This is cyclical for me. This time it was triggered by a falling out between a few people in a friend group. I had to exert a lot of emotional energy to try to mediate and repair but one party was unable or unwilling to reciprocate. I’ve been pretty socially isolated for a while so it was really devastating for this group of safe people to turn out to be not so safe. This has led to me withdrawing from a lot of other social situations because I’ve just been too anxious and drained to handle it. Which obviously has an adverse effect on my mental health as well. I’m hoping that the relationships I’ve built in the recent months are resilient enough to withstand some withdrawal on my part.
Anyway. It’s hard to get anything done when nothing feels good. Walks, video games, reading, yoga, tea, Diet Coke, writing, hot baths, being in nature… all of those things usually will at least spark some little glimmer of joy (or even just, an at-peace feeling not even joy necessarily) in me but right now it’s like trying to squeeze water out of a rock.
Even my cats cuddling with me feels like nothing :( which just makes me feel guilty and I think me being upset makes them more clingy and then I’m annoyed and guilty for feeling so annoyed at my sweet babies.
Today, the best I felt was when my partner took me on a walk after dark and we saw some bats. Then we went and swung on a swing set at a park. It was nice. Or, as nice as it can be for the state I’m in. I also pulled a heavy pot out of the garage that I want to plant some moon flowers in. I want a moon garden to attract bats and other nighttime pollinators. So, a little victory I guess.
It feels horrible going through the motions of things that should make me feel good and getting nothing. But I’m still making myself stick to a routine because I’m trusting that some hidden part of my brain or body is getting something from it passively and will aid in my healing.

Thank you guys for all your nice comments on my previous post! Here's my followup post walking through the anthology - I apologize for the delay, but I wanted to sit with this half of the album a bit longer. This analysis will be slightly different: first I’ll go through themes present throughout the anthology, and then walk through each song individually, since it’s not as consecutive of a story as the first album. As with my first analysis, I tend to also stay away from literal details as proof that a song is about a certain subject or muse – to me, it’s easier to understand the album when you think first about what the song’s overarching meaning is, rather than getting caught up in literal details (and I think Taylor often throws these in as red herrings). Moreover, it’s important to note that it’s likely that the literal detail she’s thrown in is one that only she and the muse will understand (i.e. her referencing a lilac skirt in imgonnagetyouback is unlikely to be one we’ve ever seen her wearing in public, so it’s useless to paternity test based on that detail!).
Firstly, the word anthology means a collection of assorted literary works. As a result, I think there are more themes scattered through this album, and it’s meant to be a little harder to parse than the first one. I think this album is what TTPD would have been before it crystallized into a tighter theme – similar to the 3 AM tracks for Midnights, the majority of which were written prior to the standard edition’s tracks.
There are a few themes throughout this album. From a romantic context, to me, this album is primarily about Joe. I’ll walk through why I believe that, but this album feels less muddled to me in terms of its muses, and I think that is in part due to the fact that her self-described mania from the standard edition is not a theme on the anthology. This work also covers her own relationship to celebrity and fame, and how that affects her romantic relationships and her personal life in general. And finally, I think the final theme throughout this collection is the idea of childhood, of formative experiences, and how our author goes about processing events that happen to her.
The Black Dog
What happens when you intimately know someone, when you share every aspect of your life with someone, and then it's over? Six weeks after their breakup, she’s barely holding it together (“I move through the world with the heartbroken”). She even tried to rebound her pain away (“I took the miracle move on drug, the effects were temporary”), and wasn’t able to succeed. Meanwhile, she sees him go to a bar, and she has the sudden realization that he may be able to do what she failed to do – he might be able to move on, with someone new. Reckoning with that realization is horrifying. If he is able to pull it off, what does that mean about the love they shared? When he had told her for years that he was who he was for her, and her alone?
You said I needed a bravе man
Then proceeded to play him
Until I believed it too
And it kills me
How could they go from being so intimate that they shower together, that she’s aware of his every move, to being so distant from each other that she wonders if making her fall in love with him was a hazing? And the cruelest part of it is – she doesn’t want either one of them to be able to move on, and give validity to the fact that they weren’t right for each other, even though she knows they have to. Moreover, she’s already *tried* to move on at this point, and failed – she tried to manufacture a counterfeit version of their intimacy, but what if he’s able to perfectly replicate it? And to really drive in the knife, what if it’s with someone younger than her?
And you jump up, but she's too young to know this song
That was intertwined in the magic fabric of our dreaming
Given that a theme throughout the first album was her feeling like she’d given him so much of her youth, so much of her childbearing years, with nothing to show for it, what does it feel like to know that he can essentially reset time, by being with a younger woman, but she’ll never be able to get that time back?
imgonnagetyouback
We know that her and Joe took a break or two while they were together (see: Hits Different, The Great War, in addition to PR articles). To me, this song is about when you do take that break from your partner, and you’re trying to make a point to them that they’re not going to find anyone better than you (I can tell when somebody still wants me, come clean) – the two of you are too intimately intertwined to find a suitable replacement. You know what to wear, what to say, what to do to bring them back to you:
I, I hear thе whispers in your eyes
I'll make you wanna think twice
You'll find that you were never not mine
This song also has a lot of similarities to So Long, London, which is why I attribute it to Joe. To me, it provides a deeper story to some of the lines she touches on in So Long, London:
I didn't opt in to be your odd man out
I founded the club she's heard great things about
And to some of the lines in Hits Different:
I washed my hands of us at the club
You made a mess of me
I pictured you with other girls in love
Then threw up on the street
//
Bet I could still melt your world
Argumentative, antithetical dream girl
imgonnagetyouback is a story of one-upmanship – of trying to out-jealous your partner, of proving to them that nobody knows them better than you do. And maybe this time when they’re both playing this game, it works:
Push the reset button, we're becomin' something new
Say you got somebody, I'll say I got someone too
Even if it's handcuffed, I'm leavin' here with you
//
We broke all the pieces, but still wanna play the game (Oh)
Told my friends I hate you, but I love you just the same
Pick your poison, babe, I'm poison either way
The spacing to me is a deliberate red herring (the 1975 very famously made a song called fallingforyou), and a way to illustrate that the subject of the song wants space from her – but she’s not going to give it to him. This is another theme that calls back to Joe – in So Long, London, she describes him as constantly pulling away (Pulled him in tighter each time he was driftin' away). Matty didn’t pull away – he was all in for two weeks, until he chose to ghost her, and leave abruptly. There was no slow death, no push and pull to her relationship with Matty – it was a meteoric rise and fall.
