Around Thanksgiving last year, my 22 year old daughter Izzy started complaining about her back hurting. We just assumed she pulled a muscle or had a pinched nerve. After a couple weeks, the pain seemed to be getting worse. She went to urgent care on a Friday and they confirmed she probably had a pinched nerve. They gave her some meds. That following Monday (Dec. 18) she was in a lot of pain, so I rushed her to the hospital. It was her back and her left arm now bothering her. They blew her off and said that she was fine. I insisted that she get an MRI or cat scan done. Finally at my request they did a cat scan on her back and said they didn't see anything wrong. They said it's probably a pinched nerve, gave her more meds and sent us home.
The week of Christmas everything changed. She woke up each night covered in sweat. On the 28th, her heart was beating fast, she was extremely pale, and had two knots appear on the left side of her neck and one under her left underarm. I brought her to a different hospital.
When we got to the ER, they immediately took her to a room. Her vitals were extremely high (170 heart rate) from the pain she was in. They were considering that she could have meningitis or mono. They wanted to get tests ran right away. They admitted her, and did a spinal tap and MRI. 2 days later (Saturday) the doc said they found a large tumor on her spine. Can't say if it's cancer yet, she would need a biopsy first. They informed us that she would be moved that day to their sister hospital that specializes in cancer.
When we arrived, she was put on the neurology ward in a regular room. They immediately put her on a lot of meds. She was on so many pain drugs, (Oxy, Dilaudid, muscle relaxers, Morphine, Xanax, etc.) that I kept asking, "Is this end of life? Can she overdose from all these drugs?" They would respond with, "no, it's just to keep her comfortable and we're trying to get her heart rate down." On New years day they gave her Ativan. She responded horribly to it. It was a rough day. She was hallucinating and freaking out all day and night. The next day she told them to NEVER give her that again. They told her when we first arrived that anything she didn't want to take, they would respect and not put it in her charts to receive. They would put it under allergies. We assumed they would do so as they said they would.
They finally did the biopsy on Wednesday the 3rd. When she came back from surgery, she wouldn't wake up. She slept all day Wednesday and most of Thursday. I was really concerned.They kept adding more pain meds to her chart. I again was scared she would forget to breathe. That night she wasn't breathing properly and her vitals were going down. She had to be rushed to NeuroICU. They got her stable and explained it was from all the different drugs. They explained that it's trial and error. They're trying to figure out what works for her and they decided to put her on a drip line of Dilaudid. They still gave her other drugs but Dilaudid seemed to help her pain somewhat. They also said she had a spot on her lungs what looked like pneumonia starting.
All week she was constantly telling us that she was losing feeling in her legs and her left arm. By Saturday of that week she was paralyzed. They finally took her for an MRI and saw that the tumor had spread up and down her spine and to her ovaries, and it was stealing her blood supply. She would need emergency surgery asap. They of course came to explain what was happening and the surgeon informed me that Ativan would be used during surgery. I immediately told him no, and that she is allergic to it and it was supposed to be on her allergy list. I explained to him what happened when she received it before. On Sunday they rushed her into surgery and cut the blood supply to the tumor. It was too dangerous to try and remove any of the tumor. They didn't know if the paralysis was permanent, but they were hopeful that the surgery would work. It didn't we would later find out.
When she returned from surgery, she was out of control. She was violent and cursing at me. In 22 years I had never heard her curse, but she was fluent! She was hallucinating bad and kept freaking out. It was scary to watch. They decided to give her some meds to make her to sleep, to help her heal. For 2 straight days my baby screamed blood curdling screams, she would cry out "mommy, mommy" while she slept. She screamed so much and so loud that anyone in ear shot were questioning what was going on. It was heartbreaking to witness. I thought she was having a bad reaction to the anesthesia. I later found out that they were giving her Ativan anyway. They NEVER put it in her chart as an allergy the week before, and the doctor disregarded what I said about not giving her that. They had other options they could have used but he still chose to do what he wanted. I only found out because the nurse mentioned that she would be right back with her Ativan. The nurse had no knowledge that my daughter refused that medication previously. I informed her not to give that drug to her. She went and spoke with the attending physician who changed it to haldol and ketemine. That was Monday night. By Wednesday she finally calmed down from screaming, so they decided to try and wake her up.
When she woke up she could no longer speak properly, use her left arm, or move her legs. Her fingers and toes were turning black. They said it was from a certain med she was on. That it's normal. A lay person could see something was horribly wrong.
Everyday we would see up to 30 doctors. I say we, because I never left her side. One would say one thing while another would say something else. It was confusing and scary. We still didn't have a diagnosis. We just knew she had cancer. They suspected stage 4 but couldn't say until pathology came back. It was traumatic and a nightmare. It went from a diagnosis of a pinched nerve to stage 4 cancer in a matter of a week. WTF?
We finally got the diagnosis on Tuesday the 9th.. Stage 4 anaplastic large cell lymphoma. Very rare and aggressive. They said they were starting chemo immediately. They gave her the first dose that Wednesday night. We had hope. It was a rollercoaster of terror, but the doctors kept saying that she could beat this. I googled everything I could and prayed for a miracle. It's always been my girl and I, so I was desperate for her to live through this. She wasn't just my daughter, she was literally my everything.
By week 2, she needed blood on a daily basis. She couldn't eat or drink. She couldn't relieve herself. She couldn't move. She couldn't speak clearly to explain her needs or wants. Her breathing was shallow. Her vitals were not normal. They would go down and then jump extremely high. She was so out of it, that they had to come to me concerning everything. Her oxygen was dropping significantly and they had to keep changing out the masks and oxygen levels to help her breathe. They kept changing her meds and she had multiple complications from that. They couldn't find any good spots on her arms to put her IVs anymore, and her legs were so swollen that they couldn't locate a useable spot anywhere. They put it on her right side of the neck. During all this she had multiple medical emergencies. One example is they said that spot on her lungs wasn't pneumonia but they now suspected a small blood clot. That medicine she was given would hopefully help, the only problem was that medication was causing problems for her back surgery. A few days later we found out it was blood and it was completely filled up in her chest. She was drowning in her own blood. They couldn't do surgery right away because she would bleed out since her platelets were so low even while receiving blood transfusions. That blood was somehow going into her lungs. I was floored. Everyday I would ask about it and I was told it was getting better, nothing to worry about. In fact the doctor said that very morning it had cleared up significantly. Imagine my shock when the critical team comes rushing in that evening to do ultrasounds on her and tells me they suspect it's why her breathing was going downhill.
On Monday she was transferred to a MICU room on a different floor. This floor felt uneasy to me. There was death all around and you could see it. They said that this floor was where her main doctors were, so that she would get the best care. Now they introduce fentanyl to her med regimen. They explained it that it would help with her pain. She would be allowed so much every hour if needed.
The next day they decided to do the surgery to put a tube in her chest to drain the blood. She now had an extremely dangerous back surgery, staples running up her entire back with tubes, a huge scar under her arm from the biopsy with tubes, and now a huge tube coming out her chest. Her fingers and toes at this point were in a stage of necropsy. But they couldn't do anything about it. They would just have to fall off in time. It was devastating. My daughter was a trooper through out this whole time. She never complained or was negative. She was just scared when she understood what was going on. Honestly I've never seen so much courage in my life.
When it came to her pain meds she was only on fentanyl and Dilaudid drip. She would only receive it when she asked. That was her rule. She was scared she would overdose or become hooked on it and didn't want that monster on her back. She would be in so much pain but would just sit through it. Her vitals were better, but when the pain would become to much to bare, her heart rate would go into the 150 to 170 range. As soon as she got some meds it would go down to the teens to low twenty's.
On Thursday night she had a new nurse. He would administer pain meds even when she didn't request it. I saw him give her shot when she was sleeping. I walked in on him. I asked him if she requested it as I saw she was asleep and he said no. He stated he was trying to keep her comfortable. I asked him not to unless she asks. He didn't listen.Throughout the night as we slept, he would give her meds that she didn't even need. He gave her haldol. She only received that for two days after her back surgery. No one had given her that since. He would give her a shot of fentanyl behind it. I later found this out while talking with her doctors and from her records.
That Friday morning she started having these weird episodes, what later looked like seizures to me. Her vitals would drop and she would go into a deep stare. They blamed the meds. It was constant apologies for her being over medicated again. Even the doctor didn't understand why he gave her so much.She had 4 separate episodes before they (at my constant request) sent her to get a MRI done.
She had a blood clot in her brain. Again they said nothing to worry about. But after experiencing what we went through already, I was highly concerned. As I should have been. They kept apologizing and said they would change her medication up again. I told them it wasn't the medicine it was the nurse. I couldn't understand why he would give her two doses of haldol when she didn't need it. The nurse said my daughter was anxious and thought it would help. My daughter was sleeping so how could she have been anxious. I went off. Something in my spirit was telling me to get her out of there. But how could I when she was hooked up to all these tubes. She was suffering and I couldn't help her. The only thing I could do was use my voice to try and protect her and be her advocate. The next day Jan. 20th, I woke up after a couple hours of sleep, and I knew something was wrong. She was awake and trying to talk. Her vitals were back at a steady 170 with high blood pressure and a low oxygen number so I knew she was in pain. I could feel it in every bone of my body something was different that day. I felt my baby didn't have long as I thought cancer was winning. I called all of our family to come see her. I can't explain it. At one point I pulled one of her doctors out of her room and begged him to tell me what was happening. Shoot it to me straight. He kept saying she's always been critical but she would pull through. He had so much hope.
They gave her some meds to help bring her vitals down and it started to work again. Her vitals started going from 160 to 150. At this point she was having a brain scan done in her room to see what the episodes were exactly. She was awake but could no longer move from her neck down. Which had just started the 2 days before. She had a blood infection and they had to move the pic line from the right side of her neck to the left side but we're unsuccessful because she had obstructions there (2 huge tumors) They had to put the new line back on the right side in the back of the neck. I don't know what happened since I wasn't allowed in the room. I do know my daughter said after they finished, she wasn't able to feel anything but her face. She never turned her head again.
During that day she kept having flem and spit from the congestion she had due to the chest infection and surgery. I would sit there and suck it out for her. No problem, I had been doing it for days with no complaints on my end. The doctors were coming in and out constantly all day to check her brain test and at one point the doctor seeing me and my nephew take shifts suctioning her out said he wanted to try a new medicine she had never received. My daughters nurse interrupted him and said that she didn't think that it was a good idea. They went back and forth for a few minutes and I stepped in and said, it was fine, I would sit there and suction out forever if I had to. Something felt different in this exchange as well. In all of 24 days of being in the hospital, I never saw a nurse challenge a doctor. I immediately went to the computer, where the nurse had typed in the order for this drug, and googled it. The first thing that popped up, was not to give this drug to someone with high blood pressure or high heart rate. It causes a person's heart rate to shoot up high quickly. It was too late. They already administered it to her. Since her heart rate was already high it caused her to go into cardiac arrest. I just stood there in shock screaming is she in cardiac arrest? To which the doctor finally responded "I'm sorry, yes"
They ushered me and my nephew out of the room so they could work on her. After about 30 minutes they called my phone and told me she flatlined but they got her heart beating again. I went flying back in that room screaming at them. I refused to leave the room. She was now on life support, but there was no hope for her to ever wake up again. After consulting with my family and her doctors, and looking at where her vitals were, I decided to pull the plug. She passed within seconds. I feel like the doctor should have listened to the nurse, but his ego would not allow him to. I feel like he's somehow responsible, but at the same time I saw what was happening to her on a daily basis and what cancer was doing to her body. I also witnessed a lot of negligence too on their part. I've been going back and forth since January 20th, about contacting an attorney and seeing if I have a case. I requested an autopsy to be performed, because I wanted to know what all was wrong with her. They informed me they normally don't do that because of the cancer. I argued with them and said I wanted one anyway. I wanted to know what happened. I was trying to understand this whole situation. 25 days prior it was just supposed to be a pinched nerve, but it wasn't. They explained I would have to pay for the autopsy, and I was okay with that. The next day after she passed away, I received the phone call to give my permission for an autopsy. They said it would take a couple days and would let me know when it was finished so the funeral home could pick up her body.
I've been calling for months about the autopsy report with no luck. Here we are in May, I go to the hospital to get the autopsy results and it's all of five pages. It's not even an autopsy report. It doesn't even state her cause of death. It's just bullshit paperwork. All it mentions is the necropsy to her fingers and toes and her basic info like height and weight. I'm so angry right now. I have her medical records, and I noticed on the 19th of January they finally put she was allergic to Ativan. There's a lot wrong with this situation. I even asked for a CD of all her images, from pathology. What I received only two images come up. Everything else is blocked from opening. I know my daughter took multiple MRIs, ultrasounds,and CAT scans in those three and a half weeks. There's no way it's only two images.
I counted all the times the nurse gave my daughter pain meds that Thursday night and it was double what any other nurse had given her at any other time plus with other drugs she didn't need at that time. I found out that haldol and fentanyl is something they give to patients that's in end of life care. Which I was constantly told my daughter was not. Her death certificate states she passed from lymphoma related cardiac arrest. I'm just so confused on what to do. I feel like I'm letting my daughter down if I don't look into this further.
I'm sorry this a novel. I couldn't just ask a simple question with out the back story for you to understand. It was so much more believe me, this was the short version!
Do I have a case or should I just move on and accept my daughter died from cancer related complications? Thank you....

