☄️HexArchon

HexArchon is a Custom MMO-Inspired SMP with several gameplay features such as unique Custom Mobs, Items, Enchants, Boss Fights, Abilities, Quests, Worlds, and other areas to explore such as the Skylands and Dungeons.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🔗Links

• Server Trailer
• Discord Server
• Wiki

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📖Our Values

We are a group of people with the ambition of creating something new and unique. We are always committed to putting quality work into gameplay. We love listening to community feedback and creating something that people enjoy.
Here are some of the values that we have pledged to:

• Community voice & transparency
  • We are fully committed to creating an environment where the community is heard. Anyone is welcome to provide suggestions, discuss them, and vote on them. We give updates to pending suggestions and are fully transparent about decisions made on the development of the server, as well as the reasonings. If there are any major changes up for debate, they will be voted on by the whole community.
• Huge range of free-to-choose playstyles
  • There are so many different ways to play and progress on the server, thanks to the wide range and combinations of abilities, stats, and custom items. For instance, you are up to what path they take on abilities. They can focus on ranged abilities for the perfect mage build, abilities that empower melee attacks for the maximum melee damage output, healing and damage resistance for support potential, and so much more! There are also 7 different stats you can level up to help them progress on the server, including strength, dexterity, intelligence, health, stamina, resistance, and criticals. HexArchon also provides a massive catalog of custom items each with unique skills to choose from many different play styles and builds. There are different weapon types such as long swords and greatswords that provide slow but heavy hits, daggers for fast and high DPS, staffs and other magic items for mage capabilities, and many different bows for ranged play styles.
  • Does all of this seem too complicated? No problem! You are free to play casual survival, even with cosmetics such as custom-modeled furniture, pets, decorative heads, and a shop containing a huge category of building blocks and items to enhance your builds. What’s great is that these are all optional additions - there is nothing preventing you from enjoying Vanilla Minecraft.
• Trust & respect
  • We are committed to being transparent, honest, and a group that you can personally trust. We will help players out, enforce rules if needed, and even have casual discussions.
• Dedicated updates
  • We are always looking forward to adding new and fresh content to the server for an always-improving experience on HexArchon. This ranges from anything such as new items, mobs, boss fights, dungeons, and frequently, ideas from the community.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎮Gameplay Mechanics

• Custom Mobs - We take pride in the distinctive traits of each mob. Each of our custom mobs are drafted and developed from scratch, featuring their own unique skills and behaviors. There are over 200 different custom mobs in total.
  • Regular Mobs
  • There are plenty of custom mobs that spawn across the Overworld, Nether, and End, with unique traits including attacks and skills. Custom mobs can drop money, exp, ability points, and custom materials for crafting custom items!
  • World Bosses
  • You may also encounter mini-bosses when exploring. Mini bosses have a lot more health than regular mobs and have more challenging attacks than normal custom mobs. They also drop larger amounts of money, exp, ability points, and can drop custom materials and even exclusive items!
  • Mini Bosses
  • World bosses are bosses that can be summoned in the Overworld, Nether, and End. They may require teamwork to defeat as they have a lot of health and are more difficult than other bosses. World Bosses can drop custom materials used to craft exclusive, high-tier items.
  • Arena Bosses
  • Arena bosses can be challenged solo or with up to 4 players. You will encounter bosses of varying difficulties as you progress, so watch out! Defeat the arena bosses to unlock new regions to explore.
• Custom Items - There are many different types of custom items you can obtain. There are different weapon types for each category of weapons. Melee weapons include swords, katanas, daggers, long swords, greatswords, thrusting swords, spears, greatstaffs, hammers, and axes. All item types have varying attributes; for instance, daggers can sustain high DPS due to their fast attack speed, and greatswords have slow attack speeds but high damage per-hit. Magic weapons include staffs, catalysts, wands, and consumables. All custom items have unique abilities that you can use and even combo with other abilities. Custom items can also be upgraded and have runes applied to them to enhance them even further.
• Custom Enchants - There are more than 240 custom enchantments all geared toward unique builds and uses. There are a huge variety of ways to obtain custom enchantments. They can be obtained from the shop with in-game money, enchanting tables, villager trades, dungeon loot chests and completion rewards, crates, fishing, supply drops, daily rewards, and server events. Enchantments can be upgraded and stacked onto multiple armor pieces to grant even more power.
• Dungeons - Unlock and explore dungeons to discover ruins and obtain various exclusive loot! Complete various objectives and battle with gatekeepers, mini-bosses, and defeat the final boss to complete the dungeon! There are many hidden side objectives as well, so keep your eyes out!
• Quests - There are more than 180 quests of varying types and difficulties. There are three varying difficulty levels of daily quests that each include a full-completion bonus. There are repeatable quests that you can start and finish at any time. There are also hardcore quests that may take a lot of effort to accomplish, but pay out the most. Each quest may ask you to locate and slay certain mobs, mine ores, interact with mobs, defeat varying levels of bosses, and much more.
• Abilities - Obtain points from slaying custom mobs and bosses, and use them to unlock and upgrade abilities! Some abilities may contribute to a ranged mage build, a close-range melee build, or any build that you want!
• Stats - Use XP to upgrade 7 different stats of your character! Stats can grant boosters to your abilities and custom items, such as attack damage, cooldown reduction, health/mana regeneration, attack speed, and much more.
• Auto Farms - Auto farms can be bought and utilized to ease the management of your farms. They feature upgrades such as crop growth speed, radius, and collection bin size. Make sure to keep them fueled!
• Furnaces - Furnaces can be enchanted to grant them special attributes. This includes increased smelting speeds, smelting multipliers, fuel duration, and fuel conservation.
• Furniture - You can purchase many different furniture models to further decorate your builds! Some furniture can also be interacted with.
• Player Shops - Build and run your own shop to sell items to other players!
• Pets - You can purchase a variety of modeled pets to follow you around! You can also rename them, ride them, and showcase them around.
• Fishing - Fishing can be quite extraordinary on HexArchon! Try it and see… :) May involve some creatures and deaths.
• Quality-of-life Improvements -
  • Discord Link: Talk with in-game players from Discord!
  • Keep Inventory: Never lose your items. You will still lose a partial amount of money though, so watch out!
  • Rollbacks: Ability to track and roll back any griefs - just open a ticket!
  • Invisible Item Frames: Label your chests with invisible item frames that you can click through.
  • Custom Armor Stands: Tweak your armor stands to the perfect postures you want.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🖥️Technicals

We strongly prioritize server performance and responsiveness. Not only do we put focus on resource utilization during development, but we also have powerful top-of-the-line hardware that the server runs on.
The server is run on dedicated hardware with the following specifications: * CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X * RAM: 3200MHz 16GB * Storage: 400GB NVME SSD * Hosted on the US East Coast.
We guarantee strict, zero-lag gameplay. If you are having any issues with lag, open a ticket and we will gladly help you out - even if it’s not the server’s fault.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🚪Joining

• Server IP: play.hexarchon.net
• Supports Bedrock (Port 19132). This is experimental with many technical limitations.

Thanks for reading! We hope to see you on :)

Hi, I'm a lonely guy looking for a lonely girl. I'm hitting that age where life comes at you faster, and I'm starting to realize that I don't like being alone. It's not that I don't have dating experience, I've just been single for 8 years.
What I'm looking for is someone who wants to eventually be in a relationship with me. I miss the good morning and good night texts and calls. Watching shows together and laughing about the stupid stuff that happens. Sending music to one another.
Abit about me: I live in the South Eastern US
I'm getting ready to go back and finish school for a cyber security degree, in the mean time I work full time in retail heck.
I like to play games on my pc, me and me best bud have an mmo rivalry. He plays a lot of final fantasy, but I like playing world of warcraft. I play a lot of other games too though
I'm a cat/dog person
I'm a tall guy with bad eye sight. 6ft 3in with double astigmatism. Driving at night is what I imagine it feels like to be on mushrooms
Everyone's pretty political today. I don't mind people having opposing views, sometimes I think it's better because it let's you have a conversation with someone your comfortable with. Personally I'd say I fall on the left side of the isle, but close to the middle.
I feel like attraction is an important first building block for a relationship, so I'm happy to send a picture. I'd say I'm pretty average looking personally.
If anything here interests you, or you're a lonely soul like I am, feel free to dm me.

⚠ ️Attention 18+ means 18+ Please be 18 or older! It should go without saying, but apparently these disclaimers are never enough. ⚠
We are a longstanding SMP with currently over a dozen active players and we are looking for more! A few players have been there since the early days, others since last year, and a few joined only recently.

• Overview

  Our main guideline to leave the "meta" of pure Vanilla survival as unaltered as possible (for a public server).
  The only 3 plugins that interfere with this are:
  GriefPrevention, a sleep voting plugin, and player item shops for trading. That means as many features from other plugins you know from other servers are absent by design and won't be added. There are two ranks "new" and "player", they do not give any benefits. You can not buy "power" for real money here and we have no adminshops. Everything on the map was build and farmed in survival.
  play.server26.net
  Map: https://map.server26.net/
  Discord: https://server26.net/discord
  
• No Warps, No /tpa, No /sethome
  
• No (Mojang) chat reports
  
• No McMMO or alike, No donation perks or any such frills
  
• The world will never reset
  
• Land claiming
  
• Player trading via signs (No adminshops)
  
• 20% of player need to sleep to skip the night
  
• All made in survival, including spawn area, etc
  
• Lots of public farms.
  Rules: https://server26.net/rules TL;DR: Be reasonable and don't be a dick.
  

• Community

  What you have read so far sounds like your cup of tea? Well then you may fit right in. Laid back rules, a close knit community, having some events from time to time, and there is always something you can help with. Staff and ohter players are usually available to help you. Need help digging? Just died far away? Raid an Ocean Monument? No problem! We also have a Hermitcraft-like shop area for players using a trade shop plugin.
  

• Gameplay

  This is supposed to feel like a vanilla server. The default currency is diamonds. This is not enforced its just what everyone uses. No warps, you have to walk, fly by Elytra, or set up infrastructure such as piston bolts or blue ice highways. You can focus on long term projects, take your time, because we NEVER RESET the map. Megabases welcome. Leave for months, pick right up where you left. In +7 years time we built a lot of farms and infrastructure. This makes it a lot easier to get going early in the game, especially for endgame players. But fear not, there is always need for expanding upon whats already there.
  The spawn city is protected. Areas there are released for community builds. Outside the city you can build your own base(s). You will get more claimblocks during play.
  

• Specs & Plugins

  Hosted in Germany with 128GB Ram, a Intel i9-9900k, and 1TB NVMe SSD; the server runs on Paper. Regarding updates we don't always run the latest version but we plan to update to every major release eventually. In case an update brings a big change in world generation (e.g. 1.18) we delete chunks that have been loaded less than 5 minutes. Meaning someone likely just passed by while exploring.
  For land claiming we use GriefPrevention, which lets you protect areas you selected with a golden shovel. You can allow certain or all players to build and or access chests/buttons, on your claim. It also protects your claims and the worlds surface from creepers. Then there is also a chest shop plugin. You can use iron nuggets to create villager-like trades. You can do this anywhere, but its recommended to do this in the shopping area or your claim. Harbor is a plugin which skips the night, if 20% or more players are in bed. Lastly there is one that lets you rotate Glazed Terracotta.
  Additionally we have some datapacks and tweaks: Ghasts don't break blocks. You can silent mobs by naming them "silent" (undo with "unsilent"). Your 1st kill of the Enderdragon gets you an Elytra. Craftable Enchanted Golden Apples. Hermitcraft posable Armorstands. Some recipes have been tweaked (bone blocks directly from bones, recolor glass,... )
  

Lost Ark is one of, if not, the most toxic MMO I've ever played. The game has one of the worst communities I've ever encountered. I just got back from a 1 year break and my god is the game still as toxic and unforgiving as ever. First of all, I am a fresh returning player, so I've already screwed myself with that one I guess. Thankfully, I was able to jump all the way to 1540ish thanks to the current power pass and did my first actual "group content" as you can call it in Hanumatan, and my god is the toxicity there unbelievable. I jump in first time and people were already expecting me to know every single mech in the book. KEEP in mind that I did not do too bad, as I used battle items and knew how to dodge basic patterns. As a matter of fact, I was also not the one who died the most times. I just didn't understand the major mechs. After about 5% HP of the boss left, they had the audacity to blame everything on me. What can I say? I just block these assholes and move on I guess.
After watching a few guides, I was finally able to do the mechs. Guess what? People were still nitpicking every little mistake I made even after beating it. It honestly blows my mind that people expect randoms to know every single mech when they matchmake. This is literally the same as someone driving 50 miles over the speed limit, knowing that they have a high chance of getting a ticket, then getting mad when they get one. It also blows my mind that the only way to play this game is to watch every single guide and video out there. Where's the fun in that? If I'm applying for a party that says "Know mechs" then sure, that is understandable, but we are talking about matchmaking here. Yes, I have no friends in this game(as well as a lot of other people) and this is a problem for casuals. This further proves why the game needs solo content already.
These sweatlords can have at it for all I care. I could care less, but please don't expect randoms to know mechs or use battle items when you matchmake for guardians. I've already quit the game the first time around due to the amount of toxicity it had in the first place, as well as how hard it was to find pugs for raids. I don't feel like spending hours watching guides for every single raid in the game like I am studying for a final, then getting yelled at for dying from 1 shot mechanics or getting hit by questionable hitboxes. I don't even want to imagine Brelsh or Thaemine, as I haven't done these raids and don't ever plan to. These elitists up there can argue/blame each other for wiping and have at it. I hope they do. The game needs more forgiving content for solo casuals. The amount of investment it takes to do these raids is a joke, and it will only get worse from here. I don't care if you consider this a troll post. I just figured I make a quick rant before I leave this godforsaken game that deserves to stay dead.

