflecting back on it, most people would probably have assumed I was drinking psilocybin-infused water, as the delusions were somewhat consistent with psychedelic phenomena: except these distortions were real (at least they felt that way to me).
I'd wake up and grab the box of Special K but end up eating Cheerios. The McDonalds logo would look yellow and red one day, but purple and black the next. I'd be watching a show, and then a different show, and then a different one. It was as if the entire universe was a Christmas tree with millions of lights, and the lights kept shifting hues randomly, faster and faster, and I was the only one who could see their changing colors. I remember one night my dad made spaghetti for dinner and we went out onto the porch to eat it. While we were sitting, I saw our neighbor's house, a two story townhome, blink and become a single story bungalow. I gasped, and my dad asked what was wrong, but when I tried to explain he just gave me a strange look. For him, no matter what changed, the world was "always that way". While for me, it didn't have "a way".
The situation peaked when Clair, that friend I mentioned before, disappeared. I texted her (my dad had bought me a BlackBerry at the beginning of summer break) but didn't get a response. When I asked her other friends if they knew where she was, I got the usual "what are you talking about?" look. I knew right away what had happened, even though I didn't want to believe it. I went to the teacher and asked if there was a Clair in our class. She said "no". I broke down in front of everyone. I couldn't take it anymore. I ran out of school. The lady at the front desk tried to stop me, but I just barrelled past her. I kept running until I got to a big park across the street and bawled my eyes out until the police arrived and escorted me home. When they tried asking me what was wrong, I didn't say anything. There was literally nothing I could say that they would understand.
That night I prayed to God for the first time. My dad wasn't a religious man. He went to Catholic church with my mom when she was alive, but after she died he never went back. Still, I knew how to pray, even if I never did it. I copied some of the people I saw praying in movies and interlocked my fingers and knelt down on my bed, stuffing my head into a pillow. "Dear God," I said, "Please, please, please help me." I told Him about my struggles and asked Him to make them stop. I spent an hour saying the same things over and over again. And when I was finished, my little body was so tired, I fell right to sleep.
I knew something was different the second I opened my eyelids. I didn't only feel relieved, but I felt… embraced. I felt like someone was watching over me. I felt like I wasn't alone. I moved through my day with cautious apprehension. I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be let down. But to my surprise, the blinking had stopped. At least I couldn't remember any of the inconsistencies, and to me, that was a win. I began to pray regularly, and the more I did, the more I could feel the sense that someone was looking out for me. It was like I was getting a big hug from some cosmic force that loved me and wanted me to be happy.
I made it a habit to pray regularly. I asked my dad if he could take me to a church, and he agreed to take me to St. Mark's, the same church that he and my mom used to attend. Over time, I realized that the actual church services weren't as important to me as the praying. For whatever reason, there was something about praying that was like a glue for my brain, holding the entire universe together. As I got older, I considered that maybe it wasn't that the changes were no longer happening, but that I simply didn't see them anymore. In other words, maybe I was just becoming like everyone else. Either way, I didn't mind.
In my teenage years, I got into mindfulness meditation. I thought that I'd want to go into religious studies and become a theologian, so I started to learn about Eastern traditions in addition to Christianity. I joined a bunch of different school clubs to meet kids of different faiths: Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam. I tried to find a common thread which linked them all and would explain what happened to me as a child. The metaphors of Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, the Taoist Yin and Yang—duality. Every religion seemed to speak about a way of being that would lead to a better place. In some cases that better place was a physical future existence, and in others it was merely being in contact with the perfection of nature or the present. Metaphorically, the teachings could explain what I had gone through in a kind of loose way, but there were no explicit statements about my condition.
***
I want to fast forward to why I've decided to write about this now. To give you an idea of where I'm at, I'm now 25 and working on finishing my MA in Computational Linguistics. I know that's a bit of a switch from what I was thinking when I was a teenager, but I really only interested in religion because of the value praying afforded me as a child. I didn't actually have much interest in the subject, itself. After my first year of college, I changed to an English major, which ultimately led to me taking a linguistics class and enjoying it so much that I switched tracks in my Junior year. Considering the state of the world, I thought minoring in Computer Science might help me financially in the future, so I ended up charting a path which I figured might lead to something like developing translation software.
Anyway, everything was going fine until a few weeks ago. I was out at an all-night diner with a few of my friends from the program. There was Jeremy, Martin, Bella, Jordan, and Macy. We had been working on a group project together involving modeling construction grammars by generating primitive 3D structures using C# and running the code through a game engine (it's a bit weird, but essentially we were trying to create a multidimensional model for language using a similar but more advanced concept than other LLMs), and just had a breakthrough. It was 2AM though and not a brain cell existed between the six of us, so instead we focused on a different problem: Macy's ongoing breakup with her semi-long distance trucker boyfriend. We tried to explain why Mike wasn't going to work out as we ordered a round of milkshakes and waited for the lone overnight kitchen worker to scoop out three balls of ice cream from the Deans carton for each of us, blend it, then have the server deliver the vintage diner glasses on a plastic tray.
I dug into my thick strawberry shake with a spoon. It was delicious. I kept eating but focused back on the conversation. I remember feeling something odd about one of the scoops, but I was so entrenched in Macy's story that I didn't notice the metal shard in my ice cream until I felt it against my lip. "P-tuh" I spat out the shard and ice cream all in one motion, then covered my mouth which I was sure was bleeding. The silver blade was probably as large as my thumb, and it had two jagged edges, as if it was fastened for the purpose of causing damage. "What the fuck!" I yelled.