In a post on another subreddit, I argued that norms governing sexuality, and social taboos placed on both men and women have same bases, and that western society ultimately values women for their physical beauty and holes, just like elsewhere.
Some people were struggling to get my point. So, I’ll explain it by comparing sexual norms to dietary restrictions and traditions. One person argued how it’s in human nature that such norms arise and culture shapes itself in a way that benefits the society. I will debunk these ludicrous arguments.
What is normal to eat? Try slaughtering a cow in India, and people will slaughter you.
But seriously, the answer depends on your geographical location.
Do you believe that consuming pork is right? If answer is yes then Amazing. Cool. Great.
But nearly 2 billion muslims, another 1 billion Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, as well as conservative Jews not just disagree with you, but they also believe it’s immoral of you to consume pork.
Muslims and Jews are themselves meat consumers, but they have made a list of animals that are justified to kill and consume. Pork isn’t part of that list.
Westerners have also made a list, and eating cats or dogs isn’t part of it, but people in china and east asia consume dog and cat meat, something westerners find extremely hard to tolerate, and almost puke at the thought of it.
Hindus is India have literally publicly lynched Muslims for killing cows, and Jains of India are that strict about veganism and opposed to cruelty against animals, that they don’t even kill ants.
You also have vegans among you who believe that killing animals is immoral. There are meat consumers who recognise that consuming meat is immoral but they can’t give up on it, because they grew up in a culture where it was normal.
I was born in a muslim country, and still find myself reluctant to consume pork, given my socialisation.
It applies to norms governing sexuality as well. Premarital sex and cohabitation can cost you life or social ostracisation in a good number of places. It stretches to homosexuality as well. Try being an openly homosexual person in Russia or even worse Afghanistan. It was literally considered a mental illness just 50 years ago in the United States.
Now, is consuming meat part of human nature?
Biologically humans are animals. We are classified as mammals. In sociology, humans are characterised as social animals. Humans are omnivores, in that they are capable of eating both plants and animals, so it’s very well part of our nature. But what is natural can’t always be moral. There is a thing called naturalistic fallacy, where you think what is natural is also moral.
If Hindus start consuming cows, and muslims start eating pork, what it would change about their society? If these societies accept premarital sex, and homosexuality, what it will change about them? In what ways does disallowing people from consuming cows, engaging in premarital sex, and being homosexual harms Hindu society?
These norms are not benefiting their societies. There’s no rationality behind them in 21st century, yet they cling on to them. Similarly, you westerners are doing the same thing. Whatever is the norm in your society is also arbitrary and subjective. Who knows what would be the moral state of world in next 100 years? What’s unimaginable right now, just like gay marriage was once an unimaginable nightmare for conservative westerners. Our ancestors never thought that one day we will question rigid gender roles, but here we are.

Everyone needs to read this. Info on todays battle!!
Seen this some Where else Not me. Not my post. Just trying to spread this information. Vote this up so everyone can see it!!!!!!
From another post (spread it around):
Are you asking yourself: "what now?" Here's an answer in "ape speak" for what we are waiting for. Please like and comment so others can see this post.
Okay so we held out with FFIE and ended the week nearly 2300% above what it was last week. This by itself is an amazing feat which accomplished 2 things:
We kept FFIE above 1 dollar, so it stays listed on NASDAQ (until it drops to 0.10 per share for 30 days which isn't likely for quite a while).
We made intentions for a short sale known to those who were betting it would be delisted, and eventually drop in price.
So what happens next?
Well, now the hedge funds have a decision to make:
They can cut their losses, and buy up the shares at current market value (this is the beginning of a cascade where we all get rich). Essentially, any share that a hedge fund purchases to mitigate their losses will increase the value of our shares.
They can continue to hold their shorted stock "loans" and hope the market drops again next week. If this is the case, we will need to continue to hold our shares until they crack (they pay a lot of money for each day they continue to short)
As of 1 h before market close, there were still 36 million shares being shorted.
What does this mean? It means that because Hedges believe our efforts are short lived, they didn't cancel their shorts and buy back their shorted stocks.
They are pretty much betting that the "meme" will die down soon and they can buy back their shorted stocks at a much lower price than it is right now.
Say, for example, the flame dies out, and people begin selling because they are scared or burnt out, and the share price on Monday (or aftermarket today) drops, they will be able to cover their shorts at a MUCH lower price.
This DOES NOT mean that the stock still wont jump up. But it does mean that it will jump up much less than it would've had we held out at 1 dollar. The higher the price per share, the more it will jump when the hedge funds are forced to buy back their shorts.
In the end, we only need to hold out long enough for the fees that they pay to become more expensive than it would be to just buy back their shares. Either way, they bleed. But one way, we take their money and get very wealthy.
Once one hedge fund cracks, and covers their shorts by purchasing shares, all of them will follow as it will become too expensive for all the hedge funds to hold out. This creates a "parabolic curve" as many have likely heard on various posts. Once the first hedge fund folds, this becomes officially known as a "squeeze." We hold until eventually all the hedge funds are either bankrupt (for not paying back their shorts), which will then be covered by the federal government, or until they all take MASSIVE losses and buy back their shorts.
Now, as for today, many people likely sold at peak, or once they started seeing red. Especially those who have never experienced a squeeze before (I was there in 2021 and sold out of fear). If this fits your description, please read the following:
The drop today was a maneuver known as a "SHORT LADDER."
This is a technique used by hedge funds to attempt to squash a short squeeze, and bring the price down of the stock. This is the hedge funds attempting to break you, using psychological warfare. Heres how they do it:
Step 1: They increase the share price (usually very quickly) to excite retail investors and make them think what we are doing is working. We saw this today starting about 1h after market opened this morning bringing price from 2.69 up to 3.87.
Step 2: Quickly sell every stock they bought to bring down the price to what it was before. This began approximately 2 hours after market opened today.
Now theoretically, this should only bring down the price to what it was before they bought right? Well with retail squeezers (us dumb apes), you see the shares dropping and start selling your shares in the hopes that you can still walk away with some earnings if you do it quickly enough. This is where they win.
If we all hold, the day ends at 2.69. But instead we ended at about 1.00. Meaning their ladder attack worked so well, that you monkeys got scared and sold your shares. Many of us (myself included) held out to give us another try next week and keep the flame alive.
Step 3: The hedge fund bears will try again, and again, and again (to look like a downwards staircase on the graph, hence the term "ladder") to make the fear worse, and worse, and worse, until there's nothing left and they can get away with shorting a company with very minimal losses.
Our solution, is to mimic exactly what DFV (AKA roaringkitty) did in 2021 with GameStop. We simply hold our shares. Will it put more pressure and make the spike come quicker if we buy more shares? Of course. But the reality is, at 2300% over what they shorted at, if we just even hold where we are at, eventually a hedge fund will fold and our shares will skyrocket.
Now to answer the big ticket question: When will we sell? The answer is as follows: after hedge funds crack, we will see the number of shorted shares decline dramatically. You cant base it off of the price of the share because they can manipulate those numbers to make it LOOK very promising.
Heres the link where you can check FFIE shorted shares numbers: https://fintel.io/ss/us/ffie
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As of right now, the exact number is 36, 342,623. It has hardly changed since we began our squeeze. Once this number begins dropping, we broke a hedge fund and the cascade has begun.
The only risk at this point, is if we sell. We will be our own worst enemies. They will use tricks to make us sell. They will manipulate us. They will flood media with articles describing how we failed. They will use every tool in their power to scare us. But in the end, if we HOLD OUR GOD DAMN SHARES, they cant win.
There will be red days. There will be shutdowns of subreddits (like wallstreetbets back in 2021). There will be news articles. (like the hundreds already published demeaning us). There might even be threats of legal action (like they did to DFV). However, short squeezes are 100% legal, and will make us rich + make billionaire cheaters bleed.
Good luck fellow FFIE advocates. Buy at the dips to get back in. Hold your shares to ensure profits. And no matter what, remember,
APES. TOGETHER. STRONG.