I Write this post not because I hate this game but because it honestly could be the best action combat mmos ever made and I genuinely want to see it become that. I know most people or the devs could careless about my opinion but I have over 5k hours played, hundreds of wars and up until today actively wared, and done thousands of OPRS and I honestly can say the current state of the game in both content and "fun" are the worst its ever been. I say this because I have played since day 1 and I have seen probably 50 plus companies since launch disband, over hundreds of players quit for pretty much all the same reasons. The majority of them don't care enough to voice their opinion as to why they leave, they just go play something else. I do care, I would love to continue playing this game for the foreseeable future and that's why I'm going to explain why the game is so unfun to play these days and why so many of my friends and company mates and now my self have left and most of us have almost 0 interest in coming back. Maybe a dev sees this and maybe just maybe, they maybe, they will finally get a clue but I doubt it.
-Performance/Bugs
The amount of bugs and performance issues that plague the game is unacceptable. Its literally the Dev team job... You get paid money to do this and it just doesn't happen. I still experience the same bugs I experienced 2 years ago while in combat despite them being reported hundreds of times. Bugs can also get fixed to comeback literally the next time the client is updated and left in the game again for months until its finally fixed again for a second time. It can take AGS 3 or 4 patches to fix 1 issue. Remember when grav wells and other projectiles just fell through the map. it took them like 3 updates to fix that bug just for 1 example, The amount of times the achievement popup was "fixed" and yet remained in the game for well over a year is just obnoxious and it still happens and probably will happen going forward and it is off putting to people and makes people think the devs do not care. Season 5 made the game the worst its felt since launch and its been over a month now and 0 fixes have come. They literally told us that this new combat code would allow faster changes and yet we have nothing. I still have massive ability delay and desync and horrible performance while playing this game compared to pre season 5 and there is almost a post day with others saying the same thing. Its just flat out extremely frustrating and completely ruins the experience. I want to play a game that works and so does everyone else and the amount of bugs that get left in the game that effect play is embarrassing.
-Company content or lack their of
There is 0 reason to be in a company other than to do wars. Remove wars and companies are just glorified friends lists which have 0 purpose outside giving you a special chat window and extra 100 friends to see online or store gold. This is a massive reason why so many companies disband. There isn't any reason to be in one once your company loses its land ( yes people are in companies for friendship, but I can be friends with 100 people and not in a company with them). A company loses its land, try's to attack but if it loses again 2 or 3 times on attack and is unable to retake land the majority of the time, its a dead company or will shortly become one. People leave and go join someone else who is winning or stop playing all together and this has been a very common trend since day 1.But outside of wars, why join a company besides trying to find a community???, I can find a community and not being in a company... AGS needs to add incentive joining and or for sticking with a company or reasons for a company to not disband. Its pretty sad that AGS has added nothing, absolutely nothing into the games for companies to do as company or work towards that isn't doing mindless pvp fetch quests which is the worst content in the game by FAR. Companies missions could be added, puzzles, challenges etc which all can be used to reward companies with Gold. Not the same amount as owning a territory but it could be a small source of income to allow smaller companies to still earn money and give it out to their players for whatever they want. People also love Guild hall type stuff and Not capitalizing and investing in that is just insane. Adding a company level with bonuses or perks to give players like increased stats or buffs for both pve and pvp (not game breaking) which would make being in a company that's been around for a while that's ranked up have value. It would give reason to stay in one company rather than just bandwagon to the winning team would seriously help the game, at least potentially, at the very least it would give companies something to do together as a company.
-Lack of meaningful endgame content that has purpose and replayablity.
This game simply has a no end game content loop with longevity and replayablity. There really isn't much to do for anyone once you get your build to 700 and your trade skills up and you can honestly do it extremely quickly, it took me less than 2 weeks after expansion and I played 3 hours or less a day. You can experience the chest runs, you can experience the dungeons, go roam the open world, do some OPRS. You can try to do wars but unless your apart of the "2 percent" as Dave said, you won't get into wars. Invasions on my server at least barely fill and fail regularly, mainly if there are multiple in 1 day which happens regularly. Invasions are extremely boring and companies always have to pay people join as incentive. I don't think I have ever seen a game where the end game pve is ignored by the majority of the player base unless they get paid gold as compensation to do the content and fyi the amount companies pay is not high enough to make me sit through that 30 minute snooze fest. But after that there really isn't anything to do that's worth sticking around long term for, and (I have stuck around for the combat, its the best and made me completely addicted for so long). The content at end game is just lackluster and has very low purpose to do it after you get your build. This game has no mount collection or mount skin system, No amazingly cool legendary skins you can unlock or transmog set you can grind for to make your character look like bad ass thats unique and earned by playing NOT PAYING and if it did, the transmog system we do have is paid for... well excuse me, 1 percent drop chance for 1 token a week. Yeah pass, I got better things to do than try for a 1 percent drop chance to change 1 piece of my outfit or pay real money to change my look in a video game when every other game I've ever played, I can do it for very low in game currency. The devs focus more on putting out seasonal content that has 0 replayablity and will be dead content in a very short time vs adding content that has longevity and gives REAL reason to stick around and play or fixing the main story quest which sure is good for new players, but then they get to end game and quit not to long after because of the problems I listed and other ones I haven't so it seems irrelevant in the end.
PVP-lack of pvp content
Look this game was advertised as a pvp game before it launched, the devs have even stated as such not too long ago despite them focusing on pve after launch. I think a healthy mmo needs both pve and pvp. That said outside of the arena update just before brimstone and the rework of influence pushes. There has been 0 new pvp content added to the game. There is literally nothing new on the side of pvp to do, something to give it purpose to continue to do that makes you want to keep logging back in. The devs say now, its 1 pvper to 5 pvers, but I genuinely don't know if the devs can actually tell a pvp player vs a pve player apart considering that the majority of pvpers do pve because you have to do pve to be pvp viable, (sorry for the toung twister). It took me over 50 dungeon runs to get my artifact weapon ( before the pity system was added) and I am a hard core pvper player, but do I get counted as a pver or a pvper??? because i am definitely not a pver despite enjoying the pve content in small doses and I have done every thing the pve has to offer at least once but I stick around because of the pvp. I know loads of other pvpers that feel the exact same as I do, So how can they honestly tell which is which?? Every one I personally have met all stick around for the combat, the pvp potential of this game, at least all the players who have played as long as I have, the ones who got the game at release and stuck with the game till now, while i am sure they exists, I have yet to meet someone who only plays this game to regrind the same couple dungeons day in and day out. Out of the like 20 big updates this game has seen 18 or 19 of them have been purely pve focused and pretty much every single update except the patch before brimstone, brimstone update and the patch before expansion and the expansion patch never kept players around.. They all saw player decreases and the expansion updates did so well, just took longer. So despite all the pve contented added to the game, player numbers always dropped shortly after or a month or 2 after the expansion updates. So I have a VERY hard time believing that pve carries this game and justified the neglect of pvp content. This isn't as big of thing anymore since the player base is so low but back in the day servers were killed because of pvpers. Every server that "died" was due to pvp, players leaving that server and all band wagoning to a new one or a "top" company coming over and completely dominating a server and people give up and quit. Like I already said The game needs BOTH pve and pvp content. Neglecting one of the biggest selling points of your game is beyond delusional and imo explains why the player count is so low.
PVP-Lack of Balance I will be short about this because I can write a 10 page essay about each weapon on why its either strong or weak or completely broken and should be removed from the game like musket but i will spare you the details. The game is the most unfun balance wise since i can remember. You either fight endless ranged in opr hitting for 1/3 your hit points from across the map or have to deal with heavy sns players than just hold block and can never die. OPR teams are 9/10 completely 1 sided. Pve is still extremely strong and 0 fun to deal with. Even after the nerfs i have seen 10 players with a brute still take several minutes to be able to get through t3 door MINUTES. yes i love attacking 1 door for multiple minutes, just for it to be rebuilt in 5 seconds.
-Artifacts and powercreep
Artifacts ruined any sort of competitiveness the game potentially had in my opinion. I remember when they were announced they were supposed to be Very powerful weapons with unique traits that completely change gameplay but at a negative tradeoff. Outside Scorpion sting and tempest fury, and maybe the wall, I don't think any of the artifacts change gameplay. None of the artifacts outside the jewelry ones have any real negative trade off if any at all. Artifacts like Natures wrath, Deep freeze, Finisher, Life taker, Featherweight just massively increase your damage output or survibility at 0 negative trade off. I can equip those weapon artifacts and just increase my damage output for free. I can equip natures wrath and just do 20 percent more damage than I was previously. I didn't become a better player but now I am using natures wrath and deep freeze, I am doing 35 percent more damage to targets.. Pair those with Fire harnessing and rune glass gems etc. Also Some artifacts are completely awful and never used while some are clearly way way better than the others competing with it and its left like that for ever. Time to kill is faster than it was before the expansion and we have more HP and more defensive perks than we did before. Time to kill is way to fast. I can easily kill someone in 1 second if players are new or i catch them with no stamina and they have no healer to pocket them. Either we need to have defensive perks buffed to compensate or damage across the board needs to be nerfed along with healing if DPS is reduced.
Damage types.
This is fine in pve but in pvp its completely game breaking. 6 different elemental types to defend vs and 3 different phyical types to defend agaisnt. There are simply too many different damage tpyes in the game and its not possible to mitigate all them. Even if I go 30 thrust and 4 ele aversion, i can still get hit for 5k from a musket player who is geared properly and proper build. Bows can use a normal bow with finisher or also can use bolt caster, while you also have firestaffs melting your hp bar. Imagine if the strike damage firestaff attifact was good, and scaled with int and did the same exact damage a regular firestaff does now. Imagine how BROKEN that would be, Its just simply impossible to mitigate damage from all the different types of damage. We shouldn't be forced to spec all our gems into one damage type because its currently "op" or most popular type of damage. As more artifacts are added or new weapons, it will just get worse and worse. IMO Defensive gems and perks either need to be buffed a lot or damage types in pvp need to be jus physical and elemental. It will make the game much easier to balance.
Gear progression
The way gear is designed is unique but also horrible in New world. The way you can build your character with your perks on armor is cool however its a massive problem. If you want to pvp at a competitive level, you need a competitive build with proper perks and etc on your gear. You invest time and money getting this gear then something on your build gets nerfed or a different ability gets buffed making that piece of gear no longer needed or useable. You can spend loads of money trying to craft or buy something and the next patch it can just be a bank item because its no longer "meta". In other games like wow or guild wars 2, every class has access to its perks, and trails and passives built into the class. you don't have to invest hours and gold into getting your build competitive. If something is nerfed or buffed, you just click a different trait on the trait panel and boom, got a new build, but in new world, you invest all that time into something and its just completely irrelevant. I have known loads of people who are just tired of having to change their gear set because a new patch came out and nerfed an ability and now that old piece is just no longer viable and all the money the spent went to waste. This also deincentivises trying new builds. If I didn't have to go spend all this gold to get a gear set with all the perks I need to play a bruiser build, i would probably play bruiser way more often than I do now. Sure I can play a bruiser build with out all the proper perks, but if you want to be competitive, you need to.
I can talk more and more about the state of the game, Wars are a big reason why the game dies, due to how exclusive they are but I have said enough at this point. I have finally decided to move on becuause i no longer have faith in the dev team being capable of turning the ship around and making the game it can become. I simply don't have fun playing anymore for the issues i listed and then some. I doubt anyone will read this far, but if you did thanks and have a nice day.

Join, no whitelist: mc.kodreagames.com
-=[About us - Cliff notes]=-
Hi! I'm here to shamelessly plug an old phoenix rising from the ashes. How old you may ask? This old!
Why, back when the project originally started... hMod was still a thing, then died, and this new thing called Bukkit was all the rage...
Nominally it's an "RPG" server, in the Dungeons&Dragons sort of tradition rather than any hardcore "Roleplay" or major systems.
You'll find yourself as a member of a participation driven storyline that will fork and meander as world events unfold!
It's a slow-burn project. Hardcore playtime will not be a requirement for meaningful participation.
Just be willing to play a fun role in the grand scheme of the story~
The RPG system is in active development, but during that time we are hosting our "Free settlement period" event to grow the server population and allow story foundations to marinate!
There are generous royal land-grants available to early settlers who improve regions and create interesting builds.
This is a world that will grow organically, so I'm not trying to pre-build it all, come join the re-founding!
You'll find a server with a lot of old-school MC charm to it. We don't offer quite so polished an experience as other servers... But you'll find it to be one of the more organic servers without being full anarchy.
Ok, but what can I do on the server?
It's a server where you'll get out as much as you put in, and diversity of playstyle is welcomed, encouraged, and protected...
Do you just want to live an anarchist nomad's life in the wilds? There's a space for you here, but you'll have to defend what you can! You can level and improve your character to better protect yourself and your friends.
If you want to live a life of safety and protection, free from the vagrancy of nomad life, you'll have to participate in the economy and towns side of things... Stake your own claim or join an existing town as a part of the grand Empire of Liepaja.
Life can range from the humble farmer, and the mundane merchant, To the adventuring explorer or even a noble knight or lord of a realm of the empire! Your story is what YOU make of it in this world, nobody's here to tell you "You can't"
(Well, they might, but you can ignore and hide from them, or beat them!)
You'll join to find an ancient imperial land in a period that could be described as it's twilight... inhabited by people with old traditions going back many years, with a history years in the making, mostly by players who have long since moved on, but a few have stuck around to keep the old ways alive. That just leaves room for new adventurers to build new traditions, and weave new tales!
The events that take place will form the bleeding edge of the dormant (but once living) history from which this land draws it's legends. Will you become a part of that legend, or will you exist in the world as a commoner? Will the empire grow great, or fade away? Will the players build a new polity? You will collectively decide!
Build pictures to come when I'm feeling less lazy... Sorry y'all.
Rules

• The staff are the gods of this world. Don't like it? Tough!
• You are free to protect your chests using sign lock plugins, failure to protect your chests is consent to be stolen from.
• You are able to protect your builds for an in-game price... No pay, no protection. Money convertable from diamond/gold/iron/coppeemerald at spawn.
• PVP is disabled within the empire, but outside the border it's a lawless wilderness.
• None of the server theming is a restriction on build or character theming. Build freely. Add to the whole.