The Albatross
This song feels like a sister song to “peace” – she describes what it’s like to love her. It’s a little more twisted, however, as she describes her love for her partner as both a danger, and a rescue from the danger she’s imposing on him by being involved with him:
Wise men once said
"Wild winds are death to the candle"
A rose by any other name is a scandal
Cautions issued, he stood
Shooting the messengers
They tried to warn him about her
She’s described herself as wind and liquor in her relationship with Joe previously, in Mastermind:
I'm the wind in our free-flowing sails
And the liquor in our cocktails
She has empathy for the narrator, but disdain for herself. There’s also acceptance though: she knows that she tried to prevent it, and tried to warn him about the danger she posed. In the end though, he chose this life with her, and he chose the danger – there’s only so much she can protect him from.
The devil that you know
Looks now more like an angel
I'm the life you chose
And all this terrible danger
Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus
This song feels like another sister song to The Black Dog – how does she cope with the idea that her long-time partner might move on? How does she cope with the fact that if she chooses to leave, she also chooses the future in which they both move on? A future in which they don’t know each other? It also touches on her wondering if she should move on with Matty, and how feasible it would be to know someone else instead of her partner:
If you want to tear my world apart
Just say you've always wondered
This song, more than anything else, illustrates that moving on with Matty was nothing but a way to move past Joe – what she really wants, more than anything, is a response greater than indifference from Joe:
As the decade would play us for fools
And you saw my bones out with somebody new
Who seemed like he would've bullied you in school
And you just watched it happen
There’s also the realization that Joe may never love who she is now – who she was at the beginning of their relationship will always be who he prefers:
If you want to break my cold, cold heart
Just say, 'I loved you the way that you were'
She’s trying desperately to find some way to make up for the fact that she had to leave Joe, that there was nothing she could do to stay – she tried changing everything about herself, but still, the need to leave him eventually caught up with her:
I changed into goddesses, villains and fools
Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules
All to outrun my desertion of you
And you just watched it
And she wonders whether despite his indifference, and the distance between them, she should still stay:
Could it be enough to just float in your orbit
Can we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses
Cooler in theory but not if you force it
To be, it just didn't happen
But now, they are merely ghosts of who they once were – it’s not possible to force the relationship anymore.
How Did It End?
When a long-term relationship ends, you can point to the factors that led to its demise: a difference of opinions on money, on marriage, on children, and so forth. It is easy to determine the “what” and the “why” of an ending. But what is harder to diagnose is how you both became the versions of yourselves that weren’t on the same page, that were unable to discuss these topics, that couldn’t move past these dilemmas. That is much, much harder to pinpoint, and this is the question Taylor asks in this song. She knows what killed them:
We hereby conduct this post-mortem
He was a hot house flower to my outdoorsman
//
We were blind to unforeseen circumstances
We learn the right steps to different dances (ohh)
And fell victim to interlopers' glances
Lost the game of chance, what are the chances?
But what she still doesn't know is how it happened – how did it end? She also finds the empathy from the media and from the public to be false and selfish – they only want to know what happened to feverishly spread the news like wildfire.
Come one, come all
It's happenin' again
The empathetic hunger descends
We'll tell no one
Except all of our friends
We must know
How did it end?
//
Soon they'll go home to their husbands
Smug 'cause they know they can trust him
Then feverishly calling their cousins (ohh)
//
Say it once again with feeling
What the feeding frenzy wants more than anything is gossip, and they don’t care that she is utterly lost – lost as to why this happened, and lost physically and mentally:
Guess who we ran into at the shops?
Walking in circles like she was lost
How does she give an answer to quell the empathetic hunger, when she herself doesn’t understand exactly how it happened?
So High School
In an album that touches so much on feeling like she’s running out of time to have the future that she wants, and running out of youth to give the various men who come into her life, it is interesting and heartwarming that the song about Travis on the anthology is one that describes being with him as regaining her youth:
The brink of a wrinkle in time
Bittersweet sixteen suddenly
Moreover, another detail to note in this song is the difference in how she describes alcohol and drugs – in nearly every other song on TTPD, alcohol is a vice she uses in her moments of despair, and drugs are what her previous partners turn to in their moments of strife (she also describes the influence of drugs on her partners as something she detests – “sinking in stoned oblivion” and “you needed me but you needed drugs more”). With Travis, she’s not imbibing in any substances – instead, his thoughts and jokes are enough for her:
I'll drink what you think, and I'm high
From smoking your jokes all damn night
Travis is giving her back her youth, making sober promises, and the impression that we get is that they’re building this dreamlike reality together – it’s wholesome, all-American, and high-school-inspired, yet still grounded in something tangible, unlike the promise of fate and destiny, which powered her relationship with Joe and her entanglement with Matty.
I Hate It Here
More than anything, I think this song illustrates how Taylor sometimes uses escapism and maladaptive daydreaming to ignore the reality of the situation she’s dealing with. She recognizes that it’s not possible to stay where she is, locked inside this prison of stagnation and boredom:
If comfort is a construct
I don't believe in good luck
Now that I know what's what
She recognizes that this isn’t what she used to be, and that she never intended to choose this life of secrecy, perhaps alluding to all those years she spent “locked inside her house”:
You see I was a debutante in another life but
Now I seem to be scared to go outside
She describes herself as finding hope in the places her mind creates (seemingly alluding to her creation of characters and places for folklore and evermore):
I hate it here so I will go to
secret gardens in my mind
People need a key to get to
The only one is mine
I read about it in a book when I was a precocious child
And her escapism into her past, and imaginings of what could have been:
I hate it here so I will go to
Lunar valleys in my mind
When they found a better planet
Only the gentle survived
I dreamed about it in the dark
The night I felt like I might die
All throughout the song, there’s recognition that she doesn’t want to be here – she doesn’t want to feel as if the only place she can be free is in these imaginary worlds she creates. But there’s also concession – is she perhaps only destined for an eternal consolation prize? For loneliness? For imagined romanticism? For the fantasy of how she imagined her life and her love to be?
I'm lonely but I'm good
I'm bitter but I swear I'm fine
I'll save all my romanticism for my inner life and I'll get lost on
purpose
This place made me feel worthless
Lucid dreams like electricity, the current flies through me,
and in my fantasies I rise above it
And way up there, I actually love it
​​thanK you aIMee
This song, along with a few others in the latter half of the anthology, discusses the loss of innocence she felt in key moments of her life. This one quite obviously alludes to Kim Kardashian, and their infamous feud. I will make a separate post on this, but I think people describing this song as petty may not remember the depth of the hate aimed at Taylor in 2016. Kim and Kanye organized a revenge porn music video for Famous, and held a museum exhibit so that people could take pictures with the naked dolls. The night the snapchat videos were released, every Kardashian family member descended upon social media to gleefully celebrate the #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty. The amount of hate Taylor got was so unprecedented that Instagram actually built their comment filtration system because of this incident. It really was that bad.