Howdy l've been role-playing and writing in general forat least a decade. I am a Male who can play male and female characters. I have original ideas all over and a lot of Fandoms I'm in, which I'Il include below. I'm looking for OCXOC. Every character must be 18+ I have plenty of original characters and ideas along with fandom plots.
For original ideas, i like horror and apocalypse with action and depending romance. I do have a variety. I really like monsters and creepy things from the horror genre like vampires and Tentacles, and l even have my own idea set up in modern times dealing with vampires and hunters and all of that i also enjoy eldritch type horror. I also like old-school slasher films and space sci-fi horror similar to the Alien Franchise.
Now on fandoms! To get some other things down, l only play OC. The anime fandoms i like are Jojo's, Chainsaw Man, Naruto, JJK, Soul Eater, and more. I'm well versed in the Jojo's, Naruto, and JJK, and soul eater fandoms, though it's been a while since ï've stopped keeping up with soul eater. Other fandoms im in include Percy Jackson, Call of Duty, Marvel, and DC.
I tend to use character sheets to describe my character. These are very thorough and usually consist of names, backgrounds, and personalities, along with an in-depth look on appearance. More so on appearances, I don't usually use picture references, but I will if you would like me to.
The types of characters I write are the lone wolf type that has some sad past, which leads them to potentially go off the rails and gain a villain arc.I like all types of tropes, especially enemies to lovers or rivalry. I also really enjoy opposites attracted as a whole from either opposite personality or something else they would be opposites in. Enemies to lovers takes my heart, though.
I love seeing the characters go past theurge to ultimately hate each other and/or go past their usual way of disliking the others' lineage or upcoming I also love good written trauma moments. Like character death's, moments of pain and strife only to see the characters to deal and either be consumed or overcome them. I tend to either come up with original ideas for these scenes or use anime scenes as inspiration with narrative tweaks.
REQUIREMENT
I think my two biggest requirements are creativity and good pacing. Like any story, I feel these two things are very necessary to make a good story. Now, by Creativity, I don't mean you need to bring absolute craziness into the story, but abilities, character etc need to have some good genuine thought put into them. Along with that comes good pacing, which means I don't personally care about response length, and mine will vary from scene to scene accordingly.
I'm pretty much done if you have any questions. I'm here, and I'd love to hear back from you in chat the password is your favorite color. Supply it in chat only.

Hello
Could I get some advice and guidance on what all these tests might mean and what I need to learn and know should my Endocrinologist head down the route of TRT, which is where she has indicated over the past couple of months whilst doing tests?
I apologise for the length, but I have tried to cover it as much as possible, as I accept nothing is simple. If more information is needed that I have missed, please ask.
Thanks

Stats

• Age: 45
• Height: 6ft 7
• Waist: 50 inches
• Weight: 25 stone / 159kg
• Body fat: 29.3% (using https://www.calculator.net/body-fat-calculator.html)
• BMI: 39.7

History
I was overweight for a good 20 years; we think this was when my thyroid started causing issues, and it took many years for the NHS to even consider that a problem. I also had no morning erections for a good ten years. I honestly cannot remember the last time I felt hungry, and that was after either an hour of weight lifting or hiking for a full day in the Austrian Alps (the longest one was a 10km round trip and a 1200m climb and then descent).
It took several years to sort the thyroid, and I was still unable to lose weight, although other things had resolved themselves. My GP refused to investigate further, saying simply I was too young. Plus, back in 2019, my Testosterone level was 17.1nmol/L, and now it is down to 7.5, and apart from being a few years older, nothing else has changed weight-wise or fitness, etc. I have had many Covid jabs as my father was extremely vulnerable, and I was his carer.
I am now under a different GP practice that started from scratch and said that, in their opinion, something underlying was causing the myriad of symptoms. They started testing and thought she knew what was wrong. It was agreed that, in computer terms, there was a tick box that needed ticking, but finding which one would take time.
However, their final idea saw her ask for guidance from Endocrinology; they said to do nothing and that they would take over. This was in 2023. However, Testosterone issues are an ultra-low priority in my area, so my expected appointment is in 2025.
For the past few months, I have seen an Endocrinologist privately with the agreement of my GP, who has done all the requested tests and agreed that if any prescriptions are needed, they will do it.
In addition to the above, dieticians have cleared me, having seen them privately and on the NHS.
I spent a year with a personal trainer at a bodybuilder gym, working out with him three times a week with no results and stopped through no results but with growing mental and physical fatigue. Walking 10,000 steps a day is not a problem for me.
I have had this all on hold for a while, what with COVID-19 and then a relative's very poor health. It is now time to focus back on myself, I think. I sleep a good 8 hours a night and get up feeling worse than going to bed – although randomly, I do have bouts of insomnia.
As mentioned to my GP and Endocrinologist, I have no problem putting in the hard work at the gym, but when that hard work does absolutely nothing for muscle mass or body shape, etc., it gets very depressing. I guess that does give me one direct question: How long do I need to leave it before going back if my Endocrinologist prescribes TRT—do I need to let my body recover a bit before stressing it by doing weights, etc.?
Tests (Using UK NHS Scales)
Testosterone has been done now 6 or 7 times, always within 0.2 or below and always done between 08:50 and 09:10 in the morning.
In addition, she requested an ultrasound, and the results came back as 29mm AP diameter and 19mm AP diameter, respectively, for the testes.
TestResultNHS Reference Range Testosterone7.5 nmol/L8.6 – 29.0 Calculated Free Testosterone180 pmol/L SHBG25 nmol/L18.3 - 54.1 Free T4 level21.7 pmol/L11 - 23 TSH level0.49 miu/L0.27 - 4.5 Haematocrit0.4190.387 – 0.492 Creatinine level71 umol/L59 - 104 Urea level3.9 mmol/L2.5 - 7.8 Potassium level4 mmol/L3.5 - 5.3 Albumin level39 g/L35 - 50 Total Protein level7460 - 80 Sodium level142 mmol/L133 - 146 Insulin-like growth factor 1 level11.5 nmol/L11.1 - 27.7 Growth hormone level0.1 ug/L Prolactin level241 mu/L86 - 324 Cortisol level Dexamethasone suppression test19 nmol/L Cholesterol level5.0 mmol/L Triglyceride level2.4 mmol/L HDL1.1 mmol/L LDL2.8 mmol/L Cholesterol / HDL ratio4.5 mmol B12563ng/l197 – 771