No whitelist (lol, regret?) Join as you see fit. mc.kodreagames.com
Details, for the interested.
Server core: PaperMC (MC 1.9.4)
Plugins:
Worldedit, Worldguard, EssentialsX, BlockLocker, CoreProtect, SignShop, SignShopHotel, MagicSpells, Runecraft, Bookshelf, mcMMO, Towny, Citizens, Denizen, Quests. Other libs (not player-facing)
[LORE FLUFF. FOR THE VERY INTERESTED]
You'll spawn into a small village in the heartland of an old empire... the empire of Liepaja... Established by an emperor long-gone, who left behind a legacy of laws which still bind the realm together. Ruled in regency by an imperial council consisting of the lords of the realm to act as the decision-making body...
Within Liepaja, the players and villagers live freely, and PvP is disabled. Outside it's borders, PvP is enabled, and players must defend themselves...
You'll find a land steeped in traditions, with lords and commoners, barons and counts, dukes and kings, even perhaps an emperor (if one could manage to claim the throne... It would be a first!)
The spawn in a village, at the seat of free Bun County, ruled by a lord who calls herself Rabbit, that is your starting place...
From there, you may travel freely and do as you see fit. Establish yourself in the empire or strike out beyond it's borders to make your own way. Only you can decide how you play!
The world so far: Two server-towns exist, and there are many villages in the empire region (lucky seed!). Ancient magic exists in the land but the art is lost (Runecraft, look it up~).
The mages and wizards of old have been cloistered of late, not sharing, but may soon reopen their schools.... (Magic is WIP, not done yet!)
Update post of Things to Come™: This server is in active development, but it's open while it's being built out. This allows players a chance to take part in the very foundation of the world.
The Magic system is actively WIP... But those of you familiar with the old art of Runecraft will find it ready to go if you know how to use it...
Magic will follow the usual trend of different schools out in the world, each with tracks to follow and skills to be found by questing and exploring. There's runic magic, and some more familiar castable magic schools to be had.
Quests and dungeons are on the horizon but require major time/effort on my part doing designs and laying down the development.

Hi! We are a whitelisted, semi-vanilla server on java 1.20.4 with minimal plugins, instead focusing on a chill 18+ community and playing together. We launched recently on March 23!
FEATURING: - 18+ age limit solely because we're looking for chill, drama-free members :) - NO teleportation, claims, McMMO, and all that. - Events: we love doing events and minigames! - Permanent Map: we plan on keeping this world, no resets. currently we have a 10,000 x 10,000 world border, to be expanded as the server grows.
PLUGINS/DATAPACKS: - TerraformGenerator: custom world generation – this is the only significant non-vanilla plugin - VanillaTweaks (recipes): get more trapdoors & stairs when crafting - CoreProtect: block and container logging to catch griefers and thieves - DiscordSRV: discord chat integration
Our focus is on the 'playing together' aspect; some of us have settled our bases closely to each other, not far from spawn. We won't judge you for any playstyle though – we hope to be as inclusive as we can be in growing a community :)
We welcome players from all origins, but do note that the server will revolve around east asia night timezones (e.g. UTC/GMT afternoons).
Interested? Apply here! https://discord.gg/z9ezzKBR6t

Hi! We are a whitelisted, semi-vanilla server on java 1.20.4 with minimal plugins, instead focusing on a chill 18+ community and playing together. We launched recently on March 23!
FEATURING: - 18+ age limit solely because we're looking for chill, drama-free members :) - NO teleportation, claims, McMMO, and all that. - Events: we love doing events and minigames! - Permanent Map: we plan on keeping this world, no resets. currently we have a 10,000 x 10,000 world border, to be expanded as the server grows.
PLUGINS/DATAPACKS: - TerraformGenerator: custom world generation – this is the only significant non-vanilla plugin - VanillaTweaks (recipes): get more trapdoors & stairs when crafting - CoreProtect: block and container logging to catch griefers and thieves - DiscordSRV: discord chat integration
Our focus is on the 'playing together' aspect; some of us have settled our bases closely to each other, not far from spawn. We won't judge you for any playstyle though – we hope to be as inclusive as we can be in growing a community :)
We welcome players from all origins, but do note that the server will revolve around east asia night timezones (e.g. UTC/GMT afternoons).
Interested? Apply here! https://discord.gg/z9ezzKBR6t

Join a relaxed, long term community!
About Us: The Flare Community and its Flare SMP were founded on April 14, 2023, by me, Antimony_Sb. My good friend, who fills the role of creative director, and I aim to provide our players with a relaxed semi-vanilla experience in a mature and "serious" environment. The server is my hobby and is a long-term project, without a planned end; ideally, we'll only stop when Minecraft ceases to exist.
What Sets Us Apart from Vanilla? Some of the divergences from classic Vanilla gameplay include: * Dynmap (Our maps in your browser: See who's online and what's being built!) * Bolt (Protect your chests, furnaces, and many other blocks and entities from unauthorized access with a finely adjustable permission system) * mcMMO (17 new skills to level up, with many passive and active abilities and bonuses as you progress through the levels) * GSit (Sit almost anywhere, on players, stairs, and more) * FlareDeathMessages (Our custom plugin for cooler death messages) * Pets (Let small helpers accompany you; most pets are purely cosmetic) * Cosmetics (Put on a hat or backpack, get wings or a cosmetic armor piece to express yourself) * Decorations (Many mob heads, custom player heads, soon new and exclusive paintings, and tons of plushies (almost) all Vanilla mobs and some of our custom mobs for decorating and carrying around) * Many minor additions that are more of an augmentation than a change...
We are an international community, and the primary language is English (the entire server leadership, as well as some other players, are from Germany). Some of our features are still in development, as we do almost everything ourselves in our spare time while striving for high quality. Currently, the following features are being developed and will be introduced soon (not necessarily in this order): * Jump and Run courses (as the first minigame) * In-game Wiki for all usable functions of plugins, etc. * Daily login rewards * Vote rewards
Feel free to drop by and check us out! :) The discord link is added to my profile
PS: In addition to the advertised SMP, we are developing a second server. This one, currently named "Flare Adventures," will offer a classic MMORPG player experience inspired by WoW, Elden Ring, and other major influences. This project is still in its infancy, but feel free to visit us to stay up to date!

Join a relaxed, long term community!
About Us: The Flare Community and its Flare SMP were founded on April 14, 2023, by me, Antimony_Sb. My good friend, who fills the role of creative director, and I aim to provide our players with a relaxed semi-vanilla experience in a mature and "serious" environment. The server is my hobby and is a long-term project, without a planned end; ideally, we'll only stop when Minecraft ceases to exist.
What Sets Us Apart from Vanilla? Some of the divergences from classic Vanilla gameplay include: * Dynmap (Our maps in your browser: See who's online and what's being built!) * Bolt (Protect your chests, furnaces, and many other blocks and entities from unauthorized access with a finely adjustable permission system) * mcMMO (17 new skills to level up, with many passive and active abilities and bonuses as you progress through the levels) * GSit (Sit almost anywhere, on players, stairs, and more) * FlareDeathMessages (Our custom plugin for cooler death messages) * Pets (Let small helpers accompany you; most pets are purely cosmetic) * Cosmetics (Put on a hat or backpack, get wings or a cosmetic armor piece to express yourself) * Decorations (Many mob heads, custom player heads, soon new and exclusive paintings, and tons of plushies (almost) all Vanilla mobs and some of our custom mobs for decorating and carrying around) * Many minor additions that are more of an augmentation than a change...
We are an international community, and the primary language is English (the entire server leadership, as well as some other players, are from Germany). Some of our features are still in development, as we do almost everything ourselves in our spare time while striving for high quality. Currently, the following features are being developed and will be introduced soon (not necessarily in this order): * Jump and Run courses (as the first minigame) * In-game Wiki for all usable functions of plugins, etc. * Daily login rewards * Vote rewards
Feel free to drop by and check us out! :) The discord link is added to my profile
PS: In addition to the advertised SMP, we are developing a second server. This one, currently named "Flare Adventures," will offer a classic MMORPG player experience inspired by WoW, Elden Ring, and other major influences. This project is still in its infancy, but feel free to visit us to stay up to date!

Join a relaxed, long term community!
About Us: The Flare Community and its Flare SMP were founded on April 14, 2023, by me, Antimony_Sb. My good friend, who fills the role of creative director, and I aim to provide our players with a relaxed semi-vanilla experience in a mature and "serious" environment. The server is my hobby and is a long-term project, without a planned end; ideally, we'll only stop when Minecraft ceases to exist.
What Sets Us Apart from Vanilla? Some of the divergences from classic Vanilla gameplay include: * Dynmap (Our maps in your browser: See who's online and what's being built!) * Bolt (Protect your chests, furnaces, and many other blocks and entities from unauthorized access with a finely adjustable permission system) * mcMMO (17 new skills to level up, with many passive and active abilities and bonuses as you progress through the levels) * GSit (Sit almost anywhere, on players, stairs, and more) * FlareDeathMessages (Our custom plugin for cooler death messages) * Pets (Let small helpers accompany you; most pets are purely cosmetic) * Cosmetics (Put on a hat or backpack, get wings or a cosmetic armor piece to express yourself) * Decorations (Many mob heads, custom player heads, soon new and exclusive paintings, and tons of plushies (almost) all Vanilla mobs and some of our custom mobs for decorating and carrying around) * Many minor additions that are more of an augmentation than a change...
We are an international community, and the primary language is English (the entire server leadership, as well as some other players, are from Germany). Some of our features are still in development, as we do almost everything ourselves in our spare time while striving for high quality. Currently, the following features are being developed and will be introduced soon (not necessarily in this order): * Jump and Run courses (as the first minigame) * In-game Wiki for all usable functions of plugins, etc. * Daily login rewards * Vote rewards
Feel free to drop by and check us out! :) The discord link is added to my profile
PS: In addition to the advertised SMP, we are developing a second server. This one, currently named "Flare Adventures," will offer a classic MMORPG player experience inspired by WoW, Elden Ring, and other major influences. This project is still in its infancy, but feel free to visit us to stay up to date!

Join a relaxed, long term community!
About Us: The Flare Community and its Flare SMP were founded on April 14, 2023, by me, Antimony_Sb. My good friend, who fills the role of creative director, and I aim to provide our players with a relaxed semi-vanilla experience in a mature and "serious" environment. The server is my hobby and is a long-term project, without a planned end; ideally, we'll only stop when Minecraft ceases to exist.
What Sets Us Apart from Vanilla? Some of the divergences from classic Vanilla gameplay include: * Dynmap (Our maps in your browser: See who's online and what's being built!) * Bolt (Protect your chests, furnaces, and many other blocks and entities from unauthorized access with a finely adjustable permission system) * mcMMO (17 new skills to level up, with many passive and active abilities and bonuses as you progress through the levels) * GSit (Sit almost anywhere, on players, stairs, and more) * FlareDeathMessages (Our custom plugin for cooler death messages) * Pets (Let small helpers accompany you; most pets are purely cosmetic) * Cosmetics (Put on a hat or backpack, get wings or a cosmetic armor piece to express yourself) * Decorations (Many mob heads, custom player heads, soon new and exclusive paintings, and tons of plushies (almost) all Vanilla mobs and some of our custom mobs for decorating and carrying around) * Many minor additions that are more of an augmentation than a change...
We are an international community, and the primary language is English (the entire server leadership, as well as some other players, are from Germany). Some of our features are still in development, as we do almost everything ourselves in our spare time while striving for high quality. Currently, the following features are being developed and will be introduced soon (not necessarily in this order): * Jump and Run courses (as the first minigame) * In-game Wiki for all usable functions of plugins, etc. * Daily login rewards * Vote rewards
Feel free to drop by and check us out! :) The discord link is added to my profile
PS: In addition to the advertised SMP, we are developing a second server. This one, currently named "Flare Adventures," will offer a classic MMORPG player experience inspired by WoW, Elden Ring, and other major influences. This project is still in its infancy, but feel free to visit us to stay up to date!

Join a relaxed, long term community!
About Us: The Flare Community and its Flare SMP were founded on April 14, 2023, by me, Antimony_Sb. My good friend, who fills the role of creative director, and I aim to provide our players with a relaxed semi-vanilla experience in a mature and "serious" environment. The server is my hobby and is a long-term project, without a planned end; ideally, we'll only stop when Minecraft ceases to exist.
What Sets Us Apart from Vanilla? Some of the divergences from classic Vanilla gameplay include: * Dynmap (Our maps in your browser: See who's online and what's being built!) * Bolt (Protect your chests, furnaces, and many other blocks and entities from unauthorized access with a finely adjustable permission system) * mcMMO (17 new skills to level up, with many passive and active abilities and bonuses as you progress through the levels) * GSit (Sit almost anywhere, on players, stairs, and more) * FlareDeathMessages (Our custom plugin for cooler death messages) * Pets (Let small helpers accompany you; most pets are purely cosmetic) * Cosmetics (Put on a hat or backpack, get wings or a cosmetic armor piece to express yourself) * Decorations (Many mob heads, custom player heads, soon new and exclusive paintings, and tons of plushies (almost) all Vanilla mobs and some of our custom mobs for decorating and carrying around) * Many minor additions that are more of an augmentation than a change...
We are an international community, and the primary language is English (the entire server leadership, as well as some other players, are from Germany). Some of our features are still in development, as we do almost everything ourselves in our spare time while striving for high quality. Currently, the following features are being developed and will be introduced soon (not necessarily in this order): * Jump and Run courses (as the first minigame) * In-game Wiki for all usable functions of plugins, etc. * Daily login rewards * Vote rewards
Feel free to drop by and check us out! :) The discord link is added to my profile
PS: In addition to the advertised SMP, we are developing a second server. This one, currently named "Flare Adventures," will offer a classic MMORPG player experience inspired by WoW, Elden Ring, and other major influences. This project is still in its infancy, but feel free to visit us to stay up to date!