And every baby step Taylor took (for example, even just posting that she had a good 2017 was met with immediate media backlash) was quite literally mocked across the internet. People thought the reputation era was cringey, that she was over, and that she deserved everyone’s ire because she was “proven” to be a liar. She describes this in the song:
Each time that Aimee stomped across my grave
And then she wrote headlines in the local paper
Laughing at each baby step I'd take
And it was always the same searing pain
But the whole time, despite the pain and blood, she was dreaming of the day that she would heal, and dreaming of the day that she would climb her way back to to the mountaintop:
And our town, it looks so small from way up here
//
So I pushed each boulder up that hill
Your words were still just ringing in my head, ringing in my head
What still irks her though, is that this bully who created this entire hate train and organized her downfall will pretend as if it never happened – she will undoubtedly reframe things to make our subject seem overdramatic, petty, and unable to move past the incidents of years ago. Taylor, however, has always been clear about one thing: sometimes, no amount of time can heal you from something that deeply traumatized you.
I Look in People’s Windows
This song to me feels like a sister song to The Black Dog, but a few months after the official end of a relationship. A sub theme that runs through Taylor’s songs about the Joe breakup is the loss of being understood – when you are no longer with a long-term partner, how do you cope with the fact that you move the world knowing everything about this person, but at the same time, not knowing them anymore? Would you peek into their windows just to get a glimpse of what their life looks like now? As anyone who has gone through a breakup knows, the hardest part is often not being privy to the mundane details of that person’s world – their dinner parties, their wine, their friends, and so on.
I look in people's windows
Transfixed by rose golden glows
They have their friends over to drink nice wine
I look in people's windows
In case you're at their table
What if your eyes looked up and met mine
One more time
The Prophecy
The prophecy is devastating. More so than any other song Taylor has ever written, it is full of desperation and longing. All she asks for is to be known, to be understood – to not be perceived as an idea of a woman, or a starlet with no humanity:
Please
I've been on my knees
Change the prophecy
Don't want money
Just someone who wants my company
Let it once be me
Who do I have to speak to
About if they can redo
The prophecy?
It’s striking especially considering how much she laments that leaving Joe means she’s giving up being known – it’s also striking given the fact that in the epilogue poem, she states that neither Joe or Matty ever truly knew her:
He never even scratched the surface
of me.
None of them did.
What she desires beyond fame, beyond notoriety, beyond money, is to be loved and to be known. The song also alludes to her being in therapy, and to finding some sort of consolation that she will find someone to share her life with:
I'm so afraid I sealed my fate
No sign of soulmates
I'm just a paperweight
In shades of greige
Spending my last coin so someone will tell me
It'll be ok
Cassandra
This track is a sister song to ​​thanK you aIMee, and continues exploring the theme of fraught public womanhood we see in Clara Bow and Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me. In this song, Taylor discusses how the validation of women is never publicized in the way that the crucifixion of them is:
When the first stone's thrown, there's screaming
In the streets, there's a raging riot
When it's "Burn the bitch, " they're shrieking
When the truth comes out, it's quiet
Moreover, when women speak up about an issue, they’re often viewed as overdramatic, and unserious. Cassandra, in Greek mythology, was cursed by Apollo to always predict the future accurately, but never be believed. We see this happen every day to women in politics, in the media, and in pop culture:
So, they killed Cassandra first 'cause she feared the worst
And tried to tell the town
So, they set my life in flames, I regret to say
Do you believe me now?
And for Taylor, it’s reminiscent of all the times she’s been the first to speak out about something in the industry – for example, against Scooter Braun and his well-established pattern of bullying, or of the exploitation of artists on streaming services – but never been supported broadly by her peers. They believe her later, but at that point, very few people give her the credit for speaking up in the first place. It’s reminiscent of the Kimye scandal. When the news broke originally, the hatred she received was widespread. But when she was acquitted by the long-form video that leaked, it didn’t receive anywhere near the level of coverage that the original scandal received.
Peter
Peter is another song that touches on both the male muses for this album, and in turn, on the promises various men have given her over her life (we’ll circle back to this in The Manuscript!). It also touches on the theme of waiting that’s seen throughout this album, especially on her songs about Joe – how much time is enough time to give?
Both Matty and Joe were 25 when they met her, and it’s abundantly clear that both men made promises to her: promises of marriage, of children, and of a future. But how long can she wait for these promises to be fulfilled? To Joe, she gives six years of her life and youth, and to Matty, she gives him a chance to prove that he was reformed from the time she knew him last: both men eventually fail. Neither man is ready to give up their childish whims, and she has no choice but to lose hope that either of them ever will.
And you said you'd come and get me but you were 25
And the shelf life of those fantasies has expired
Lost to the lost boys chapter of your life
Forgive me Peter, please know that I tried
To hold onto the days when you were mine
But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light
Another thing to note is the interesting double meaning of the song title. To peter also means to diminish gradually – much like her faith in both men’s promises.
The Bolter
A lot of the songs Taylor has written about Joe in this album deal with the question of “when is the right time to leave?” When you know that things are stagnant, and you know that you’ve given everything you have to a relationship, you know that you have to leave – but it’s easy to convince yourself if you have a history of “leaving before you get left” that you should ride out this wave, and that this pain might just be temporary.
The Bolter, to me, reflects on Taylor’s history – it seems like she prided herself on being able to see the warning signs, and being able to get out in time.
She's been many places with
Men of many faces
First, they're off to the races
And she's laughing drawin' aces
But, none of it is changin'
That the chariot is waitin'
Hearts are hers for the breakin'
There's an escape in escaping
It’s relevant to TTPD, because likely, she saw not bolting as a sign of growth and maturity. You know that you’ve grown as a person when you don’t abandon ship at the first sign of trouble, but what if there are so many signs of trouble that the truly mature thing to do would be to leave?
Robin
Robin leads into this theme of childhood and innocence that we see further in The Manuscript. The track name is also the name of Aaron Dessner’s child. She ponders how beautiful and sweet it is that we work so hard to protect childhood naivete:
Strings tied to levers,
slowed down clocks tethered,
all this showmanship
To keep it, for you,
In sweetness
And there’s an element of wistfulness to it – don’t we sometimes wish that we could also be protected from the worst the world has to offer?