Hello! Looking for my forever person! Someone who shares my feelings and desire to want to be in a relationship. I'm a 6' 1'' American. I am very kind and understanding to others. I tend to be a good empathizer and listener when it comes to other people having issues and helping them overcome issues. I really strive to make people happy. I am very fun loving and deeply enjoy showing people a good time! Work related stuff I sort of feel like sharing is that I have my associates degree in I.T. as well as a Bachelor's in Cyber Security and currently work an office job that has pretty good pay. This was especially true when I got promoted a couple of times in the past two years. I've been rewarded many time and recognized for good work frequently.
The reason for my preference towards Indians is because at my previous university in Northern Virginia I was able to join it's Indian Student Association when they had a booth at a club rush event I stumbled upon one night before my statistics class. They said they took anyone so I joined wanting to see and enjoy a new culture. I really enjoyed doing stuff there and made great friends and almost got an internship thanks to one of my friends I made there...... then I got news that I would be moving again with my parents which made me sad, that is a story for anyone who wants to hear it another time.
For hobbies I enjoy playing PC games, (such as Helldivers 2, Paladins, Cyberpunk 2077, RTS games, etc.. and always willing to try new games) board games, cooking, and trying new foods (especially Indian food since I love spicy foods). One thing to note with my eating, I am not vegetarian, though I do not mind vegetarians and am willing to do that sort of thing around family if need be, though I have mushroom and peanut allergies. I have been learning Hindi on Duolingo. In my free time I like to take pictures and am highly interested in photography. I do not smoke/or vape and I drink socially and mix cocktails. I like walking, hiking, window shopping, traveling and snuggling. While I have no issues with someone who is Hindu and such, however unless your family is okay with someone who is Catholic like me I would prefer if someone is either Christian or Catholic. Just to avoid potential family disagreements and drama.
As for what I know about Indian culture, I only saw a couple of Bollywood films Bhool Bhulaiyaa and Jab We Met. I am really interested in watching more Bollywood films and learning trivia about the actresses and actors. I am aware of Salman Khan’s crazy antics for example. Another Bollywood film I would want to watch is RRR and Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani. I would love to watch it with someone and learn more about it. I do get to see some stuff about it on twitter from some accounts I follow but I don’t really understand it much. Many of the actors and actresses I hear come up are Rajinikanth, Sri Devi, Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, and Keerthi Suresh. Again I am willing to learn more about all the interesting details about Bollywood and such. I am familiar with some parts of Indian history like the Kargil War, the recent farmers protest and the horrific Goan Inquisition. I would like to start out slow as a casual acquaintance and test the waters with someone. I’m not comfortable rushing headfirst into a relationship and I understand that neither would you, so being friends first is a must. I really want to get to know someone so that we can both be compatible. I am somewhat open to long distance relationships so whether you are from India, UK, etc don't be discouraged to hmu. But I would prefer someone already in the U.S. Lastly I don't want someone who'll waste my time. I don't like being led on and dumped out out the blue. Please be serious and committed.
I can talk on reddit though I like talking off reddit. Contact me anytime if you are feeling the same way about finding a life long partner and feel free to ask me any questions. :)

Shabbat Shalom everyone,
Last week, we looked at some verses that support veganism. In Genesis we can read that man and beast were commanded to eat herbs, seeds and fruits from the start of creation. After the flood, then the animals are permitted to consume themselves. In Isaiah we see the picture of a new earth where the animals also return to consuming plants. Another good reason I find to be vegan is the example of Daniel and his friends; they chose not to defile themselves with the flesh of the animals and the wine of the King of Babylon because they were offered to other gods. Not to the God of Abraham, Isaack and Jacob.
My reasons for becoming vegan were at the start to support my wife, but ultimately, I ended up getting more benefits. Doing no hurt is a great bonus too. As a type 1 diabetic, I used to struggle to control my blood sugar, but when I stopped consuming the flesh of animals, my insulin consumption reduced by half and I was “cured” from neuropathy and arthritis. Within a week, I noticed significant changes. The arthritis was so bad in my shoulders and hips that I though I was down and out for the count in my early fifties. The arthritis took about 3 months to disappear, first in my hands and feet, then even the most chronic in my shoulders and hips. Even the rheumatologist preached to me the benefits of a vegan diet to help counter the arthritis. She preached to me that eliminating flesh from my diet would reduce my ailment to a manageable status without drugs and she was right. I thank Yah for the new lease on life. All these pleasant results were done without any drugs or medications. I’m a believer!
Plant based whole foods can make a real difference. Try the 10-day vegan challenge, and like Daniel, his friends, and myself you will look better and have a better countenance just like they did while in Babylon (Daniel 1:15). Enough on that, let me change to a different kind of witness.
God speaks to his people, no matter where or who they are. He might speak through a prophet, like Moses or Yeshua. He speaks to his people through visions and dreams. He speaks in plain words sometimes. He even speaks to the false prophets who claim to speak in his name. What is the difference between a believer and a doubter? The difference is when God calls, the believer listens. The doubter instead of listening, will raise more questions: Did I really hear that? Did the Creator of the Universe speak to me? What can I do to make a difference?
Can doubters be believers. No, they can’t. Doubters and believers are contradictions in terms. If a believer is still on the fence so to speak, he or she is not a believer. If we pick and choose what we accept and reject in the Torah or in Yeshua’s teachings, we are still on the fence and didn’t choose which side we are on. Doubt is from the father of lies. Doubt is the weapon of choice in disinformation campaigns. We are exposed to these every day through the media, advertising and the propaganda of the for-profit corporations of the world.
They will say things like “Use this product and you will _______________ (insert your greatest desire in this blank)”. The blank can be filled with: popularity offers, or worse shaming a person for not having the right hair, color, mood, car: whatever. All of which are untrue. For profit corporations have been deceiving the masses since they found out that by associating themselves with the popular elites of the world, through sports personalities, social media influencers, even politicians, they can profit from their followers by association. For example, they will pay a celebrity to endorse their own brand. The celebrity will then lie to their own followers saying things like “I always wear this brand.” Or “I drink this brand”. The follower or fan then sees their idol, and then imitate him or her. Happens billons of times every day that an idol makes a product more popular, and the product fills the pockets of the corporation that created it. That’s capitalism. Fooling the masses by lies, half-truths, and doubts.
I wonder how much Donald Trump is paid every time he flashes a Diet Coke or shows up at McDonalds? One thing is certain, he doesn’t do it for free. Everything about the man, even the presidency was for his own gain, and not for the people he was supposed to represent. Even turning clemency into a risk to the people by releasing convicted perpetrators for a price.
Yeshua teaches us that we need to love one and hate the other (Luke 16:18). Idols profit only the idol makers of the world. Elohim gives to his people gifts greater than gold and silver. Ask the Father to give you these. If you’re sincere, He will answer.
Don’t take it from me! Prove all things and judge for yourself. Let the spirit lead you where it wants you to be.
Faith in God’s promises brothers and sisters. Let’s not bend to the ways of the world. Instead of bending, let us be broken instead.
Yeshua is our master, savior and rabbi, we need no other man to lead us!
Shalom, VN

