19
afab
5’10”
140lb
White
I take medications prescribed by doctor: lolo birth control pill 5mg and Escitalopram 20mg. I have been on Escitalopram since around 2020 and lolo since last year (mid-late summer. I have slight memory issues sometimes which i think are unfortunately due to stress). depression and autism. no known physical conditions other than scoliosis. do not smoke, do not drink (only once in my life for my birthday last year)
at around 10 am, Saturday, I noticed a bit of pain on my thigh so i sat down to examine the area. I felt a small (bigger than a singular pea, DEFINITELY smaller than a golfball) lump over where it was. There’s a bit of pain when i walk around and if i touch the area. Over the next few hours to now i observed as a bruise began to form. as of writing this post it’s been around 15 hours since i noticed the bump, and 13 since i noticed very slight discolouration on my skin which was the beginning of a bruise. The affected leg is my left leg, and my right leg is fine. while I don’t remember bumping on anything i may have done so in my sleep, but I’m curious as to why a lump has come with it this time.(could be a deep bruise? i am no medical professional and neither is anyone in my family. I’m not incredibly worried about it, but it’s driving me crazy because i just want to find out what it is.)
about the lump: not particularly soft or moveable, a bit firm. It doesn’t rise out of the skin; in order to notice it I had to touch the area myself. It’s a bit painful if i walk with that leg, but no more than a 2 on the pain scale. hurts if pressed into. i will be keeping an eye on this as it hasn’t been 24 hours since i discovered it, so probably too early to confirm anything. can still feel a bit of pain a little while after pressing into it.
pictures: (links should be in order of what time i took them; first links are earliest. the last two are around the same time, i just took one with the flash on)
https://ibb.co/ThRVzt6 https://ibb.co/zs9PVFs https://ibb.co/Y2pWGyC https://ibb.co/3RRCHxC

*CONTAINS SWEARING*
This is gonna be a hefty and most likely triggering post for specific groups of people out there (meaning people who struggle with anger, people who don't want poltical content/opinions etc), so please stop reading and leave if you figure this is gonna be rough for you. This will (mainly) be about the conflict between Palestine and Israel. (and apparently a long one) No hate towards any specific groups of people, but I do have a lot of *frustration regarding behaviours*.
Before I start, I want you to remember some facts about me as you read;
I am autistic
I am heavily influenced by world peace, hate, racism and other unfair situations
I have incredibly high standards for myself that I strive to not break, including, but not limited to, being kind and respectful *always*, despite being in a bad mood, not liking someone, or disagreeing, especially political disagreements
I have always, and will always, stand against widespread hate, racism and other discrimination towards any specific religions, ethnicities, nationalities, cultures, etc.
I also want you to know that I named this throwaway accordingly.
So let's get this shitshow started then, shall we.
As the details of the conflict stands, it is beyond obvious to me that this is racism and, literally, a Holocaust. Not *the* Holocaust, but *a* Holocaust. Oxford Languages has the term defined as a destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war . I'd say that's very much accurate. Proof to come.
Regardless, this situation has had me very pressed the last almost 8 months, as I know most other people have been too. Without getting too much into the conflict itself, I want to talk a little about what I've seen from the Jewish community.
This is where I advise anyone who struggles with anger especially to leave and try to keep your day positive. If you have a magical potion to stay stable after this, who am I to stop you...
Alright, onto the dreaded part. And yes, I am stalling.
I have never, and I truly mean *never* had any hateful thoughts or opinions about religions (other than Christianity but that's one for another time), and as we are all aware of, The Holocaust had massive effect on the world some 80 years ago. I have always seen Jews as victims due to this, but in recent times I've realised that a lot of them, too, see themselves as victims. The issue is that they aren't the victims right now. They (Israel) aren't defending themselves, they have nothing to defend themselves against. Israel is currently doing the exact same thing as Germany did to them, to Palestine. Sure, maybe at some point who knows when, Palestine *was* the land of Jews, but since then, multiple religions have been thriving together on that land, including Jews. They were never excluded. From what I've understood, there weren't any wars or conflicts going on within the country that didn't happen elsewhere. The issue began when in the late 1940's zionists brutally murdered families to steal their homes. I'm sure the situation was so much more complex than that, but in a nutshell that is basically it. The fact that everyone today have been so desensitized from the travesties happening around the world is depressing and hope-killing. I truly am well on the way to giving up, and at this point in time I'm so angry all the time due to the Middle East's situation.
So a few weeks ago, probably closing in on months at this point, I randomly got a notification from reddit about someone posting on /Jewish. They didn't say anything explicit, so I pressed the notification and I was met with the worst victimization and ignorance I've ever seen. I truly believed most jews would see this for what it is, and not let some racist maniac spoon-feed them propaganda and hate, but I was brutally and humbly proven wrong. They were mocking proPAL parades, hating on news anchors and civilians alike calling this a genocide, insisting that Israel has no other choice, saying "casualties happens in war", convincing each other that zionism is a good thing, and feeling sorry for themselves when friends and families cut contact because they said they supported Israel and saw this as the only solution. Some might have been genuine problems, idk, but for the most part, that subreddit seems to only be about hating the rest of the world because their great grandparents were killed. I know I sound like a complete asshole, but the world isn't antisemetic anymore - they are actively looking for it and then using that one person telling them to stop feeling so sorry for themselves as proof that everybody in the world wants to throw them back in gas chambers.
I commented on my personal once where I mentioned that judaism and zionism are two separate things and got downvoted to oblivion. Someone replied saying that my comment was very much exactly what they too feel, but I got downvoted *simply because* I referred to them as separate entities. That is another criticism they've recieved lately; the pure idea of zionism is on the complete opposite side from what Judaism stands for. I've seen so many of the members there calling Jews protesting against Israel "self-hating" and traitors.
I've also made so many replies that I never sent because I know for a fact they would do anything in their power to ban me from ever using reddit again, and I wouldn't be surprised if I got doxxed and harrassed IRL from it. I saved them all, though. I found that it was kind of therapeutic to get it out, but it still bugs me that I never found a way to say it to them. I once also made a post about my rage for their behaviour connected to this genocide, but I thankfully stopped myself before I posted it. I'm so enraged by their sheer ignorance and hypocritical behaviour, all the while Gaza is still being eradicated and slaughtered, war crimes happening day in-day out, inhumane atrocities by the IOF being posted and hailed, and they have the audacity to say that they are the victims? That Israel has no other choice but martyring tens of thousands of CHILDREN? Starving the entire Gaza Strip, segregating West Bank, literally teaching their young in school to hate and attack arabs? That last one might not be true as I don't speak Hebrew or Arabic, so anyone could've just made up the translation, but I still feel it's worth mentioning in case it actually *is* real.
My point is that the guts they have to claim to be so moral, yet still be so unfaced from what's happening in Gaza is beside me. Sure, for those living near the Gaza wall, I'm positive that hearing bombs and screams were traumatizing as fuck, but to then leave for work the next day and claim that "shit happens"? It's insane! It's inhumane. They can leave whenever they like, children can play football (soccer) in the streets and not having to worry about shit, hotels and restaurants with 5-star ratings thriving, plants and flowers still blooming, absolutely no threats on a daily basis. The fact that people are still calling this a war, something necessary, is beyond devastating to me. There are millions still siding with zionism, claiming there's nothing wrong with the belief that you have an innate right to some dirt simply because your holy book says that thousands of years ago, your religion lived there, and simply because of that religious fact you are rightfully owed thousands of young lives, the death of an entire country with its own culture, just to feed the irrational religious political system? How in God's name has that ever, *IS* that still okay? If Muslims were the ones saying that shit, they would've been completely destroyed by now, today's generation wouldn't know what the fuck Islam was. They are still being slaughtered though, because they're saying it's *not* okay. How is that not racist again?
My brother and I got into a heated argument a few days ago about this. I am very much *for* Palestine to have human rights and to own their own land - he is very much *against* "ugly blackies" having any rights because they're *not* human. Boi when I tell you I got so angry I started crying. And the worst part about that fight? He claims that Jews aren't any better, however they still deserve to defend themselves against children running on the beach. "But Hamas-" is so over-used and outdated by now, it just proves that he doesn't follow up on statistics and evidence. Even if there only were one-sided news (from Gaza), the fact that the ICJ ruled Israel's actions a genocide and war crimes still proves everything he claims to be "n*****'s propaganda". And the fact that he so underminds my autism and *need* for factual evidence before discussing it also goes to show that he genuinely does not care about anything other than the black "terrorists" being eradicated. I said "So you're not just a racist, you're just plain racist?" he just scoffed and looked at me as if I just said the most nonsensical bullshit gibberish ever, practically saying "I'm not gonna say anything, but it really took you that long to realise?" Either that, or he actually didn't comprehend the words coming out of my mouth, like it was a foreign language or something. Because he genuinely does not have a single reason to be racist.
He can't even blame suicide attacks because 1) not all are carried by muslims, and 2) between 1981-2015 around 45,000 were killed by suicide attacks worldwide, where in 2019 the total death toll was only 1,699 more than amount of attacks; whereas in Gaza, between Oct 7 to present there are about 34,000 confirmed palestinian deaths, and assumed around 42,000 with unconfirmed deaths. If, in 36 years, "muslim terrorism" killed about the same amount as Israel has in almost 8 months, how on earth are Arabs the terrorists?
And I've also seen the argument that 30,000 is nothing compared to the total population in Gaza, as if that makes it okay. I will, again, make example of The Holocaust. When 30,000 Jews were martyred, people were already catching on, and this was without the technology we have today.
How have we been allowing this to happen to Palestinians *with* our technology today? Why haven't people been doing more; striking our jobs, cummute chauffeurs striking, proper permanent boycotts, more coverage from news anchors and private people alike? Even if it is to officially reclaim your love for white supremacy, you're still talking about it. Why are people still not reading up on this? Why does millions still not know that this *didn't* begin on October 7th? And why are there still those who claim that the past doesn't matter today? I have so many questions, and if I do get an answer I will only end up with more questions. How hasn't the world stopped over this? Why are people so okay knowing that there are children being intentionally murdered every single day? How can you go to work and talk about Dave's new tie? Or your 6 year old's birthday party with 15 other 6 year olds? Hasn't it crossed your mind that if the roles were reversed, your precious princess would be the one burried under tons of rubble, dying slowly while simontaniously starving, dehydrating, suffocating and crushing, and *knowing* that absolutely no one cares because you're [skin color] and it's normal for your kids to be horrendously massacred? "Oh but the Taliban-ISIS-Al Qaeda" OKAY so what are you gonna do to help save innocent lives and suffering??? How are you gonna contribute to STOP these organizations that have manipulated and murdered to rule their country and are intentionally making the citicens miserable? Are you even aware that your own govurnment is essentially the same fucking thing, just disguised as a well dressed, polite gentleman? Aren't you sick of all those ads on TV showing brown children with flies in their eyes? Or your mama telling you to think about the starving children in Africa? Because I am.
I am so sick and tired of how inhumane humans have come to be. You don't see animals (and I'm trying my best to not mention how humans *are* animals, guess I failed) intentionally kill another animal simply because they're that animal. They kill prey; polar bears kill seals, seals kill penguins, penguins kill fish, fish kill amoebas, and you can get to that result from absolutely everything. What you don't find as a natural event is a golden, brown mane lion attack and kill an albino lion simply because it's albino. You don't see a school of fish swim away from one with two heads, because "*omg Jared is such a freak with his two heads*." So why the FUCK DID WE START DOING THAT? Where did this hunger for power come from? You *will* see a female lion tell the king that enough is enough, and he *will* accept that. I could go on and on for DAYS if I got the chance, but I don't wanna get too off topic here.
I've started a list of all the universally illegal shit Israel has done, and once I'm satisfied with it, I'll make one comparing Israel to Palestine, and then Arabs/Muslims as a whole. I can guarantee that I will still hear "on-sided sources" still, or "You can't trust Wikipedia!" Have you ever tried to edit or create an article on Wikipedia? I have, and I had to confirm that I had a degree or a current valid work ID to prove that I was elgible to speak on the topic. I tried to make a site for myself... Sure, there are more trustworthy sites, but even in a discussion about wether or not being trans is a mental illness, where I quoted and linked all of the most well known official sources like WHO, I was still slapped with "but this shady ass article from a random Deutch website that explicitly says everything I've said, yet still isn't actually saying the same thing because I misquoted and mixed the words to form my own sentence says that it is" when they literally linked a website called "disabled world". I will say though, I agree with that name. Today's world is so non-funtional for neurotypical, hetero, white MEN, it's no fucking wonder everyone else are classified as disabled or whatever. Also, on that disabled topic, if you've made it this far, please don't say "differently abled". A quote unquote quote (heh geddit? cuz it's rephrased and I don't have the book near me rn to directly quote) from Devon Price's "Unmasking Autism" that I really like: "You wouldn't say "a person with Asianness", you'd say "an Asian person"." We are disabled because today's world isn't made for us, and for the most part isn't even accomodated or accessible to us. We are different, yeah, but literally everyone is. We just got that term because we can't do the same things as you (assuming you're neurotypical) without aid. We are able, just not like you. Of course, if an autistic person tells you they prefer "person with autism", listen to them! But most of us embrace it as a part of us because we can't just get rid of it. Autism is what make me me, I wouldn't be me without my autism, so I *am* autistic, for better or for worse. :)
I find it kinda ironic that I started this as a venting about a lot of Jews' hypocritical behaviour, and now ending up on autism. Yaknow, cuz Dr. Asperger during WW2 experimented and tortured autistic people, and found out that some where more alike him than others, which then coined the term Aspergers for the Autistic Community.
Anywho, I feel better now, so thanks for letting me vent a little (a lot). I want to finish off by restating my intro; I have not, and will not tolerate any hate, racism or discrimination towards any religion, ethnicity, nationality, culture etc. This post is not intended as a rant about how aweful jews are, because they're not. I just wanted to air some frustration over their behaviour regarding I/P genocide. This is also not about *all* Jews, but that's the same discussion as "not all men" so I'll leave it at that.
I will delete this account in a week, so if you have any questions, be fast ig. If you find I've mis-phrased, used irrationally insensitive wording or any other complaints that calls for a repost, I will fix it and post an updated version. My DMs will also be available if that should be of interest, but I will not be responding to hate or personal attacks for my opinions. If the issue is my wording, again, tell me and I'll fix it.
At this point I've written so much that I don't remember if I found anything myself that I figured was worth fixing, and I've proof read it so many times that my eyes are crossing and giving me a headache lol
Gosh I'm scared of posting this. I don't want anyone to read this and think I support what A. H. did in 1940 cuz I cannot begin to describe my hatred for that man