Join a relaxed, long term community!
About Us: The Flare Community and its Flare SMP were founded on April 14, 2023, by me, Antimony_Sb. My good friend, who fills the role of creative director, and I aim to provide our players with a relaxed semi-vanilla experience in a mature and "serious" environment. The server is my hobby and is a long-term project, without a planned end; ideally, we'll only stop when Minecraft ceases to exist.
What Sets Us Apart from Vanilla? Some of the divergences from classic Vanilla gameplay include: * Dynmap (Our maps in your browser: See who's online and what's being built!) * Bolt (Protect your chests, furnaces, and many other blocks and entities from unauthorized access with a finely adjustable permission system) * mcMMO (17 new skills to level up, with many passive and active abilities and bonuses as you progress through the levels) * GSit (Sit almost anywhere, on players, stairs, and more) * FlareDeathMessages (Our custom plugin for cooler death messages) * Pets (Let small helpers accompany you; most pets are purely cosmetic) * Cosmetics (Put on a hat or backpack, get wings or a cosmetic armor piece to express yourself) * Decorations (Many mob heads, custom player heads, soon new and exclusive paintings, and tons of plushies (almost) all Vanilla mobs and some of our custom mobs for decorating and carrying around) * Many minor additions that are more of an augmentation than a change...
We are an international community, and the primary language is English (the entire server leadership, as well as some other players, are from Germany). Some of our features are still in development, as we do almost everything ourselves in our spare time while striving for high quality. Currently, the following features are being developed and will be introduced soon (not necessarily in this order): * Jump and Run courses (as the first minigame) * In-game Wiki for all usable functions of plugins, etc. * Daily login rewards * Vote rewards
Feel free to drop by and check us out! :) The discord link is added to my profile
PS: In addition to the advertised SMP, we are developing a second server. This one, currently named "Flare Adventures," will offer a classic MMORPG player experience inspired by WoW, Elden Ring, and other major influences. This project is still in its infancy, but feel free to visit us to stay up to date!

Join a relaxed, long term community!
About Us: The Flare Community and its Flare SMP were founded on April 14, 2023, by me, Antimony_Sb. My good friend, who fills the role of creative director, and I aim to provide our players with a relaxed semi-vanilla experience in a mature and "serious" environment. The server is my hobby and is a long-term project, without a planned end; ideally, we'll only stop when Minecraft ceases to exist.
What Sets Us Apart from Vanilla? Some of the divergences from classic Vanilla gameplay include: * Dynmap (Our maps in your browser: See who's online and what's being built!) * Bolt (Protect your chests, furnaces, and many other blocks and entities from unauthorized access with a finely adjustable permission system) * mcMMO (17 new skills to level up, with many passive and active abilities and bonuses as you progress through the levels) * GSit (Sit almost anywhere, on players, stairs, and more) * FlareDeathMessages (Our custom plugin for cooler death messages) * Pets (Let small helpers accompany you; most pets are purely cosmetic) * Cosmetics (Put on a hat or backpack, get wings or a cosmetic armor piece to express yourself) * Decorations (Many mob heads, custom player heads, soon new and exclusive paintings, and tons of plushies (almost) all Vanilla mobs and some of our custom mobs for decorating and carrying around) * Many minor additions that are more of an augmentation than a change...
We are an international community, and the primary language is English (the entire server leadership, as well as some other players, are from Germany). Some of our features are still in development, as we do almost everything ourselves in our spare time while striving for high quality. Currently, the following features are being developed and will be introduced soon (not necessarily in this order): * Jump and Run courses (as the first minigame) * In-game Wiki for all usable functions of plugins, etc. * Daily login rewards * Vote rewards
Feel free to drop by and check us out! :) The discord link is added to my profile
PS: In addition to the advertised SMP, we are developing a second server. This one, currently named "Flare Adventures," will offer a classic MMORPG player experience inspired by WoW, Elden Ring, and other major influences. This project is still in its infancy, but feel free to visit us to stay up to date!

About Us: The Flare Community and its Flare SMP were founded on April 14, 2023, by me, Antimony_Sb. My good friend, who fills the role of creative director, and I aim to provide our players with a relaxed semi-vanilla experience in a mature and "serious" environment. The server is my hobby and is a long-term project, without a planned end; ideally, we'll only stop when Minecraft ceases to exist.
What Sets Us Apart from Vanilla? Some of the divergences from classic Vanilla gameplay include: * Dynmap (Our maps in your browser: See who's online and what's being built!) * Bolt (Protect your chests, furnaces, and many other blocks and entities from unauthorized access with a finely adjustable permission system) * mcMMO (17 new skills to level up, with many passive and active abilities and bonuses as you progress through the levels) * GSit (Sit almost anywhere, on players, stairs, and more) * FlareDeathMessages (Our custom plugin for cooler death messages) * Pets (Let small helpers accompany you; most pets are purely cosmetic) * Cosmetics (Put on a hat or backpack, get wings or a cosmetic armor piece to express yourself) * Decorations (Many mob heads, custom player heads, soon new and exclusive paintings, and tons of plushies (almost) all Vanilla mobs and some of our custom mobs for decorating and carrying around) * Many minor additions that are more of an augmentation than a change...
We are an international community, and the primary language is English (the entire server leadership, as well as some other players, are from Germany). Some of our features are still in development, as we do almost everything ourselves in our spare time while striving for high quality. Currently, the following features are being developed and will be introduced soon (not necessarily in this order): * Jump and Run courses (as the first minigame) * In-game Wiki for all usable functions of plugins, etc. * Daily login rewards * Vote rewards
Feel free to drop by and check us out! :) The discord link is added to my profile
PS: In addition to the advertised SMP, we are developing a second server. This one, currently named "Flare Adventures," will offer a classic MMORPG player experience inspired by WoW, Elden Ring, and other major influences. This project is still in its infancy, but feel free to visit us to stay up to date!

I really need someone to just vent this out to and maybe get advice on what I could do because right no I feel so trapped and it feels like theres only one way out. I cant afford a therapist even tho I really wish I could see one.
When I was younger around 8ish my parents split and my dads job had him moving all over the US from New York, to Arkansas, to Texas, to South Carolina, etc. Because of all the moving I rarely got to be put into public school, and was forced into homeschooling for most of my prior years. Instead of actually properly engaging with me tho, I just got handed a text book and had to solve it myself while my father worked or played his MMO Warcraft. I got my first laptop at around the age of 8-10 maybe and because I had nothing else to do I guess I just started getting really big into gaming and being online.
Then when I was about 15 we settled down in a ghost town in Texas. Some stupid college town with literally nothing to do. We have 1 street with fast food chains, an empty abandoned mall, and 1 or 2 bars, 1 of which recently shut down. I had a kind of hard time fitting in at school since it was my first time in an actual public school and it was my Freshman year in college. My father forced me and my brother to play football and while I was athletic, I couldnt catch for shit but my father was so proud anytime I was on the field so I just stopped fighting it and forced myself to get through it. Im about 5'6-5'7 range of height and that made it much harder as well.
Anyway, about in my sophomore year or so, maybe a bit earlier I started getting in trouble. Like a lot of trouble, running away, fights, tresppassing, breaking into cars and stealing, destruction of property. Thinking back on it, a lot of it was just me acting out for attention because it seemed like the only time my father or really anyone would pay attention was when I forced them to. My father was on his 5th new girlfriend who I hated and I had 2 awful step siblings that got the golden treatment while me and my 2 younger brothers were treated much worse. Around this time I also sort of came to terms with the my mother not caring about us. She would visit every summer or so or we'd go down once a year to visit thanksgiving with her side of the family and for the most part that was always fun.
But my mom was a major hippie. Like a real junkie. Every year or 2 it was a new abusive horrible boyfriend that would treat me and my brothers like shit and my mom and him were always shifting between being super lovey and cute with eachother when they were drunk or high out of their minds, to the inveitable fighting and yelling at eachother about how he treats her and us kids, or how she is always yelling at him over little things whenever their high or buzz eventually wore off. I could never really understand it. Why she couldnt come see us more often as she only lived a little over an hour and a half away. She would use the excuse that she didnt have that kind of money to take us down and feed us and what not or had no one to watch us. But I saw and I knew how much she spent on weed and alcohol and it must have been at least 250 a month bare minimum. It always felt like she didnt *want* to see us.
And my father, Ive already eluded to how he was very dismissive of me and my brothers but he also had anger issues. He wasnt necessarily abusive but he would yell and he would scream about how fucking stupid I was for doing x and x or how I need to treat his girlfriends better. And Id yell back. His mother, my grandma has extremely bad mental health disorder (I dont know what specifically) but it causes her to go manic when shes off her medication and seeing as my grandpa didnt believe in that (the 1900s am I right) and seeing as they were both extreme christians she often would not take them and this caused her to lash out and abuse my father by both yelling and screaming but also by beating him with a belt or a pan or her hands.
I think this is why my father is the way he is, why hes so emotionally stunted and closed off.
When I was 17 my life was actually at its peak, I was finally starting to do better in school, I had a solid group of friends with and just a lot of really healthy relationships. But then I met this girl, and she sort of clung to me, presumably because she had a crush on me (duh). And would pester me all the time. This really got to me because for the first time in my life there was someone prying for MY attention instead of the other way around. She was extremely forward, texting me all the time, holding onto my arm while we walked down the halls, waiting for me at lunch, after school, after class, etc. I was starting to fall for her hard.
At this time I actually had a best friend who I really liked because despite all my flaws she seemed to genuinely care about me. I liked her at the time but I wasnt sure if she liked me back and I was too scared to ask. And so, when I met this new girl who seemed to be very clearly into me I folded and sooner than later we were officially dating. This is where everything went down hill. My friends stopped hanging out with me as much because they thought she was "very sexual" for a lack of better wrods or whatever and didnt approve, and Id push them away when I argued that she wasnt and that she was misunderstood and abused.
This relationship would end up being extremely toxic. She made me block friends, If my friend was a woman, I had to cut ties with them. (which was a lot of my friends that I had left). And then things started getting really bad. She was very obsessive and abusive, if I looked at a girl the wrong way, if I was too nice to a waiter, or she thought they were too nice to me, it was somehow my fault and she'd start acting distant. Replying with small answers, leaving me on open, until eventually I apologized and then BOOM she was all over me again. And this continued anytime I did something she didnt like she'd withhold any affection, refused to talk it out, would scream and throw things, lock herself in rooms, threaten to hurt herself. She also pulled me into smoking weed which became a constant thing for us.
Around this time I should also mention, my father had disenrolled me from school early into my Junior year due to skipping classes and fighting, and also my girlfriend had gotten in a huge fight with her parents and she got kicked out and came to live with us.
She was VERY intimate, and would often hurt me at my most vulnerable. When I would break down about things in my past or because of a really shitty day she would waste no time using that in later conversations. And during sex she would often scratch or bite or keep going even when I told her to stop because it hurt or I was uncomfortable or not in the mood and when I finally would get physical and push her off she would just throw something at me or hit me and say something like "Fucking p**sy, Youre such a loser" and then would spend the next few hours acting like Im the bad guy saying things like "You think Im ugly" "You dont wanna fuck me anymore" etc etc. And she was pretty much with me 24/7 as she lived with me at this point, eveyr morning, every night.
Things continued like this for about a year and right when I was gonna break up with her, and I think she could tell because I was starting to be more standoffish, I had finally reconnected with some friends. She got pregnant. I was too fucking naive and horny I guess and so extremely dumb hat I just believed her when she told me she was on birth control. I mean we'd had sex many many times before hand without a condom and there was never any issue.
Anyway, this was the real downfall. I couldnt make her get an abortion, and I didnt wanna be forced to pay 40% child support for the rest of my young life. So I stuck with her, and I got a job working about 50hrs a week at a chicken factory. I made pretty good money but I came home miserable. On the bright side I finally kicked my weed addiction for both my sake but more importantly my sons. I wasnt gonna be the same as my mother or father. But once our attentions wernt on eachother anymore, it became all about the kid.
We had an agreement, that since Im on my feet and using my back and hands all day Id usually come home with very swollen hands and feet and I just wanted 30m to an hour to myself to just relax and calm down after work but this only lasted for maybe a month or 2 before she started pawning our son off on me the moment I was home. I came home to dishes all over the room, clothes sitting in the bin for weeks without being washed, overflowing trash. It was horrible.
Things pressed on like that while the relationship just deteriorated further and further and before I knew it, 3 years had passed. Now Im 21, and we basically dont talk to eachother at this point and just share a space and a kid together. But one day I wake up and my ex is gone, and so is my son. She had left in the middle of the night and all I had was a text from one of her friends saying she breaks up with me and shes leaving with my son. I try to contact her but Im blocked on literally everything with no way of knowing where they went. I didnt care that she was gone, but not knowing where my son was killed me. I spent 3 long months hiring a lawyer and tracking her down and eventually found her staying in a womens shelter claiming I was abusive.
Eventually our day in court came even tho I paid 9k for a lawyer with a really high success rate, and I had an actual home, and a good system of connections for the kids, and a family that Im actually in contact with, and a job and a car. I had photos, videos of her breakdowns, screenshots of her message threatening myself and herself. I had witnesses, and even court documents about her being sent to a mental hospital for her issues and her parents both having gone to jail for possession of drugs and YET even despite all of this, she was able to walk in with no legal support, coming from a shelter with no home and no body to reach out to and yet somehow she still fucking won custody of our son. I promise you Im not being biased in this explination, she somehow won and I blame it on the fact that we lived in good ol sexist Texas where the mother always get the kid no matter what and because they wanted me to pay child support. I cant explain it in any way that makes sense.
Anyway, I wallowed in defeat drunk for about 3 months after that until I got a message from my ex saying that she's being evicted from the shelter and she has nowhere left to go but her uncles house. Thing is, our court doc had a special restriction to being within 30m of eachother, and though she absolutely could have found a way around it I was somehow able to convince her to sign custody over to me since she has no other options as she was gonna be kicked from the shelter and would be breaking the border restriction if she left. And it actually worked and for the first time in months I had my kid back.
Now flashforward a year and a half, Im 22 now and turning 23 in a about 6 months. But my life feels so empty. I live with my parents because I cant afford childcare, and also work and pay off a home and a car at the same time. I have no friends and no girlfriend and its so fucking lonely. And anytime I try to talk to people I just fuck it all up because I dont use social media, Im not familiar with the current trends, I dont have time to hang out or go drinking or smoking, or just go on trips because I have to stay home and watch my son. I have a group of friends Ive known for about 4 years online and some of us from the group finally met up in Chicago for a 4 day weekend trip Fri-Mon last weekend and while I felt a little akward because it was my first time out in years where I could actually enjoy myself and it was my first time really in a big city.
I really did have the best time of my life in years and I really really enjoyed it for the most part, it was my first taste of real freedom and fun in as long as I can remember. But then when we got home and we called the next day and shared stories and photos, it was all just talking about how akward I was or how it felt like I hated the trip and that Id just wander off or just seemed anti-social. These wernt just jokes either, they were actively being outwardly mean for what seemed like no reason. Saying they were happy the trip was over and saying they could never go on a trip with us again. All very mean spirited jokes and jabs, and then came the videos and photos where they took of me just kinda sitting akwardly or when I was drunk. And it would just go back to them making a "Yikes" face.
A little bit of context- so there are 5 of us in the GC that have known eachother and called almost every other day for about 4 years. 3 out of 5 of us went on the trip, It was a girl and her boyfriend and then there was another man that we had added to the GC maybe a few months prior. The entire trip, it seemed like the 2 in a couple were sort of othering us, they were doing there thing and we were along for the ride. They would take photos of themselves only, they would whisper and just talk to eachother mostly the entire time, and anytime we would say something it was usually just 1 note response before they would go back to talking to eachother. All of this combined with me just gawking at the fact that I was ACTUALLY there and I would just kinda of zone out sometimes and admire the city and foot traffic and just appreciate the fact I was there. (These were the moments they would capture on camera and say that I was being awkward or anti-social) but they didnt capture all the moments we were actively talking and walking or any of the other good moments like back in the hotel room when we were all just chilling and laughing it up.
When I got home and they just broke out all the insults and were being super mean out of nowhere for literally no reason it just got to me. I wanna be mad at them but Im not Im just super depressed. It was such a fun trip and they basically just ruined it saying the entire time they felt weirded out or they felt like I was sad or unhappy the entire trip. To be fair, Im really stoic, in the sense that I dont show a lot of emotion, seemingly getting that from my father, and I do have a resting frown. So when theyre sitting there talking about the latest Kendrick Lamar vs Drake drama or some tiktok trend or something I didnt understand I would just be kinda left sitting there without knowing what was going on.
The other guy we added to the GC, he was actually really cool to be around, he could hold a convo, and we talked a lot about morals, and shows, and politics, and video games, and things I could relate to and when I asked him about the Drama or Tiktok trend he would actually go out of his way to fill me in and explain it and answer my questions where as the other 2 would just kinda respond with a simple answer and act annoyed when I was like "Ah that makes sense" or "Oh ok I get it". I deleted snapchat awhile back because my son kept posting photos on my story. But when I redownloaded it yesterday I was able to watch all the snaps from the moment our planes landed and we met, to the moment we said goodbye at the airport and all my feelings were validated. The entire time they were sneaking bad photos and recordings of me, and captioning it with things about how they think Im upset or that Im being awkward and sending it to the snap GC.
And my whole world kinda crumbled as I just went through 30 minutes of photos and videos of all of them just talking about me that way behind my back the entire time and seeing how they really felt. During the trip I kept apologizing and telling them Im not upset and that its all just very new to me and I dont get out often and I already felt terrible because my feet were extremely blistered and bruised from all the walking and I felt like I was ruining their fun on the trip and they just kept saying "No its fine!" "Dw about it" "No seriously we're ok, just tried".
Anyway in our call I kind of called them out saying I dont get why theyre acting this way even tho on the trip we seemed to be having a good time and they just got mad at me like "oh my god relax, its not that big of a deal" and yea.
It feels like Im trapped in this cycle where my depression and isolation causes me to act awkward or have a hard time conversing and connecting to people and that makes it hard to make friends or find a girlfriend, but also the loneliness and isolation is whats causing my depression and Ive tried looking up all the advice on how to be more confident or talk to people or whatever but I just cant do it. When Im talkative I come off as "too much" or annoying and yappy but when I dont try as hard Im too quiet. I cant get out of this hole that I spent my entire life digging and now it feels like I might never get out.
I wanna go to college, I want the life that I see everyone my age living, active on social media, travelling, participating in trends, going out to clubs and just enjoying their 20-30s. The worst part is, is that even tho I love my son with every ounce of my being, Im often negligent towards him. He brings toys to me and asks me to play with him and I just tell him not right now while I watch my latest yt video or show, or play games with friends online, and I just feel myself becoming my father and repeating his mistakes. I dont make sure my sons is well clothed and showered, I wear the same clothes multiple days in a row sometimes, and I can already see my son lashing out for attention the same way I did in my teens. Hes 4, some attitude is to be expected, but I know this an attention thing because he acts so good with my aunt or my step mother.
I feel horrible because I wanna do better, I wanna be better but idk how. Ive been considering that it may be in my sons best interest if I give him back to my ex. She has a good life right now with a good car, job, and home and shes finally been clean for awhile. Both of her parents are dead and she has no connection to immediate family but when she sees him she treats him so well and hes always begging to see her again. She genuinely shows him the kind of love and attention he needs. But a part of my feels like if I give him up, Im just like my mother. Abandoning my kid for my own selfish reasons. I could move to the big city with my saved up cash or even camp out of my car as Ive always dreamed of that kind of life. Maybe stay in a dorm or get a roomate while I study in college with a part time job. So Im not left behind in the world
Ive tried justifying it by saying that its better for both of us, and that at this rate Ill be a nobody and he'll grow up just as fucked up as I am. But maybe if I can get out and change the course of my life, I could actually be successful and pay for his college when hes ready, and take him on trips around the world and buy him things. And he'd have a loving mother, and I could still come visit more often than my mother did. Im just so scared. I dont wanna be my father but I dont wanna be my mother either and I cant imagine coming to terms that maybe she wasnt horrible after all. And then I get worried about the logistic, what could go wrong if I give him up. What if my ex decides randomly that she wants child support even tho we agreed no child support was needed. And then my life is fucked all over again but I also lose my son.
I tried researching and In Texas, the judge can decide its "not in the childs best interest" for me not to pay child support or for me to terminate my parental rights even if BOTH me and my ex agree to the terms. So I could be forced into having my life ruined even if we both agree that I dont need to.
I feel alone, and isolated and I have no one to talk to about this and I have no help. No matter how I look at it, my life feels like its over before it even got started and all I can think about is ending it all because it feels like whats the point. Please help me know what to do