A/N: yeah I changed up the Alliance admiral's name a teeny tiny bit because it really bugged the shit out of me. Not a lot, it's still basically the same name, but now I can't get sued for using it. That change has been a long time coming, really.
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It was said that no plan ever survived contact with the enemy. That, at least in the case of Marcus Wayne’s infiltration of Neldia, was proven entirely true.
His ship, the Peacemaker, had undergone an extensive refit before its jump to Neldia to both modify its sensor signature and repair its failing Aegis barrier. The first objective succeeded. The second did not.
One day later, leaving the derelict Ultimate Vigil behind in deep space, the United Human Alliance courier ship Winged Deliverance logged a real space entry at the edge of the Neldia system. Its crew, having spent their waking hours plagued by hallucinations and enduring horrible nightmares as they slept, found this shift very welcome. The worst, though they could hardly believe it, was still yet to come.
“The Neldian fleet is mustering for war,” rumbled the man who had once held the title and security codes of an Alliance sector admiral. Now, he was a traitor to his homeland. “Security will be high.”
“No need to worry, Admiral,” said Marcus Wayne. “Your code will get us through.” It would not.
It took two hours for the Peacemaker, disguised as the Winged Deliverance, to be challenged by the Neldian Armada. “Transmit clearance code,” said an automated voice. Marcus took out a data disc with the admiral's clearance code on it.
“Hold,” said Terris. She was clad in black, her active camouflage offline to save battery, and she had been sitting at the passive sensor console for the past three hours. “Look at this.” A news broadcast popped up in front of Marcus Wayne and his officers. Sector Admiral Sheparda Dama, or at least he was once a sector admiral, had been tried and convicted of high treason.
“It was a secret trial,” Dama said, still in shock at the revelation. “I had no knowledge of this.”
“Well, that tracks, but what do we do now? What code gets us through?”
“Transmit clearance code,” the voice said again, “or adjust course.”
Dama thought for a moment. “Change course,” he said. “We’re not getting through.”
They did. A great sense of defeat took hold in the hearts of the crew. They would never reach the Neldian hypercom. Sheparda Dama, who would have gladly given his life in defense of humankind, would never get the chance to be the man who broke their chains.
The Peacemaker was halfway out of the Neldia system before Terris spoke again. “Hold it,” she said. “I have an idea.”
That was why she had been placed where she was. Clad in an airtight stealth suit. Inside a hollowed-out asteroid. On a ballistic journey to the heart of Neldian space. It was the most insane idea that Marcus Wayne had ever seen.
But, sometimes, insanity was a symptom of genius.
Terris flew past the Neldian Armada undetected. Many asteroids entered the inner system this way, flung by outer-system prospecting ships to the foundries and shipyards in Neldian orbit, and they were thrown and caught so frequently that only the most cursory of inspections was put upon each one. Terris passed the Alliance fleet entirely undetected.
Terris’ chameleon suit could mimic the sensor return of the precious metals it was buried in, at least enough to fool a probing scan, and the cuts made by Protectoral engineers had been so precise that Terris had fit inside there with barely a centimeter of space to spare. She was effectively entombed inside sixty meters of solid rock.
Interstellar espionage was not a job for the claustrophobic.
Finally, after days of waiting, the signal came. She was in range. A mental command triggered a series of shaped charges in the rock above her, if such directions existed in microgravity, and forty pea-sized explosives blasted a circular tunnel all the way to the asteroid surface. If just one of them had failed, that rock might have been her tomb.
Terris tried not to think about that as she began climbing her way out. A brief burst from her suit’s EVA thrusters was enough to start her on her way, and the tunnel out was wide enough for her to use her arms and legs to speed things up. Finally, after too long a wait, Terris saw the Neldian sun for the very first time.
There was fire in the distance. Comm chatter on every band. Warships burning hard for the outer system. The Coalition fleet was here.
She zoomed in, far more than she had ever had to before, and she could pick out the faintest flashes of blue as warships exploded in the black. A brief crawl around the asteroid, which also helped to warm up her muscles after days of inactivity, let her discern an attack force engaging the Alliance fleet. After a moment’s hesitation, weighing the risks, Terris activated her passive sensor suite to try and decrypt Alliance military chatter.
Instantly, her sensors were flooded with noise from the defensive bastions. The fleet base at the L5 point was loudest, its comm operators screaming indecipherably at fellow Alliance elements fighting in the black. Neldian orbit, where the hypercom station was, seemed to be the centerpiece of all the communications traffic. The hypercom, unsurprisingly, was being used as a relay for comm traffic all across the system. Terris made a note to hack its server banks for intelligence, and perhaps leave a timed virus or two to shut down the system after she was gone.
Her suit bleeped, alerting her that she was in optimum position to make the leap to the hypercom. She zoomed in on it, a red and spiked thing just like everything else the Alliance made, and calculated the right trajectory to land right on its metal surface.
Trying to jump from a moving asteroid out past Neldia’s rings and hit a hypercom station barely three hundred meters in diameter was like shooting a rifle from a jumbo jet in hopes of hitting a mosquito down on Earth. A nearly impossible shot, even with Coalition computers to help make the jump, and anyone lucky enough to make it would have been better served bankrupting their local casino at the slot machines.
Terris gave a command to her suit, activating a set of ion thrusters to boost her off the asteroid and adjust her course mid-flight. She’d never believed in luck.
She coasted silent and graceful past the particle guns in high orbit, like a majestic swan flying on a summer wind. Their sensor arrays were directed out, past her, to the far distant parts of space where a trillion tons of steel were locked in deadly battle. Terris really did wish she could smile at the moment. She was about to have unrestricted access to the biggest communications relay in the star system, able to send out viruses and receive vital intelligence that could cripple the Alliance fleet if placed in the right hands. Terris, confident as ever, knew they would be.
She would make the Neldian Armada burn, and they had no idea she was even coming.
She reached the hypercom station in just under a day, agonizingly slow for a woman like her, hovering just above its surface to avoid triggering pressure sensors. After that, it was simple enough to get inside. Terris found it almost trivial to bypass the airlock sensor grid and trigger the outer bulkhead to open unnoticed, its report to the command room destroyed before it ever arrived. Entering the station itself was easy after that.
Here, there was gravity. She could not hover like she had on the outside of the station. But here, there were no pressure sensors. She really had no need to hover.
The corridor she found herself in was large enough, though nothing like the expansive halls of a dreadnought, and a patrol of marines in powered suits trundled towards her obliviously. Terris had made the right call not to wear a Phantom powered suit. She ducked into an alcove, the chameleon suit concealing her from even their impressive sensor batteries, and they passed by with no clue at all.
Terris made it to the server banks with ease. Most of the hypercom’s security measures took the form of warships in orbit, clustered tightly around the planet to prevent exactly this scenario from happening, but those warships were off waging war. The station defenses were hopeless now that she was actually inside.
The data was encrypted, and she could neither access it nor copy it without potentially fatal consequences, but she wasn’t there to steal data. A brief, milliseconds-long connection to the primary server was all it took to riddle the entire system with custom-tailored computer viruses. The viruses were self-replicating, rather like an electronic version of the biological ones on Earth. They worked similarly, too, meant to latch onto outgoing communications signals and remain inert for a certain amount of time before activating and wreaking havoc across cyberspace.
Terris planned to leave the station in approximately thirty minutes. Shortly after that, the fireworks would begin. It was going to be beautiful.
She heard footsteps. A maintenance worker, no doubt. It was time for her to go. She disconnected from the server, taking pains to hide her involvement, and snuck out of the server room like a ghost in the night.
Next was the transmission array. This room was better-guarded, its door being flanked by marines, but Terris slipped inside by trailing behind an officer as he entered on some unknown pretext. After that, her daring and sleight of hand made sure Admiral Dama’s pre-recorded propaganda transmission was uploaded to the hypercom transmitter. It came with a set of instructions bearing the Admiralty’s seal, changed to be anonymous, to ensure as many people as possible heard his message.
In just under one standard hour, the United Human Alliance would be shaken to its very core. Terris had just made sure of it.
It took longer than she had expected for the door to open again and give her a chance to slip out. Terris had spent that time quite productively, downloading as many incoming and outgoing messages as she could to the internal hard drive just by her spinal cord. Even if they were encrypted, they’d be useful intelligence once Coalition codebreakers took a crack at them.
After that, it was trivial to slip past marine patrols and escape to the hull of the hypercom station. Terris found her ride, an Alliance warship by the name of Brightest Thunder, holding orbit just near the hypercom station. Admiral Dama, even if he was no longer an admiral, still had connections.
She charged her ion thrusters by tapping into the station reactor, an act which did not go unnoticed, but by then it was too late to respond. She had completed her incursion. The damage had been done. Perhaps if the Alliance acted swiftly and accurately, they could undo it, but Terris was a careful woman. She had covered her tracks well.
Waving one final goodbye to the crew of the hypercom station, Terris triggered her thrust pack and shot off into the ink.
“You must be my passenger.” A man in an Alliance captain’s uniform was waiting for her in the Brightest Thunder’s airlock. He wore a helmet and gloves, hermetically sealed to his airtight outfit, so he felt no effects from the vacuum of space. “I was sent by Sector Admiral Sheparda Dama,” he announced after a period of silence, “To transport you and whatever you may have safely to the Coalition fleet.” Nothing. Apart from the dull thudding of the ship’s railgun batteries, firing missiles at range to ward off a strike force of Coalition ships, the airlock was quiet as a ghost.
“You cannot expect me to endanger my life and the lives of my crew without at least some identification that you are who you claim to be!” Silence. Captain Senar Trevy had been standing in that airlock for three and a half hours, while his ship was tasked with screening Neldia and her eighteen billion inhabitants from harm, and he was just now wondering if he had been talking to a ghost.
“I am,” came a voice. Cold. Sterile. Inhuman. Exactly the kind Trevy expected from the secret spies of his former admiral.
“So you are.” Captain Trevy thought for a moment. He cycled the airlock. If his guest held hostile intent, one steel bulkhead would make no difference. “I’ve been stocking the crew with handpicked men and women since I received word of the operation,” he explained as they walked through the ship’s corridors. The crewmen he passed thought him insane. “I can’t vouch for them all, but the ship as a whole will obey me.” No response. Sometimes, Captain Trevy thought himself insane as well.
“This is my personal quarters,” he told the specter, stepping inside and sealing the door behind him. “I must warn you, for your own safety, it would be best not to leave it. The crew are mostly still Alliance loyalists.” He looked around, paying no heed to the decorated furniture or artificial sky, and finally shrugged and sighed. “Are you even here, still?”
Terris decloaked. She stood between him and the door, winged and cloaked in black like a demon of ancient myth. “I am.”
“You’re a black angel.” Senar Trevy, to his credit, kept his composure well. “A spy for the Ierad Republic.” He questioned her purpose here. They both knew it.
“You weren’t told?”
“I was told an alien would be coming aboard, but…” Trevy shrugged again, as if to say ‘what am I supposed to do?’ “The admiral vouched for you. That much is enough for me.” He also knew he had no choice in the matter. From what he knew about black angels, his ship had been lost the moment she boarded.
“I could have impersonated him,” said Terris, voice a perfect replica of Captain Trevy’s own. Even his own mother could not have told the difference. “And I’m trained to lie.” She was testing him, gauging his reaction to assess his personality. She was good at that.
“I could have you screened for deception,” Trevy countered, pointing up at a pearl-sized camera in the ceiling. Terris made a note that it was disabled. “And I could have had the technology officers vet your transmission.”
“I’m trained to lie well.” Terris sat down on Captain Trevy’s bed, a spartan thing compared to the sleeping quarters of most officers. There were no chairs in the room, so her options were few. She took off her helmet and tried to at least appear relaxed. In reality, she was anything but. “It comes with the job, really.”
“Fair,” Trevy chuckled, feigning calm. “I suppose the question now becomes whether or not you can trust me.”
“It’s a safe gamble.” Terris made a mental calculation. It would take her between thirty and fifty seconds to kill Captain Trevy, take the bridge, and vent the ship. That was a very safe gamble. “Besides, that’s what a peace treaty is.” Trevy looked confused. “A leap of faith. You trust your enemy to back their word, and you trust them to trust you as well. If we can’t get along here, can’t put aside our differences to work toward a common goal, then the Alliance will be right. And I hate it when they’re right.”
“I’m speaking to you now because I know they are wrong.” That came as no surprise to either of them. “You know, I was once a foreman of a labor crew in the munitions factories. The most productive unit in my sector.” That one did come as a surprise. “As a foreman, you get leeway to make certain decisions regarding the… well, I suppose they are slaves, under your command. Food intake and the like.” Captain Trevy looked pained when he brought up such memories. Terris wasn’t convinced that was how he really felt. “They use it to weed out any potential xeno sympathizers from the populace. Of course, at the time, I wasn’t so empathetic.”
“So you were a slave driver, and you beat your slaves to make them work. I hope every one of those shells was sabotaged.” Terris’ voice dripped with disdain. She had almost forgotten the Alliance captain was her enemy.
“No, I showed mercy,” Trevy defended himself. “I was generous.” This made Terris reconsider. Perhaps Senar Trevy could be an ally, if not a friend. “I won’t say I was a good man, but I wasn’t cruel. I was practical. Strong, healthy, well-treated workers are more productive than the beaten sacks of flesh in the other factories. My crew’s output was unmatched.”
“And?” Terris cocked her head inquisitively. For a high-ranking officer in the space navy of a genocidal regime, Senar Trevy really did not seem so bad. To be fair, however, she had set the bar pretty low.
“I was investigated for anti-human activity.” Terris could have predicted that. She almost did, too. “They sent me to the fleet, and my labor crew was reacquainted with the energy whips and pain beams.” There was no carrot for an Alliance labor slave. Only the stick. “Their productivity fell thirty percent in the first two weeks alone.” He sounded almost mournful as he said that. He was not lamenting the loss in productivity.
“You see,” said Trevy, “Hatred is not natural. It has to be caused, sustained, nurtured from the day a man is born until the day he dies.” With that, at least, Terris agreed. “And, as you’re about to see, a nation built around cruelty or prejudice cannot sustain itself. It will have to apply pressure to maintain its flawed status quo, like it did with me, and the pressure will build and build until it cannot build anymore.” He tapped a few buttons on the data disc in his hand. It began projecting an image of the battle for Neldia. He placed it on the bed next to Terris. “Now it’s breaking.”
“I wonder if they’ll find themselves in need of more shells.” Terris knew it wasn’t just shells. Every time a slave driver prioritized hatred over hard work, put cruelty over their quota, or even just bowed their head and obeyed the traditional dogma, they hurt the Alliance. Across nine worlds, with billions of slaves not working as they could have, things started to add up. “You know, for a superior species, your fleet is really getting its ass kicked right now. Might want to work on that.”
Captain Trevy nodded. His data disc beeped. He was needed on the bridge. “Agreed,” he said. “I hope this war ends soon, and to our mutual benefit. I’d hate to face you on the battlefield.” He picked up the data disc and turned to leave.
“Oh, forgot to mention, there’s a virus embedded in the transmissions you’ve received. Self-replicating. Nasty piece of work.” Terris shifted a bit in her seat. “Almost forgot about that.”
“Well, better to know now than when it’s activated,” Trevy smiled. “I’ll have Technology Officer Galdir investigate it.” With that, he left. His duty to the Alliance was nonexistent, but the men and women under his command still needed him. He had waited too long in the stateroom.
Terris, with nothing better to do, got to work on cracking the encryption in the transmissions she had copied. She failed. A transmission from deep in unknown space, sent from a dreadnought at the head of a task force known only as the Deep Expedition Fleet, was the only message she could read. Its contents, while troubling, mattered little at the moment. What was far more crucial, however, was the message Terris could not decipher. The military battle plan of Janus Ora’s personal armada.
The battle plan that, when analyzed on a Republic starship, would reveal its terrible secret too late.
The Coalition fleet was walking into a trap.
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In my 30s, I got very close to my dream career — not the exact job, but a job a lot of people use as a stepping stone to my dream job.
I loved that job, but unfortunately, the stress of the work brought into focus a number of problems I had been trying to ignore — mainly, alcoholism and trauma around some things that had happened in my childhood.
When I got laid off from that almost-dream job at 37, I had a bit of a breakdown, and then realized I need to get a handle on my problems. I decelerated to a related but less stressful/ prestigious career path and focused on getting sober and getting a handle on my emotions.
I'm now 41, feel strong in my sobriety, have done a ton of therapy, and now feel confident in both my support system and my ability to cope with life. I was recently laid off from my less stressful job, and part of me feels like the time is finally right to take another crack at my dream job, which I still miss and think about all the time. It's the only career I've ever wanted.
But another part of me feels like that's absurd — that I'm way too old to be trying to start something up, not quite from scratch, but close to it (I still have my body of work in my industry, but a lot of my old contacts and connections have moved on to other industries, fell out of touch when I was sobering up, or maybe don't have the greatest impressions of me due to my drinking and personal issues at the peak of my career). It also feels like it might be a really bad idea to take career risks in this current economy, and I should just find something stable and be thankful for the steady paycheck.
Have any of you dropped the career ball in a kind of competitive field and then picked it back up at a later date? How did it work out? Do you think it was the right move, or do you have regrets?
(I don't have any kids, I rent, and I am a single earner with some savings, if that factors into your considerations)