"You gotta know that there's an art to it, Ezra," Hitch said, cutting another piece of duct tape.
The sleeves of his weather-beaten coat were shoved all the way up his arms, to stop the fabric from falling over his knuckles while he was working, and goosebumps lined his skin. He was strapping a rubber chicken to the back of his truck, over the lens of the shattered backup camera, with the legs pointing down so that they hung a couple inches above the ground. There were dents in the hood from the crash last week, and scratches along the door from scraping into a curb. The chicken, hopefully, would keep him from breaking anything else.
"You can't go cheap," Hitch said. "The cheap rubber chickens only make noise when pressure lets go. That's no good. As soon as I back up into something, I want this chicken to be screaming like it’s in the depths of hell."
“Sure thing,” I said in a monotone, leaning against the side of the truck.
There were scrambled electronic parts piled in the back of the truck, the innards of a radio, a broken computer, tangled wires, a couple loose pairs of earbuds. He found the parts in alleyways or bummed them off his friends for a couple bucks or stole them from the vacation homes that were left empty for most of the year. Then he sold them for a profit at the scrapyard. Hitch had bounced between minimum-wage jobs for a while after high school, spending a couple months as a bagger at the grocery store or as a seasonal worker at the farm two hours down the highway. He'd never stuck with it. At the very least, the scrapyard got him enough money to eat and occasionally spend a night in a motel when he got tired of sleeping in his car.
Hitch pressed the last piece of tape in place and grinned up at me. "I've got something for you, duck."
The nickname came from when I’d broken my leg as a child and waddled around in a cast until it was healed. I hated it with a burning passion, and I glared at Hitch with the ease of twenty-one years of practice. He had a duck tattoo at the base of his thumb that he’d gotten in a back-alley shop as a teenager. He said that he’d gotten it to remind him of me, and the fact that I hated the nickname was just a bonus. It was shaky-lined, with an uneven face, but he loved it anyway.
The handle stuck when Hitch tried to open the door, a consequence of the rust collecting in the crevices of the car and running down the sides like blood from a cut. The car groaned when the door finally popped open, a metal against metal screech that had me flinching away. Hitch dug through the cluttered fast food containers in the passenger-side footwell, eventually coming up with a crinkly paper bag. He waved away the flies buzzing around the opening of the bag and held it out to me.
The last time Hitch had brought me food, I’d gotten food poisoning because he’d left it out in the midday sun for two days. The donut was squished slightly, and the icing was stuck to the bag. I still ate it, grimacing at the harsh citrus flavor. Taking Hitch’s food was an instinct engraved from the days when Dad had given us a can of kidney beans for dinner and Hitch had drank the juice, leaving the beans for me.
I rarely went hungry anymore, three mostly square meals a day and granola in my pockets just in case, but habits didn’t die easy.
These days, Hitch only brought me food when he wanted my help, like when he saw a place he wanted to hit but was worried about doing it alone.
I got in the car, like I always did.
We drove past the cluster of seafood-themed restaurants with chipped paint decks, the beachfront park where there were always shifty-eyed men sitting under the slide, the single room library where all the books had been water damaged in the flood last year. The change was quick as we drove across Main Street, heading closer to the beach. The roads were freshly paved, the concrete a smooth black except where the sun had already started to pick away at it. The three-story homes lining the sides of the street were crouched on elegant stilts, with space underneath for a car or three. Most of the garages were empty, with the lights off and curtains drawn in the house. Come summer, the streets would be swarming with tourists and vacationers, but until then, most of the buildings nearest to the beach were unoccupied.
Hitch stopped as the sun started to go down at a house that was leaning precariously out towards the beach, tilted ever so slightly, the edge of its foundation buried in the shifting sand of the beach. It certainly looked deserted, with an overgrown yard and blue paint peeling off the door in sheets.
Hitch took his hammer out of the backseat, hoisting it over his shoulder. It was two feet of solid metal with rags wrapped around the head to muffle the sound of the hits. Hitch squared up, bending his knees and holding the hammer like a baseball bat. Before he could swing, though, the door creaked open on its own, the hinges squeaking. The house beyond was dark enough that I could only make out general shapes, glimpsing the curve of a sofa to the left, what was maybe the shimmer of a chandelier on the other side.
Hitch lowered his hammer, looking vaguely disappointed that he didn’t get to use it. “That’s…weird as hell.”
“Maybe the deadbolt broke, maybe they forgot to lock it, it doesn’t matter,” I hissed, checking our surroundings for other people again. “Just hurry up and get inside before someone calls the cops.”
Hitch flicked the lightswitch on the wall, and the lights flickered on. They were dim, buzzing audibly and blinking off occasionally. The walls were plastered with contrasting swatches of wallpaper and splattered with random colors. There was neon orange behind the dining table, a galaxy swirl in the kitchen, and on the ceiling there was a repeating floral pattern covered in nametag stickers. Each of the stickers was filled out with The Erlking. Chandeliers hung in every room, three or four for each, and rubber ducks sat on every table. A miniature carousel sat in the corner along with a towering model rocket.
Sand was heaped on every surface, at least a couple inches everywhere. It was piled in the corners and stuck to the walls, and it covered the floor in a thick blanket. Our hesitant steps into the house left footprints clearly outlined in the sand.
Hitch took a cursory look around and headed immediately for the TV mounted on the wall. “Look out the windows and tell me if anyone is coming.”
I shook the sand out of the blinds and pulled them open, then had to brush sand off of the window before I could see anything.
Hitch was quick, practiced at finding and appropriating the things that were worth taking. He came back to me with an armful of electronics and chandeliers, dumping it at my feet before turning to head deeper into the house again.
There was a thump, somewhere upstairs, and then footsteps, slow and deliberate. Hitch froze at the threshold of the room, then ran for the door with me just ahead of him, sand flying out from under our feet.
My hand was almost brushing the doorknob, close enough that I could see the light from the streetlamp outside streaming in through the cracks in the door. My fingers touched the wood and it gave under my touch, becoming malleable and warm. I yelped, stumbling backwards, and the door started to melt. The paint ran down in thick drops, pooling at the bottom of the door, and the wood warped like metal being welded. The soft edges of the door ran into the walls until there was no sign of an exit ever being there.
“Well, well, well,” said a cultured voice with just an edge of snooty elitism. “What do we have here?”
The man was well over eight feet tall, with long black hair covering his eyes. He was wearing a yellow raincoat with holes cut out of the hood to accommodate the deer antlers jutting upwards from his head. There was sand settled on his shoulders and hovering around his head like a halo.
“Who the fuck are you?” Hitch said, inching towards a window.
He smiled, just a little bit, and his teeth shone in the dim light. “I am the Erlking.”
Hitch nodded, and seemed about to respond. I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him towards the window. I could feel sand in the wind roaring against my back as the Erlking growled in anger, the grains scraping harshly against my cheeks.
We were almost to the window when Hitch was ripped away from me, and I came to a startled halt. The sand had formed long grasping arms that pressed Hitch against the floral wallpaper. His wrists were held tight, and as I watched, a sandy hand wrapped around his mouth and forced its way between his teeth. He gagged, and sand trickled out of the corners of his mouth.
The Erlking strolled towards him, not seeming to be in any sort of rush. “You know, I’m not very fond of your yapping.”
He made an idle gesture and the sand wrapped around my ankles, tethering me in place.
“I yap all the time,” Hitch said. “Three-time olympic yapper, that’s me. Best to just let me go now and save yourself some trouble.”
The Erlking tapped a manicured nail against Hitch’s mouth, hard enough to hurt, judging by the way he flinched away. “But why would I ever let you go when I’ve gone to this much trouble to catch you and your sister? It’s so hard, these days, to find people that no one will miss.”
Hitch struggled against the sand, trying to escape and failing. “What do you want with us, then? You just said it, we’re nobody.”
“I’m fae, dear one,” the Erlking said. “I get my power from my followers. And I think that you two will make lovely additions to my flock.”