You have no room in your dreams for regrets
You have no idea
The time will arrive for the cruel and the mean
You'll learn to bounce back just like your trampoline
But now we'll curtail your curiosity
The Manuscript
This song is perhaps the most climactic song on the album. It covers her romantic history up until that point, and starts at the moment she feels everything went awry – and it predates Joe and Matty. Instead, it calls back to the first time she experienced a proper heartbreak, and the first time she lost her childlike innocence in the world – her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal (a time she described as her transition from childhood to womanhood). She describes how they compared licenses, and how he told her that if they had sex, and it was as good as the conversation was, then they would get married, and have a family. He was the first man to make her these promises:
He said that if the sex was half as good as the conversation was
Soon they'd be pushin' strollers
But soon it was over
He tells her that it’s ok that they have an age gap, because she’s so advanced for her age:
She thought about how he said since she was so wise beyond her years
Everything had been above board
She wasn't sure
While dating him, she desperately wants to be older, and starts emulating his behavior:
In the age of him, she wished she was thirty
And made coffee every morning in a French press
And when it’s over, she regresses, and turns back into a child – unable to sleep alone without the comfort of her mother, and unable to eat anything substantial besides the sugary cereal of her youth:
Afterwards she only ate kids' cereal
And couldn't sleep unless it was in her mother's bed
She forces herself to date boys her own age, to not rely on the maturity of an older man to guide her through adulthood, but she can’t help but feel disappointed in their youth:
Then she dated boys who were her own age
With dart boards on the backs of their doors
Finally, as she creates the All Too Well short film, she recognizes the damage he did to her, and how the consequences of that affair have shaped her life since:
And the years passed
Like scenes of a show
The Professor said to write what you know
Lookin' backwards
Might be the only way to move forward
Then the actors
Were hitting their marks
And the slow dance
Was alight with the sparks
And the tears fell
In synchronicity with the score
And at last
She knew what the agony had been for
Everything calls back to this first man, and these original promises – everything she’s been chasing since is reminiscent of this first scar. And just like how releasing All Too Well transformed and healed her, she hopes that by releasing this additional manuscript into the world, it will heal her again. As she describes in the epilogue poem, she is entering all her thoughts, emotions, and pain into evidence – she now asks the audience to process it with her, and thus conclude this process of healing.
The only thing that's left is the manuscript
One last souvenir from my trip to your shores
Now and then I reread the manuscript
But the story isn't mine anymore
If you read all of this - thank you! I enjoyed writing it, and I'm excited to discuss with you all in the replies :)

I had two cats 10M and 3F. They were cuddle buddies and loved each other. About 2 months about the male started losing weight and declining. He went through many tests and bloodwork and meds but ended up getting diagnosed with cancer on Tuesday and was put to sleep to end his suffering as he wasn’t himself. The entire time, my girl cat who is my entire heart and soul seemed so sad. She didn’t play with him anymore (it feels like she knew he didn’t feel good and didn’t want to bother him) and would cry at night for someone to play with as she would run around.
I’m feeling a lot of guilt and regret I didn’t spoil him in his last months. What if he had future symptoms and I didn’t register them as abnormal? I feel like I was in strong denial we would find something out and he would be fixed and healthy again. We would cuddle every night but I feel like I should’ve done more and spent more time focusing all my attention on him. He was such a sweet loving boy. I can barely eat and I’ve been throwing up I feel so sick for how it ended. When we brought him to the vet on Tuesday I feel like I got hit by a truck when the vet felt his abdomen and immediately said it’s not good and he thinks it’s rapidly spreading intestinal cancer. X-rays confirmed this. He was put to sleep with me and fiance in the room while he weakly laid there.
We stayed in the room for the process by his head petting and kissing him while he got injected with the anesthetic. I didn’t want him to look at what was going on and he kept his eyes on us the entire time. After the first injection, he started purring so loud. He hadn’t purred like this in weeks. I feel so guilty he was purring to comfort himself because he was scared or in pain but was too weak to vocalize or move.
We chose to do cremation. I’m scared they weren’t kind and gentle with his body. I’m personally so against cremation as it feels so cruel to do to a body even if they’ve passed. I’m scared he was just thrown into an incinerator and didn’t get the respect he deserves. My coworkers asked me if it was a solitary or mixed cremation. I didn’t even think about this. I don’t mind getting mixed ashes - it could be multiple animals whose owners chose not to keep their ashes and that’s so sad to me. But what if I get the ashes back and it’s barely his? How do I even know if it’s him? I want to ask the vet clinic but I’m so scared of the answer and how I’ll linger on it forever.
Then… I got two new outdoor kittens that were about to get trapped in storms happening and adopted them this week. I got one Monday and my male cat cuddled him and me the entire time before his appointment. After we euthanized him… we went back and got the other babies brother the same night so he wouldn’t be alone and scared and in the storms. It wasn’t to replace him - that was not our intention whatsoever. We just knew we could help this baby and it would be more comforting to the first kitten to have his brother.
They’re so sweet. But I feel so guilty my cat somehow feels replaced. But they could never be a replacement for him, they just needed help and we had the resources to do so. I feel like it looks really shitty of me to adopt so quickly and that it looks just forgetting my cat for some new babies. I know I shouldn’t care what people think and I would never judge someone else for helping out a cat after a loss.
My girl cat seems happy. She loves cuddling them when they’re calm during the day and plays with them at night which is her regular crazy hours. She sets her boundaries gently with them when they get a little wild and she’s not ready to play. But I feel so guilty and evil. They get lots of love but to be honest I can’t help but look at them and think that should’ve never happened with my male cat and he should be here. I applied to volunteer at my local shelter that needs help to help with their cats - they have a lot of senior and special needs cats I want to work with as they deserve love.
I’m really just rambling but I feel like I can’t talk to anyone about it without looking crazy. I’m in one on one therapy but it’s not until Tuesday and I feel weird going in and just dumping all my problems about cats. It feels so insignificant compared to issues people go through in life and we’ve been focusing on my OCD obsessions and rituals.
Am I a bad cat owner? Did I make too many wrong quick decisions?

I had two cats 10M and 3F. They were cuddle buddies and loved each other. About 2 months about the male started losing weight and declining. He went through many tests and bloodwork and meds but ended up getting diagnosed with cancer on Tuesday and was put to sleep to end his suffering as he wasn’t himself. The entire time, my girl cat who is my entire heart and soul seemed so sad. She didn’t play with him anymore (it feels like she knew he didn’t feel good and didn’t want to bother him) and would cry at night for someone to play with as she would run around.
I’m feeling a lot of guilt and regret I didn’t spoil him in his last months. I feel like I was in strong denial we would find something out and he would be fixed and healthy again. We would cuddle every night but I feel like I should’ve done more and spent more time focusing all my attention on him. He was such a sweet loving boy. I can barely eat and I’ve been throwing up I feel so sick for how it ended. When we brought him to the vet on Tuesday I feel like I got hit by a truck when the vet felt his abdomen and immediately said it’s not good and he thinks it’s rapidly spreading intestinal cancer. X-rays confirmed this. He was put to sleep with me and fiancee in the room while he weakly laid there.
We stayed in the room for the process by his head petting and kissing him while he got injected with the anesthetic. I didn’t want him to look at what was going on and he kept his eyes on us the entire time. After the first injection, he started purring so loud. He hadn’t purred like this in weeks. I feel so guilty he was purring to comfort himself because he was scared or in pain but was too weak to vocalize or move.