Me and my wife have been together since high school. Together for 14 years, married for 7. No kids yet.
For the last two years I started feeling that this relationship has become very stale and it doesn’t seem like we love each other anymore. There’s no more excitement in making surprises, buying gifts or having dinner dates together. All these things feel like a duty now.
We don’t fight, we are still friends and love each other, but that love feels more brotherly/sisterly than anything else.
I’ve started longing for a relationship that would make me feel in love again, to feel a deep connection with a person. It has gone as far as me having feelings for my co-worker. And instead of focusing on my marriage, I’m now constantly imagining my life with this co-worker, with whom, at least in my head, we have a deep connection.
NOTE: I have not acted on the co-worker relationship in any way, it’s just a hypothetical love story that I’ve been playing out in my head.
Long story short - I’ve been stuck in this loop for such a long time, that I now feel completely mentally drained and feel like my life is just not going anywhere. On one hand, I’m hoping that this is just a phase which will pass and things will go back to normal. On the other hand, I don’t think I can keep doing this for another two years. I’m also thinking that at least in theory, if I end things now, I’m still border-line “young” to start over.
What should I do? Has anyone gone through a similar situation? Any advice or thoughts would be very highly appreciated.
P.S. I’ve been doing therapy for the last 6 months, but that doesn’t seem to be helping much.

Boreeed on a Saturday, doing small chores/errands. Wanna just talk online a bit or send voice clips? hit me up on the chat (not DM).
I like chatty people, people with their own interests and like talking about them, love talking to people from around the world (honestly if you have a non-American accent, hmu haha, adds to my experience), and absurd people who jump from topic to topic. If you feel like dumping info on me whether it's personal or factual, I'm down for that. Haha
I'm a great listener, like to read, travel often, sardonic sense of humor, love comedy standups, go to the gym regularly, and also starting to learn jump rope shuffling (youtube it). Like *just started*. I'm riddddddddddddiculously honest, and friends often come to me when they want to know the truth. So you can always expect me to come at you directly. For music, I love EDM, some metal, neoclassic, and soundtracks.

I don't personally see the value of making a new Halo game from scratch after spending close to 3 years building Infinite.
It'd be better to make the next campaign DLC just like Infinite's and bring people back to Gigafinite with all of the content it has now and The Exchange to have new/returning players be able to get the missed vaulted content. Put the money they save from building up a new multiplayer from scratch into a marketing campaign and boom. Nice shiny new campaign, hopefully continuing where Infinite left off with The Endless, and a huge ass multiplayer experience that has everything people expect from Halo. It'd be pointless to start anew and not have things like Infection again.
We all bought Infinite's campaign for the price of a full game. We'll buy another campaign all the same.