I really need someone to just vent this out to and maybe get advice on what I could do because right no I feel so trapped and it feels like theres only one way out. I cant afford a therapist even tho I really wish I could see one.
When I was younger around 8ish my parents split and my dads job had him moving all over the US from New York, to Arkansas, to Texas, to South Carolina, etc. Because of all the moving I rarely got to be put into public school, and was forced into homeschooling for most of my prior years. Instead of actually properly engaging with me tho, I just got handed a text book and had to solve it myself while my father worked or played his MMO Warcraft. I got my first laptop at around the age of 8-10 maybe and because I had nothing else to do I guess I just started getting really big into gaming and being online.
Then when I was about 15 we settled down in a ghost town in Texas. Some stupid college town with literally nothing to do. We have 1 street with fast food chains, an empty abandoned mall, and 1 or 2 bars, 1 of which recently shut down. I had a kind of hard time fitting in at school since it was my first time in an actual public school and it was my Freshman year in college. My father forced me and my brother to play football and while I was athletic, I couldnt catch for shit but my father was so proud anytime I was on the field so I just stopped fighting it and forced myself to get through it. Im about 5'6-5'7 range of height and that made it much harder as well.
Anyway, about in my sophomore year or so, maybe a bit earlier I started getting in trouble. Like a lot of trouble, running away, fights, tresppassing, breaking into cars and stealing, destruction of property. Thinking back on it, a lot of it was just me acting out for attention because it seemed like the only time my father or really anyone would pay attention was when I forced them to. My father was on his 5th new girlfriend who I hated and I had 2 awful step siblings that got the golden treatment while me and my 2 younger brothers were treated much worse. Around this time I also sort of came to terms with the my mother not caring about us. She would visit every summer or so or we'd go down once a year to visit thanksgiving with her side of the family and for the most part that was always fun.
But my mom was a major hippie. Like a real junkie. Every year or 2 it was a new abusive horrible boyfriend that would treat me and my brothers like shit and my mom and him were always shifting between being super lovey and cute with eachother when they were drunk or high out of their minds, to the inveitable fighting and yelling at eachother about how he treats her and us kids, or how she is always yelling at him over little things whenever their high or buzz eventually wore off. I could never really understand it. Why she couldnt come see us more often as she only lived a little over an hour and a half away. She would use the excuse that she didnt have that kind of money to take us down and feed us and what not or had no one to watch us. But I saw and I knew how much she spent on weed and alcohol and it must have been at least 250 a month bare minimum. It always felt like she didnt *want* to see us.
And my father, Ive already eluded to how he was very dismissive of me and my brothers but he also had anger issues. He wasnt necessarily abusive but he would yell and he would scream about how fucking stupid I was for doing x and x or how I need to treat his girlfriends better. And Id yell back. His mother, my grandma has extremely bad mental health disorder (I dont know what specifically) but it causes her to go manic when shes off her medication and seeing as my grandpa didnt believe in that (the 1900s am I right) and seeing as they were both extreme christians she often would not take them and this caused her to lash out and abuse my father by both yelling and screaming but also by beating him with a belt or a pan or her hands.
I think this is why my father is the way he is, why hes so emotionally stunted and closed off.
When I was 17 my life was actually at its peak, I was finally starting to do better in school, I had a solid group of friends with and just a lot of really healthy relationships. But then I met this girl, and she sort of clung to me, presumably because she had a crush on me (duh). And would pester me all the time. This really got to me because for the first time in my life there was someone prying for MY attention instead of the other way around. She was extremely forward, texting me all the time, holding onto my arm while we walked down the halls, waiting for me at lunch, after school, after class, etc. I was starting to fall for her hard.
At this time I actually had a best friend who I really liked because despite all my flaws she seemed to genuinely care about me. I liked her at the time but I wasnt sure if she liked me back and I was too scared to ask. And so, when I met this new girl who seemed to be very clearly into me I folded and sooner than later we were officially dating. This is where everything went down hill. My friends stopped hanging out with me as much because they thought she was "very sexual" for a lack of better wrods or whatever and didnt approve, and Id push them away when I argued that she wasnt and that she was misunderstood and abused.
This relationship would end up being extremely toxic. She made me block friends, If my friend was a woman, I had to cut ties with them. (which was a lot of my friends that I had left). And then things started getting really bad. She was very obsessive and abusive, if I looked at a girl the wrong way, if I was too nice to a waiter, or she thought they were too nice to me, it was somehow my fault and she'd start acting distant. Replying with small answers, leaving me on open, until eventually I apologized and then BOOM she was all over me again. And this continued anytime I did something she didnt like she'd withhold any affection, refused to talk it out, would scream and throw things, lock herself in rooms, threaten to hurt herself. She also pulled me into smoking weed which became a constant thing for us.
Around this time I should also mention, my father had disenrolled me from school early into my Junior year due to skipping classes and fighting, and also my girlfriend had gotten in a huge fight with her parents and she got kicked out and came to live with us.
She was VERY intimate, and would often hurt me at my most vulnerable. When I would break down about things in my past or because of a really shitty day she would waste no time using that in later conversations. And during sex she would often scratch or bite or keep going even when I told her to stop because it hurt or I was uncomfortable or not in the mood and when I finally would get physical and push her off she would just throw something at me or hit me and say something like "Fucking Vagina ( She obv used the P-word instead), Youre such a loser" and then would spend the next few hours acting like Im the bad guy saying things like "You think Im ugly" "You dont wanna fuck me anymore" etc etc. And she was pretty much with me 24/7 as she lived with me at this point, eveyr morning, every night.
Things continued like this for about a year and right when I was gonna break up with her, and I think she could tell because I was starting to be more standoffish, I had finally reconnected with some friends. She got pregnant. I was too fucking naive and horny I guess and so extremely dumb hat I just believed her when she told me she was on birth control. I mean we'd had sex many many times before hand without a condom and there was never any issue.
Anyway, this was the real downfall. I couldnt make her get an abortion, and I didnt wanna be forced to pay 40% child support for the rest of my young life. So I stuck with her, and I got a job working about 50hrs a week at a chicken factory. I made pretty good money but I came home miserable. On the bright side I finally kicked my weed addiction for both my sake but more importantly my sons. I wasnt gonna be the same as my mother or father. But once our attentions wernt on eachother anymore, it became all about the kid.
We had an agreement, that since Im on my feet and using my back and hands all day Id usually come home with very swollen hands and feet and I just wanted 30m to an hour to myself to just relax and calm down after work but this only lasted for maybe a month or 2 before she started pawning our son off on me the moment I was home. I came home to dishes all over the room, clothes sitting in the bin for weeks without being washed, overflowing trash. It was horrible.
Things pressed on like that while the relationship just deteriorated further and further and before I knew it, 3 years had passed. Now Im 21, and we basically dont talk to eachother at this point and just share a space and a kid together. But one day I wake up and my ex is gone, and so is my son. She had left in the middle of the night and all I had was a text from one of her friends saying she breaks up with me and shes leaving with my son. I try to contact her but Im blocked on literally everything with no way of knowing where they went. I didnt care that she was gone, but not knowing where my son was killed me. I spent 3 long months hiring a lawyer and tracking her down and eventually found her staying in a womens shelter claiming I was abusive.
Eventually our day in court came even tho I paid 9k for a lawyer with a really high success rate, and I had an actual home, and a good system of connections for the kids, and a family that Im actually in contact with, and a job and a car. I had photos, videos of her breakdowns, screenshots of her message threatening myself and herself. I had witnesses, and even court documents about her being sent to a mental hospital for her issues and her parents both having gone to jail for possession of drugs and YET even despite all of this, she was able to walk in with no legal support, coming from a shelter with no home and no body to reach out to and yet somehow she still fucking won custody of our son. I promise you Im not being biased in this explination, she somehow won and I blame it on the fact that we lived in good ol sexist Texas where the mother always get the kid no matter what and because they wanted me to pay child support. I cant explain it in any way that makes sense.
Anyway, I wallowed in defeat drunk for about 3 months after that until I got a message from my ex saying that she's being evicted from the shelter and she has nowhere left to go but her uncles house. Thing is, our court doc had a special restriction to being within 30m of eachother, and though she absolutely could have found a way around it I was somehow able to convince her to sign custody over to me since she has no other options as she was gonna be kicked from the shelter and would be breaking the border restriction if she left. And it actually worked and for the first time in months I had my kid back.
Now flashforward a year and a half, Im 22 now and turning 23 in a about 6 months. But my life feels so empty. I live with my parents because I cant afford childcare, and also work and pay off a home and a car at the same time. I have no friends and no girlfriend and its so fucking lonely. And anytime I try to talk to people I just fuck it all up because I dont use social media, Im not familiar with the current trends, I dont have time to hang out or go drinking or smoking, or just go on trips because I have to stay home and watch my son. I have a group of friends Ive known for about 4 years online and some of us from the group finally met up in Chicago for a 4 day weekend trip Fri-Mon last weekend and while I felt a little akward because it was my first time out in years where I could actually enjoy myself and it was my first time really in a big city.
I really did have the best time of my life in years and I really really enjoyed it for the most part, it was my first taste of real freedom and fun in as long as I can remember. But then when we got home and we called the next day and shared stories and photos, it was all just talking about how akward I was or how it felt like I hated the trip and that Id just wander off or just seemed anti-social. These wernt just jokes either, they were actively being outwardly mean for what seemed like no reason. Saying they were happy the trip was over and saying they could never go on a trip with us again. All very mean spirited jokes and jabs, and then came the videos and photos where they took of me just kinda sitting akwardly or when I was drunk. And it would just go back to them making a "Yikes" face.
A little bit of context- so there are 5 of us in the GC that have known eachother and called almost every other day for about 4 years. 3 out of 5 of us went on the trip, It was a girl and her boyfriend and then there was another man that we had added to the GC maybe a few months prior. The entire trip, it seemed like the 2 in a couple were sort of othering us, they were doing there thing and we were along for the ride. They would take photos of themselves only, they would whisper and just talk to eachother mostly the entire time, and anytime we would say something it was usually just 1 note response before they would go back to talking to eachother. All of this combined with me just gawking at the fact that I was ACTUALLY there and I would just kinda of zone out sometimes and admire the city and foot traffic and just appreciate the fact I was there. (These were the moments they would capture on camera and say that I was being awkward or anti-social) but they didnt capture all the moments we were actively talking and walking or any of the other good moments like back in the hotel room when we were all just chilling and laughing it up.
When I got home and they just broke out all the insults and were being super mean out of nowhere for literally no reason it just got to me. I wanna be mad at them but Im not Im just super depressed. It was such a fun trip and they basically just ruined it saying the entire time they felt weirded out or they felt like I was sad or unhappy the entire trip. To be fair, Im really stoic, in the sense that I dont show a lot of emotion, seemingly getting that from my father, and I do have a resting frown. So when theyre sitting there talking about the latest Kendrick Lamar vs Drake drama or some tiktok trend or something I didnt understand I would just be kinda left sitting there without knowing what was going on.
The other guy we added to the GC, he was actually really cool to be around, he could hold a convo, and we talked a lot about morals, and shows, and politics, and video games, and things I could relate to and when I asked him about the Drama or Tiktok trend he would actually go out of his way to fill me in and explain it and answer my questions where as the other 2 would just kinda respond with a simple answer and act annoyed when I was like "Ah that makes sense" or "Oh ok I get it". I deleted snapchat awhile back because my son kept posting photos on my story. But when I redownloaded it yesterday I was able to watch all the snaps from the moment our planes landed and we met, to the moment we said goodbye at the airport and all my feelings were validated. The entire time they were sneaking bad photos and recordings of me, and captioning it with things about how they think Im upset or that Im being awkward and sending it to the snap GC.
And my whole world kinda crumbled as I just went through 30 minutes of photos and videos of all of them just talking about me that way behind my back the entire time and seeing how they really felt. During the trip I kept apologizing and telling them Im not upset and that its all just very new to me and I dont get out often and I already felt terrible because my feet were extremely blistered and bruised from all the walking and I felt like I was ruining their fun on the trip and they just kept saying "No its fine!" "Dw about it" "No seriously we're ok, just tried".
Anyway in our call I kind of called them out saying I dont get why theyre acting this way even tho on the trip we seemed to be having a good time and they just got mad at me like "oh my god relax, its not that big of a deal" and yea.
It feels like Im trapped in this cycle where my depression and isolation causes me to act awkward or have a hard time conversing and connecting to people and that makes it hard to make friends or find a girlfriend, but also the loneliness and isolation is whats causing my depression and Ive tried looking up all the advice on how to be more confident or talk to people or whatever but I just cant do it. When Im talkative I come off as "too much" or annoying and yappy but when I dont try as hard Im too quiet. I cant get out of this hole that I spent my entire life digging and now it feels like I might never get out.
I wanna go to college, I want the life that I see everyone my age living, active on social media, travelling, participating in trends, going out to clubs and just enjoying their 20-30s. The worst part is, is that even tho I love my son with every ounce of my being, Im often negligent towards him. He brings toys to me and asks me to play with him and I just tell him not right now while I watch my latest yt video or show, or play games with friends online, and I just feel myself becoming my father and repeating his mistakes. I dont make sure my sons is well clothed and showered, I wear the same clothes multiple days in a row sometimes, and I can already see my son lashing out for attention the same way I did in my teens. Hes 4, some attitude is to be expected, but I know this an attention thing because he acts so good with my aunt or my step mother.
I feel horrible because I wanna do better, I wanna be better but idk how. Ive been considering that it may be in my sons best interest if I give him back to my ex. She has a good life right now with a good car, job, and home and shes finally been clean for awhile. Both of her parents are dead and she has no connection to immediate family but when she sees him she treats him so well and hes always begging to see her again. She genuinely shows him the kind of love and attention he needs. But a part of my feels like if I give him up, Im just like my mother. Abandoning my kid for my own selfish reasons. I could move to the big city with my saved up cash or even camp out of my car as Ive always dreamed of that kind of life. Maybe stay in a dorm or get a roomate while I study in college with a part time job. So Im not left behind in the world
Ive tried justifying it by saying that its better for both of us, and that at this rate Ill be a nobody and he'll grow up just as fucked up as I am. But maybe if I can get out and change the course of my life, I could actually be successful and pay for his college when hes ready, and take him on trips around the world and buy him things. And he'd have a loving mother, and I could still come visit more often than my mother did. Im just so scared. I dont wanna be my father but I dont wanna be my mother either and I cant imagine coming to terms that maybe she wasnt horrible after all. And then I get worried about the logistic, what could go wrong if I give him up. What if my ex decides randomly that she wants child support even tho we agreed no child support was needed. And then my life is fucked all over again but I also lose my son.
I tried researching and In Texas, the judge can decide its "not in the childs best interest" for me not to pay child support or for me to terminate my parental rights even if BOTH me and my ex agree to the terms. So I could be forced into having my life ruined even if we both agree that I dont need to.
I feel alone, and isolated and I have no one to talk to about this and I have no help. No matter how I look at it, my life feels like its over before it even got started and all I can think about is ending it all because it feels like whats the point. Please help me know what to do