Everyone at the table turned to see what was the matter. "Hey, Lauren, you okay?"
I spoke through a covered mouth, using my free hand to point at the table. "That was in my—"
But it was gone.
"In your… shake? Was something in your shake?" asked Jeremy.
I froze. In that moment, the stories of my childhood that I had only remembered as faint nightmares came back in a wave of crushing terror. How could I have been so stupid to think they would simply vanish forever? No, this isn't the same thing, I thought. But deep down, I knew it was. I drew my hand away from my lips and saw that it was dry—no blood. When I looked back up, all of the blood in my veins went cold. My friends were… smiling at me. Their lips were elastic like taffy, stretching to reveal their teeth. I could feel them radiating malevolence, as if the only thing holding them back from picking up their utensils and stabbing me to death was some thinly veiled force field. The moment lasted for what felt like half a minute, then Jordan said two words which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"Found you"
The words ricocheted in my now adrenaline powered skull. But just as he spoke them, the world blinked and my friends were back. Bella reached out and grabbed my hand. I pulled away, but when I saw her concerned expression, I relented.
"Sorry, guys, I think I'm going to have to call it." I said.
"You sure, L?" asked Jordan. "You look like you just saw a ghost."
"Yeah, thanks, but I just…" I stumbled for a lie, but when one wouldn't come, Martin stood up and said he'd walk me out to my car.
"Thanks," I said as I got into my little 2015 Jetta. "It's just been a long day."
"No problem, Lauren. You know, if there's ever anything—"
"I know," I said but didn't mean. Some things just couldn't be shared.
I drove for about five minutes before stopping at a gas station. I pulled in and parked near the back. Then I interlocked my fingers and prayed for half an hour. I apologized for not taking my praying seriously and asked to once again be granted peace. Unlike my younger years, I also drifted into other avenues of thought. I imagined my mom. I pictured the whole arc of my life, all of the little decisions that led me to where I was. I cried for a long time. I felt like that little girl again reaching out for help. I still felt so lost, so out of control; there were so many things missing, and I was so confused.
I decided then to take a trip back home and visit my dad who was now working as a private tutor. He made enough prepping affluent students for the ACT and SAT that he could spend his free time pursuing his real passions: reading and writing. When I arrived at his doorstep that weekend, he greeted me with open arms. "How are you, kiddo? It's been, what? A year or so?"
It was actually more like two years, but I didn't tell him. I just smiled and nodded.
"Well, come in."
The house was almost exactly how I remembered it. Linoleum floors, beige walls, a few scattered pictures, the scent of camomile. Everything minimalist. There was a quaintness, a prettiness to the way everything seemed to be well kept and in a perfect place. From the cherry wood chairs we'd sit in to eat, to the cream-colored loveseat. I felt at home.
I spent the drive thinking of what I would talk to my dad about, but ultimately I wasn't sure what I'd say. I loved my dad, but I think growing up it was easy to see him as naive. After all, arguably the most important episodes of my childhood were completely unknown to him. In that way, I kind of loved him from a distance. Maybe losing my mom also played into that. Maybe I just had trust issues. And after what happened at the diner… Luckily there hadn't been any blinks since.
I stayed for a couple days and he showed me around some of the different coffee shops where he'd tutor kids or write some of his stories. I met some of his friends, mostly other retired or part-time teachers who were in a similar place in life. I was happy for him. Then, on Sunday, he made me my favorite meal growing up: homemade carbonara pasta with chicken and broccoli. The sauce had a few different cheeses, butter, olive oil, and a raw egg yolk. It was the perfect blend of creamy, savory, and sweet. After we ate, he cracked open a scrapbook of some old photos and other clippings he had put together.
We reminisced about the past and laughed whenever I'd cover up one of my awkward pictures. He brought up some stories from school that I had forgotten, naming some teachers that I hadn't thought about in years. Apparently I had started at the end, because as I moved to the other end of the book, I kept getting younger and younger. I flipped to the last pages and noticed a couple pictures of my mom that made my heart sink.
"She was beautiful, wasn't she?" said my dad.
"Mmm," I agreed.
I flipped to the last page and saw a collage of newspaper clippings. One of them was related to the accident. It was headlined: "Two Survive Head-On Collision". After a cursory glance at the text, I noticed something odd. It said, "Both the husband and child, a three year old girl, sustained life-threatening wounds. The husband was found unconscious on the scene. The girl was found twenty meters away from the vehicle, crying." I swallowed, trying to remember back to what happened that day. The feeling of crashing, of the world slowing down, then breaking, returned. And then there was a hand. My dad's hand. Or was it? If he was unconscious, who pulled me out of that wreck?
I looked up at my dad. He was smiling.
I shot up and started backing up slowly toward the door. "No, not you, too. What is this? What's happening? Who are you?"
My dad, or whatever was controlling him, laughed."Oh, Lauren, Lauren, Lauren. You know who we are." he purred as he stood up. He lifted his hands and the lights began to flicker then bend in a way which shouldn't have been possible. Dark figures began to propagate from the shadows along the walls. The pictures nailed there began to blink out of existence. I turned to run toward the door but the handle was gone. Glass shards materialized all around me and swarmed like locusts. Certain I was going to die, I dropped down on my knees and once again turned to prayer, this time asking God to directly intervene and save me.
Everything went quiet.