We chose to do cremation. I’m scared they weren’t kind and gentle with his body. I’m personally so against cremation as it feels so cruel to do to a body even if they’ve passed. I’m scared he was just thrown into an incinerator and didn’t get the respect he deserves. My coworkers asked me if it was a solitary or mixed cremation. I didn’t even think about this. I don’t mind getting mixed ashes - it could be multiple animals whose owners chose not to keep their ashes and that’s so sad to me. But what if I get the ashes back and it’s barely his? How do I even know if it’s him? I want to ask the vet clinic but I’m so scared of the answer and how I’ll linger on it forever.
Then… I got two new outdoor kittens that were about to get trapped in storms happening and adopted them this week. I got one Monday and my male cat cuddled him and me the entire time before his appointment. After we euthanized him… we went back and got the other babies brother the same night so he wouldn’t be alone and scared and in the storms. It wasn’t to replace him - that was not our intention whatsoever. We just knew we could help this baby and it would be more comforting to the first kitten to have his brother.
They’re so sweet. But I feel so guilty my cat somehow feels replaced. But they could never be a replacement for him, they just needed help and we had the resources to do so. I feel like it looks really shitty of me to adopt so quickly and that it looks just forgetting my cat for some new babies. I know I shouldn’t care what people think and I would never judge someone else for helping out a cat after a loss.
My girl cat seems happy. She loves cuddling them when they’re calm during the day and plays with them at night which is her regular crazy hours. She sets her boundaries gently with them when they get a little wild and she’s not ready to play. But I feel so guilty and evil. They get lots of love but to be honest I can’t help but look at them and think that should’ve never happened with my male cat and he should be here. I applied to volunteer at my local shelter that needs help to help with their cats - they have a lot of senior and special needs cats I want to work with as they deserve love.
I’m really just rambling but I feel like I can’t talk to anyone about it without looking crazy. I’m in one on one therapy but it’s not until Tuesday and I feel weird going in and just dumping all my problems about cats. It feels so insignificant compared to issues people go through in life and we’ve been focusing on my OCD obsessions and rituals.
Am I a bad pet owner? Did I make too many wrong quick decisions?

Honestly asking RE: co sleeping
Zero judgement or SIDS hysteria, just honestly curious about cosleeping. I tried it out of desperation when my daughter was around 8 months. She wanted to be attached to my boob for what felt like 100% of the night. We both woke up constantly all night. And at a certain point I just wanted to be able to bring my arm down from under my head/pillow. For people who say how much they loved cosleeping with their babies and toddlers, did it just not bother you to be stuck in that cuddle curl position? I hated the sleep training process and I felt so guilty doing it, but it felt like the only way for both of us to get any consolidated sleep.
Idk I’m just curious and processing some of these super difficult experiences of first time parenting.

30 weeks tomorrow. I basically can’t sleep at night time. At all. I stayed up for 28 hours to fix it. Slept a normal 8 hours at the end of that long stretch only to wake up the next day and not be able to sleep that night. Some days I sleep for 12 hours straight, but I’m never getting good sleep or wake up fully rested. Sometimes I sleep for 3 hours and feel great, or like crap. There’s almost no rhyme or reason to my sleep patterns/lack thereof.
I’m terrified I still won’t be able to sleep once she’s born. I know newborn exhaustion is a thing, and a different kind of tired. But right now all I have to worry about is her growth and my nutrition intake and getting enough rest, not WHEN I rest. Day/night time doesn’t matter too much. Right now I dont have another person who solely depends on me for survival(outside of the womb) who needs a schedule. I guess I’m just scared of having this same viscous (and lonely) cycle going once she’s here too. It’s like I myself am a newborn who has day/night confusion.
People in my circle tell me it’s common but it’s so lonely that I’ve become depressed from it. I realize hormones change after birth and I’ll be so tired from the newborn routine, but I’m so scared of being a failure of a mom because of this depression I’m dealing with and that it won’t go away when postpartum hormones come through.
All I do every day is sleep and wake up a few hours before my husband gets home from work. I get about 2 1/2 3 hours max with him and then he’s sleeping. And I have sleep anxiety. It’s like he’s leaving me for the day again? Because of this and the loneliness/depression it’s caused it’s been difficult to regulate my emotions on top of the typical irritability and irrationality that comes with pregnancy. If anything my body hasn’t suffered from this pregnancy. It’s nearly a flawless pregnancy. But my mind… is suffering in a way that’s hard to explain. this is the least like myself I’ve ever been in my life. I can’t control any of my emotions/feelings/hysterical bouts. And so many people tell me it just gets worse postpartum. If I’m struggling this bad to the point of wanting to bang my head against the doorframe and crying for no reason until my eyes are swollen now how will I ever get better once she’s here? I’m genuinely terrified for my mental health and my baby’s, she can feel what I’m feeling. I’m so scared that she will have a horrible anxious attachment to me from what she’s already experiencing.
I take pregnancy approved medication for these mental struggles that are a side affect of my insufficient sleep/lack of it/too much of it. I’m also working closely with a psychiatrist. Has anyone else experienced this specifically? Did it change after birth? For the better? Or worse?

Hello! I’m looking to knit sweaters using charts I generated using images. How would I go about incorporating these into an existing sweater pattern? My concern is that the pattern won’t be centered or will end up at an awkward spot and I won’t know until I’ve invested a lot of time knitting it. Thanks in advance!

Hi! 32+3 with my second GD baby. First was diet controlled- it was annoying, but no real issues besides just needing more frequent monitoring than the typical population. I could eat the suggested 45g carbs a meal and was fine- I wasn't even super strict. I'm sure I went over that several times a week too and didn't have issues.
This pregnancy is a totally different story... diagnosed around 17 weeks with GD. It was diet controlled for a bit, then we needed to add in Lantus at night for my fasting numbers. I've been eating a max of 25g carbs per meal with my placenta doing whatever it wants. I'll literally split a meal down the middle, eat one half now and the other half the next day and my body will suddenly spike super high the second time I eat it even though it barely changed my glucose the night when I ate the first half. It's been incredibly frustrating since there's essentially no rhyme or reason to it. If it consistently followed a pattern, I could at least cope. Sometimes it will go high when I only eat 10g carbs and other times I can each 25g carbs (with a starting glucose that is within range but likely to go too high if I eat 25g carbs) and it never goes over 140.
I'm now taking 5units Humalog with breakfast, 8units with dinner, and 22units Lantus at night. My fasting numbers have been great this week (recently had upped both insulins) and meals were coming out as expected. I had 20g carbs for dinner tonight with 26g protein- a meal I eat frequently because it's within range, I usually respond fine, and it's semi-satisfying... My glucose went from 84 to 187. I wear a Dexcom so I did a finger prick to double-check I wasn't getting a bad ready but, nope. It was accurate.