I really need someone to just vent this out to and maybe get advice on what I could do because right no I feel so trapped and it feels like theres only one way out. I cant afford a therapist even tho I really wish I could see one.
When I was younger around 8ish my parents split and my dads job had him moving all over the US from New York, to Arkansas, to Texas, to South Carolina, etc. Because of all the moving I rarely got to be put into public school, and was forced into homeschooling for most of my prior years. Instead of actually properly engaging with me tho, I just got handed a text book and had to solve it myself while my father worked or played his MMO Warcraft. I got my first laptop at around the age of 8-10 maybe and because I had nothing else to do I guess I just started getting really big into gaming and being online.
Then when I was about 15 we settled down in a ghost town in Texas. Some stupid college town with literally nothing to do. We have 1 street with fast food chains, an empty abandoned mall, and 1 or 2 bars, 1 of which recently shut down. I had a kind of hard time fitting in at school since it was my first time in an actual public school and it was my Freshman year in college. My father forced me and my brother to play football and while I was athletic, I couldnt catch for shit but my father was so proud anytime I was on the field so I just stopped fighting it and forced myself to get through it. Im about 5'6-5'7 range of height and that made it much harder as well.
Anyway, about in my sophomore year or so, maybe a bit earlier I started getting in trouble. Like a lot of trouble, running away, fights, tresppassing, breaking into cars and stealing, destruction of property. Thinking back on it, a lot of it was just me acting out for attention because it seemed like the only time my father or really anyone would pay attention was when I forced them to. My father was on his 5th new girlfriend who I hated and I had 2 awful step siblings that got the golden treatment while me and my 2 younger brothers were treated much worse. Around this time I also sort of came to terms with the my mother not caring about us. She would visit every summer or so or we'd go down once a year to visit thanksgiving with her side of the family and for the most part that was always fun.
But my mom was a major hippie. Like a real junkie. Every year or 2 it was a new abusive horrible boyfriend that would treat me and my brothers like shit and my mom and him were always shifting between being super lovey and cute with eachother when they were drunk or high out of their minds, to the inveitable fighting and yelling at eachother about how he treats her and us kids, or how she is always yelling at him over little things whenever their high or buzz eventually wore off. I could never really understand it. Why she couldnt come see us more often as she only lived a little over an hour and a half away. She would use the excuse that she didnt have that kind of money to take us down and feed us and what not or had no one to watch us. But I saw and I knew how much she spent on weed and alcohol and it must have been at least 250 a month bare minimum. It always felt like she didnt *want* to see us.
And my father, Ive already eluded to how he was very dismissive of me and my brothers but he also had anger issues. He wasnt necessarily abusive but he would yell and he would scream about how fucking stupid I was for doing x and x or how I need to treat his girlfriends better. And Id yell back. His mother, my grandma has extremely bad mental health disorder (I dont know what specifically) but it causes her to go manic when shes off her medication and seeing as my grandpa didnt believe in that (the 1900s am I right) and seeing as they were both extreme christians she often would not take them and this caused her to lash out and abuse my father by both yelling and screaming but also by beating him with a belt or a pan or her hands.
I think this is why my father is the way he is, why hes so emotionally stunted and closed off.
When I was 17 my life was actually at its peak, I was finally starting to do better in school, I had a solid group of friends with and just a lot of really healthy relationships. But then I met this girl, and she sort of clung to me, presumably because she had a crush on me (duh). And would pester me all the time. This really got to me because for the first time in my life there was someone prying for MY attention instead of the other way around. She was extremely forward, texting me all the time, holding onto my arm while we walked down the halls, waiting for me at lunch, after school, after class, etc. I was starting to fall for her hard.
At this time I actually had a best friend who I really liked because despite all my flaws she seemed to genuinely care about me. I liked her at the time but I wasnt sure if she liked me back and I was too scared to ask. And so, when I met this new girl who seemed to be very clearly into me I folded and sooner than later we were officially dating. This is where everything went down hill. My friends stopped hanging out with me as much because they thought she was "very sexual" for a lack of better wrods or whatever and didnt approve, and Id push them away when I argued that she wasnt and that she was misunderstood and abused.
This relationship would end up being extremely toxic. She made me block friends, If my friend was a woman, I had to cut ties with them. (which was a lot of my friends that I had left). And then things started getting really bad. She was very obsessive and abusive, if I looked at a girl the wrong way, if I was too nice to a waiter, or she thought they were too nice to me, it was somehow my fault and she'd start acting distant. Replying with small answers, leaving me on open, until eventually I apologized and then BOOM she was all over me again. And this continued anytime I did something she didnt like she'd withhold any affection, refused to talk it out, would scream and throw things, lock herself in rooms, threaten to hurt herself. She also pulled me into smoking weed which became a constant thing for us.
Around this time I should also mention, my father had disenrolled me from school early into my Junior year due to skipping classes and fighting, and also my girlfriend had gotten in a huge fight with her parents and she got kicked out and came to live with us.
She was VERY intimate, and would often hurt me at my most vulnerable. When I would break down about things in my past or because of a really shitty day she would waste no time using that in later conversations. And during sex she would often scratch or bite or keep going even when I told her to stop because it hurt or I was uncomfortable or not in the mood and when I finally would get physical and push her off she would just throw something at me or hit me and say something like "Fucking p**sy, Youre such a loser" and then would spend the next few hours acting like Im the bad guy saying things like "You think Im ugly" "You dont wanna fuck me anymore" etc etc. And she was pretty much with me 24/7 as she lived with me at this point, eveyr morning, every night.
Things continued like this for about a year and right when I was gonna break up with her, and I think she could tell because I was starting to be more standoffish, I had finally reconnected with some friends. She got pregnant. I was too fucking naive and horny I guess and so extremely dumb hat I just believed her when she told me she was on birth control. I mean we'd had sex many many times before hand without a condom and there was never any issue.
Anyway, this was the real downfall. I couldnt make her get an abortion, and I didnt wanna be forced to pay 40% child support for the rest of my young life. So I stuck with her, and I got a job working about 50hrs a week at a chicken factory. I made pretty good money but I came home miserable. On the bright side I finally kicked my weed addiction for both my sake but more importantly my sons. I wasnt gonna be the same as my mother or father. But once our attentions wernt on eachother anymore, it became all about the kid.
We had an agreement, that since Im on my feet and using my back and hands all day Id usually come home with very swollen hands and feet and I just wanted 30m to an hour to myself to just relax and calm down after work but this only lasted for maybe a month or 2 before she started pawning our son off on me the moment I was home. I came home to dishes all over the room, clothes sitting in the bin for weeks without being washed, overflowing trash. It was horrible.
Things pressed on like that while the relationship just deteriorated further and further and before I knew it, 3 years had passed. Now Im 21, and we basically dont talk to eachother at this point and just share a space and a kid together. But one day I wake up and my ex is gone, and so is my son. She had left in the middle of the night and all I had was a text from one of her friends saying she breaks up with me and shes leaving with my son. I try to contact her but Im blocked on literally everything with no way of knowing where they went. I didnt care that she was gone, but not knowing where my son was killed me. I spent 3 long months hiring a lawyer and tracking her down and eventually found her staying in a womens shelter claiming I was abusive.
Eventually our day in court came even tho I paid 9k for a lawyer with a really high success rate, and I had an actual home, and a good system of connections for the kids, and a family that Im actually in contact with, and a job and a car. I had photos, videos of her breakdowns, screenshots of her message threatening myself and herself. I had witnesses, and even court documents about her being sent to a mental hospital for her issues and her parents both having gone to jail for possession of drugs and YET even despite all of this, she was able to walk in with no legal support, coming from a shelter with no home and no body to reach out to and yet somehow she still fucking won custody of our son. I promise you Im not being biased in this explination, she somehow won and I blame it on the fact that we lived in good ol sexist Texas where the mother always get the kid no matter what and because they wanted me to pay child support. I cant explain it in any way that makes sense.
Anyway, I wallowed in defeat drunk for about 3 months after that until I got a message from my ex saying that she's being evicted from the shelter and she has nowhere left to go but her uncles house. Thing is, our court doc had a special restriction to being within 30m of eachother, and though she absolutely could have found a way around it I was somehow able to convince her to sign custody over to me since she has no other options as she was gonna be kicked from the shelter and would be breaking the border restriction if she left. And it actually worked and for the first time in months I had my kid back.
Now flashforward a year and a half, Im 22 now and turning 23 in a about 6 months. But my life feels so empty. I live with my parents because I cant afford childcare, and also work and pay off a home and a car at the same time. I have no friends and no girlfriend and its so fucking lonely. And anytime I try to talk to people I just fuck it all up because I dont use social media, Im not familiar with the current trends, I dont have time to hang out or go drinking or smoking, or just go on trips because I have to stay home and watch my son. I have a group of friends Ive known for about 4 years online and some of us from the group finally met up in Chicago for a 4 day weekend trip Fri-Mon last weekend and while I felt a little akward because it was my first time out in years where I could actually enjoy myself and it was my first time really in a big city.
I really did have the best time of my life in years and I really really enjoyed it for the most part, it was my first taste of real freedom and fun in as long as I can remember. But then when we got home and we called the next day and shared stories and photos, it was all just talking about how akward I was or how it felt like I hated the trip and that Id just wander off or just seemed anti-social. These wernt just jokes either, they were actively being outwardly mean for what seemed like no reason. Saying they were happy the trip was over and saying they could never go on a trip with us again. All very mean spirited jokes and jabs, and then came the videos and photos where they took of me just kinda sitting akwardly or when I was drunk. And it would just go back to them making a "Yikes" face.
A little bit of context- so there are 5 of us in the GC that have known eachother and called almost every other day for about 4 years. 3 out of 5 of us went on the trip, It was a girl and her boyfriend and then there was another man that we had added to the GC maybe a few months prior. The entire trip, it seemed like the 2 in a couple were sort of othering us, they were doing there thing and we were along for the ride. They would take photos of themselves only, they would whisper and just talk to eachother mostly the entire time, and anytime we would say something it was usually just 1 note response before they would go back to talking to eachother. All of this combined with me just gawking at the fact that I was ACTUALLY there and I would just kinda of zone out sometimes and admire the city and foot traffic and just appreciate the fact I was there. (These were the moments they would capture on camera and say that I was being awkward or anti-social) but they didnt capture all the moments we were actively talking and walking or any of the other good moments like back in the hotel room when we were all just chilling and laughing it up.
When I got home and they just broke out all the insults and were being super mean out of nowhere for literally no reason it just got to me. I wanna be mad at them but Im not Im just super depressed. It was such a fun trip and they basically just ruined it saying the entire time they felt weirded out or they felt like I was sad or unhappy the entire trip. To be fair, Im really stoic, in the sense that I dont show a lot of emotion, seemingly getting that from my father, and I do have a resting frown. So when theyre sitting there talking about the latest Kendrick Lamar vs Drake drama or some tiktok trend or something I didnt understand I would just be kinda left sitting there without knowing what was going on.
The other guy we added to the GC, he was actually really cool to be around, he could hold a convo, and we talked a lot about morals, and shows, and politics, and video games, and things I could relate to and when I asked him about the Drama or Tiktok trend he would actually go out of his way to fill me in and explain it and answer my questions where as the other 2 would just kinda respond with a simple answer and act annoyed when I was like "Ah that makes sense" or "Oh ok I get it". I deleted snapchat awhile back because my son kept posting photos on my story. But when I redownloaded it yesterday I was able to watch all the snaps from the moment our planes landed and we met, to the moment we said goodbye at the airport and all my feelings were validated. The entire time they were sneaking bad photos and recordings of me, and captioning it with things about how they think Im upset or that Im being awkward and sending it to the snap GC.
And my whole world kinda crumbled as I just went through 30 minutes of photos and videos of all of them just talking about me that way behind my back the entire time and seeing how they really felt. During the trip I kept apologizing and telling them Im not upset and that its all just very new to me and I dont get out often and I already felt terrible because my feet were extremely blistered and bruised from all the walking and I felt like I was ruining their fun on the trip and they just kept saying "No its fine!" "Dw about it" "No seriously we're ok, just tried".
Anyway in our call I kind of called them out saying I dont get why theyre acting this way even tho on the trip we seemed to be having a good time and they just got mad at me like "oh my god relax, its not that big of a deal" and yea.
It feels like Im trapped in this cycle where my depression and isolation causes me to act awkward or have a hard time conversing and connecting to people and that makes it hard to make friends or find a girlfriend, but also the loneliness and isolation is whats causing my depression and Ive tried looking up all the advice on how to be more confident or talk to people or whatever but I just cant do it. When Im talkative I come off as "too much" or annoying and yappy but when I dont try as hard Im too quiet. I cant get out of this hole that I spent my entire life digging and now it feels like I might never get out.
I wanna go to college, I want the life that I see everyone my age living, active on social media, travelling, participating in trends, going out to clubs and just enjoying their 20-30s. The worst part is, is that even tho I love my son with every ounce of my being, Im often negligent towards him. He brings toys to me and asks me to play with him and I just tell him not right now while I watch my latest yt video or show, or play games with friends online, and I just feel myself becoming my father and repeating his mistakes. I dont make sure my sons is well clothed and showered, I wear the same clothes multiple days in a row sometimes, and I can already see my son lashing out for attention the same way I did in my teens. Hes 4, some attitude is to be expected, but I know this an attention thing because he acts so good with my aunt or my step mother.
I feel horrible because I wanna do better, I wanna be better but idk how. Ive been considering that it may be in my sons best interest if I give him back to my ex. She has a good life right now with a good car, job, and home and shes finally been clean for awhile. Both of her parents are dead and she has no connection to immediate family but when she sees him she treats him so well and hes always begging to see her again. She genuinely shows him the kind of love and attention he needs. But a part of my feels like if I give him up, Im just like my mother. Abandoning my kid for my own selfish reasons. I could move to the big city with my saved up cash or even camp out of my car as Ive always dreamed of that kind of life. Maybe stay in a dorm or get a roomate while I study in college with a part time job. So Im not left behind in the world
Ive tried justifying it by saying that its better for both of us, and that at this rate Ill be a nobody and he'll grow up just as fucked up as I am. But maybe if I can get out and change the course of my life, I could actually be successful and pay for his college when hes ready, and take him on trips around the world and buy him things. And he'd have a loving mother, and I could still come visit more often than my mother did. Im just so scared. I dont wanna be my father but I dont wanna be my mother either and I cant imagine coming to terms that maybe she wasnt horrible after all. And then I get worried about the logistic, what could go wrong if I give him up. What if my ex decides randomly that she wants child support even tho we agreed no child support was needed. And then my life is fucked all over again but I also lose my son.
I tried researching and In Texas, the judge can decide its "not in the childs best interest" for me not to pay child support or for me to terminate my parental rights even if BOTH me and my ex agree to the terms. So I could be forced into having my life ruined even if we both agree that I dont need to.
I feel alone, and isolated and I have no one to talk to about this and I have no help. No matter how I look at it, my life feels like its over before it even got started and all I can think about is ending it all because it feels like whats the point. Please help me know what to do