"Honey? Are you okay?"
I didn't trust his voice. I knew if I opened my eyes, I'd see that awful smile. He was just toying with me. "It's not you," I said in between muttered prayers. "I know it's not you."
"Honey," my dad said, closer. I felt his arms wrap around me. This was it, I was going to be suffocated. I waited for the inevitable crushing weight of my chest collapsing. I waited to break all over again.
"I would never hurt you, Lauren. I love you more than anything in the whole world."
I burst out in tears. "No, it's not you, I know it's not you. You don't exist!"
My dad's weight dissipated. I opened my eyes and saw that he was no longer there. "Dad?" I called aloud. "Dad? Where did you go?"
I checked all over the house, but there was no trace of him. There were still pictures of him all over the house, so I knew he hadn't blinked out of existence like everything else, but somehow he was missing.
***
I left the house and got a room at a hotel, where I am now. I'm sure at this point that whatever is happening to me is no longer random. Something out there is actively trying to hunt me. Maybe it has been my whole life, but only now it can see me—however weird that sounds. If that's right, then God has been on my side trying to protect me from this demon or monster or devil or whatever it is. Regardless, the methods I was using when I was younger are not going to cut it anymore. I already posted my story in several other small circles and have gotten one reply. A man who goes by the name "Trent" (apparently it's an alias). He said that he has some insight into my "condition" and can offer help if I want it. I'm planning on meeting with him tomorrow. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but at this point I need answers. I can keep you updated with my progress if that interests you, and to anyone who knows anything about what's happening to me, please… I could really use your help.
***
I was just about to post this when Trent sent another message. This is what it says:
Trent: We can do the \*** at **** O'clock. Also, if what you're telling me is true, your mother may still be alive.*

When I was three years old I was in a really bad car accident. I didn't know it at the time, but that singular event would come to define everything about my life moving forward. What I remember about the accident is mostly a collage of backdated comments I was able to reel out of my father in the following years. He was driving me and my mom in his old '91 Chevy Tahoe through the twisting backroads of Southern Illinois, weaving his way through the gnarled branches of oak trees which interlocked into a braided ceiling overhead. A fog had rolled in, giving the impression that we were driving through a cloudy tube. Everything was simultaneously bright and opaque. I didn't mind though, as I was in the back seat working on a coloring book. My mom was in the front, talking with my dad or turning around to entertain my completed pictures.
Although I was of the age where my memory was just beginning to mature, I still recall two things very clearly from the accident. First was the sensation of breaking. I remember feeling the way a plate must feel to be dropped: weightless at first, then suddenly meeting a much larger, more solid object—the air popped like a firecracker, and the entirety of my body shattered into hundreds of fractals. And then I remember a hand. It was my dad's hand pulling me from the wreck.
I ended up hospitalized for weeks after the crash. My mom was less lucky. The impact had killed her instantly.
As I've alluded to, I was young, and at the time I didn't fully understand the implications of what had happened. I knew something was missing, but it was like a word on the tip of my tongue, or the forgotten vanilla in a cherished cake recipe—coloring my experience, but not the whole of it. Not like my dad. For him, it was the whole fucking cake. He had somehow made it out with only a few scratches. I'm sure he had a really bad case of survivor's guilt, and frankly, looking back, I wouldn't have blamed him if he slumped into despair and spent his days drinking away his sorrow. But he wasn't that type of man. He got help. It took him years before he was able to recall anything that happened that morning, and most of it is still repressed, but he shared with me what he could. Or at least that's what I had thought.
My dad was a Middle School teacher since before I was born, and he kept his job until very recently. As a result, we didn't have much by way of resources. I grew up on Disney Channel and TV dinners for the most part, but I didn't mind. When I became of school age, his job actually made caring for me pretty convenient. Since our Elementary and Middle schools were connected, he was able to drive me there and back each day.
It was around third or fourth grade that I realized I was different. I didn't understand the other children or even the adults most of the time. They would say things then immediately change their mind, or they would talk about something and in the next breath forget its existence entirely. I remember one day at lunch, I had just gotten my tray of hot food and sat down with some friends. One of the kids, Alex, was talking about a stuffed bird he had won for getting first place in Mr. Curtis's pop-up math competition. We were all admiring its blue wings and white belly and sharp black beak and beady eyes. I left mid-conversation to get a chocolate milk. When I came back, I asked to see the bird again, and Alex said "what bird?" I was perplexed. "The bird—the bluejay you were just showing us." I remember all of the other kids looking at me like I was crazy. I figured they were all playing a trick on me, so I got up and went over to Alex's seat and crouched down, looking under the table, then I sprung up and tried to open his lunchbox. "What are you doing!?" he yelled. I felt so confused and embarrassed that I ran to the bathroom to cry.
And then there was another time a group of kids were laughing about a joke one of the girls, Taylor, had made about our homeroom teacher's face looking like a seal. I knew it was mean, but at the time I just wanted to fit in so I played along, but when I made a comment about her resemblance to the semi-aquatic animal, they all looked at me confused. "What are you talking about? We never said that…"
These misattributions kept happening, and it led to me being ostracized from most of the little childish cliques that popped up. I developed a quasi-standoffish temperament which I used as a shield against a chaotic world that I didn't understand. My dad eventually had me tested for ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), but I passed the test. He asked if I wanted to move to a different town with different schoolmates, thinking that perhaps I was getting bullied, but I told him it was fine. Somewhere deep down I felt like no matter where I went, this problem would follow me.