He flicked Hitch's nose and Hitch gasped. Feathers started to form on his arms, popping out from under his skin in a spray of blood.
Hitch pushed off the wall, using his bound hands as a fulcrum, and his knees crashed into the Erlking’s stomach. The Erlking fell backwards, wheezing, and the sand around my ankles loosened.
Hitch made desperate eye contact with me as feathers shot up his neck and jerked his head towards the window. The message was obvious. Run.
The last thing I saw before crashing out the window and into freedom was Hitch’s body twisting, his arms wrenching into wings and feathers covering every inch of his skin. By the time I landed on the concrete outside, he was a small black bird, held tightly in the Erlking’s hands. The whole building was sinking into the ground, burnished-gold sand piling up over top and streaming from the windows.
Thirty years later, I saw Sam’s Supernatural Consultation and Neutralization written in neat, looping handwriting on a piece of paper taped to the door. The tape was peeling at the corners and the paper was yellowed with age, but there was obviously care put into the sign, in its perfectly centered text and looping floral designs drawn over the edges in gold marker.
I knocked, hesitantly, drawing my woolen coat closer around my shoulders. I’d bought it as a fiftieth birthday gift for myself, and I took comfort in the heavy weight of it over my shoulders.
“Coming!” someone called from within the depths of the office.
There were a couple crashes, and the sound of paper shuffling. Eventually, the door was opened by a young woman with ketchup stains on her shirt and pencils stuck through her hair.
“Hi, I’m Sam, I specialize in supernatural consultation and hunting, how may I help you today?” Sam said, customer-service pep in her voice. She stood in the doorway, solidly blocking entry into the office.
“My name is Ezra, I’m for a consultation. I emailed you but you didn’t respond?” I shifted in place, suddenly feeling awkward.
“Oh! Yeah, I lost the password for the email ages ago. Sorry for the bad welcome, I get lots of people thinking I’m crazy or pulling a prank and harassing me.”
She ushered me into the office, clearing papers off one of the chairs to make room for me to sit down. There was a collection of swords along one wall, all of them polished to perfection, several with deep knicks in the metal which indicated that they’d been used heavily.
“So what can I help you with?” Sam asked again, more sincere this time.
“Thirty years ago, my brother was turned into a bird,” I started. I’d told this story so many times that it barely felt ridiculous to say anymore. I was used to the disbelieving looks, the careful pity. But Sam just nodded along, face open and welcoming.
“I’ve almost given up on finding him, at this point,” I said. “But I saw your ad in the newspaper, and…here I am, I suppose.”
“Here you are,” Sam echoed, smiling. She pulled one of the pencils out of her hair and took a bit of paperwork off of one of her stacks, turning it over so that the blank side sat neatly in front of her. “Tell me everything.”
I told Sam everything, and she wrote it all down, pencil scratching along the paper.
The last part of the story was always the hardest to tell. “I left him there. I ran and I didn’t look back.”
I had been to dozens of detectives and investigators over the years, once the police had dropped Hitch’s case. I’d been to professional offices with smartly-dressed secretaries and met scraggly men in coffee shops. All of them had given me the same look, pity and annoyance all mixed up into a humor-the-crazy-lady soup. Sam, though, just seemed thoughtful.
Sam leaned forward and put a hand over mine, carefully, like she thought that I would pull away. “Sometimes you have to leave people behind.”
I tightened her hold on Sam’s hand and drew it towards me, like I could make Sam listen if only I squeezed tight enough. “But that’s why I’m here. I don’t want to leave him behind.”
“Okay then. I’ll do my best to help you.” Sam agreed, finally. Then she paused, and said softly, “You know…I think I met your brother once. He might have saved my life. He’s certainly why I started in this business.”
“Really? What happened?” I asked.
This is the story that Sam told me, related to the best of my abilities:
It was a new moon, so the only illumination came from the stars gazing idly down and distant porch lights shining across the scraggly brush of the dunes. Sam’s neighbors were decent people who cared about baby turtles, so the lights were a low, unobtrusive red, and the ocean sloshed like blood. Sam walked on the beach almost every night, drawing back the gauzy pink curtains and clambering out her bedroom window. She didn’t often bother to be quiet; her mama worked the late shift and came home exhausted. As long as Sam got home before the sun, her mama would never find out that she paced the shoreline and dreamed of inhaling sand until her lungs became their own beach.
The sky was lightening. The sun would come up soon, and that meant Sam’s time on the beach was over. She needed to get back to her real life, go to her fifth grade class and stop that nonsense, as her mother would say. Her mother loved to say things like that, pushing Sam into her proper place by implication alone.
“She’s a good kid, of course, but she’s a bit…” Her mother would trail off there, usually getting a commiserating expression from whoever she was talking to. Sam always wondered how that sentence would have finished. She’s a bit strange, maybe. She’s a bit intense. She’s a bit abrasive. She’s quiet enough but when Jason tried to steal her pencil in math class, she stabbed him in the hand so hard that the lead tattooed him.
Her mother was better, for the most part. The days of her stocking up the fridge, and leaving a post-it note on the counter, and leaving for days at a time were gone. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen tile where her mother had collapsed and caved her head in, even though the bloodstains had been replaced with new tile.
“Your auntie got an abortion, you know,” her mother had said from her place on the couch, slurring her words. “Pill in the mail and then bam, no more baby.”
She had clapped her hands together to illustrate her point. Her mother jerked forward and grabbed Sam by the wrist, then, staring up at her until Sam met her eyes.
“I love you, you know? But sometimes I wonder…” She settled back onto the couch. “Yeah. I wonder.”
She’d gotten up, then, back to the kitchen. She’d been stumbling, a shambling zombie of a woman. The ground in the entryway of the kitchen was raised, ever so slightly, and her mother went down hard. Her head cracked against the tile, chin first, and she didn’t move.
Sam had been the one to call the ambulance. She had stared at the scattering of loose teeth on the ground while she waited, and considered what her life would be like with a dead mom. Not so bad, she thought, and immediately felt guilty for it.
Her mom was better, now, for the most part. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen floor where she had collapsed. There was still a matchbox hidden under her bed with the gleaming shine of her mother’s lost teeth, two canines and a molar. It was nice, having a piece of her mom to keep. Even if she left again, Sam would still have part of her.
Sam sighed, and turned away from the ocean. As she faced towards the low dunes further up the beach, she saw a sandcastle sitting nestled among them. It was such a strange sight that her eyes skipped over it at first, almost automatically, disregarding it because it was so out of place.
Sam found sandcastles out on the beach sometimes, usually half-collapsed and on the verge of being washed away by the waves, but she had never seen anything like the sandcastle in front of her. It was life-sized, something that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Scottish highlands, with spires shooting up above her head and carefully etched out bricks lining each side. The front wall was dominated by an arched set of double doors, twice her height, with a portcullis nestled at the top, ready to be dropped. All of it was lovingly detailed, down to the rust on the tips of the towers and the wood grain of the door. It was made out of wet, densely-packed sand, held together impossibly. It had not been there two hours ago, when she had come to the beach.
There was a bird sitting on the overhang of the door, small and black.
As soon as she took a step towards the sandcastle, the bird shook out its feathers and swooped down towards Sam, landing at her feet with a little stumble.
“Hey, kid, get out of here,” said the bird.
Sam closed her eyes, very deliberately. When she opened them, the bird was still there. Sam considered herself a very reasonable person, so she immediately drew the most logical conclusion. The bird was, she was almost certain, a demon.
“Trust me, you don’t want to run into Mr. Salty, the queen bitch himself,” the bird said.
“Mr. Salty?” Sam inquired, polite as she knew how to be. She edged to the side, trying to get a good angle to kick the bird like a soccer ball.
The bird did something similar to a wince, all its feathers fluffing up then settling back down. “Ah, don’t call him that. He’d turn you into a toad.”
The bird gestured with its head, towards the looming sand structure. “That’s his castle. He’s in there, probably scuttling along the ceiling or some shit because that’s the sort of weirdo he is.”
Sam nodded, encouraging. She pulled back her foot and lined up her shot, the way she’d seen athletes do on TV. She aimed right for its sharp beak and let loose. The bird saw it coming, its beady eyes widening, and it cawed in distress. It flapped away, avoiding her kick only to fall backward into the sand in a scramble of wings.
“What’s your fucking problem?” it squawked. “I was trying to help you!”
“I don’t need the help of a demon,” Sam yelled, trying to remember the exorcism that her mama had taught her once, because her mama believed in being prepared for anything.
“I’m not a demon,” the bird said indignantly.
It was at about that moment that Sam gave up and just decided to roll with it.
“What are you, then?” Sam asked.
The bird shuffled its clawed feet, looking about as awkward as it could, given that it didn’t really have recognizable facial expressions. “Technically I’m a familiar of the Erlking, prince of the fae, but I prefer to be called Hitch.”
“You can’t blame me for assuming, though,” Sam said. “Ravens do tend to be associated with murder.”
“Hey, excuse you,” Hitch said. “I’m a rook, not a raven. Ravens are way bigger.”
“Sure,” Sam said, not really paying attention. Her eyes had caught on the details of the sandcastle, and she was transfixed by the slow spirals of the sand, the strange beauty of it. She found herself stepping towards the great doors, lifting a hand to knock, and as she did, the sand warped in front of her eyes, heaving itself towards her with bulging slowness. The door creaked open before her, revealing a vast, empty room. Just before she stepped inside, she felt a piercing pain in her foot, and she yelped, leaping backwards.
Hitch pecked her again, really digging his beak in. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Sam glared at him, rubbing her foot. About to retort, she finally really took in the room inside the sandcastle, and her words died in her throat.
There was a body just past the threshold of the door, face down and limbs hanging limp at its sides. Long hair splayed out in a halo around its head.
“Don’t,” Hitch warned, suddenly serious. “Just leave, kid, I mean it. I’ve seen too many people go down this road and you don’t want to be one of them.”
Sam ignored him. She made her way across the beach, slipping with every step. The sand felt deeper, piling up around her feet in silent drifts. She picked up the nearest stick and poked the body with it through the door, ready to leap back if anything went wrong, staying firmly outside of the sandcastle.
This close, Sam could tell that it used to be a woman. Her head wasn’t attached to her body. It hadn’t been a clean amputation, either. Her upper body was bruised, with chunks taken out of it, and the bones in her neck hung mangled, not connected to anything.
“Well, I warned you,” Hitch said, defeated. “I did warn you.”
Sam nudged the head with the end of the stick, nudging it over so that she could see the face. Her mother stared back at her, torn to pieces, breath still wheezing from her lungs. She wasn’t blinking, just gazing forward with glazed eyes. Sweat dripped down from her hairline.
Sam screamed and dropped the stick, tripping over herself in her haste to get away.
Her mother’s eyes were wide and pleading, and she was mouthing desperate words at Sam. Her vocal cords were broken to bits, and the only sound that came out was a strained groan.
The head rolled, inching closer to Sam like a grotesque caterpillar.
Her mother gasped for air, torn lips fluttering. Finally, comprehensible words came out. “Help. Help me, daughter.”
“That’s not your mother,” Hitch said, quiet.
Sam knew that. Her mother was sleeping back at home, and anyways her mom had never asked for her help. She had an aversion to accepting charity, as she put it.
“Okay,” Sam said, shaking all over. “Okay.”
She backed away from the sandcastle, not looking away.
“Failure,” her mother hissed as she stepped away. “I never wanted a daughter like you.”
The sun came up over the horizon. The sandcastle, Hitch, and her mom all disintegrated into sand as the light hit them.
The beach, the next night, was almost exactly how I remembered it. The beams of our flashlights sent light bouncing across the dunes, illuminating the waves, and I imagined faces in the foam of the waves.
“I’ve been back here a hundred times. There’s nothing left,” I said.
Sam took the car key out of her purse and pointed it at the sand, adjusting the sword slung over her shoulder in order to do it. The key had belonged to Hitch; Sam had requested an item of his, and it was the only thing I had left. She rested the key on the sand and drew a circle around it, inscribing symbols around the borders.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Sam shrugged. “Not much, really. I’m…I guess you could say that I’m knocking.”
The key laid inert on the sand for long enough that I was just about to give up and go home, admit to myself that Hitch was dead and that I was a fool to believe that Sam could actually help me. Then a building started to take shape, flickering in and out like it was struggling to get away. With a pop of displaced air, the sandcastle settled into existence.
Sam banged on the entryway. Nothing happened. She did it again, harder, and scowled when the door still didn’t open.
“We demand entrance, under your honor,” Sam yelled. There was a hard rush of wind, and I gripped Sam’s arm to keep my balance, but the doors cracked open reluctantly.
The inside of the sandcastle consisted of one enormous hall, the roof arching up out of sight. Rafters crisscrossed from wall to wall, and a cobbled path led further into the building, but other than that, it was completely empty, except for the birds. There were thousands of them, perched on the rafters or hopping along the ground. They parted in front of Sam and I, and reformed behind us, leaving us in a small pocket of open space. They were all black-feathered, with sharp beaks and beady eyes.
The Erlking sat on a throne at the end of the hall, lounging across it with his feet up on the armrest. He watched them as they came forward, the soft caw of the birds the only sound.
“I am here to bargain for the life of my brother,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, before the Erlking could say anything.
The Erlking ignored her, tilting his head to look at Sam. “I remember you. I almost got you, once.”

Sam glared at him but didn’t respond.
“You want your brother,” The Erlking said to me, and he almost sounded amused. “Then go get him.”
As if by some sort of silent signal, every bird in the room took flight at once, and their cawing made me think of screams. I covered my head against the flapping of their wings, and my vision was quickly obscured by the chaotic movement of them. I found myself on my knees, just trying to escape them.
A hand met my shoulder. Sam urged me to my feet, and together we ran for the edge of the room, where the swarm was the thinnest. We pressed ourselves into the corner and the swarm spiraled tighter and tighter at the center of the room. It went on until there seemed to be no differentiation between the birds, all of them fused together into one creature.
When the chaos died down, the birds had become one mass, with wings and eyes and talons sticking out of its flesh, thrashing and chirping. Human body parts stuck out of it, bulging out from the feathers. It was hands, mostly, with a couple knees or staring eyes. The bird amalgamation had no recognizable facial features, but there was one long beak extending from the front of its head. Most of the body parts were concentrated around the beak, and they peeked out from where the beak connected with muscle, or grew from the tongue, nestled between the two crushing halves of the beak.
It turned its beak down and crawled forward, using the hands to balance. The fingers scrambled over the ground. I was afraid of centipedes as a child, and I felt that same crawling dread when it started moving.
“Holy shit,” Sam whispered, which was rather disappointing, because I had been hoping that at least one of us knew what to do.
The creature turned, a lurching movement that crushed some of the hands underneath it, and started heaving itself slowly towards our corner.
“Better hurry up!” the Erlking called from his throne.
It was blocking the exit, by then. The shifting body of it had moved to block us off. It ambled towards us and I tried to sink further into the corner.
As it approached, getting close enough that I could smell the stink of it, I saw a flash of a tattoo on one of the hands. I leaned in, trying to find it again, like looking for dolphins surfacing in the ocean. And again, I caught a glimpse of a duck tattoo, the tattoo that Hitch had gotten on his hand as a teenager.
I ripped away from Sam’s death grip and ran for the monster.
I fell to my knees in front of it, wincing as I impacted the ground, and reached into the nest of hands. I could feel them tearing at my forearms and ripping into me with their sharp nails, but I kept going. I pressed further in, up to my shoulder in a writhing mass of limbs, aiming for the spot where I had last seen that tattoo.
The hands were tugging at me, wrapping around my back and hair. They were pulling together, trying to draw me completely into the mass of them. I was aware of Sam at my side, anchoring me in place and bashing any hand that got too close with her sword or the sparks that leapt from her hands with muttered words. But I didn’t think it would be enough. They were too strong, and there were too many of them.
I was up to my waist in the hands when something grabbed my palm. I felt the way it clung to me, and the calluses on its palm, and I knew that I had found my brother.
I flung herself back. The hands didn’t want to let me go, and they fought the whole way, but slowly, I made progress. I kept hold of Hitch’s hand in mine the whole time, gripping it as hard as I could. I finally broke free, Hitch with me, and Sam was immediately charging the creature, able to use her sword with much greater strength without being worried about injuring Hitch. She swung it forward, and it sliced through the wrist of one of the hands. It fell without a sound, red sand flowing out of it. It deflated until it looked like dirty laundry, just a piece of limp flesh. The creature shrieked, scuttling away enough that the door was finally accessible. The three of us ran for it, Sam and I supporting Hitch between us.
I looked back as I left and found the Erlking staring right at me.
“Interesting,” he murmured, his voice carrying impossibly across the vast space between us.
The sandcastle collapsed behind us, the great walls falling in on themselves. We were out in the morning sun, the sandcastle disappearing as we watched. Hitch was on the ground in front of me, as young as he’d been thirty years ago, when he was captured. He started laughing, feathers puffing out of his mouth. He laughed until he cried and I hugged him in the way that he’d held me when I was young, in the times when my life had been defined by hunger and fear.
Hitch left, afterwards. He scratched at the pinhole scars covering his body, where feathers burst through his skin, and pulled his long sleeves down around his wrists. He didn’t know where he was going but he told me that he needed time
I had spent thirty years worth of time without him. I wanted to grab my brother by the shoulders and beg him to stay. But he flinched when I hugged him goodbye and he refused to go near sand and he stared distrustfully at the birds chirping in the trees. Hitch needed to go away and I loved him too much to stop him.
I sat out on the beach every morning. I felt the sun on my face and I waited for Hitch to come home.