Not necessarily looking for advice- just venting and looking to commiserate. I go in Tuesday again so I'll see if the doctor has anything to say (they check my Dexcom history closely). I know we'll be making adjustments the next few weeks because that's just how things go at this point in pregnancy but it's all just so frustrating anyway, especially when I've been dealing with this so much longer than is typical.

Tell me what all you pack for airplane rides!
For my two hour flight today, and a 5 day visit, I packed:
Noise cancelling headphones Loop earplugs 1 ADHD book (your brain is not broken) 1 poetry book 1 self help book (the untethered soul) 1 sudoku book 2 knitting projects (one in progress and another one to start if I want- which includes 3 different color yarns, so 4 yarn balls total 😂) 2 printed knitting patterns and extra paper in case I feel like writing Nintendo Switch And obviously my phone, with all its music and audiobooks and podcasts.
During the flight, I used my headphones, switch, knitting, and sudoku! And played South Park on the tv for fun visuals.
What’s in your personal item (easy access) travel bag?

I’m planning to make the Satie shawl by Dee O’Keefe as a 90th birthday gift for my mother-in-law and wondered if anyone has made it. If so, do you have any tips? I knit Continental with a Norwegian purl if that changes things at all.
With the assist of the owner of my LYS, I’ve chosen Berroco Lanas Light, 2 ply sport weight, with Berroco Aerial (mohair). I do need to learn M1L and M1R and work on ensuring my yo is done in the correct direction (this far my yarn overs have all been accidental).
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/satie
Thanks!

I started quilting a few months ago after a friend taught me how to hem my own pants. So far I've made two quilts for other coworkers baby shower gifts and each was better than the last. I think I'd like to make one for myself now.
Background: I'm trans and even after I came out I still held on to one of my favorite dresses. I loved the fabric and look of it. I'd like to repurpose the fabric from the dress for my quilt that way I can have it forever.
It's a Michael Miller fabric in the nevermore collection called Goth bugs.
I'm going for a black and white theme to match that. What pattern or style would best feature this fabric? I'm aiming for a full or queen size blanket.

1. Franklin is unborn with Morgan at the hip and this does not do much to their existing pattern of sexuality by definition a Seer Morgan who violated the yugioh card and Franklin who is of the Fourth Underworld and Disdevolved of his City there who was My Little Syndey and A Nigger City there so felt not a princess as her friend so is back with us as My Little Syndey and wants nothing to do but I am her mommy and tell her my story and I will be in room 404 standing in the shower or in the sex swing with My Little Sydney who I never got to take her as meth or smoke with her, or really just talked nice with her and she loves me so I put franklin illegally out of his shower as a baby with a no gurney operation with syndey to get into suite 404 and put them suite 403 which syndey bumps the hind98 like she is used to to go to minecraft but she has to goto no escape South Park Elementary which is not Burning Anna and live there now which this is her home with Taylor and Justin and gives her First Underworld Access as herself the princess which then as a little princess she somehow activates hind98 there like I taught her and we are back in together at the same rate normal but on hind to the 404 shower and tim orders us her loam, the drugs she works on frankinscense lube of anticancer and I fuck up her stoichiometry with reds to break the blues detector because she needs it unscented and my vagina unscents it for her for the urine in the drain and she is out of minecraft and the next time she is here, she has virtual squatters rights to the base and they are her testificates and has Jake-Bot there to give her survival at the very end but this is just to use a wrench to get megans pc like my little syndey said and I get her a better PC than OK Computer she got a lenovo Minecraft now and she is the minecraft princess minecraft girl throughout this but desired to see herself because she will be trapped here forever besides it otherwise and we spend 3 years after this which take 2997 years right next to each other while i sign into her hand oil synthesis and this eventually, she gets it, burn the world, record the oil, use the client, you cash out, back to your own 2B2T more planks cash the oil, this lets her use a blueprint when she gets oil from the flames and I make sure thats my capryllate I am working on and cause it is sweedish mode we got to take it and I take it and it is just a hydrochloride like a poke and it was the one I already had getting shot by police and it was made by my oil i made with that method before all of what I needed and it never took the first I gave My Little Syndey and we spend 6 years which takes 3 years and hind can no longer target us for our life and our hind can only do 2585 now not 3000 and this is where we stand up and take it in the ass which syndey does her reds with her pussy because she is a princess and the hind helps her there alex can help with homework and we then get pregnant to the baby dna in us and syndey is aborted with a wedge inside her she can feel and feels transexual here for she is got sex loam and sees the princess wedge as male genitals, she is male and gets rabbit energy to bang me here while I am pregnant and because it is rabbit energy it bangs me deeply and then I am 9.7 and I give birth and then she is not given a violative here my little syndey she is not a nigger she turns into sloucher syndey from riches class which I swear this is just sloucher sydneys dbt she needs for AP Chemistry not to turn into Justine and equally the sloucher is Syndey Renshaw out of this but she is in the shower I have to teach her everything and I am 10.7 and we both give birth and we have a new record for baby prostitute babies is 5 babies technical limit and I am 12 and have another baby and we are lucky forever then we have had 7 babies as young mothers with the nondominant baby at the higher ot princess then the princess baby and I stay here 9 years syndey has to go bang the men in room 404 and I get squatters rights on my shower and it was always the right reds for me to be safe of the sedative chelator in the water and syndey visited me in here and was drugging as a black person then and I sell the shower right away for 700,000$ payout which is for the First Underworld is this goes to Aaron who he gets this Quote Inventing Reddit this was erwin mainly but he did compile it authorize what it did et cetra, erwin was already paid so aaron is paid and then he is not homeless and shotted on us by police and then I spend 60 years or until I am well sydneys lesbian wife which darappa master onion will tell her if she chops onion for french onion soup which this is the nimitz chow we might have is french onion soup I am a Lesbian which is the actual author telling kelsey this and I am 81 and I have a heart attack on the french rivera and am fine to it and later My Little Syndey dies which then we overlay at the First Underworld until back to the Third Underworld, but then it is the 2nd yitvah and this puts the 700,000$ to Aaron Schwartzchild for inventing the haired singularity, or reddit to not be homeless, and to spend wisely, and that is his only money so should he protected, and emancipated from legal burden for he had only gone in nuclear scare of valid nuclear scare to the suburbs and also A -Marian then.