I really need someone to just vent this out to and maybe get advice on what I could do because right no I feel so trapped and it feels like theres only one way out. I cant afford a therapist even tho I really wish I could see one.
When I was younger around 8ish my parents split and my dads job had him moving all over the US from New York, to Arkansas, to Texas, to South Carolina, etc. Because of all the moving I rarely got to be put into public school, and was forced into homeschooling for most of my prior years. Instead of actually properly engaging with me tho, I just got handed a text book and had to solve it myself while my father worked or played his MMO Warcraft. I got my first laptop at around the age of 8-10 maybe and because I had nothing else to do I guess I just started getting really big into gaming and being online.
Then when I was about 15 we settled down in a ghost town in Texas. Some stupid college town with literally nothing to do. We have 1 street with fast food chains, an empty abandoned mall, and 1 or 2 bars, 1 of which recently shut down. I had a kind of hard time fitting in at school since it was my first time in an actual public school and it was my Freshman year in college. My father forced me and my brother to play football and while I was athletic, I couldnt catch for shit but my father was so proud anytime I was on the field so I just stopped fighting it and forced myself to get through it. Im about 5'6-5'7 range of height and that made it much harder as well.
Anyway, about in my sophomore year or so, maybe a bit earlier I started getting in trouble. Like a lot of trouble, running away, fights, tresppassing, breaking into cars and stealing, destruction of property. Thinking back on it, a lot of it was just me acting out for attention because it seemed like the only time my father or really anyone would pay attention was when I forced them to. My father was on his 5th new girlfriend who I hated and I had 2 awful step siblings that got the golden treatment while me and my 2 younger brothers were treated much worse. Around this time I also sort of came to terms with the my mother not caring about us. She would visit every summer or so or we'd go down once a year to visit thanksgiving with her side of the family and for the most part that was always fun.
But my mom was a major hippie. Like a real junkie. Every year or 2 it was a new abusive horrible boyfriend that would treat me and my brothers like shit and my mom and him were always shifting between being super lovey and cute with eachother when they were drunk or high out of their minds, to the inveitable fighting and yelling at eachother about how he treats her and us kids, or how she is always yelling at him over little things whenever their high or buzz eventually wore off. I could never really understand it. Why she couldnt come see us more often as she only lived a little over an hour and a half away. She would use the excuse that she didnt have that kind of money to take us down and feed us and what not or had no one to watch us. But I saw and I knew how much she spent on weed and alcohol and it must have been at least 250 a month bare minimum. It always felt like she didnt *want* to see us.
And my father, Ive already eluded to how he was very dismissive of me and my brothers but he also had anger issues. He wasnt necessarily abusive but he would yell and he would scream about how fucking stupid I was for doing x and x or how I need to treat his girlfriends better. And Id yell back. His mother, my grandma has extremely bad mental health disorder (I dont know what specifically) but it causes her to go manic when shes off her medication and seeing as my grandpa didnt believe in that (the 1900s am I right) and seeing as they were both extreme christians she often would not take them and this caused her to lash out and abuse my father by both yelling and screaming but also by beating him with a belt or a pan or her hands.
I think this is why my father is the way he is, why hes so emotionally stunted and closed off.
When I was 17 my life was actually at its peak, I was finally starting to do better in school, I had a solid group of friends with and just a lot of really healthy relationships. But then I met this girl, and she sort of clung to me, presumably because she had a crush on me (duh). And would pester me all the time. This really got to me because for the first time in my life there was someone prying for MY attention instead of the other way around. She was extremely forward, texting me all the time, holding onto my arm while we walked down the halls, waiting for me at lunch, after school, after class, etc. I was starting to fall for her hard.
At this time I actually had a best friend who I really liked because despite all my flaws she seemed to genuinely care about me. I liked her at the time but I wasnt sure if she liked me back and I was too scared to ask. And so, when I met this new girl who seemed to be very clearly into me I folded and sooner than later we were officially dating. This is where everything went down hill. My friends stopped hanging out with me as much because they thought she was a slut or whore or whatever and didnt approve, and Id push them away when I argued that she wasnt and that she was misunderstood and abused.
This relationship would end up being extremely toxic. She made me block friends, If my friend was a woman, I had to cut ties with them. (which was a lot of my friends that I had left). And then things started getting really bad. She was very obsessive and abusive, if I looked at a girl the wrong way, if I was too nice to a waiter, or she thought they were too nice to me, it was somehow my fault and she'd start acting distant. Replying with small answers, leaving me on open, until eventually I apologized and then BOOM she was all over me again. And this continued anytime I did something she didnt like she'd withhold any affection, refused to talk it out, would scream and throw things, lock herself in rooms, threaten to hurt herself. She also pulled me into smoking weed which became a constant thing for us.
Around this time I should also mention, my father had disenrolled me from school early into my Junior year due to skipping classes and fighting, and also my girlfriend had gotten in a huge fight with her parents and she got kicked out and came to live with us.
She was VERY intimate, and would often hurt me at my most vulnerable. When I would break down about things in my past or because of a really shitty day she would waste no time using that in later conversations. And during sex she would often scratch or bite or keep going even when I told her to stop because it hurt or I was uncomfortable or not in the mood and when I finally would get physical and push her off she would just throw something at me or hit me and say something like "Fucking pussy, Youre such a loser" and then would spend the next few hours acting like Im the bad guy saying things like "You think Im ugly" "You dont wanna fuck me anymore" etc etc. And she was pretty much with me 24/7 as she lived with me at this point, eveyr morning, every night.
Things continued like this for about a year and right when I was gonna break up with her, and I think she could tell because I was starting to be more standoffish, I had finally reconnected with some friends. She got pregnant. I was too fucking naive and horny I guess and so extremely dumb hat I just believed her when she told me she was on birth control. I mean we'd had sex many many times before hand without a condom and there was never any issue.
Anyway, this was the real downfall. I couldnt make her get an abortion, and I didnt wanna be forced to pay 40% child support for the rest of my young life. So I stuck with her, and I got a job working about 50hrs a week at a chicken factory. I made pretty good money but I came home miserable. On the bright side I finally kicked my weed addiction for both my sake but more importantly my sons. I wasnt gonna be the same as my mother or father. But once our attentions wernt on eachother anymore, it became all about the kid.
We had an agreement, that since Im on my feet and using my back and hands all day Id usually come home with very swollen hands and feet and I just wanted 30m to an hour to myself to just relax and calm down after work but this only lasted for maybe a month or 2 before she started pawning our son off on me the moment I was home. I came home to dishes all over the room, clothes sitting in the bin for weeks without being washed, overflowing trash. It was horrible.
Things pressed on like that while the relationship just deteriorated further and further and before I knew it, 3 years had passed. Now Im 21, and we basically dont talk to eachother at this point and just share a space and a kid together. But one day I wake up and my ex is gone, and so is my son. She had left in the middle of the night and all I had was a text from one of her friends saying she breaks up with me and shes leaving with my son. I try to contact her but Im blocked on literally everything with no way of knowing where they went. I didnt care that she was gone, but not knowing where my son was killed me. I spent 3 long months hiring a lawyer and tracking her down and eventually found her staying in a womens shelter claiming I was abusive.
Eventually our day in court came even tho I paid 9k for a lawyer with a really high success rate, and I had an actual home, and a good system of connections for the kids, and a family that Im actually in contact with, and a job and a car. I had photos, videos of her breakdowns, screenshots of her message threatening myself and herself. I had witnesses, and even court documents about her being sent to a mental hospital for her issues and her parents both having gone to jail for possession of drugs and YET even despite all of this, she was able to walk in with no legal support, coming from a shelter with no home and no body to reach out to and yet somehow she still fucking won custody of our son. I promise you Im not being biased in this explination, she somehow won and I blame it on the fact that we lived in good ol sexist Texas where the mother always get the kid no matter what and because they wanted me to pay child support. I cant explain it in any way that makes sense.
Anyway, I wallowed in defeat drunk for about 3 months after that until I got a message from my ex saying that she's being evicted from the shelter and she has nowhere left to go but her uncles house. Thing is, our court doc had a special restriction to being within 30m of eachother, and though she absolutely could have found a way around it I was somehow able to convince her to sign custody over to me since she has no other options as she was gonna be kicked from the shelter and would be breaking the border restriction if she left. And it actually worked and for the first time in months I had my kid back.
Now flashforward a year and a half, Im 22 now and turning 23 in a about 6 months. But my life feels so empty. I live with my parents because I cant afford childcare, and also work and pay off a home and a car at the same time. I have no friends and no girlfriend and its so fucking lonely. And anytime I try to talk to people I just fuck it all up because I dont use social media, Im not familiar with the current trends, I dont have time to hang out or go drinking or smoking, or just go on trips because I have to stay home and watch my son. I have a group of friends Ive known for about 4 years online and some of us from the group finally met up in Chicago for a 4 day weekend trip Fri-Mon last weekend and while I felt a little akward because it was my first time out in years where I could actually enjoy myself and it was my first time really in a big city.
I really did have the best time of my life in years and I really really enjoyed it for the most part, it was my first taste of real freedom and fun in as long as I can remember. But then when we got home and we called the next day and shared stories and photos, it was all just talking about how akward I was or how it felt like I hated the trip and that Id just wander off or just seemed anti-social. These wernt just jokes either, they were actively being outwardly mean for what seemed like no reason. Saying they were happy the trip was over and saying they could never go on a trip with us again. All very mean spirited jokes and jabs, and then came the videos and photos where they took of me just kinda sitting akwardly or when I was drunk. And it would just go back to them making a "Yikes" face.
A little bit of context- so there are 5 of us in the GC that have known eachother and called almost every other day for about 4 years. 3 out of 5 of us went on the trip, It was a girl and her boyfriend and then there was another man that we had added to the GC maybe a few months prior. The entire trip, it seemed like the 2 in a couple were sort of othering us, they were doing there thing and we were along for the ride. They would take photos of themselves only, they would whisper and just talk to eachother mostly the entire time, and anytime we would say something it was usually just 1 note response before they would go back to talking to eachother. All of this combined with me just gawking at the fact that I was ACTUALLY there and I would just kinda of zone out sometimes and admire the city and foot traffic and just appreciate the fact I was there. (These were the moments they would capture on camera and say that I was being awkward or anti-social) but they didnt capture all the moments we were actively talking and walking or any of the other good moments like back in the hotel room when we were all just chilling and laughing it up.
When I got home and they just broke out all the insults and were being super mean out of nowhere for literally no reason it just got to me. I wanna be mad at them but Im not Im just super depressed. It was such a fun trip and they basically just ruined it saying the entire time they felt weirded out or they felt like I was sad or unhappy the entire trip. To be fair, Im really stoic, in the sense that I dont show a lot of emotion, seemingly getting that from my father, and I do have a resting frown. So when theyre sitting there talking about the latest Kendrick Lamar vs Drake drama or some tiktok trend or something I didnt understand I would just be kinda left sitting there without knowing what was going on.
The other guy we added to the GC, he was actually really cool to be around, he could hold a convo, and we talked a lot about morals, and shows, and politics, and video games, and things I could relate to and when I asked him about the Drama or Tiktok trend he would actually go out of his way to fill me in and explain it and answer my questions where as the other 2 would just kinda respond with a simple answer and act annoyed when I was like "Ah that makes sense" or "Oh ok I get it". I deleted snapchat awhile back because my son kept posting photos on my story. But when I redownloaded it yesterday I was able to watch all the snaps from the moment our planes landed and we met, to the moment we said goodbye at the airport and all my feelings were validated. The entire time they were sneaking bad photos and recordings of me, and captioning it with things about how they think Im upset or that Im being awkward and sending it to the snap GC.
And my whole world kinda crumbled as I just went through 30 minutes of photos and videos of all of them just talking about me that way behind my back the entire time and seeing how they really felt. During the trip I kept apologzing and telling them Im not upset and that its all just very new to me and I dont get out often and I already felt terrible because my feet were extremely blistered and bruised from all the walking and I felt like I was ruining their fun on the trip and they just kept saying "No its fine!" "Dw about it" "No seriously we're ok, just tried".
Anyway in our call I kind of called them out saying I dont get why theyre acting this way even tho on the trip we seemed to be having a good time and they just got mad at me like "oh my god relax, its not that big of a deal" and yea.
It feels like Im trapped in this cycle where my depression and isolation causes me to act awkward or have a hard time conversing and connecting to people and that makes it hard to make friends or find a girlfriend, but also the loneliness and isolation is whats causing my depression and Ive tried looking up all the advice on how to be more confident or talk to people or whatever but I just cant do it. When Im talkative I come off as "too much" or annoying and yappy but when I dont try as hard Im too quiet. I cant get out of this hole that I spent my entire life digging and now it feels like I might never get out.
I wanna go to college, I want the life that I see everyone my age living, active on social media, travelling, participating in trends, going out to clubs and just enjoying their 20-30s. The worst part is, is that even tho I love my son with every ounce of my being, Im often negligent towards him. He brings toys to me and asks me to play with him and I just tell him not right now while I watch my latest yt video or show, or play games with friends online, and I just feel myself becoming my father and repeating his mistakes. I dont make sure my sons is well clothed and showered, I wear the same clothes multiple days in a row sometimes, and I can already see my son lashing out for attention the same way I did in my teens. Hes 4, some attitude is to be expected, but I know this an attention thing because he acts so good with my aunt or my step mother.
I feel horrible because I wanna do better, I wanna be better but idk how. Ive been considering that it may be in my sons best interest if I give him back to my ex. She has a good life right now with a good car, job, and home and shes finally been clean for awhile. Both of her parents are dead and she has no connection to immediate family but when she sees him she treats him so well and hes always begging to see her again. She genuinely shows him the kind of love and attention he needs. But a part of my feels like if I give him up, Im just like my mother. Abandoning my kid for my own selfish reasons. I could move to the big city with my saved up cash or even camp out of my car as Ive always dreamed of that kind of life. Maybe stay in a dorm or get a roomate while I study in college with a part time job. So Im not left behind in the world
Ive tried justifying it by saying that its better for both of us, and that at this rate Ill be a nobody and he'll grow up just as fucked up as I am. But maybe if I can get out and change the course of my life, I could actually be successful and pay for his college when hes ready, and take him on trips around the world and buy him things. And he'd have a loving mother, and I could still come visit more often than my mother did. Im just so scared. I dont wanna be my father but I dont wanna be my mother either and I cant imagine coming to terms that maybe she wasnt horrible after all. And then I get worried about the logistic, what could go wrong if I give him up. What if my ex decides randomly that she wants child support even tho we agreed no child support was needed. And then my life is fucked all over again but I also lose my son.
I tried researching and In Texas, the judge can decide its "not in the childs best inrest" for me not to pay child support or for me to terminate my parental rights even if BOTH me and my ex agree to the terms. So I could be forced into having my life ruined even if we both agree that I dont need to.
I feel alone, and isolated and I have no one to talk to about this and I have no help. No matter how I look at it, my life feels like its over before it even got started and all I can think about is ending it all because it feels like whats the point. Please help me know what to do