I just saw my ex tonight for the first time in months & now i don’t know how to feel. For context i am the one that broke up with her & i am the one that told her we shouldn’t talk or be friends anymore months after the breakup. Let me give you guys the back story. She was my first relationship ever & she my was my first time. She was my first everything & i feel like that’s why it’s so hard for me to move on. When we started dating she told me about her past relationship which was over a year before we started talking & she said it was very toxic. She told me about how she was cheated on & how she stayed & all these different things about how bad it was. Hearing these things just made me want to show her what real love was even though she was my first love. As u can predict , our relationship was pretty toxic. She would always try to end things with me & block me & I would always beg for her back & we would always end up making up. A couple of months into the relationship I just started feeling drained honestly but i just loved her so much that I wanted to work through it. Her birthday came around & I threw a party for her at my house and made it super special. The next morning I decided to go through her phone because she would always follow guys back & had random guys on her spam. I found out that everytime we stopped talking or “broke up” for the night, she would text some guys & all these different things. I don’t know if she physically cheated or if texting guys is even considered cheating at all but I was hurt. I confronted her about it & she got mad at me & I ended up begging for her back. We stayed together for a couple of months after that incident but i felt so different. I couldn’t let any of that go so then one day i just decided to break up with her. It was hard for me but I had to for my mental well being. A few weeks after she texted me saying she was pregnant. So we continued talking & We ended up getting an abortion. It was so hard for the both of us & i continued to try to be there for her because I cared for her still obviously. We would still hangout & go out on dates & stuff like that for a few months. One day i found out she was having sex with one of my homies during that whole time & I was honestly so hurt. My whole friend group knew about it & nobody told me anything. The whole time i was being there for her because she was hurt about the abortion, she was having sex with my friend & risking getting pregnant again. I was still friends with that whole group & i was confused as to why they chose her over me. I introduced her to them & i had been friends with them since middle school. It was a tough point in my life because i felt like i lost everything & i was honestly suicidal. I cut things off with her completely & with that whole group. I saw her again a few months after that & she wanted to be friends still but i told her it was just best for the both of us to stop talking. A month after that encounter she shows up to my workplace with a new guy. She’s now been dating him for a couple of months & i don’t understand how she could just move on so fast from everything that happened. I’m still hurt to this day & the thought of being with someone else right now doesn’t sit right with me. Tonight was the first time seeing her in like 5 months & i decided ed to write this post because I honestly have no one to talk to. If u read this whole thing, thank i so much. Typing this made me feel a whole lot better.

My boyfriend is out of town celebrating his best friend’s 21st birthday. They are naturally going out for his first legal drink at a bar, (which I am not allowed in) so I stayed home.
I thought it would be nice to be at home alone because lately it’s all I’ve been craving after work. As an extreme introvert I need a lot of time to recharge and I haven’t been able to do so since my bf moved in. But a few hours in and I am BORED OUT OF MY MIND.
I moved here from my hometown in August and I haven’t gotten super close to anyone. I have never really had more than two friends at a time, and I’ve always had people come up to me, so it seemed for a while friends just came naturally, even if it was superficial and very few far in between.
I cut contact with everyone I knew besides my family for my own mental health. I just wanted to start fresh. I’ve noticed, though, that for MONTHS. I’ve been going to work then going back to my apartment. Alone (this was before my boyfriend was able to move in, since he’s moved in, I’ve only hung out with him his friends and his band mates girlfriends, never really making any real meaningful connections of my own).
So I sit here wondering if I should hit up a coworker to spend time with me but I’m so. Goddamn. Anxious.
I wish I just had a group of people that liked me, that I could laugh with and that I could make laugh. That I could call up and they’d actually be happy to spend time with me. I’m not charismatic or relatable or like-able really. I’m kind of boring and don’t have any real hobbies I’m dedicated to and while I have many interests they aren’t prominent enough that I could have a full length conversation with someone who is also interested in those things. I feel like I just don’t have enough time to explore things as deeply as I would like to. I’ve accepted I am an acquired taste, maybe only built for desperate people that latch on and suck out all the life out of me 💀
Or even worse maybe I just suck the life out of everyone else.
I would like to be different person completely, someone people automatically took a liking to. I don’t have the slightest clue of who I am to begin with, and idk what I’m doing wrong.
I have a coworker that really wants me to join roller derby (she wants everyone to join roller derby really) but she says it would be really good for me. My bf thinks it might be a good opportunity for me to meet people but I’m nervous for two reasons.
1) I’m not a super aggressive (or athletic) person. I really don’t believe roller derby is the route for me but everyone else insists that’s it’s basically my destiny (which is extremely annoying to me, personally, like I THINK, even though I have constant identity crises, I would know myself better than they do, but they don’t listen to me).
2) Every single group of people I’ve ever met have always met me with rejection. It’s like they can sense something about me that isn’t normal.
Me: 👽 “hello”
Them: 😀…🤔🤨 proceed to never speak to me, ever
I’m an adult now in the real world but it still feels like high school. I’m still a weirdo and I’m still a loser. The theater kids didn’t even fw me.
TLDR; idk how to make friends I feel like no one likes me and I only like to hang out with my bf but I know I need to make friends. What should I do?

Background: So my boyfriend, “S” has been a widower since his wife passed 14 years ago, they were together 3 years. She had a daughter from a prior relationship, “L”, that my boyfriend adopted as soon as he could when she turned 18 (a very long wait for both of them). He wasn’t able to keep custody of L when her mom passed because her biological dad obviously got her, they don’t have a good relationship and from what I’ve heard he’s a piece of shit. I’ve been seeing S for over a year now and he just moved in to my hjjouse, we were friends several years before this. S and L love each other very much obviously, but S said he couldn’t live with L anymore, so when he moved in with me, we got her the apartment (mostly issues with her being messy and not being responsible for herself). They lived together from when she turned 18, to a few months after her 19th birthday.
Long story short, L doesn’t like me. Enough that S’s mom texted me this week to apologize for L’s behavior at a dinner we all went to. I feel like I’ve been trying to convey this to S for a very long time. My biggest issue with L is that she insists on having couple photos of S and her mom all over the place, namely in her apartment that I pay half for. When S told her to take them down, she started using a couple photo of them as her screensaver on her phone. Every time I bring it up he says I’m being too sensitive and what is he supposed to do about her apartment and her phone. I get it but Jesus, it makes me so uncomfortable like he’s still in another relationship. She does have photos of just her mom, but mainly displays photos of S and her mom together (wedding photos, pictures of them embracing, etc.)
She also makes comments here and there that are snide, and rarely makes eye contact with me or talks to me when we’re all together. When I text her I usually don’t hear back. S keeps telling me that L is socially awkward and it’s nothing to do with me, it’s getting hard to believe. I get so confused because I feel like a lot of times he agrees with me and gets pissed, but then he talks to her and says I’ve got it all wrong and gives me things I can try to do to make her and my relationship better. I do them, it doesn’t work, rinse and repeat.
Anyway, after S’s mom texted me that she was sorry for L’s behavior, she texted L and let her have it. My boyfriend was also mad all week up until he could talk to her, but as soon as he did she got upset and when he came home I feel like he totally changed his tune. He was saying how she doesn’t mean it and she actually really likes me, etc. I got mad because I’ve heard this all before, and I feel like all the pressure is on me to get us to have a good relationship. I’ve tried to include her in things, gave her the code to the house, buy her nice thoughtful gifts for special occasions, tried texting for a long time, obviously help pay her rent so she doesn’t have to worry about that while she’s in school, but somehow the story is always that I’m not doing the right things, or at least that’s how it feels when I’m given things I could try or do differently.
He got madder while we were taking because I was pushing back and I walked away. He eventually started yelling at me up the stairs where my own daughter might hear him so that pissed me off and it escalated. Now I’m sleeping upstairs on the couch in my own house while he’s in the bed, feeling like a fucking loser. He ended up telling me I don’t love her and so I ended the conversation and came upstairs. I’m seething, am I in the wrong here? What should I do? I’ve already had therapy about this, and L is in therapy as well. I feel like she’s holding on to her mom and resents me because she finally got to be with S again and then he moved out, but these behaviors have been started way before we were discussing living together . I asked S after the dinner to have a family therapy session but tonight L told him she would have to think about it.
What am I missing? What should I do differently? Am I an insensitive yet too sensitive asshole? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills and don’t have many people to bounce things like this off of, so any comments would help.
TLDR; I feel like boyfriend’s young adult daughter dislikes me because he’s moved on after being a single widower for 13 years and she didn’t get to live with him a long time. I’m at a loss of what to do but feel like I’m being made to feel responsible for her and I’s relationship, and am tired of feeling disrespected.

Long story short, I just got in a heated argument with my father over how he treats my 13 year old brother (more on that later). I am 21 years old and they still control a lot of my life. I am financially independent (technically, more on that later as well).
For some background. I was raised VERY religious. Those Christian moms you see on social media that was my father. I never went to prom (because godforbid I got out in the world). I went to a public high school but was still super sheltered. My life outside of school consisted of coming home and working on homework, the extra homework he assigned me, yelling because I never did "good enough," and church youth group (which I hated because I am not a Christian). I made good grades, mostly As, the occasional B, and one C (in chemistry, but I mean come on that shits hard). That was never good enough. Every single assignment I did he had to look at. Study guide for an exam. He had to look at it. Discussion board reply. You guessed it he looked at that too. I didn't get a phone until sophomore year of high school and when I did I got one of those shitty 80 dollar Samsung phones that you couldn't do shit on (and where he checked all my texts, notes, and emails). I was very sheltered. The extent of my fun was shooting the shit with my friends in the cafeteria at lunch and on the bus. I wasn't allowed to go to birthday parties or sleepovers or even go over to a friends house. He is raising my brother the same way, but way worse. If I am ever blessed with kids one day he has taught me what not to do.
Thankfully I am now in my third year of college. I picked a school he didn't want me to go to. Not because of money or anything he just said "you aren't going to a party school. There are too many idiots there you don't need to be around." I rebelled and committed to that school. Hands down the best decision I have ever made. I have a full ride scholarship that pays for my tuition (although it is dirt cheap for in-state already). I also have a scholarship that pays for rent for my 1100 dollar a month apartment and gives me about 500 spending money every month. I consider this my second best accomplisment as screwed up as that may sound. My father controls my money. All of it. I have a credit card that I use and then he pulls that money out of my account. I have no idea how much money I have and what he is doing with said money. He also has access to my Schwab and Vanguard accounts. He says he does this to help me with investing but I know there is more to it. He still wants to control me. I don't even know my damn login to the banking app for Christ sake (sorry not sorry dad for using the Lords name in vane). I know I should have fixed this issue sooner but I didn't want to fuck up our relationship. I am not sure what to do about this.
Another major problem came from this sheltered/overbearing environment I grew up in is my inability to say no to things I have never done before. Throughout my time in college I have experimented with drugs and alcohol (cocaine, weed, molly, lsd, shrooms, xans, oxy, you name it, pretty much with the exception of meth and heroin, I've done it and not just once). I am not proud of this (minus the fun I've had on psychs and even then not one of my better attributes). As a result of his abusive parenting style I have a hard time saying no and give in super easily to peer pressure. So much so that the first friends i met at college I still hang around with. These guys I probably shouldn't be around (the type where daddy pays for everything so they get a four-year drug fueled adventure in college). Don't get me wrong they aren't all that bad but just not the type of people I though I would be hanging around. I never thought I would be sleeping around, going to clubs on a Tuesday, and doing lines of coke off my island at 4pm but here we are. I am not proud of this but feel like I started doing these things because I was finally free. It is so hard to stop now. I think that I hang around them as a sense of rebellion to my parents and a sort of "f u" if you will. I know it is wrong but it feels good to finally be free. I have developed a raging nicotine addiction as well (something I am definitely not proud of). My parents have no idea. I have had to lie to them about things for the past three years.
I don't know if that is a result of my own actions or the years upon years upon years of constant yelling by my father. I mean for fucks sake the man never told me good job on anything. I got an A on a test it wasn't good job. It was "show me the test and what you got wrong," followed by a thirty minute yelling match about how I fucked up on the test. When I got into college on a full ride it wasn't good job it was "that is all because of me and the things I gave you." When I graduated high school it wasn't good job. It was my mom, god bless her she is great but tied down by my father, putting on a dinner party for me with all the neighbors and my parents friends. My dad was there but never even spoke to me (he just bullshitted to his friends about how I was such a hard worker (mind you he never told me this) and other things that narcissists do). I never was told good job when I got Eagle scout. That fucked me up, all of it. I am not one to want praise or one of those participation trophy people but come on that's fucked up at least in my mind. I never heard good job once.
He does the same shit to my brother but worse. My brother is 13 and in seventh grade at a private Christian K-12 school (one of those rich schools where the parents drive benzs and the kids have gucci shoes and shit). My father doesn't send my brother there because it is a better school, trust me, it is not by any stretch of the word. He sends him there to look better (aka "my kid goes to a private school you peasants" type of behavior). Recently, my brother was caught playing a computer game (papa's pizazaria on coolmathgames). Off topic but that is still the best one and you cannot change my mind. When he caught my brother they went at it for four hours. Now my dad checks my brothers search history, backpack and every single piece of paper in every binder every single day. He has moved my brothers desk into the living room and made my brother buy, with his own money, 300 dollar noise cancelling headphones to somehow be able to focus down there. My brother now has developed a twitch and the habit of twirling his hair. It was gotten so bad that some of his hair is falling out because of it and my dad refuses to take responsibility for it. The kid is so stressed that you would think he is on coke or meth the way he acts. He told me that he is scared when my dad comes home from work. I brought this up with my dad and asked him how he feels about his child being scared of him. My dad said nothing. Not one word. I am asking advice/thoughts on this situation.
To end things off I want advice on what I should do moving forward. I am home for the summer and working a job up here but am really considering not working and going back down to my school. I never had a normal childhood and can't stand my brother being treated this way. He is not allowed to go outside and play with the neighbor kids, watch TV, search ANYTHING on his computer, and take breaks longer than dinner away from his "schoolwork." I can't handle this shit anymore. I understand that part of my situation is my doing but I think it partly stems from the years of manipulation and control on behalf of my father. Am I overreacting? What would you do?
P.S. One final thing I wanted to say to get off my chest is that I do not respect this man. He yells at my mother constantly about how when she lets him be a kid and do kid things she is "setting him up for failure." I don't mean yelling I mean cussing and screaming to the point when I go to bed I can hear my mother crying. It hurts me to hear her cry it really does. I'm a bigger dude, 6 foot, 210, built. But that shit hurts. A fucking lot. I'm at the point where he needs to be confronted about it. I have lost every ounce of respect I have ever had for him. This may be an overreaction but I don't think so. He still controls my life. He tracks where I go in school, what I buy, etc. I have to lie to him sometimes but I am okay with that. This is the first real fun I have had in my life. I am doing pretty good in school, 3.1 gpa in a major I (not him) am happy in. I already have a job lined up outside of school making 58k straight out the gate. He has no idea because I don't tell him shit, he doesn't deserve to know in my mind. This is a man who will act super nice around everyone but our family. He is super active in the church and scouting, although he doesn't let my brother go anymore. He constantly gives to charity and volunteers around the community. You would never know this if you watched how our family operates on any given day behind closed doors. The only conversations I have with him now are about "why is there a charge for mexican food on the credit card. you should be studying," or my personal favorite "why is there a charge for x amount of dollars at a convenience store at 9:00 at night. Only bad people hang outside after dark (by bad people he is referring to everyone who is non-Christian by the way)."
This man has held me back so much even in college. I understand that this is partly my fault because as a legal adult I could have stopped this but I did not want to ruin our relationship. He stopped me from going on trips because "people could be drinkng" and has told me that on my 21st birthday (last week) that if he ever catches me drinking or vaping or anything I will not be allowed back into the house. I want to get clean but I do that shit as a fuck you to him. I apologize about cussing so much in here I'm just frustrated and need to get some stuff of my chest. I can't be the only one with parents like this. Right? I refuse to let this situation continue on. Should I do something about the way he treats me and my brother and mom? What do I do? What would you do? FYI cutting him out of my life entirely is not ideal because my mom and I still get along great. I would do it if there was a way to still be able to see my mom as they live in the same house. Minus certain political issues (mostly economic stuff) my dad and I don't agree on anything. He is the most judgemental person I have ever met in my life. I have met upwards of 1000 people in the past couple of years and he is by far the most judgemental person I have ever met. There is not even a close second.
Am I overreacting? What would you do in this situation? God bless and thanks for any and all responses/similar stories you all are willing to share. This seems like a great group of people. Stay blessed and if you need someone to talk to I am here for anything.