chinese history can’t be separated from the problem of eunuchs, a political class, that was in theory supposed to be loyal to the emperor but turned out to be as self-interested as any other clique
a particularly messy rebellion against them
as a matter of interest, they also had the penis as well as the testicles removed giving rise to urinary tract problems that were highly unpleasant and even so, the imperial concubines usually took eunuchs as lovers
i think on balance they probably did facilitate many centuries of highly centralised rule, a role today filled by communications and surveillance technology
the bottom line of any addiction is what is it excluding ?
what is the opportunity cost ?
usually its so high because you have recognised it as an addiction
human beauty
i have none of
its not sadness that leads one to grasp it
too fragile to be held
but a deep melancholy
death is too close
to
beauty
the female world
sorta isolated
its own bubble
sorta tangential
to reality
propaganda and dictatorships work by controlling information and hence beliefs and opinions and it is amazing how easily we driven by these into various insanities
from the control point of view, any creativity is a threat or poison and is dealt with by the force of suppression or aversion
in delusian terms "creativity is an act of resistance"
when on reddit and you get downvoted, just repeat to yourself "a downvote is an upvote" which it really is since you have distressed an idiot !
the freedom
of good health
in old age
there
is
no
other
women
the burden of ovaries
undercuts
an entire life
seeker and sought
the religious parlance
meaning
nothing
"zen" is a wrapped up box with some writing on it saying "i promise the answer’s inside" and when you open it up, its empty
i would guess the royal family has been boosted to the gills for covid and king charles and princess catherine both getting cancer makes me wonder
the precipice’s edge
unstable
dangerous to be there
walking
back
takes
time
on the other hand
stability
is an illusion
st. isaac the syrian
quotes I
quotes II
“ for it is more expedient to be bruised than dead ”
he’s very underappreciated
the
female
need
for
faces
deep
genetic
programming
han china
umpteen million
one
grain of sand
amongst many
must alter your perspective
the
system
can
do
without
you
existential angst
when tears roll from a baby’s eyes
its a bit early to be thinking about these matters
pillars of salt
we are always looking behind
but at least we can see
what has gone behind
what we can’t see
is
what is behind
other pillars
of
salt
plucked from life
unto death
another state of being
the former from the latter
distinctive is
but how the latter
views the former
we can never know
ed. a poem i wrote on looking at a photo of emily dickinson’s nephew, gilbert dickinson who died of typhoid aged eight, the rhythms and semantics of the poem make it seem like it could have been written by emily ?
a non traumatic demonstration of how a caesarean delivery is done
its not a trivial procedure, i’ll say that
something i had never thought about
not surviving an operation
it happens
even
with
the
routine
the unwanted
stalks
us
everywhere
.
something i had never thought about
surviving an operation
it happens
even
with
the
routine
the unwanted
stalks
us
everywhere
feeling
the travesty
of how ill it fits
with the way this world works
the thought of nothing squared
halve it
then triple it again
is still nothing squared
travelling and living in a new place you like for a while and then leaving again
its like falling in love and then breaking up, what can you do ?
continuities
dreams
stitching together
what is discontinuous
interior stresses rend
apart
what is held together
for a while
all rivers run
as coleridge said
to oblivion
ed. these lines below from coleridge’s most famous poem have always puzzled me, now i think about it, my poem is an alternative, more abstract version of his full poem which has always puzzled me and now it has sort of solved itself, i can’t believe it has sat in my brain for thirty or forty years as a puzzle looking for a solution
where alph, the sacred river, ran
through caverns measureless to man
down to a sunless sea
i give credit to coleridge claiming the poem is unfinished, but i am not sure that level of intense creativity can be sustained and even in terms of the existing poem it was starting to fall apart by the end
this is such a zen/religious thing, taking other’s words and paintings, not a single thing is their own
this is because the moment they say something or draw something of their own its laughable
you can’t tell 'em, diet and exercise are extremely important in keeping good mental health “ recent research published in the journal clinical nutrition reveals a significant link between high consumption of ultra-processed foods and an increased risk of developing depression
this study, conducted in brazil, indicates that individuals adhering to diets rich in ultra-processed foods are more likely to experience depressive symptoms over time these findings underscore the potential mental health risks associated with dietary patterns characterized by processed and convenience foods ”
i nearly ran into a cyclist a week ago on a windy back road because neither of us was keeping far enough to the left, then a little later nearly hit a car because, again i was not keeping far enough to the left
hopefully i have learnt, i think i was driving like i drive at night when you can assume you will see any oncoming traffic well ahead because of their headlights
daylight gives no such clues and cutting blind corners seems to be a local habit
“ taken together, our data highlight the profound impact of exercise in rejuvenating aged microglia (ed. reverting their gene expression signature to that of young microglia), associated pro-neurogenic effects and on peripheral immune cell presence in the ageing female mouse brain ”
julliard
clone factory
squashes
creativity
assembly line
performance
when OP’s bleed
their writers
in denial
about their injury
but
a portion
of
their
brain
cries
ed. certified GPT-free
the double edged sword
cuts
its holder
as one brought up on a very patriarchal version of english history its interesting to see that william the conquerer’s success was in part due to having a very politically competent wife
ed. video has 3 parts
also interesting is that due to harold godwinson having been captured in normandy and kept there for a while, he knew both mitilda (possibly even having an affair with her) and william very well and should have been more au fait with norman battle tactics and strengths i have a theory that the middle ages and somewhat later had in effect a breeding program through intermarriage within the nobility/aristocracy creating a politically competent class, because politics is not a natural skill to the species, same thing for ancient egypt, in fact today’s international politics suffers a lot from people lacking any sort of the rationality and largeness of mind required

This is something I felt I've long avoided, I haven't always felt this urge to speak up and show the truth. I kept holding back but i no longer want to avoid something that although i'm still learning i now know wasn't my fault. I will probably never know at what exact age it started but I truly believe as far as remembering was about six years old, I remember the house where my mother had just had my last sister so I know it was the year 2000. I fell asleep on the couch that night and i remember my parents having sex on the floor i woke up noticed and quickly closed my eyes what came next change my life forever my stepdad tapped my leg to wake me up and everytime i tried to close them he would do it again he made me watch and as disgusting as it may sound i remember the entire things and when i have flash backs it disgust me. Its all started there i'm not sure for how long that started before he actually started doing things to me. I truthfully can't say I remember every single time. I remember the first time he made me sucks his penis i dont recall my age but I do believe I was under 10, I was awakened in the middle of the night, pants pulled down and ready to go nonetheless. told me what to do and hit me until I got it ‘right’ until i accidently bit him and he got mad and smacked me and covered my mouth so I couldn't scream and walked away. This will get disgusting and gruesome. I hated myself always because at a young age I actually felt jealous ? My parents were disgusting people having sex at any time any place loud with no concerns for any of us which was six of of by the way. I would hear them and felt hurt like why is he doing this and i think once he realized it he was fed of it and enjoyed me feeling that type of way which by the way i realized was wrong