I’m posting here to see if anyone else aligns with this belief. My partner is extremely convinced that the Earth is fake, but not exactly in a computer simulation way. It seems that everything we know about the Earth has been told to us. I don’t exactly know how to put all of this into words, so bear with me. We know the government lies, the 1% pretty much controls everything and that we can’t believe everything the media tells us. I do believe many of the things we know to be facts could potentially be be lies. She feels as though we’re in some sort of realm. Everything in this realm has been given to us. If there are others, everything could be different. She doesn’t believe that everything on Earth is fake, but believes that all things that exist here have been created by some higher force outside of this realm. She believes we are being observed and that this is almost like a giant experiment. We are real beings who reproduce. How we operate, think (psychology) and interact is real. We aren’t being controlled and we have free will. They watch our collective behaviors, what we do within this realm that humans were placed in long ago, and how we advance as a species. She believes that whoever is observing / controlling things manipulates the world we live in to further the experiment. She genuinely thinks all life on Earth has also been placed here. She feels as though we are trapped in this realm that is the Earth. The part I struggle with is where she isn’t convinced that space exists. We don’t really have definitive proof of anything to a degree and that everything could very easily be a lie,. All the evidence we have has been given to us and if it’s true, it’s only true in this realm. She thinks the sky is simulated, HAARP is actively causing natural disasters and affecting human behavior and that so many things just don’t make sense in a real way. We have scientific “evidence” to back up a lot of our ideas and things we understand to be true, but what if this isn’t 100% accurate? Everything we know to be true is an observation that has been confirmed to the point where things can be considered factual. There is never a way to be 100% certain that scientific facts are completely and undeniably true. She gives very specific examples and I wish I memorized all of them so I could convey exactly what she means. She can be extremely convincing when sharing her theories with the people she speaks to. She make a lot of relevant points I’m not her, so it’s hard to fully explain this correctly. I feel as though some of the things she says contradict each other. When people try to dispute her claims with scientific facts it obviously doesn’t sway her because she feels as though we’ve all as a society been brainwashed into believing the people in positions of power who confirm and supply us with all of the information we know. I can’t say I fully believe everything she says to be true, but she makes some good points. The belief that we are trapped here and that none of what we do really matters because it’s a giant experiment takes a toll on her. She feels like there’s so few who think like her that she’s alone. People thinking she’s crazy just makes her feel even more alone because she’s convinced that nearly everyone subconsciously has this sheep mentality. There’s been so many cases of people who have had seemingly outrageous theories and being ridiculed, dismissed and labeled as insane, but they turned out to be correct about things and now their beliefs are understood to be facts. Consistently, people in power have silenced those who spoke the truth to avoid information they don’t want out from being exposed. So she feels as though people are ignoring signs and are too afraid to question reality because it would be too hard to come to terms with. It would be a scary, sad realization that leaves you feeling hopeless. I’m not looking for proof that her theory is incorrect. I’m wondering if there are others whose takes align with hers. Every time we talk about this over the phone her the call drops randomly. We call each other again and the same happens each time. It’s facetime and she leans her phone against something every time we talk. Her hands are in view and I would be able to see if she were touching her phone and ending the call. This doesn’t happen during any other conversations, ever. Literally every time we talk about it in person in detail she gets strange, almost cryptic phone calls. One time she was explaining her thoughts to me ( I ask about her theories often, I want to understand her mindset and make her feel heard without necessarily agreeing with her statements. I often dispute things she says and ask her to explain in more detail), anyway we were talking about something very dark regarding this topic and then I got a phone call that said “Sfop” and nothing else. Seriously freaked me out. She will start talking about how the world is a stage (which is true imo). Everything seems to be a distraction from reality. Every form of entertainment we have is a distraction. She’ll bring up inconsistencies with things that are commonly told to the us. I’m sure we could all do this, it’s pretty universally understood that lies and misinformation circulate constantly. Some of the things she says makes sense, some don’t. At least not to me. I think about the things she says a lot. She’s extremely articulate, so that alone causes people to consider the things she’s saying. I’m genuinely curious about if this is a shared belief. Are thefe communities of people who think like this? Subs even? I really want to know if this is something others ponder.

3 years of on and off because I am always doubting and thinking that this will be my partner forever. I am now at a point that I have never been before: NC and it hasn't even been a week. For 5 years we talked everyday and now... nothing. I have never seen anyone like her, not in terms of looks but personality. I find her attractive but I can find other girls more attractive (more of my type ig) but always doubting if I can be with her forever just because of that (I think). We broke up 3 months ago but only started NC a week ago because I couldn't handle it. I am going mad because when I think of letting go of her, it makes me desperate. I don't want to let go. I feel like my doubts have no reason, she is absolutely impeccable. I can't picture a future where I don't talk to her, where she doesn't exist in my life. I also can't just go back to her. I can't do that to her. I need to understand these doubts in order to tell if I want to be with her or not. I am going mad. I wake up anxious every day thinking that she is not there for me and I am not there for her.

I'm going to link my previous post but it won't be there bc it was removed. https://www.reddit.com/covidlonghaulers/s/vac8kfy5To I just stated what I took and helped me recover in 2 months. I talked about ivermectin but also a list of supplements I'm going to repost it here. If you guys/mods plan to remove my post again could you tell me what guidelines I didn't follow? I shared my recovery story just like many other people share what they did or took that helped them.
Sometimes I think when posts gets removed is because there is something nefarious greater at work.
So take it how you guys want if it gets deleted again. I'm going to repost here along with one more update and if it gets removed again then just screenshot my tips if you want to apply them to your protocols. GOD BLESS.
Update at the end
POST: I want to start by saying I am aware everyone's case is different. I'm not stating this is the ultimate cure for everyone since long covid is a unique case for each individual.
So I started experiencing long covid since Jan 2022 after an infection that passed fairly quickly, i got the vaccine a few weeks after. By July 2022 I starting experiencing strange symptoms which I know now to be long covid. I had two symptoms: A pressure throbbing facial pain 24/7 behind my nose, eyes and forehead and an elevated temperature 99.5-100F. I did the initial rounds like we all have and everything kept coming back normal, got on nerve medications but they failed. They told me I had atypical facial pain trigeminal neuralgia type 2. I was pretty much left in the dark. I didn't know what I had could possibly be long covid until March 2024. After finding people similar to my case, I talked to my doctor about it and started researching.
March 2024 I was put on Nurtec ODT this helped me manage my pain to some level, its used for migraines
April 2024: I started targeting the viral load and spike protein degeneration via supplementation and prescriptions.
Prescriptions:

1. Ivermectin - every other day for 6 days, now once a week. I will keep doing this for many more months regardless, and if i get infected again it will be first thing i take for 3 days straight. I saw this work first hand on my dad in 2021 but I didn't take it when i got infected.
2. Clarithromycin - Currently finishing up my 2 week course i got this for SIBO overgrowth from covid immune suppression. Its showing up on long haulers, overgrowth can cause brain fog and headaches. You can ask your provider for a test.

Supplements:

1. NAC - 500mg 2x a day for spike protein denaturation
2. Vit C - 1500-2000mg a day
3. Glutathione 250 mg once a day for spike protein denaturation
4. Nicotine gum - 2mg 2x a day (To bind to the acetylcholine receptors covid binds to, so it can be released and broken down with supplements)
5. Quercetin - 1x a day
6. Antihistamine - Allegra D 1x a day with a low histamine diet.
7. Vitamin B complex (therapeutic doses for nerve regeneration) - Brand: Nuphoria.com
8. Oregano oil - Antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral 1x a day for 3 weeks with a one week break in between.
9. Gut repai recover supplement - Brand: Mybrainco.com
10. Probiotics- Low histamine probiotic by vitamonk
11. Licorice root tea - Natural blood thinner that got recommended to me for possible covid microclotting
12. ashwagandha - 1x a day at bedtime, helps with covid.
13. Zinc 30-60mg

Honorable mentions I didn't try: Nattokinase (for spike protein denaturation)
****I STOPPED TAKING MAGNESIUM. I see people reacting to food even on low histamine diets. I had to even stop my multivitamin. Why cut magnesium off? My provider told me that mRNA strand was cut using an enzyme that is activated with magnesium, and deactivated with NAC, EDTA, high doses of vitamin C or glutathione. IF anyone knows how enzymes work, they help chemical reactions by catalyzing them to completion. I suspect this is why I still was reacting to food even on a low histamine diet.
Also could be why carnivore diet helps long haulers bc there is less magnesium in red meat, higher concentrations are in fruits and even higher in vegetables. Still some amount of magnesium will enter your body,, but lowering it as much as you can during your recovery protocol could really help in your recovery.
Throughout this whole process i started developing other covid symptoms I didn't have the past 2 years, I knew this was a good sign because they would only last 24hrs max. For example: Chest tightness, shortness of breath going up steps, fatigue. Recently I developed strange rotten smells and a metallic taste in my mouth. ALL of these were signs I was well on my way to recovery because my atypical facial pain and elevated temperature was 95% gone. Now I don't have ANY symptoms at all.
Update: get checked for silent reflux and I'm in the process of doing so, COVID can really damage so many organs and this could be a second reason why you are reacting after food consumption. Silent reflux can also cause head and facial pain. I think during long COVID my gut was greatly affected. Regardless I react less on a carnivore diet. :)))