I just finished impulsively breaking up with my boyfriend. I constantly feel like he doesn’t care about me. For example, tonight we just broke up because he promised to call me and then he never did. He doesn’t send a text or anything and this is a weekly occurrence. It’s like he gets around friends and always forgets about me. I wouldn’t care but what makes me sad is he said he would call. I never asked him to because I know he does things like this, so I never want to put myself in a situation to be let down. But he said he would and didn’t. It’s tough because I am always trying to build myself up and believe that he does care but he is admittedly emotionally unavailable. I know he was hurt in the past and his family situation lends itself to someone shutting off their emotions. However, for years now I stayed around hoping that we could open up and be vulnerable but it never really happens. Then whenever he does try opening up he just stops himself.
I didn’t have a stable home life either. Hence the anxiety on my part and having trouble handling my anger when I feel my needs aren’t getting met. I feel like an idiot. I feel like I shouldn’t have been so impulsive and waited for us to at least talk. Because I love him and don’t want to just throw this away. However, it’s upsetting I feel like I’m always an afterthought. What’s worst is I called him and asked if he wanted a break because I couldn’t understand why he’s never vulnerable and why he can’t be true to his word. His response was “do whatever the fuck you want.” I was so shocked by the response I hung the phone up.
What’s worst is he’s been out drinking until late with his friends. I didn’t get jealous and even encouraged him to have fun. However, all that on top of him lying about calling all the time is just too much for me. Especially since I’m dealing with stress and depression. I just loss an aunt not even a month ago. And it’s just tough being strong for myself and having to deal with this. He even has trouble giving me a compliment without adding in something funny afterwards. I feel like screaming because I never seem to pick good relationships. I always stay trying to hope for something because I want to have faith and I don’t want to just feel like I’m ever giving up without a fair chance. Now I wonder why I even try. I don’t even know if I’m lovable or if real love is even a thing anymore. Like I’m genuinely just not even sure why I put myself in these heartbreaking situations. I really thought I was working on healing but I feel I’m just fucking retarded when it comes to interacting with people in general. Maybe I take words too literal and make myself upset. But I don’t know. Just feeling broken and the need to scream so I wrote this all here in hopes of getting rid of the need to scream feeling.

hello, i need advice!
i’m currently a rising senior in college. i go to school about 2 and a half hours away, i currently don’t have a car, so i don’t come home very often unless it’s for spring break or winter break. my mom and i have a great relationship when i am not at home (we call each other every 2 days or so), and the rest of my family and i (dad and 2 younger sisters) get along great almost all of the time.
my mom and i butt heads almost everyday i am home for a break. i didn’t realize it wasn’t normal to get into arguments with someone until i went to college and everyone respected boundaries… shocker! my dad drove to help me move out of my sorority house yesterday, and everything was going great. we had good conversation the whole way home, my sisters helped me unpack everything from the car, and i sat down at our dining table.
admittedly, the house was… pretty dirty when i got home yesterday. it’s irritating to me because i am always making sure my apartment at school is always kept up, no matter how much i have going on everyday. my mom preaches being clean and organized, but her house is a mess. it bothers me when i come home, but i accept it pretty quickly. i had been home for maybe 20 mins, and as i am sitting on my phone at the table, my dad comments about the house being dirty since my mom had been home all day. of course, she starts attacking my younger sister about how she never does anything around the house, and then attacks my dad for never doing anything either. she then starts talking about me (i don’t live here for 6 months at a time), and i am not one to sit and listen to someone talk badly about me, so i argued with her. i said something along the lines of “i’ve been home for 20 mins and you’ve already managed to make it about yourself.” she got offended, and wanted to argue even more, so i walked away to my room. it basically ruined the whole night because since it was my 21st birthday a couple days ago, we were supposed to go out at as a family and they wanted to buy me my first drink. this didn’t end up happening since everyone’s mood was instantly turned sour because of my moms comments towards everyone.
i ended up going out to eat with a friend, and came back after everyone was already asleep. today, i woke up around 10:30, unpacked a little, showered, and was out of the house around 12 to go shopping since i am leaving for europe in about a week and a half and needed clothes. i came back around 4 (she had already left for work) and was here the whole day unpacking and catching up with my sisters. she came home around 11, didn’t say hi to me, and went upstairs to watch TV.
me, my dad, and my mom all ended up in the kitchen, and she started asking me how much money i had spent and what i had bought (asking about money and spending it will always end up in an argument btw), so i say i bought clothes and some travel things. she says “idk how you’re going to get everything ready by the time you have to leave. i work everyday.” mind you, i have not asked her for anything since i got back. i said “yes i know you work” and she starts going off about how she has a life of her own and she can’t do everything for everyone…. i told her i understand and said again that i have not asked her for anything, and that i understand she has a life. she takes offense to that statement, and begins an argument, to which my dad simply walks away from.
she ends up bringing it back to the house being dirty thing again, and says it bothers her that i am bothered the house is dirty, even though i have not said anything. i ended up walking away and saying good night because i didn’t feel like explaining myself after i had already explained why i was irritated in a calm manner.
how do i deal with this? it is literally the second day of me being home, and she is making legit everything about her.

In proper English said "niece" is my second cousin once removed who lives a couple hours' flight from me. But in my culture "once removed" is the same as niece/nephew or aunt/uncle, so I will refer to this 16-year-old girl as Niece.
I am very close to her mother, my second cousin (42F). She recently flew in to attend a funeral in our family. While staying with me I learned that Cousin intends to move out tonight and file for divorce this coming week.
Cousin does have an affair and is leaving for her AP. In general I usually oppose affairs vehemently, as I have survived my own father's affair and know how it hurts the family. But please refrain from judging my cousin, because the point of my post is about what I could do to support her daughter, rather than debating the morality of my cousin's infidelity.
With proper context, I understand why Cousin went there. She's been enduring chronic emotional abuse from her own STBXH (43M) including rape, and being silenced and shamed for grieving for her father who died earlier this year.
Cousin has had trouble leaving because like many survivors of abusive marriages it takes time and enormous effort and willpower to pull off leaving. Not to mention that she and STBXH run a business together and have been striving to brave a presentable face for their delicate professional network.
Cousin's marriage has been dead for years, but before she managed to completely pull off leaving, her AP came into the picture and catalysed her exit. While I would never condone cheating to betray a loving spouse, I do find myself sympathetic to this particular grey area, especially because I see that the AP happens to have goals, values and capabilities that align with what Cousin needs in order to pursue a fulfilling future and not live the rest of her life as a zombie in an undead marriage.
Cousin has informed her 21-year-old son of the upcoming divorce and her affair. Although Nephew is a devout Christian who in principle does not condone divorce and affairs, he understands that this marriage has killed his mother's spirit, and he supports whatever his mother needs to do in order to reclaim her own autonomy, confidence and identity. He promises to look out for his sister in this difficult and potentially traumatising transitional period. He also told his mother that he loves her no matter what, though he is also honest and firm about boundaries like being unwilling to meet the AP because he does feel that AP has robbed him of his mother.
Niece has not been informed of what is about to happen in the coming days, and my heart breaks for her. Like her older brother, she is an intelligent and hard working young person with big dreams for her future, and a good heart. And I know she also loves her mother to the moon and back. My heart breaks for her because she will be blindsided by her parents' upcoming divorce.
Despite the marriage troubles, Cousin describes STBXH as an otherwise good father and provider. He will contest the fault divorce, but Cousin will offer him a full share of the house and custody of their daughter, because she will be moving to the countryside for her next job.
My Aunt (Cousin's motheNiece's grandmother) also lives in Cousin's STBXH's house, but will also be blindsided by this upcoming divorce. Aunt is a good person who I know will do her best to support her granddaughter, but she will also struggle with her own grief and strong emotions, and often speaks unfiltered before thinking.
While Cousin was staying with me, I addressed preparing Niece with some other good key people in her support system. I suggested hooking Niece up with a psychologist to see on a fortnightly or monthly basis so that she has a reliable adult figure to help her process her complicated emotions in a non-judgmental safe space, develop healthy coping skills and overcoming strategies, disarm traumas before they have a chance of festering, and gets empowered by someone who can model reclaiming her identity and self-worth in a world that's changing overnight.
I also offered to check in with Niece and to be there for her through this difficult transitional period.
I'm not half as close to Niece as I am to her mother, but we are on friendly terms. My ex husband is a novelist/filmmaker and my Niece is a huge fan of his, so at one point she texted me lovely compliments and expressed enthusastic interest in my ex's newer works-in-progress. I also offered her words of support when her now late grandfather was hospitalised and her family moved to his city to care for him.
I guess this brings me to my questions. Because I care about my Cousin, I'm interested in contributing to Niece's support system by offering to be there for her as a safe adult she can trust and approach anytime for perspective, a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on and a voice of reason. What can I do for a teenage girl in my extended family who is going through a parents' divorce blindsided?
For those of you who have been in these aunty/uncle shoes before, what are some do's and don'ts and key lessons you have learned from your experience?
And for those of you who survived parents' divorce as blindsided teenagers, who were the best safe adults in your support system at the time, and what did they do for you? Or if you weren't as lucky, what kind of support did you wish you had, and what do you wish adults in your life back then did differently?
Finally, what can I do to facilitate recovering my niece's love and respect for her parents in spite of their faults and her anger and grief about it?
Thank you!