You may think that I was simply coping with the absence of my mom, and while I'm sure that her absence has left certain holes in my life, kindly, no, that wasn't what was happening. You see, at first I didn't notice the instances of what I'll call "blinking". I simply thought that I was misremembering things: objects, words, events. They were all little things anyway. A bird, a joke, my pencil box. It wasn't until sixth grade that I realized the magnitude of the phenomenon.
I was in my dad's 6th grade Social Studies class and we had just been assigned our "Ancient Civilizations" project which involved creating a diorama of our chosen civilization and presenting its features to the class. My friend at the time, Claire, had taken my first choice of Ancient Rome (which we had a heated argument about at lunch), so I was left with Ancient Egypt. At the time, all I pictured for Egypt was a plate of sand. However, my dad and I went through some illustrated history books and pictures on the internet and he really built up the project for me.
Over the course of a couple months, he helped me shape three pyramids out of small wooden planks and a bunch of tan clay. We placed them in the center of a giant square shoebox lid which served as the container for the diorama. Then he bought some small wooden mannequin puppets and we dressed them up in cloth clothes (mostly kilts and tunics) and colored their eyes, mouths, and hair. We added a few obelisks and some small box-huts which were collected into a little village around the Nile. Finally, we added a light glaze of glue where we felt would be necessary and then covered the whole project with golden glitter.
As we worked on each part of the diorama, my dad helped me understand what we were adding and why it was important to Ancient Egypt. I loved the way he talked about history. He spun everything into a miraculous story. To this day, I don't think I've ever had a teacher who came close to his level of charisma and creativity. As a result, I became really proud of my diorama. I memorized all the little details and rehearsed my speech in front of the mirror for hours leading up to the last couple weeks of class. And then, two days before I was supposed to give my presentation, everything fell apart.
First, I need to apologize for deceiving you about an aspect of my story. I thought it might help you to understand what I was going through at the time. What I'm about to tell you is going to sound insane. I get that. But please hear me out. The truth is that I was never assigned to present on Ancient Egypt; everything else about Clair taking my first pick and dad helping me with the whole project and my excitement leading up to the presentation was all true, but it wasn't a project on Ancient Egypt, it was a project on Ancient Sidovan, which was a civilization located on the eighth continent called "Catalan" (the same name as the spoken language, but unrelated) which was due West of Australia in the Indian Ocean.
I know this sounds incredible, and if you want to believe it's all in my head, I get that, but I remember clearly all sorts of facts about it: the Malagasy, the same people who populated Madagascar, were the first peoples to discover Catalan and settle it. However, about five hundred years later, Indian ships would arrive and create the civilization known as Sidovan. A pidgin language formed between the indigenous population and new arriving Indians called "Hiesa" (pronounced: Hai-E-suh or Hai-ʔ-suh). Catalan had a warm climate with plenty of natural resources, but Sidovan had a dense enough population to require agricultural production. They grew rice, grain, sugarcane, vegetables, and even tobacco.
I remembered all of these facts and more. My diorama reflected the main features of the Sidovan civilization. And then two days before my presentation, I woke up and my diorama was entirely different. The hilly grasslands were traded out for sandy dunes. The Hindu statues and stone palaces became clay pyramids and large spear-like pillars. And everything was covered with the ickiest yellow glitter I had ever seen. Tears stung my eyes as I trampled over to my dad's room and banged on his door. "Dad! What did you do!?" I yelled.
"Honey?" He responded, rushing over to the base of the stairs. "What's wrong?"
"The diorama. It's ruined!"
"It's what?" he asked and ran up the stairs, leading me to my room. He looked over it for a few seconds, checking to see if everything was intact, then said, "I don't see it, honey. Where is it ruined?"
I was completely dumb-struck. What did he mean he didn't see it? "All of it!" I shouted. "The whole thing is wrong. Where's the grass and the stone buildings and the lady with the four arms and the elephants? Where is my project!?"
My dad looked at me in silence. "Lauren, baby, what civilization do you think you were working on?"
"Ancient Sidovan, of course! We've been working on this for months now! Dad, please tell me you remember."
He knelt down and put his hands on my shoulders. "Honey, your project was on Ancient Egypt. There is no Ancient Sidovan."
"Y-you're lying." I protested. "Books, you have books. On your bookshelf."
He took me into his study and showed me all of his books. None of them were on Ancient Sidovan. He even turned on his computer and typed in the name of the civilization, but all that came up was a near match "Sidon". I remember feeling the sudden urge to puke. My entire body felt like it was pumping battery acid instead of blood. "I—I don't," I started but suddenly my head felt very light, and I fainted.
When I woke up, I was in the hospital. I had lost consciousness for over half an hour, enough time for my dad to call 9-1-1 and have the ambulance transport me to the nearest ER. They ran all sorts of tests on me, but they all came back fine. After a couple hours of IV fluids and monitoring, they released me with my dad.
I ended up skipping the rest of school that week. My dad didn't make me present my diorama. In fact, he never brought the subject up again. Part of me was glad. I just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened. But another part of me couldn't move past what was clearly the most absurd thing to ever happen to me. About a week after the incident, I tried to broach the subject, but when I asked my dad about it, he didn't seem to remember our conversation at all. He said I had fallen ill and that's why I needed to go to the ER and miss class. I felt like I was going crazy. If I was older, I probably would have voluntarily checked myself into a psychiatric ward. But I was young and helpless and alone, and I decided that if I just ignored the changes well enough, I could still get along. This proved difficult though, as the blinking would only exacerbate in the coming months.