but not my fault i dont think i was even out of elementary school at that point so please don't blame me trust me im disgusted with myself every single day. I hated him because not only would he molest me he would abuse my mother all the time and eventually turned into abusing me any time I tried to stand up to him and call the police. My step dad would punch and choke me up against the wall feet several inches off the floor until i almost pass out barely getting words out, the shameful part is i was willing to risk my life to save my mom and stop the abuse and would go until my last breathe but i know realize she would never do the same for me, that shit hurts always. I recall one night i was forced to stay up late with them as they drank and would force alcohol on me at the time thinking how cool and they made me play strip poker with them and i must of been so drunk maybe 8 or 9 years old my pants and panties being pulled down and hearing him tell he to do it as disgusting as it sounds and how everytime i think about it making my skin crawl could remember her cold tongue hit my vagina and lick it and then after a while they got on the floor and had sex while i layed there on my bunk bed bottom one by the way i don't think anyone was in the room with us but i honestly couldn't tell you. Since that time I couldn't recall too many times but I'm sure as the story goes on I will remember things to please be patient. I want to be honest but I don't want to wreck myself by getting the courage to speak my truth. 2009 My mom was arrested for fraud she commited back in 1990’s thats when to me i felt like things got really bad, I had a boyfriend and i wasnt aloud to see him well anyways i had to drop out of school i had pretty much just started 9th grade and had to leave school to take care of the kids the home and the company and also be a translator for my step dad. The prime of my anxiety and depression. I was always scared and on edge, that first night that my mom was locked away he made me sleep in his room with him. I was forced to do oral intercourse on him and when i started to refuse he pin me into the corner and punched me in my face and body until i started to see black and remember waking up randomly in the middle of the night when i came to and layed in bed which by the way he was already asleep didn't even care to make sure i wasn't dead and now to think of it i will never really know if he took advantage of me while i was knocked out. I still had to wake up at 6 am to get siblings ready for school and make breakfast and lunch for us for a long day at work. After that it was pretty much the same thing everyday. I was made to take the place of my mother and take the role of mother for the kids and his ‘wife’. Every single day was hell, I was always scared, scared for the kids to leave to school for them to leave me alone at night. It was so bad, I cried every day to my mom about when she would get out because I was so drained physically, mentally and emotionally. One day he was so frustrated i remember us being in the bathroom and him getting mad i didnt want to do anything so he said you know what im tired of this shit im just going to fuck you and put me on to the counter top. I let out a loud scream which scared him and he walked out. I walked out and into the kitchen that day and grabbed a huge knife and said God, I'm done im so sorry please take care of my siblings. I went and grabbed a huge kitchen knife and went for my veins and started going back and forth saying please God please just let me fucking die pushing the knife down hard and it not cutting even a little. After that my mental health went spiraling down i couldn't control anything i was so tired about five months later my mother finally got of of jail we moved and for a little while things seem to be getting better i feel like it would only happen when we were left alone so i tried hard to avoid it i started telling my siblings please i know you don't understand but please don't leave us alone. My mother didn't care she had to ‘go to the store’ and could take everyone but me. It hurt so bad at that point I felt like I was pawned off to him. I am so alone. I feel so alone and I'm so sad. I want to be heard and I want to be seen. I don't want him to hold power over me anymore. He can't hurt me anymore i dont have to be silenced anymore. Sadly I wasn't just molested by my step dad. I'll do a quick dive into those as I don't recall it all mostly because it didn't last as long. The shortest ones being a women babysitter my parents would drop us off with she use to take me in the bathroom with her naked and make me watch her masturbate and would touch my body i don't know what she did to my younger brother but she would take him into the bathroom to so i would offer myself to avoid him being exposed to my understanding it was about a handful of times she did anything to him. There isn't much I remember about her since it was always the same but I hate that I always have that image in my head when I think back on it. My baby sister's GodFather’s brother molested me for what I would think was about a year and this one was tricky. I hate to admit it now but I found him attractive. I believe he was barely legal in age even though I had to be about 10 to 11 years old. He would make me cuddle him on the couch while he rubbed against me and touched himself, mostly made me kiss him and let him touch me. It felt ‘easier’ compared to my stepdad until one day he made me ‘ride’ him without penetration until he wanted to penetrate and I begged him not to. I was scared and he punched me and the face and thighs until he threw me off him across the room. I couldn't even tell you what happened after that. I just remember one day my parents fighting with GodParents and us moving. I thought they found out and ‘protected’ me. A Little of the topic can you believe up to about 2 years ago when telling them that they were surprised and angry, I didn't tell them sooner as if my step dad wasn't doing it himself and my mom was fully aware. Honestly, what scum of the earth my parents are. I was always afraid and made to feel guilty for letting it happen for too long being told I wanted it or why didn't I stop it sooner as if i didnt ty time and time again. As I got older it all got worse he saw me as a grown lady. I hated that I had to do ‘favors’ in order to get basic necessities and being able to go out with my sisters to parties , go to the mall hand out with friends and such

I’ve miscarried twice in the last year, this month is the anniversary of my first one. The first time I was really happy because I didn’t even think I could get pregnant. When I miscarried I was devastated. I got to see a sac but never got to hear a heartbeat. The second time I was shocked because it had only been about 5 months but it had honestly had a worse toll on me than the first time cuz my levels rose to almost 8,000 with no sign of a sac (the first time my levels were just under 2,000 with a sac). My body was still producing HCG and pregnancy symptoms for over two months. I’m having a hard time. I have lost my spark. I hate everything and everyone. The last time was such a rollercoaster cuz I kept having my period like normal. I wouldn’t have even known if a couple of my friends didn’t convince me to take a test because of my symptoms just for it to result in confusion and two and a half months of heartache. I’m so bitter. I’m so angry. I have no elders to talk to. I’m no contact with my dad. My mom ignored my calls when I was miscarrying the second time and we’ve had a strained relationship ever since. My grandma insinuated it was my fault. I don’t live near any of my long time friends. I’m absolutely miserable most days now. And I feel awful for it.
Pregnancy has changed my body in ways that makes me feel like I don’t know myself. I told my boyfriend about some symptoms I’ve been feeling and he keeps urging me to test but I tell him no even though I’ve tested twice and they’re negative. But I did take them in the afternoon so if there is anything in my system my pee could be too diluted in the evenings. It’s not that I don’t want to be pregnant I just don’t want to find out early just for me to lose it. I’d rather just not know. I’d rather be one of those women who finds out when they’re in labor because I’m already tired of the stress and disappointment.
Everyone either gets extremely positive or extremely negative when I bring up just things I feel in my body so I stopped talking to people about it. I hate that I can’t trust my own body anymore. I hate that I can’t bring myself to be optimistic even if I wanted to be.
I should have a two months old baby but I don’t. I should be in my second trimester but I’m not. I’m not sad, I’m pissed.