So basically, start of freshman year there was a girl who I rly didn’t know and don’t even think I saw in person except for maybe once or twice. Anyways, I was really socialable and I made a private Snapchat story based on my experiences, and asked anyone on my public story if they want to join they can. She joined without actually knowing me, and my first post was a picture of me in a tutu (football game attire)
Anyways, one of the reasons of this story was so I could make new friends and share my experiences. First, I asked if ppl had a BeReal because I was peer pressured into getting one. She gave me hers and I thanked her for it, added her. I don’t remember the full details. However, this garuntee she at least knows what I look like
The 2nd time, on the same story, I asked if anyone was going to an event on campus, and she said she was and that I should join her.
My dum-dum responded with “thanks for the offer, but I don’t really know you and figured I will probably stay in”. She responded with “oh I’m sorry I thought you were someone else”
(This could be true, but this is Snapchat. My name is right there and at the time you could still delete or unsend messages. I also looked at her IG following list a few days ago to see people with similar names as mine. There were none)
The last time was her wishing me happy birthday a few days later. I said thank you and went on my merry way
I made a (new) ig a few months ago, and dropped a follow. She followed back and I looked at her account and thought “damn she’s cute” and really didn’t think much more about it
A few days ago, my friends were talking about situations where they fumbled the bag, and this whole situation came back up in my mind. According to them, girls rarely if ever make the first move and that likely was her attempt to making a first move. Especially since she invited me over to an event with her, despite not knowing me. I also know that for most people in general, they won’t be straightforward. As a straightforward thinker, it’s annoying, so of course it took my well over a year to figure out maybe she wasn’t being straightforward
Of course, she could definitely have been honest about the entire situation, I rly don’t know
I think we met irl once before this but my memory is foggy ngl
Anyways, since this “realization” hit (and again, I could be very very wrong) I began wondering if I should reach out, and if so how. I could just snap her, but her snap score hasn’t increased at all and I don’t wanna be weird. Plus, a random snap probably doesn’t do anything to build anything
She’s a chair at one of the charity clubs in my school though (this I found out by accident), which is actually personal to me. A few weeks ago, my parents decided to sponsor an orphan girl in India and give her financial support. This club basically sponsors similar things for similar people and I was planning to learn about it next semester if I had the time, especially since it was something that became personal due to my situation. Plus, I plan on joining a frat next year and there are community service hours I will need to log in order to stay part of said frat. The opportunity presented itself imo. I originally wanted to use a different club for the hours, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing both as long as I get the hours. I don’t plan on getting a position of command per-say
My biggest thing with this is simply that I truly don’t have a clue if me reaching out to her about that would be weird. It does feel like I do have some ulterior motives if I do that, and that makes people uncomfortable (with full respect that if I reach out to her about the club I do genuinely want to learn about the club and the opportunities and benefits it could provide). But, again, there is a subconscious worry that it may just be me trying to get something and that will push her away
There is also the case of me knowing some people in the club. We used to be friends but neither of us decided to keep in contact at all not rly cared for each other and I feel rly awkward reaching out to them about it
Any advice would be appreciated. I also don’t know if the dating advice subreddit is the best option for this but it may work?
For the older people out there who don’t understand the story, it’s a situation where you posted something on Facebook and a girl you don’t rly know reached out to you about it, and invited you out to do something, but you didn’t know. Idk, I’m not old
Thank you!
TLDR: I may or may not have fumbled the bag with a girl. I realized it about a week ago but this was a pretty long time ago. I want to contact her without being weird. There’s a club she is a chair of and newly became personal to me due to a family situation. I was thinking about reaching out to her, but I feel weird about it since I don’t rly know her. I think she’s cute and don’t know how to contact her without being weird about it