Up until the time of the project, I hadn't been able to directly observe the phenomenon. It was always in retrospect that things disappeared. It was during the summer after sixth grade that this changed. I still remember the first time it happened. I had just gotten out of the shower and was drying my hair in front of the mirror. After it was dried, I threw on my clothes then went to tie my hair up in a ponytail, but as I went to set the elastic tie, I felt its weight dissipate in my hand. I gasped and held my hand out. The circular black band was gone.
Fast forward to seventh grade and the blinking had spiraled out of control. Reflecting back on it, most people would probably have assumed I was drinking psilocybin-infused water, as the delusions were somewhat consistent with psychedelic phenomena: except these distortions were real (at least they felt that way to me).
I'd wake up and grab the box of Special K but end up eating Cheerios. The McDonalds logo would look yellow and red one day, but purple and black the next. I'd be watching a show, and then a different show, and then a different one. It was as if the entire universe was a Christmas tree with millions of lights, and the lights kept shifting hues randomly, faster and faster, and I was the only one who could see their changing colors. I remember one night my dad made spaghetti for dinner and we went out onto the porch to eat it. While we were sitting, I saw our neighbor's house, a two story townhome, blink and become a single story bungalow. I gasped, and my dad asked what was wrong, but when I tried to explain he just gave me a strange look. For him, no matter what changed, the world was "always that way". While for me, it didn't have "a way".
The situation peaked when Clair, that friend I mentioned before, disappeared. I texted her (my dad had bought me a BlackBerry at the beginning of summer break) but didn't get a response. When I asked her other friends if they knew where she was, I got the usual "what are you talking about?" look. I knew right away what had happened, even though I didn't want to believe it. I went to the teacher and asked if there was a Clair in our class. She said "no". I broke down in front of everyone. I couldn't take it anymore. I ran out of school. The lady at the front desk tried to stop me, but I just barrelled past her. I kept running until I got to a big park across the street and bawled my eyes out until the police arrived and escorted me home. When they tried asking me what was wrong, I didn't say anything. There was literally nothing I could say that they would understand.
That night I prayed to God for the first time. My dad wasn't a religious man. He went to Catholic church with my mom when she was alive, but after she died he never went back. Still, I knew how to pray, even if I never did it. I copied some of the people I saw praying in movies and interlocked my fingers and knelt down on my bed, stuffing my head into a pillow. "Dear God," I said, "Please, please, please help me." I told Him about my struggles and asked Him to make them stop. I spent an hour saying the same things over and over again. And when I was finished, my little body was so tired, I fell right to sleep.
I knew something was different the second I opened my eyelids. I didn't only feel relieved, but I felt… embraced. I felt like someone was watching over me. I felt like I wasn't alone. I moved through my day with cautious apprehension. I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be let down. But to my surprise, the blinking had stopped. At least I couldn't remember any of the inconsistencies, and to me, that was a win. I began to pray regularly, and the more I did, the more I could feel the sense that someone was looking out for me. It was like I was getting a big hug from some cosmic force that loved me and wanted me to be happy.
I made it a habit to pray regularly. I asked my dad if he could take me to a church, and he agreed to take me to St. Mark's, the same church that he and my mom used to attend. Over time, I realized that the actual church services weren't as important to me as the praying. For whatever reason, there was something about praying that was like a glue for my brain, holding the entire universe together. As I got older, I considered that maybe it wasn't that the changes were no longer happening, but that I simply didn't see them anymore. In other words, maybe I was just becoming like everyone else. Either way, I didn't mind.
In my teenage years, I got into mindfulness meditation. I thought that I'd want to go into religious studies and become a theologian, so I started to learn about Eastern traditions in addition to Christianity. I joined a bunch of different school clubs to meet kids of different faiths: Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam. I tried to find a common thread which linked them all and would explain what happened to me as a child. The metaphors of Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, the Taoist Yin and Yang—duality. Every religion seemed to speak about a way of being that would lead to a better place. In some cases that better place was a physical future existence, and in others it was merely being in contact with the perfection of nature or the present. Metaphorically, the teachings could explain what I had gone through in a kind of loose way, but there were no explicit statements about my condition.
***
I want to fast forward to why I've decided to write about this now. To give you an idea of where I'm at, I'm now 25 and working on finishing my MA in Computational Linguistics. I know that's a bit of a switch from what I was thinking when I was a teenager, but I really only interested in religion because of the value praying afforded me as a child. I didn't actually have much interest in the subject, itself. After my first year of college, I changed to an English major, which ultimately led to me taking a linguistics class and enjoying it so much that I switched tracks in my Junior year. Considering the state of the world, I thought minoring in Computer Science might help me financially in the future, so I ended up charting a path which I figured might lead to something like developing translation software.
Anyway, everything was going fine until a few weeks ago. I was out at an all-night diner with a few of my friends from the program. There was Jeremy, Martin, Bella, Jordan, and Macy. We had been working on a group project together involving modeling construction grammars by generating primitive 3D structures using C# and running the code through a game engine (it's a bit weird, but essentially we were trying to create a multidimensional model for language using a similar but more advanced concept than other LLMs), and just had a breakthrough. It was 2AM though and not a brain cell existed between the six of us, so instead we focused on a different problem: Macy's ongoing breakup with her semi-long distance trucker boyfriend. We tried to explain why Mike wasn't going to work out as we ordered a round of milkshakes and waited for the lone overnight kitchen worker to scoop out three balls of ice cream from the Deans carton for each of us, blend it, then have the server deliver the vintage diner glasses on a plastic tray.