Join, no whitelist: mc.kodreagames.com
-=[About us - Cliff notes]=-
Hi! I'm here to shamelessly plug an old phoenix rising from the ashes. How old you may ask? This old!
Why, back when the project originally started... hMod was still a thing, then died, and this new thing called Bukkit was all the rage...
Nominally it's an "RPG" server, in the Dungeons&Dragons sort of tradition rather than any hardcore "Roleplay" or major systems.
You'll find yourself as a member of a participation driven storyline that will fork and meander as events unfold! It's a slow-burn project. Hardcore playtime will not be a requirement for meaningful participation. Just be willing to play a fun role in the grand scheme of the story~
The RPG system is in active development, but during that time we are hosting our "Free settlement period" event to grow the server population!
There are generous royal land-grants available to early settlers who improve regions and create population centers.
This is a world that will grow organically, so I'm not trying to pre-build it all, come join the re-founding!
Ok, but what can I do on the server?
It's a server where you'll get out as much as you put in, and diversity of playstyle is welcomed, encouraged, and protected... We like good stories!
Do you just want to live an anarchist nomad's life in the wilds? There's a space for you here, but you'll have to defend what you can! You can level and improve your character to better protect yourself and your friends.
If you want to live a life of safety and protection, free from the vagrancy of nomad life, you'll have to participate in the economy and towns side of things... Stake your own claim or join an existing town as a part of the grand Empire of Liepaja.
Life can range from the humble farmer, and the mundane merchant, To the adventuring explorer or even a noble knight or lord of a realm of the empire! Your story is what YOU make of it in this world, nobody's here to tell you "You can't"
(Well, they might, but you can ignore and hide from them, or beat them!)
You'll join to find an ancient imperial land in a period that could be described as it's twilight... inhabited by people with old traditions going back many years, with a history years in the making, mostly by players who have long since moved on, but a few have stuck around to keep the old ways alive. That just leaves room for new adventurers to build new traditions, and weave new tales!
The events that take place will form the bleeding edge of the dormant (but once living) history from which this land draws it's legends. Will you become a part? Will the empire grow great, or fade away? Will the players build a new polity? You will decide!
Build pictures to come when I'm feeling less lazy... Sorry y'all.
Rules

• The staff are the gods of this world. Don't like it? Tough!
• You are free to protect your chests using sign lock plugins, failure to protect your chests is consent to be stolen from.
• You are able to protect your builds for an in-game price... No pay, no protection. Money convertable from diamond/gold/iron/coppeemerald at spawn.
• PVP is currently disabled (There are plans to change this in the future, by adding a lawless wilderness)
• None of the server theming is a restriction on build theming. Build freely.

No whitelist (lol, regret?) Join as you see fit. mc.kodreagames.com
Details, for the interested.
Server core: PaperMC (MC 1.9,.4)
Plugins:
Worldedit, Worldguard, EssentialsX, BlockLocker, CoreProtect, SignShop, SignShopHotel, MagicSpells, Runecraft, Bookshelf, mcMMO, Towny. Other libs (not player-facing)
[LORE FLUFF. FOR THE VERY INTERESTED]
You'll spawn into a small village in the heartland of an old empire... the empire of Liepaja... Established by an emperor long-gone, who left behind a legacy of laws which still bind the realm together. Ruled in regency by an imperial council consisting of the lords of the realm to act as the decision-making body...
Within Liepaja, the players and villagers live freely, and PvP is disabled. Outside it's borders, PvP is enabled, and players must defend themselves...
You'll find a land steeped in traditions, with lords and commoners, barons and counts, dukes and kings, even perhaps an emperor (if one could manage to claim the throne... It would be a first!)
The spawn in a village, at the seat of free Bun County, ruled by a lord who calls herself Rabbit, that is your starting place...
From there, you may travel freely and do as you see fit. Establish yourself in the empire, or strike out beyond it's borders to make your own way. Only you can decide how you play!
The world so far: Two server-towns exist, and there are many villages in the spawn region (lucky seed!). Ancient magic exists in the land but the art is lost (Runecraft, look it up~).
The mages and wizards of old have been cloistered of late, not sharing, but may soon reopen their schools.... (Magic is WIP, not done yet!)
Update post of Things to Come™: This server is in active development, but it's open while it's being built out. This allows players a chance to take part in the very foundation of the world.
The Magic system is actively WIP... But those of you familiar with the old art of Runecraft will find it ready to go if you know how to use it...
Magic will follow the usual trend of different schools out in the world, each with tracks to follow and skills to be found by questing and exploring. There's runic magic, and some more familiar castable magic schools to be had.
Quests and dungeons are on the horizon but require major time/effort on my part doing designs and laying down the development.
​