I first started noticing that something was wrong around 3 months ago. At the time, I was working from home and would usually light a scented candle while I worked, which usually helped me relax and stay focused on my work. I would usually burn through a candle a week, but over time, the candles started to take less time to fully burn up. At first, I thought that this was because of a change in ingredients the company that made the candles used, but the problem persisted after I switched candle brands, which I once again blamed on the candle manufacturers.
I kept this belief for another week until the first incident. While getting up from my computer desk, which faces away from the candle, to take a quick bathroom break, I caught a glimpse of the lit candle. A two-inch layer of molten wax rested on another three-inch layer of solid wax, the wicks rising out at first and being somewhat visible through the molten layer, finally breaking the surface and being slowly burned away. The flames flickered as I swung the door open and walked out of the room. When I returned 10 minutes later, the molten layer was gone, and the wicks had been shortened so that the flames rested right above the solid layer of the wax. At first, I thought that the glass jar that contained the candle was leaking, but after a short inspection, I was only able to find two small drops of candle wax that had solidified right next to the candle on the bedside table. I still had 2 hours of work left to do, but I was too lost in thought and was unable to do any work for the rest of the day.
Every night before I go to sleep, I like to read for at least 30 minutes, and while reading, I usually light a candle. Around 4 days later, I had mostly forgotten about the incident and went back to using candles. Due to my naivety, it returned.
I fell asleep while reading with a candle lit on my bedside table. I woke up to loud slurping noises. As I opened my eyes, the brightness of the light I had not turned off almost blinded me. As my eyes tried to readjust to the light and focus on what was in front of me, I saw a somewhat humanoid dark gray to light blue blur that contrasted with the white paint on the walls behind it. Another gray line stretched from the shape's head to the candle on my bedside table. I could feel my heart skip five consecutive beats. I opened my mouth and tried to force out a scream for help, but the pressure I applied to my throat was way beyond what it was able to handle, leading me to only produce a light wheezing sound. I tried to sit up or to at least prop myself up, but my muscles failed me. Trying to push myself up with my arms felt impossible. As I stared at the figure that had suddenly appeared in my room, my eyes finally managed to focus, making it possible for me to see the intruder who was now staring at me. The figure was a man at least 7 feet tall, fully naked; he looked bloated; his eyes were bloodshot and looked like they would pop out of their sockets; at any point, his skin was a grayish light blue.
HIS LIPS
His lips extended from his mouth like an elephant's trunk, which had been split in half. The lips extended from the man's face to the candle; the flames had been put out. He was using his lips as a makeshift straw, slowly sucking up all the molten wax from the candle, which had fully liquified while I was asleep. I laid in bed, unable to move, unable to scream for help, staring until he emptied the jar. His lips retracted back to his face, the molten wax solidifying on their tips and cracking, flakes of wax falling off the man's lips and falling to the floor. The man grinned, staring at me. The ridges and gaps between the teeth were filled in with wax, making it impossible to make out where one tooth ended and the next one began. The man opened the door he was standing next to, but instead of walking out of the room, he stepped behind it. His face peered at me from above the door, and then once again, like he had done to drink the wax, the man puckered his lips, which stretched from his mouth and floated to me. I shook and tried to roll over away from him. I wanted to get up and run, but my fear had taken over my body. Tears flowed from my eyes. He kissed me on the cheek, leaving flakes of wax and light moisture. He retracted his lips and lowered his head behind the door.
I don't remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, I saw the empty glass jar, which at one point contained the candle. Even though I had hoped that what had happened was a dream, it wasn't. I still had flakes of wax on my cheek, and on my bedroom floor, the wax in the jar had disappeared. I called the police, but they were unable to find anyone in my apartment; they also could not find any evidence of a break-in.
After the break-in, I started looking for a new apartment to move to, thinking that the man was tied to the building I was in, but even though I had thrown out all of my candles, I could not stomach spending another hour in my apartment, constantly looking over my shoulder or walking around with my back pressed up against the wall to not allow it to creep up on me. Thankfully, my friend Emma was able to let me stay over at her apartment while I looked for a new one for myself.
Me and Emma have been friends since we were 8, and we've been there to support each other when times get rough. This isn’t the first time I've had to stay over at her house for an extended amount of time; in fact, I have had to stay over at Emma’s as many times as she has had to stay over at my apartment, whether it was because of evictions after losing a job, breakups, or a candle wax drinking squatter. I didn't even know if it was human. I mean, sure, it looked like one, but human lips are not supposed to do what his did, and somehow it didn't have a reaction to molten wax being poured down its esophagus. I didn't tell Emma about what happened—the details at least—I just told her that a man had broken into my house and was watching me sleep. The only people I told the truth to were my therapist and the cops, and all of them disregarded what I told them as my mind making things up after a traumatic event.
For a while, I believed what they said—I mean, why wouldn’t I?—but then I started seeing him again. For a few days, I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me again like it had done during the night of the incident. For split seconds out of the corner of my eye, I would see the outline of a tall, bloated figure. At first, they were hours apart, but after a while, it became constant. He was standing in each room I passed, in every single dark corner I glanced past, and then he spoke.
“FeeD MeEeee”
It stood in the kitchen, peering over from a small gap between the fridge and the sink, where the trash can that had been knocked over onto its side usually stood. His voice was raspy, and every word that came out of his mouth was distorted as if he were gargling water, but still, I could somehow clearly make out each word he said from over 15 feet away.
“Please just leave me alone I… why are you following me?”
I shouted at the figure, the same fear that had taken over my body during the night I saw him for the first time paralyzing me, making it impossible for me to move anything other than my eyes, eyelids, and mouth.
“i’M sTarviNg, I nEEd You To FeEd ME”
It replied again. Now, stepping out from behind the fridge, he stepped directly onto a rotten banana. Its mushy brown content’s seeping out of the peel under the pressure of his decomposing foot, which was covered in scabs, and took up the same grayish light blue color as the rest of his body. He mostly looked the same; his bloodshot eyes bulged from their sockets, but now his tongue was swollen. It peeked out from between his bloated, cracked gray lips; it stared at me, waiting for an answer.
“Ok, I’ll.. I’ll feed you, but please just... leave me alone.”
I replied, the tone of my voice shifting into high-pitched squeals with every quick breath I took. He looked satisfied by my response. He somehow squeezed his bloated body back into the gap that was at least four times smaller than him. After peering over at me from above the fridge, he bent over backwards, his spine releasing a series of sickening cracks until he was fully obscured by the fridge, and then he vanished.
Still barely in control of my body, I limped over to the couch tucked away in the back corner of the living room, it took me at least 10 minutes to steady my breathing and 20 more to fully regain control of my body again but as soon as I did I ran out the house and to the nearest store, during the 15-minute walk he stared at me through dark windows and the backs of cars, peered out at me from gaps between leaves in the trees and bushes, he even followed me into the store staring at me from the middle of deserted isles before disappearing right before my eyes were able to fully catch him, once I finally got the candles I randomly picked four off of the shelves and rushed to the self checkout.
When I arrived home, I had 2 hours before Emma got off work. I didn't want to feed it while she was home, and I didn't want her to see it. I pulled out two of the candles from the black plastic bag and placed them on the kitchen table, the first a light blue candle named “Garden Rain” and the second a red candle named “Juicy Watermelon." I pulled out a lighter from one of the drawers Emma used after her stove stopped lighting on its own and lit each of the 6 wicks on the candles. As soon as I started seeing the wax melt under the heat of the burning wicks, I dropped the lighter onto the table next to the candles and ran out of the room. I could not stomach seeing that thing again; even just thinking about it made me shudder and hyperventilate. The paralyzing fear that seeing him caused me made me want to vomit.
At least 30 minutes later I started to hear it drink even though the living room and kitchen were separated by a wall, even though I had closed the door I could still hear what at first started as slurping sounds which were followed up by loud gulps, then it stopped, and once again 30 minutes later it started drinking, as the slurping started once again I heard the door to the apartment crack open, it was Emma, as she stepped through the door I saw her carrying two large brown paper bags of groceries in her hands, she was headed to the kitchen.
“Hey let me grab those for you”
I said running over to her, my voice shaking.
“Oh, thanks. Are you… okay, you look scared?”
My eyes shot wide open in a mixture of fear and surprise. I said the first thing that came to mind.
“Yeah just umm… I didn't expect you to come home so early and I got a bit spooked”
“shit sorry, I know I should have called you, work let me off early today,”
I started to turn away from her walking to the kitchen.
Trying to keep her away from the kitchen I told her to wait for me in the living room because I wanted to talk to her about something. I didn't know what I would talk to her about but that was a problem for future me to resolve, somehow it worked.
“What's that sound?”
She called out to me while walking towards the living room couch. It took me a few seconds to come up with an excuse.
“I think it’s the sink, or the pipes at least”
I opened the door to the kitchen with my eyes closed at first hesitant to look knowing what would be greeting me. slowly prying my eyes open I started to see its outline, my muscles started to lose strength as the details of the man came into my view, I felt the grocery bags start to slip from my arms, my knees buckled, face first I fell onto the kitchen floor scattering the groceries all over the floor, I mixture of a light scream and a yelp escaped from my mouth as my body made contact with the floor, Emma concerned for my safety ran into the kitchen, she didn't scream, using all of the strength and mobility I had left in my muscles I rolled over expecting to see her face drenched in terror, her body frozen still unable to move just like my body had done the first time that I saw him, but Emma looked concerned, the man was gone, she crouched down beside me.
“Oh my god are you ok? What happened?”
I looked around observing my surroundings.
“I um… I… I tripped on the little thing at the bottom of the doorframe”
I finally managed to blurt out another excuse, not being able to remember what the name of a door sill was. I started to sit up using a part of the energy that had returned to my body, pain pulsed through my chest and arms, Emma looked at me with a concerned face.
“You've been acting really weird since I got home, are you sure you're ok?”
“Yeah… I think I’m just having one of those days you know”
The confusion on Emma’s face said that she didn’t know and to be honest I didn't either, I guess my luck of pulling random excuses out of my ass ran out, Emma thought that she triggered some sort of PTSD response after barging into the house unannounced at first apologizing then trying to change the subject to stop my trembling which I was still unsuccessfully trying to hide from her.
“Did you buy candles?”
Emma asked picking the groceries apart from the garbage that spilled out the can that the man had knocked over, placing them on the table next to the now half-empty glass jars, the flames flickered above the inch or so of molten wax the man was unable to finish drinking.
“Yeah I’ve been struggling with work lately, they usually help me focus”
“Huh Interesting combination you’ve got going on here”
She looked at me and smiled slightly, I smiled back and chuckled to seem normal.
“Yeah even I don't know what I was trying to accomplish here, to be honest”
I tried to help Emma clean up the spilled groceries but she did not let me, she told me that I needed to recover like I had been in a car crash instead of having taken a little tumble. After a few seconds of silence, Emma spoke again.
“Anyway, what did you want to talk to me about earlier?”
A quick jolt of stress shot through my body, in a jumbled mess of lies and fear I had forgotten what I had told Emma, I sat there in silence for a few seconds unable to come up with an excuse
“I…umm… I don’t remember, it wasn't anything serious though”
“Damn did you hit your head too?”
She said once again proudly smiling at her joke.
At this point Emma picked up the last bag of potato chips from the floor and placed it on the table, then she opened the fridge and started loading the groceries into it.
“Anyway I gotta go get back to work’’
I blurted out after a few more seconds of awkward silence.
“Alright well good luck”
I walked over into the living room and sat down in front of my workstation, which now consisted of a laptop sitting on a small foldable TV tray that had just barely enough room left on it to fit a small USB mouse.
The last thing I remember, before I fell asleep, was me mindlessly scrolling through apartment listings while Emma watched a random 90’s horror movie I’m positive only had a budget of $500.
I woke up with a light stinging pain shooting through my dry throat, and a dim hissing sound caused by thousands of water drops striking the ground outside filled the room. I pressed the spacebar on my laptop, the brightness of the screen blinding me temporarily, after taking a few seconds to let my eyes readjust I managed to make out the time, 3:45 AM. A strong smell I was unable to make out the origin of assaulted my nostrils. Lavender.
The smell hitting my nose had the same effect on me that I would expect smelling salts would have on a weightlifter right before they set a world record. Before I knew it my legs were moving on their own at an almost uncontrollable pace, fighting back against my mind which was telling them to slow down after years of being used to navigating both mine and Emma’s apartment as steadily as possible to not bother the neighbors.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity I stood before Emma’s bedroom door, a faint, yellow, pulsating light radiated from a lamp and snuck out of a small gap between the door and the doorframe, reluctantly I pushed my left hand up against the door, my right hand grasping onto the door frame for a sense of stability, once the door was fully agape I scanned the inside of the room my heart skipping a beat for every humanoid shadow cast up onto the wall by the lights from the wicks which were set ablaze and were being slowly burnt away.
I walked into Emma’s room and made my way over to her bedside table to put out the candle, as I stepped closer towards her, her face became more defined, I could finally make out her features, she was awake, but no she could not have been, even though her eyes were wide open they never blinked, she didn't even move slightly, as I moved closer I finally managed to fully make out the expression of pure terror on her face, her mouth wide agape as if she was about to release a deafening screach, but she could not have, a single drop of solidified wax dribbled out of the corner of her mouth and clung to her cheek, my eyes traced the cream colored path back towards her mouth, first up her cheek then between the corner of her mouth and finally behind her teeth, there instead of her tongue or the roof of her mouth I saw a wall of wax which had filled in the entirety of her mouth.
I fell to my knees and hunched forward supporting my body weight with my arms, I was too late, I resisted the urge to vomit and got back up onto my feet, a mixture of tears and snot slid down my face and onto my lips, shaking now I slowly started limping over towards my phone which I had left on the couch next to where I had awoken just minutes before, just minutes before my life was destroyed because of my lies if I had just told Emma what I had gone through, if I had just told her what had happened on the night of the incident which now seemed trivial, even if she thought that I was crazy, I know that she would have complied just to make me feel comfortable.
It took me at least 30 seconds of repeated attempts to stabilize my hands enough to properly dial 911. “Someone broke into my apartment and hurt my friend” was the only reasonable explanation I could come up with that would not get the operator to hang up on me thinking that this was a prank call.
I sat there in the living room for an agonizing 10 minutes, crying, my sadness slowly transformed into anger towards myself, and my mind raced thinking of all the lies I’d told, I kept thinking that if I had just told her the truth she would not have been laying there in her bed, her body bloated, “every single orifice has signs of forced penetration and has been filled with what seems to be candle wax” is what was written on her autopsy report.
For a few days I was the main suspect in Emma’s murder, but due to the almost unstoppable crying and the unresponsive state that I was in when the police arrived, mixed with the lack of evidence of me having a way to produce 30 pounds of candle wax led to me being released out of police custody, but because I was the main suspect I was not told any details about what had fully happened to Emma, for days all I had to work off of was the image of her face frozen in terror, and a short glance I caught of her bloated body as she was being carted out on a stretcher.
I recounted every single word of our last conversations over and over again until they became permanently etched into my brain.
Emma’s parents originally wanted to cremate her, as that is what she had somewhat jokingly asked for whenever the topic of funerals came up, well she had joked about wanting to have had unpopped popcorn shoved down her throat before she was sent off to “scare the shit out of the guy cremating me” but due to all the wax which would have been impossible to get out of her body they were forced to bury her.
A few days before Emma’s funeral her body disappeared.
After Emma’s death, her parents took me into their home, after reading the autopsy reports and seeing her corpse they had thrown out every single candle they owned which made their home the safest choice I had, still, this did not stop me from buying a machete and keeping it under my bed, just in case.
I was laying on the bed in their guest bedroom The day that the police informed Emma’s parents about her disappearance, the bedroom is right above the front porch of the house, at first I heard them ring the doorbell which was followed up by 3 powerful knocks on the door, for about a minute I laid there on the bed listening to muffled voices exchanging distorted words I was barely able to make out which slowly transformed into distorted weeps, curious I lifted myself up from the bed, made my way over to the window and carefully lifted the bottom panel making Shure to not make too much noise, the distorted muffled sounds started forming into coherent words “We checked the security footage but the only strange thing we could see was a 5 second time jump” one of the officers spoke in a serious and almost monotone voice “which meant that the security guard who was the only person in the building had to climb down 2 flights of stairs walk through a 40 foot long hallway and then drag her body back up stairs and out of the building in 5 seconds” Emma’s mom let out yelp “ but don’t worry ma'am that’s actually good news because we know that her corpse is still somewhere within the building and was probably brought to the wrong floor by an intern, we’ve already warned all of the staff at the hospital to keep an eye out, and we also sent 5 officers to search the hospital”
I could not believe what I was hearing, my breathing quickened, but this time instead of fear I felt anger, that fucker stole her corpse and was probably in the weird separate plane of existence he always went back to after terrorizing me, cutting off chunks of her body, melting her, and drinking her.
I closed the window Emma’s mom's cries once again turned into a muffled rumble which was only possible to make out if you knew what to look for, I took a few steps back away from the window planning to lay back down, not wanting to bother Emma’s parents. I bumped into something, not something, someone, its fleshy towering form as solid as a wall sent me tumbling forward, I knew it was him, he had returned to take me too, to stretch his swollen cracked lips, push them down my esophagus, fill my lungs and stomach with wax. But despite all of that this time I was not scared, I was angry, and I was not going to stand there in terror like I had the last time I saw him.
I fell forward onto my knees my face missing the window sill just by mere inches, I put my hands onto the floor, lifted one of my knees, and rotated 180 degrees now facing the monster, to the right of him pushed up against the wall was the bed, light from the sun reflected off of the metallic button which kept my machete in it’s sheathe, the man started to stretch his lips, they were moving towards me, waving a wiggling through the air like a snake slithering towards me.
I dove towards the bed one of my feet pushing off of the floor and the other pushing against the wall which creaked under the pressure applied to it, I flew for a few moments before slamming down onto the carpet and sliding forward, the heat generated by my skin brushing against the carpet released a sharp stinging pain throughout my body, my outstretched arm landed just a few inches short of the machete, I quickly bent my arms, pushing my body up and crawled towards the machete. my fingers wrapped around the handle I spun around, my back pushed up against the bedside table, once again facing the man, he was still facing the window but his lips faced me and were just a few feet away from me, for what felt like minutes but was most likely no longer than a second, I struggled to hook my finger under the strap securing the machete into its sheath, as the lips inched towards me the man started producing gurgling noises, he was regurgitation wax.
I finally pulled the machete out of its sheath, I swung the blade at the man's lips, the blade was not met with any resistance as it sliced through the man’s lips which landed on the carpeted floor with an audible thud, the man did not have a physical reaction to my counter-attack, his lips kept creeping towards me, once again I slashed at the lips, still no reaction, I repeated this at least 3 more times.
I wanted to kill him, I wanted to take revenge for what he had done to Emma, but fighting back was pointless. I realized that no matter how much I tried to hurt it, I could not kill him, I could not get rid of him.
My rage dissipated and a mixture of fear and sadness crept in, and soon took over my body, I screamed for help, I screamed in fear, in agony, tears streamed down my face as the man's lips finally reached my face, he wasn’t met with any resistance as his lips snuck between mine, pried my jaw open and finally started to slide down my esophagus.
I heard the cops run up the stairs, they started banging on the door asking if I was okay only to have been met with muffled screams, hot wax started to pour down inside of me, the stinging pain of the heat made me want to plunge the machete which I had dropped onto the ground next to me into my stomach to create a gaping wound that the wax would hopefully funnel out of, the texture of the man's slippery, oily lips matched with the poison like flavor of the wax caused me to start gagging, I felt my insides bulging like at any moment my intestines would have been filled to the point where they would pop, I wanted to vomit, the drain myself of the filth I was filled with, but his lips had plugged my throat not allowing anything to get out.
Hearing my muffled screams the cops started kicking the door down, the man retracted his lips, the suction aided my attempts at cleansing my insides, I got onto my hands and knees streams of molten wax pouring out of me, solidifying on the the carpet, with another loud thud the door swung open slamming into the wall, the man was gone.
That’s the last thing I remember before I passed out, but according to one of the doctors who was in the ambulance that brought me to the hospital, I was still semi-responsive during the first 10 minutes of the ride to the hospital.
Approximately 13.4 pounds of wax were removed from my body, the doctors said that I was in a critical condition and some of them did not expect me to make it.
One of the officers who was there the day the man attacked me took a report of what had happened to me, due to the unmistakable evidence of what had happened to both me and Emma, and the fact that this was the 3rd instance of me reporting something like this the police finally started investigating who this man might have been.
Around a month later I was discharged from the hospital and once again have been staying in the living room of Emma’s parent's house.
I’ve been seeing the man again, candles were not allowed in the hospital I stayed at, which means that he’s probably very hungry, he’s close to attacking me again, I know it, he wants to finish what he started and I don't know if I have the power to fight back, I’m not sure if defeating him is even possible, I’m tired.
I’ve been seeing Emma too, her bloated, reanimated corpse often appears to be standing next to the man. If I let him take me will I get to join them? I’ve tried asking but they don’t answer, they just stare, I can’t keep living in constant fear, always looking over my shoulder, I miss Emma.

Ever since i can remember, paranormal shit just happens around me. I blame this on my family’s wiccan roots. What strikes me as weird is I am not a girl. I am a male, yet other than my aunt I have had more paranormal encounters than most of my family.
My latest is possibly my favorite.
I live In an old army barracks and if you know anything about soldiers than you know they are professional shit heads.
My new ghost is a girl, I know this because she woke me up One night by asking in a panicked tone “who are you?” For the first month or so she would do this right before or right after I woke up.
Once she got used to me she started fucking with me.
I am a very disorganized adhd organized individual. Things have a place even if they only make sense to me. So when my belt disappeared for an entire month before popping right back up where I left it. I had to chuckle. Or when the room would get a littlw messy so she would knock the broom over in the next room.
Cheeky.
One night she turned on an…..”adult toy” I had three times in a row.
Across the room it just turned on. I turned it off she turned it back on.
She likes fucking with electronics for some reason. The first one ive met that has such an interest in turning things on or off.
Most recently I was telling this story to a friend on the computer through discord and she shut my pc off.
I got annoyed so I told her to knock it off.
She turned it off again.
I got angry and told her to calm the f*ck down.
She than turned my computer back off, turned my xbox on and the monitor off.
It was like something out of a movie.
Id almost say I had an electrical problem if I hadnt seen her turn on battery powered things around the house. I think its my fault for communicating with her though. The one thing I was taught since the cradle is do not speak to them. They are not your friends.
Shes never hurt me, Only given me a scare once or twice.

I’m 23. In my culture, at this age, elders arrange blind dates for us. I didn’t really want to participate, but my parents insisted that I do. So, I went along and met her. Over the next few months, we chatted online almost every day, and I realized we had a lot in common. I fell in love with her. However, recently she told me she doesn’t really like me. I already knew it; the whole thing was just my wishful thinking. I’ve prepared her birthday presents, but I don’t want to continue. I think I should tell her that I’m over it. I mean, now that she said she doesn’t love me, why should I persevere? I’ve been through a lot, and my heart is already broken. I’m more afraid of getting hurt than falling in love. Before she broke my heart, I thought I should run away from this situation. So, I’ve decided to give her the birthday present and tell her we’re done. For the past few months, I’ve tried my best to make her happy, care about her emotions, and talk to her when she’s sick. I’ve told her that everything will be okay. But she’s never done the same for me. Throughout my life, I’ve longed for someone who could say, ‘Don’t worry, everything will be okay.’ Even my parents never said this to me. I realize that no one can truly take care of my feelings, so I’ve become an introverted person. Maybe someday, when I look back on this, I hope I can say, ‘Yeah, I tried my best, and I don’t regret it.’ And when she recalls this, she’ll say, ‘He’s a good person, but we just don’t fit.‘. Maybe after this I’ll never love anyone again, I’m afraid that someday I won’t love her anymore and also afraid someday she won’t love me anymore. Not matter what, I think it’s all my fault, can’t to trust, can’t to love, can’t to persevere, that’s me.