I dug into my thick strawberry shake with a spoon. It was delicious. I kept eating but focused back on the conversation. I remember feeling something odd about one of the scoops, but I was so entrenched in Macy's story that I didn't notice the metal shard in my ice cream until I felt it against my lip. "P-tuh" I spat out the shard and ice cream all in one motion, then covered my mouth which I was sure was bleeding. The silver blade was probably as large as my thumb, and it had two jagged edges, as if it was fastened for the purpose of causing damage. "What the fuck!" I yelled.
Everyone at the table turned to see what was the matter. "Hey, Lauren, you okay?"
I spoke through a covered mouth, using my free hand to point at the table. "That was in my—"
But it was gone.
"In your… shake? Was something in your shake?" asked Jeremy.
I froze. In that moment, the stories of my childhood that I had only remembered as faint nightmares came back in a wave of crushing terror. How could I have been so stupid to think they would simply vanish forever? No, this isn't the same thing, I thought. But deep down, I knew it was. I drew my hand away from my lips and saw that it was dry—no blood. When I looked back up, all of the blood in my veins went cold. My friends were… smiling at me. Their lips were elastic like taffy, stretching to reveal their teeth. I could feel them radiating malevolence, as if the only thing holding them back from picking up their utensils and stabbing me to death was some thinly veiled force field. The moment lasted for what felt like half a minute, then Jordan said two words which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"Found you"
The words ricocheted in my now adrenaline powered skull. But just as he spoke them, the world blinked and my friends were back. Bella reached out and grabbed my hand. I pulled away, but when I saw her concerned expression, I relented.
"Sorry, guys, I think I'm going to have to call it." I said.
"You sure, L?" asked Jordan. "You look like you just saw a ghost."
"Yeah, thanks, but I just…" I stumbled for a lie, but when one wouldn't come, Martin stood up and said he'd walk me out to my car.
"Thanks," I said as I got into my little 2015 Jetta. "It's just been a long day."
"No problem, Lauren. You know, if there's ever anything—"
"I know," I said but didn't mean. Some things just couldn't be shared.
I drove for about five minutes before stopping at a gas station. I pulled in and parked near the back. Then I interlocked my fingers and prayed for half an hour. I apologized for not taking my praying seriously and asked to once again be granted peace. Unlike my younger years, I also drifted into other avenues of thought. I imagined my mom. I pictured the whole arc of my life, all of the little decisions that led me to where I was. I cried for a long time. I felt like that little girl again reaching out for help. I still felt so lost, so out of control; there were so many things missing, and I was so confused.
I decided then to take a trip back home and visit my dad who was now working as a private tutor. He made enough prepping affluent students for the ACT and SAT that he could spend his free time pursuing his real passions: reading and writing. When I arrived at his doorstep that weekend, he greeted me with open arms. "How are you, kiddo? It's been, what? A year or so?"
It was actually more like two years, but I didn't tell him. I just smiled and nodded.
"Well, come in."
The house was almost exactly how I remembered it. Linoleum floors, beige walls, a few scattered pictures, the scent of camomile. Everything minimalist. There was a quaintness, a prettiness to the way everything seemed to be well kept and in a perfect place. From the cherry wood chairs we'd sit in to eat, to the cream-colored loveseat. I felt at home.
I spent the drive thinking of what I would talk to my dad about, but ultimately I wasn't sure what I'd say. I loved my dad, but I think growing up it was easy to see him as naive. After all, arguably the most important episodes of my childhood were completely unknown to him. In that way, I kind of loved him from a distance. Maybe losing my mom also played into that. Maybe I just had trust issues. And after what happened at the diner… Luckily there hadn't been any blinks since.
I stayed for a couple days and he showed me around some of the different coffee shops where he'd tutor kids or write some of his stories. I met some of his friends, mostly other retired or part-time teachers who were in a similar place in life. I was happy for him. Then, on Sunday, he made me my favorite meal growing up: homemade carbonara pasta with chicken and broccoli. The sauce had a few different cheeses, butter, olive oil, and a raw egg yolk. It was the perfect blend of creamy, savory, and sweet. After we ate, he cracked open a scrapbook of some old photos and other clippings he had put together.
We reminisced about the past and laughed whenever I'd cover up one of my awkward pictures. He brought up some stories from school that I had forgotten, naming some teachers that I hadn't thought about in years. Apparently I had started at the end, because as I moved to the other end of the book, I kept getting younger and younger. I flipped to the last pages and noticed a couple pictures of my mom that made my heart sink.
"She was beautiful, wasn't she?" said my dad.
"Mmm," I agreed.
I flipped to the last page and saw a collage of newspaper clippings. One of them was related to the accident. It was headlined: "Two Survive Head-On Collision". After a cursory glance at the text, I noticed something odd. It said, "Both the husband and child, a three year old girl, sustained life-threatening wounds. The husband was found unconscious on the scene. The girl was found twenty meters away from the vehicle, crying." I swallowed, trying to remember back to what happened that day. The feeling of crashing, of the world slowing down, then breaking, returned. And then there was a hand. My dad's hand. Or was it? If he was unconscious, who pulled me out of that wreck?
I looked up at my dad. He was smiling.
I shot up and started backing up slowly toward the door. "No, not you, too. What is this? What's happening? Who are you?"
My dad, or whatever was controlling him, laughed."Oh, Lauren, Lauren, Lauren. You know who we are." he purred as he stood up. He lifted his hands and the lights began to flicker then bend in a way which shouldn't have been possible. Dark figures began to propagate from the shadows along the walls. The pictures nailed there began to blink out of existence. I turned to run toward the door but the handle was gone. Glass shards materialized all around me and swarmed like locusts. Certain I was going to die, I dropped down on my knees and once again turned to prayer, this time asking God to directly intervene and save me.
Everything went quiet.
"Honey? Are you okay?"
I didn't trust his voice. I knew if I opened my eyes, I'd see that awful smile. He was just toying with me. "It's not you," I said in between muttered prayers. "I know it's not you."
"Honey," my dad said, closer. I felt his arms wrap around me. This was it, I was going to be suffocated. I waited for the inevitable crushing weight of my chest collapsing. I waited to break all over again.
"I would never hurt you, Lauren. I love you more than anything in the whole world."
I burst out in tears. "No, it's not you, I know it's not you. You don't exist!"
My dad's weight dissipated. I opened my eyes and saw that he was no longer there. "Dad?" I called aloud. "Dad? Where did you go?"
I checked all over the house, but there was no trace of him. There were still pictures of him all over the house, so I knew he hadn't blinked out of existence like everything else, but somehow he was missing.
***
I left the house and got a room at a hotel, where I am now. I'm sure at this point that whatever is happening to me is no longer random. Something out there is actively trying to hunt me. Maybe it has been my whole life, but only now it can see me—however weird that sounds. If that's right, then God has been on my side trying to protect me from this demon or monster or devil or whatever it is. Regardless, the methods I was using when I was younger are not going to cut it anymore. I already posted my story in several other small circles and have gotten one reply. A man who goes by the name "Trent" (apparently it's an alias). He said that he has some insight into my "condition" and can offer help if I want it. I'm planning on meeting with him tomorrow. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but at this point I need answers. I can keep you updated with my progress if that interests you, and to anyone who knows anything about what's happening to me, please… I could really use your help.
***
I was just about to post this when Trent sent another message. This is what it says:
Trent: We can do the \*** at **** O'clock. Also, if what you're telling me is true, your mother may still be alive.*

I’m posting on behalf of my brother who doesn’t have a Reddit account.
He and his girlfriend of 2 years broke up last week. They share a 6 month old baby. They were living the house she inherited from her parents. She told him to leave after shoving him twice, breaking his phone, iPad and PlayStation because he wanted to come visit me with the baby on my birthday she didn’t want to. My brother has since told me this isn’t the first time she’s broke his things, put her hands on him and she regularly screams at him and belittles him. He is on the birth certificate and the baby is a junior - I’m not sure if that matters.
He has stayed until now because he didn’t want to leave his son. In the past week she has hacked into all of his social media accounts, email, and texted his boss lies.
She’s sent texts threatening to burn his stuff, kill his pets (reptiles), and what is most worrying to my brother is she’s not letting him see the baby and says unless they get back together he will never see his son again. He has already filed for shared custody (the day after he moved out) and has been saving all of her texts.
Is there anything else we can do in the mean time? She won’t let him pick up any of his clothes and he really wants to see his son for at least a few hours. He is in Bucks County, PA.

Hello everyone! Can you please recommend great underarm products?
I have dark underarms as I used to scrub them hard when I was a kid because I thought it was just dirt, I also have an odor but only when I sweat— I sweat a lot haha. I already used several products but none of them seemed to work out well. I have tried:

1. ⁠CALAMANSI- worked well but only a few times after I tried it, then I started getting a somehow sour odor
2. ⁠TAWAS POWDER- used it when I was in my junior days, worked its magic but I start to smell after a few hours. I stopped using it during pandemic, I got conscious of my UA because they darkened
3. ⁠FRESH FORMULA SGT AT ARTS LIGHTENING DUO- thought this was a great purchase since the CEO herself claimed that this has improved her UA. What I hate in this duo is it leaves a white sticky/creamy texture on my UA and it’s so hard to remove unless you rub it. Used this in 2021
4. ⁠GMEELAN SAKURA WHITENING UA CREAM + GLUTA DEO SPRAY- saw this on tiktok and instantly bought it when I checked the reviews. My UA got a little brighter (according to my sister) but doesn’t stop the odor after a few hours, it has fragrance so I think it has something to do with that as well. [Note: I only use it when I’m at home, otherwise I use Avon deo]
5. ⁠AVON DEO CREAM (POWDER LIGHT)- I currently use this one since 2022. It works well with the odor, but not with excessive sweating. I can last a whole day without smelling like I haven’t taken a shower for 3 days. Problem is it darkens my UA, like they instantly darkened as soon as I used it after a week (or two) of using Gmeelan.

My odor is not that severe, I only get it when I sweat too much which is normal I think. My bf said my dark UA are not big deal for him and that he accepts everything about me, but ugh I’m so conscious about it, I can’t wear sleeveless clothes without having to use cardigans. Please please recommend good deodorants.