Back story... My parents only dated a short time (like 3 months) when i was concieved back in the 70's. Growing up I was told I was my step dad's child until I was 11 years old when him and my mom divorced and was told that I couldn't live with my dad because I wasn't legally his child, which broke my heart. I love my dad (step dad) and always will, he treated me like his own from day one that he knew me and never let it slip I wasn't until my mom pressed the issue of me staying with her when they divorced.
I was finally told who my biological father really was and his mom actually worked with my mother. I got to know my grandparents and 1 aunt, but not my biological father because "he wasn't ready". My other aunt refused to believe I was his even though I look Damn near exactly like a clone of my grandmother (bio father and my aunts mother). Even to the point she ripped up my school picture she was given in front of me one time when i was 13. Well when I turned 17 dna paternity test was done and he (biological father) was 99.9998% my father! At this point I met him (because my grandpa basically made him because I was already grandpa favorite) and had gotten to know him somewhat but no other family members at all. A couple years later he told me to my face "I wish you were never born" and his mother (grandma) lost it on him. So I went NC for a few years until I found out that my grandfather whom adored me (biological fathers dad), got sick and I moved there to help my grandmother who I got really close with even though her son is a douche canoe in sneakers and a bad impersonation haircut short of a wannabe starsky from starsky and hutch. A couple months go by and my grandpa passed away. While at the funeral I went to sit with my family and someone that I had seen before (which I find out later was a cousin) comes up to me and says "you shouldn't be sitting up here, it's for family only, not hospice care nurses." And I told them "I'm "grandpa's" grandchild so I am family" to which the cousin says "I would know if you were my cousin since he only had 3 children and only 2 grandsons and i don't have a sister". I said that I was his uncle's child and he argued with me until my grandmother came to my defense telling my cousin that I was in fact his uncle's child. My cousin runs over to my biological sperm donor of a fucking legend and tells him what had happened in front of a hell of a lot more of the family extremely loudly and outs him about my existence to the whole universe. To which Sperm donor of a fucking legend comes over to me after the funeral and tells me that I just ruined his reputation and his father's funeral. I told him to pretend that I don't exist in his world and I'll do the same in reverse, I didn't ask to be born nor did I ask him to impregnate random women that he only knew briefly then keep the child a secret and make his own parents keep it a secret for 26 years! Am I the asshole?

this is my first time posting but i’m trying to give as much detail w/o people being able to figure out who i am (throwaway account just in case) so if you have any questions or suggestions please feel free to ask or lmk in the comments.
i (19f) had a birthday this week and decided it would be fun to go out with my friends on the weekend since we are all so busy with work and moving back home from college. most of us were available for the time and day i set so we were good to go. all week i’ve been so excited to see everyone since it’s been about 6 months since we’ve all been together since our lives have been changing a lot in this year that most of us have graduated from high school.
well come today i was getting ready and found a really cute dress that i just love since it just looks great on me and i pair it with a crop top that’s too small but works with the dress but it doesn’t fully cover my chest (big problem since i hate bras) so the dress has to fully cover it (if that makes sense). i shower, do my makeup, get dressed, and meet everyone giving out hugs and catching up at our first destination, an arcade. we have a great time playing games and hanging out beating each other in games we haven’t played in years it’s great. i decided to join a waitlist for a restaurant close so we could have better food and we have a kinda big party so i didn’t want to chance having to wait too long once we got there (important for later).
we start to cash out our tickets for candy and knickknacks and head over to the restaurant to meet up with more friends. when we get out our cars i text to check us in. we stand and wait outside for the second text message saying we can head inside. while talking we see our friends pull in then my best friend texts me to fix my dress. me being the idiot that i am stands up and asks what’s wrong not feeling the breeze on my breasts that have fallen through my two layers of clothes. i’m still so embarrassed and have no clue what to do i’m just still in shock 5 hours later. idk who all saw but i’m so scared that the guy i like saw me like that or even worse if the people around us saw it’s just so embarrassing idk what or how to feel about it i understand it’s an accident but i wish i could’ve avoided it and i feel like i could’ve. really just looking for advice or anything that could take my mind off of it, thank you!
TL;DR- i accidentally flashed my friends and maybe some people in front of a restaurant because i go braless.

Hey, I'm a 20-year-old guy from Utah County, and no, I'm not Mormon, so dating here is always an adventure /S. I'm posting here because it feels more personal than swiping on dating apps.
I'm a confident, upbeat guy with a knack for being a smartass, but I can also have deep, meaningful conversations. If you need someone to listen, I'm your guy, but I expect the same in return. I like to stay active, often doing things that might get me in trouble or banged up, but that's half the fun. I'm into calisthenics and running—I'm fit, though not exactly bulking up like a bodybuilder.
When I'm not working out, I'm diving into video games, especially military simulations like Arma and OHD, or classic platformers like Mario and Sonic. History, particularly WW2 and the Cold War, fascinates me, and I'm even working on a Cold War-themed board game. Despite my nerdy interests, I have a sensitive side—yes, I write poems and love to flirt once I get comfortable with someone.
I'm looking for someone sweet and caring around my age, preferably in the USA. I'm liberal and an atheist, just to put it out there upfront. If we click, that's what matters most to me.
If you're interested, hit me up. We can swap Snap or Discord and take it from there.

When I was growing up my mom had symptoms of borderline personality disorder and my dad had symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. My parents were constantly extremely abusive.
When I reached the safety of young adulthood I felt safe talking to my aunt, my mom’s sister. I had a good job and was 100% financially independent. It was euphoric finally getting to tell someone after all these years without worrying about violent consequences.
My aunt criticized my parents for the abuse and it got back to my family. There was some event at my aunt’s church that I attended with her that my mom drove far to attend. I think it might have been a male cousin’s baptism who was the child of my mom’s and aunt’s younger brother.
When the church service was over my mom and aunt got into an argument in the church foyer!!!! It was so ridiculous and like an episode of Jerry Springer. My aunt complained about my mom beating us so my mom countered with, “You didn’t beat your kids enough! You raised three hippie atheists!” As if you convince somebody to believe something by beating them. My aunt later joked to me that they should contact Jerry Springer and try to make money off their fights.

Trigger warning: Mentions of losing a loved one and chronic illness
This has been the absolute worst year for me so far. In order; my best friend passed away, my chronic illness has gotten significantly worse, my boyfriend lost his job, and my mom has become homeless.
I’m the only one between my mom, boyfriend, and I with an income. I am struggling to make rent on my own due to my health (I call out at least once a week these days and I know I’m going to possibly lose my job but I can’t help that my endometriosis has grown onto my gallbladder and kidney).
I am also struggling to help my mom out in every which way I can. She can’t live with my boyfriend and I, but I have her sleep over every once in a while and make sure to cook her meals and let her use whatever she needs (laptop, shower, kitchen to cook, etc). I pay for her hotels when she needs a place to stay, but can’t do it anymore because I don’t make enough to cover my rent and rooms for my mom.
My boyfriend and I are on the verge of breaking up, because on top of me being the only one who has a job, I handle most of the chores. He complains when I ask him to do chores, but I am too sick to handle even basic tasks on my own. He called me entitled one night, and that lead to a fight between us because I am far from entitled. I work hard even with the state I am in.
He even asked me to pay for his haircut when my birthday is next week, and I don’t even have the money to take myself out. His response to me telling him this was, “Everyone has a birthday.” He puts his family’s birthdays first before everything else, so hearing him say this broke me.
My mental health has been absolute shit since my best friend passed away. And everything that has happened since is just building onto my stress.
I just feel so stuck because I don’t have the means to leave my boyfriend or my job, and I need surgery on top of everything.
I’m just so tired.

As the morning sun finally breaks through the night I am already getting dressed for my first day of second grade. As I’m struggling to button up my white collar shirt my dad walks into the room.
“You getting ready for school champ?” He asks me, clearly proud of how grown I looked.
“You betcha Dad!” I exclaimed as a wide smile beamed across my face,
Dad bent down and helped me finish buttoning my shirt.
“So…” he started asking, “what’s the plan for today? You know,” he paused trying to find the right words, “so you don’t have another one of those outbursts?”
These “outbursts” as Dad called them weren’t really outbursts. I’d had outbursts before but these were different. I’ve only had a handful of these breakdowns but they were the worst thing I’d ever experienced. It felt almost like someone was clawing into my skull. The pain was almost unbearable. Then there were the voices… ugh, I shuddered thinking about the voices.
It was because of these outbursts that we had to move cities. They were so bad I was kicked out of every school in Saint Louis.
Now that we moved to my crazy old grandmother’s house in Maryland, my parents were hoping I’d grow out of the breakdowns. They had tried everything they could to “fix” me but to no prevail. No matter how many doctors or therapists I went to none of them could ever find out what was wrong with me. It made me feel hopeless like I was doomed to be the weird kid for the rest of my life.
I still remember my 6th birthday all too well. I had invited every kid in my class to my party and was so excited to have people over.
You see, I had never had a real friend before and I was hoping by having people over at my house I could finally make one. That’s how dumb of a thought process I had in kindergarten. Now that I was in second grade I realized that wasn’t how the world worked. When it came time to have my party no one except my older brother Nathan and my older sister Jess showed up.
“I’m sorry Weston.” I remember Nathan saying, “Maybe next year you’ll have friends.”
Nathan didn’t mean that in a mean way but it sure felt like that. That year when I blew out my candles all I wished for was a single friend, a friend whom I could talk to, a friend whom I could play with and laugh with, a friend who cared about me.
But like most wishes, it never came true. And now here I am ready to reinvent myself and ready to try again. Hopefully, things were different in Baltimore, hopefully the kids were nicer.
“I’ll try not to freak out again Dad.” I finally replied to him as he finished tying my navy blue tie around my neck. “I promise.”
“I know you will Westy. I know. Just please try to take deep breaths like the kind therapist told you to.”
“Dad,” I said longingly, “I told you those silly techniques don’t work.”
“They worked for me.” My older sister Jess said as she walked into the room and sat on my bed, “I used to have the same outbursts happen to me.” She paused, “Matter of fact, the feelings never go away, you just learn to mask them.” She looked at Dad, “That’s just what the Man does to you.
“Jessica!” My dad scolded, “Stop scaring your brother. It’s his first day after all.”
“Weston.” He said turning to me, “Don’t listen to her. Do you understand me?”
I nodded submissively,
Dad turned and walked out of the room leaving me and Jess to finish getting ready.
“He doesn’t get it Westy.” She said to me once she knew he was out of earshot, “But just so you know it gets worse when he visits you again.”
“Again?” I replied in horror, “Jess you’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m not I swear Weston. Now normally I wouldn’t be telling you this at your age but you seem pretty mature so I think you can handle it.”
She was wrong, I couldn’t handle it.
"Weston, Jess!” My dad yelled from the kitchen, “Time for school!”
I arrived at school in my dad’s big, grey, Chevy Silverado and hopped down on the curb. I waved goodbye to my dad while Jess grabbed my hand and walked me to my classroom.
Ever since mom died, Jess has stepped up to be the motherly figure in my life though never fully replacing my mom. My mom was a beautiful woman with brown chestnut-colored locks of curly hair and beautiful blue eyes as pale but vibrant as the ocean on a cloudy day. I loved my mom but ever since the Man first showed up at our doorstep she was never quite the same. After the incident with the Man, she turned into a hollow shell of a person. Until, until she’d had enough.
It was right after my 6th birthday when the Man came. Maybe he was the answer to my birthday wish. In some ways, I guess he was. It was raining that day. I can still hear the pitter patter of the raindrops hitting the pavement outside my house when all of a sudden there was a knock on my door. I ran to open it, having not been able to sense danger at such a naive age, and was surprised when a tall man wearing an all-black attire stood there staring at me. When my mom saw who it was from the kitchen she immediately dropped the knife in her hand and started running toward me but not before the Man grabbed me by the shoulder and yanked me out the door. I remember being frozen in fear, not sure whether to cry or scream. I ended up doing nothing. The man shoved me into the back seat of his car and drove off as my mom came running down the driveway. I couldn’t tell if she was crying or if it was just the rain rolling down her face but I remember wondering whether or not I’d ever see her again.
I think about this now as I walked up the steps into the elementary school with my sister’s hand in mine. Once we reach the outside of my classroom, I turn and stare at my sister.
“I don’t wanna go in there,” I said, my anxiety acting up again,
“Come on Weston,” She replied, “I’m sure it will be fine.”
I usually trusted my sister when it came to stuff like this but this time it felt different, something felt wrong. Either way, I decided to suppress my fear and turn to the classroom door. Too short to look into the window of the door, I reach up and turn the handle instead, without looking inside to evaluate the classroom. I crack open the door and peer inside, what I see when I open the door makes me scream at the top of my lungs with fear. I’m struck with fear and can feel the voices coming back.
The Man was sitting at the teacher’s desk, coffee in hand, feet resting on the desk itself.
“It’s nice to see you again William.” He said as a maniacal grin crossed his face,
“Remember me?”