Also, is Lay Bare’s 5+1 UA brightening package good? I’ve never experienced waxing my UA before, I just shave. Thank you in advance! 🙏

i met my ex when we were both 17 and in junior college (jc). he was my first real love and serious relationship. we continued to date for about 2.5 years after that, with multiple attempts of breaking up. in hindsight, it wasn't healthy. he was controlling and i had crippling anxiety and self-esteem. he would insist on having a say in what clothes i wore, how i dealt with body hair, tattoos, what activities i joined in university etc.
when we tried first to break up, he was very civil, saying things like he would wait for me and he still cares about me etc. but soon he tried contacting me on every communication platform possible. if i blocked him on whatsapp, he would telegram me etc. untill one night i agreed to meet him on zoom and he begged me to give him another chance. i said "i'm not saying no but i'm not saying yes". he wouldn't take that answer the first few times but eventually let me hang up and go to sleep. the next day, he sent me a long text saying i didn't deserve him (considering all the efforts he made in the past few days) and that it was my fault for not being strong enough to overcomes the trauma (he caused me) to try again.
since then he went on to date the girl he told me not to worry about. but they broke up after about a year. he goes to the same university as me but i am graduating soon. i have bumped into him a couple of times in school and it triggered a lot of feelings for me. there was one time where i contacted him and at the end of it he told me to "never contact him again".
i am 23 now and in a new healthy relationship (for almost 2.5 years). i started therapy at 19 and have tried to work out relationship issues with my ex ever since then. i have since moved on to a different therapist and our main therapy goal at the moment is to help me get over the trauma of my ex.
after years of therapy and time away from my toxic ex, i have forgotten about how it feels to be in that toxic relationship. my brain still knows the pain he caused me but i have physically forgotten what it feels like. but as i have forgotten about the bad times, it has made me miss him more and more over the good times. i made so many memories of young love with my ex that i can never get back or experience again (eg. meeting each other in between lessons in jc, walking to tuition together in our uniforms etc). now, these all feel like "wasted memories".
it makes me feel really guilty to have these feelings of missing my ex and getting back to him whilst in another relationship. my current bf is very understanding but i know this is unfair to him. i don't see how i can get over these feelings other than eventually getting back together with my ex or something like that. i feel like i can never love as fearlessly and dearly as i did with my ex. and it's almost like ending up with him is the only way i can experience that kind of love again.
it has been years and i am still trying to work through all these feelings about my past relationship. this can't be just trauma right? i'm fully aware it might be a still existing trauma bond but what if it's not?
you know those teenage shows who showcase a toxic and emotionally unavailable relationship but they still end up together because they're "soulmates"? (eg. conrad and belly in tsitp tv show) that's kind of how i feel. but i've had friends tell me how can he be your soulmate if he treated you so badly?
even after having typed out how toxic the break up was, i still feel a fondness for him. gosh, this doesn't make sense. i've been feeling so frustrated and anxious over this. any advice will be appreciated 🙏🏻

Hi PMs,
I'm planning to move to Project Management role, no experience, from ansolute start. I have just over a year of Property Management experience, but rest of the jobs been very basic. I done my research and I love SCRUM, I absolutely adore it's impericism and lean approach. I'm not just saying it because I read the guide. The guide was answer to my prayers, it's just the way I think, reading the guide was like realising that there are people who think the same way. Total Scrum and Lean fanboy. But only business software companies and bank software divisions are hiring Scrum Masters and Product Owners (my dream role). I got no knowledge, no experience and honesty little interest in business software. I don't mind it, but I won't go and do Microsoft DevOps Cert to get a job. MS DevOps is too time and money consuming for a very niche area IMHO.
I'm looking at two certifications to get credentials to try and get entry level job in Agile PM environment. PMI-ACP and AgilePM Practitioner. I am also working on Jira certification.
Which one would you recommend for the UK job market to give me a chance at getting a junior role on an Agile PM team?
And which roles should I be aiming for?
Key industries of interest: Hospitality and catering (have atiny bit experience), luxury lifestyle services (have experience), tech startups (love tech and all novelty), traditional retail (worked in Harrod's in my 20s), clothing manufacturing. In that order. I'm 36, based in Glasgow and spent a total of 8 years in London, willing to relocate anywhere in England (and as far as possible from Scotland).
Any advice will be very welcome. Especially if it's something I havent thought of. Thank you 🙏

Last night, I cried to the point that my eyelids were swollen the next morning.
There’s nothing that I like about myself. I feel like people think I’m weird. I’m not smart, I’m lazy, and I’m not pretty either. I don’t have any passions or hobbies. My room has clothes everywhere and I do my homework at midnight, every night. I used to be able to maintain high A’s; however, I lost so much motivation that my GPA dropped a whole point. I’ll never forget when I tried to drop AP lang, my associate principal looked at my decline in grades and asked “did you give up or something?” I just feel so stupid and I’m angry at myself. I missed school so much that now I’m on credit recovery and I have to make up for the hours I was absent.
My presence is insignificant and it makes no difference if I don’t show up to school, miss the family gathering, or hide in my room upstairs. Even at school with my friends, I feel lonely. I feel like I annoy my friends. School is so mentally draining and I’m counting the days until summer break.
I feel like I’ll never be a functional adult in the future. I have no clue on what I want to do in life and my whole family is pushing this narrative that I need to be a lawyer or doctor; however, I’m so lazy and slow that I can’t even handle junior year of high school.
Sometimes it feels like it would be better if I was never born. My sisters are truly amazing, smart, and dedicated, but I can never be that.
It makes no difference that I am around and frankly, I wouldn’t mind getting in an accident and dying.