Hi everyone, I'm 24f and I have ADD (no full testing has been done though). I've been having these waves of overwhelming depression. At the end of last year, around NovembeDecember time, I got really bad. Since then, I've had one week or two weeks where I felt okay. During the bad times, my skin hurts. Not to the touch but like a burning/stinging sensation all over my body. Also, I'll go through waves of daily headaches where the sensation is also a burning instead of throbs. Thoughts are fully consuming and debilitating and many times I curl up unmoving because it feels like if I do they get worse. I'll just sit there, heart racing and the it feels like I need to do it. I panic with the ideas and the intense impulse and need to do it because what if the feelings do pass? But the more the waves come and with how long they last I'm starting to lose faith on the idea. The waves start out of nowhere and things don't have to be going wrong for them to start. Back in around 2019 is when I realized how controlling the thoughts are. I developed panic disorder and was prescribed lorazepam. The first time I took one my body wanted to take the whole bottle so bad the my arm was trembling cause I physically was fighting with myself. Luckily, I was able to call someone to take the bottle away. My panic attacks would last minimum 4-5 hours and happen also at random.
In the past few weeks and during this current wave a lot has happened. My home flooded about a year ago and we lost almost everything. This was my childhood home and my only sense of stability. We couldn't afford repairs and my grandmother sold it about two weeks ago. I went down to help with packing (I'm off in college rn) I could barely handle being there but I couldn't bring myself to leave. Also, a few weeks ago my uncle passed away. I haven't processed this at all. One of the things I was trying to figure out was how to reach out to them because a lot of my family keeps dying and I didn't want to lose anybody else with regrets. Years ago when my great grandmother and great great grandmother passed away, my uncles couldn't cope and went back to drugs heavily. Holidays became broken up with intoxicated holiday wishes. It was hard speaking to them when all the heartache on my end, but it's too late now. I know that I haven't dealt with death properly. I few weeks ago my lizard passed and when I went to pick him up it felt like I'd been electrocuted, my hands hurting the most. I wasn't able to remove him myself and had two wait a couple of weeks til my boyfriend visited. During this time I didn't go to the half of my room the enclosure is on (except for a few more attempts to try and get him and I had to do an online proctored exam at my desk.) I got him cremated and when the delivered his ashes is when my mom called to say my uncle passed.
The only person I really have a strong support structure is my boyfriend. With ADD, object permanence applies to people as well. We're long distance and it feels like he's not even real. It's hard to explain and I'm sure to understand if you don't deal with it. I've been reeling with this. Past bad times (saying he hates me and the things he said/they way he has looked at me while drunk) has been consuming.
The only other thing I have is my cat. I can't keep him where I'm staying though so he's on the other side of the country with my boyfriend. He had medical issues about a year ago and I told them to go ahead with the operation. There's slim chance I would've continued without him. I wasn't able to make payments with the credit card company (CareCredit) so now they're taking me to court.
TW: SA and Domestic Violence
My therapists brought up my past SA instances and asked me to go into detail them. My body feels so used and dirty. There was a domestic violence issue across the street a few weeks ago. While I witnessed it and debated calling the police (I did), I realized I do have trauma with how intensely I felt the fear.
Sorry it's a lot, I want to just keep going but it would be rambly. With the severity of the depression waves and everything that's been going on, I've been content with with the thoughts. Things have been a lot constantly in the past but the cycles never end. It's been really hard to complete school. I started in 2018 and I finished my Associates this recent spring. I really just don't have anything. Nothing I enjoy doing now and no thought for when I'm done with my bachelor's. I keep pushing, but as of right now I think it's only to stick around for other people.
(I'm so sorry but I don't go back to proofread)

I am a black woman. I have been 19 for a little over a month now. I was raised in, and live in, an area with a very low black population.
My preference has changed a lot over time, which is something I’ve more recently started to think about.
The first crushes I remember having ever had, like when I was preschool-elementary school aged, were on Michael J Fox (when he was Marty in “Back to the Future,” may be more accurate to suggest that I had a crush on Marty mcfly,) and Michael Jackson (my parents had his music videos on DVD. I’ve never liked the way he looked in the 2000s, but I think when I was little I liked the way he looked in the 70s-90s. However, in sixth grade, I remember remarking that I thought 80s Michael Jackson was more attractive than 70s Michael Jackson when chatting with my former best friend, who had the opposite opinion.) My parents have also always liked to tease about how I “dated” a white boy when I was three, claiming that I liked how blue his eyes were. What I find interesting now that I am an adult is that me liking blue eyes and blonde hair (the combination that I believe the kid I liked when I was three had, though it was much too long ago and I don’t remember how he looked or really anything about him at all,) is something that I’m not sure has entirely gone away. I say this only because in 11th grade, I was already fascinated by/somewhat attracted to a boy I sat next to in Statistics because of his blue eyes and blonde hair, even though I hadn’t yet seen him without a mask (and when I did see him without a mask, I still liked his appearance. To me, he was a little above average.) There was also a mixed race (1/2 black 1/2 white) boy who was considered to be conventionally attractive by most of the grade who I was very attracted to in 12th grade (fawning over him in the halls kind of attracted, which is rare for me,) and he had both light skin and colored eyes (I no longer remember his eye color, though I’m certain it was blue or green.)
In 4th grade, I had a crush on a Filipino boy who I was no longer attracted to by high school (he was a nice person, though, which was partly why I’d liked him so much.) In 6th grade, I had a crush on a 1/2 white 1/2 Japanese boy (he didn’t look fully phenotypically Asian, but didn’t look “white” either. I don’t know what I thought he was. By the time we were in high school and I was perhaps more familiar with different phenotypes, I could see how he was mixed with Asian. But off the top of my head, he may have looked more similar to a Mexican/Latino person.) In 7th or 8th grade, I was either attracted to or had a crush on an Asian girl (she was not considered above average, she had apparently been teased about her looks in elementary school - she was at a healthy weight, at the time her look worked for me but at some point in high school I saw her again and she was subjectively unattractive to me.)
In 10th grade during quarantine, I started to crush on an older above average looking black man who had been kind to me in 9th grade (in this case, the attraction may have actually been reciprocated.) I also had a crush on an average looking white girl, was overweight (may have been a little below average, I don’t know. I also liked her in 10th grade. I was very lonely and depressed in 10th grade.)
I had a crush on David Bowie throughout all of middle school. I remember listening to his albums “Hunky Dory” alongside “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.” I loved Jareth from “Labyrinth.” (I was also a big fan of stranger things in middle school, and thought Finn Wolfhard was cute during the second season. I hadn’t really noticed Caleb McLaughlin and found him attractive until I became an adult.)
I will note that I was very attracted to Tim Curry’s Dr Frank N Furter maybe four-five months ago after seeing “rocky horror picture show” for the first time, even though I’m not really attracted to most white men anymore. It was just the energy he exuded.
I had my longest strongest crush on another light skinned mixed race (1/2 black 1/2 white) boy in high school, although he was a bad person. He was slightly above average physically, though he became average by 11th grade and I no longer liked him because he had criticized my appearance behind my back. He had dark brown eyes and I was very into him between 9th-10th grade (crush continued after online schooling had begun,) because I felt he was the only person who noticed my depression, and liked that he wasn’t dismissive of me yet (he later on sort of became dismissive of me after I messed up during a public discussion. I think he’d been curious about me because a friend of his told him I’d been known as smart in middle school.)
In 11th grade, I dated an overweight black boy who I had regarded as average (he was dark skinned. Some may subjectively regard him as a little below average due to the weight and racism, although I remember thinking he had a very common looking face, straight teeth.) I do regret the relationship, he was a bad person. But he was my first sexual experience and this is likely why I know now that if I have another sexual experience, I’d ideally like for it to be with a darker skinned black man (or a Mexican/Latino man, just someone who I suppose has darker skin than the average white man.) It’s strange because before 11th grade I didn’t tend to think sexually about men often, it used to be women but I haven’t felt attraction toward a woman in three years.
I know that I am not attracted to most white men, as someone who lives around a lot of them.
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Help!! Just opened my pool, and of course there is always a little something that needs to be addressed... This time, one of my valves seems faulty. The valve to the deck jets is not completely shutting off, and water is slowly trickling out of the jets. The screw in valve knob at the top is missing for some reason? I figure I'm going to have to get the valve repaired/replaced, but I'm wondering if I can still run the pump if I put the plugs back into the jets. It desperately needs to start cleaning, but I don't want to F with the pressures in the the system or anything. Pls advise! TY!
Pics of my setup:
Pool
Equipment
Valves up close (Jandy NeverLube)
All possible valve settings

Hello community. I am recovering from a recent break up with someone I met on a dating app 2 years ago. I had observed the guy to be especially stingy and selfish during the dates which was off-putting and wasn't attracted to him at all when we went out on 3 dates, after which, he sent me a text saying he doesn't think we are headed in a romantic direction and wondered if I'd like to stay friends. Since we were both new to the city and wanted to explore it further, I thought it isn't a bad idea to stay friends.
After being friends for a year, he asked me out after I told him about a bad online dating experience. It stood out to me that he chose a moment of my vulnerability to ask me out on a date again, saying he was attracted to me after watching me dance. I didn't reciprocate as I wasn't feeling right about it and didn't want to ruin the friendship that was developing with him. His relationship history was also a factor that kept me guarded. He had been with a woman on again off again over 10 years. He said she was an avoidant and he felt the relationship was over when he tried to move cities for her and she asked him not to and broke up with him. The other reason I didn't feel confident in him was as he seemed to have many surface-level friends from his coworking space but no close friends who really know him. His best friend and partner moved to the city a few months ago but even there something didn't seem to add up. He never seemed to accommodate to their needs (e.g. their dietary restrictions and hence never hosted them for dinner), and criticized them for being not as social and outgoing as he would like them to be.
After two months into our relationship, wherein he had made a few more attempts to 'proxy date', we had an argument over me wanting to move out of the city, where he made it about himself and how I am not considering how important he is to my life. He called the very next day and over 2 hours on the phone, apologized for his tone and his outburst and said it was only because I am so dear to him that he felt badly about me wanting to move. Something shifted in me after that call and I decided to date him.
The first month was magical- he told me he loved me and that I was the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with. He introduced me to his parents over a call and I introduced him to mine, although typically, I'd have waited for a few years before doing that on my side as culturally it'd mean more to introduce him to my parents. We also talked about moving in to his place. He would proudly show me off in front of his friends from his coworking space but only focus on superficial details (job, appearance) and not the qualities for which he decided to be with me.
A month later, things started to shift. He said he didn't want to move in with me because he doesn't feel ready. When I pressed for an explanation, he said it's because we had an argument and he is no longer sure of me the way he was before. He also said that moving in wasn't a 'commitment' from his side and was merely an idea we'd been discussing. This is where my alarm bells went off. I clearly remembered him offering to put me on his lease as I wasn't comfortable to just move in without any formal paperwork. This led to our first major conflict within 2 months of being together. When we tried to resolve the conflict, he sat next to me and talked to me in a low, cold, impersonal tone, like he was in control, while I was distressed and wearing out with a conversation that seemed to be going nowhere for hours. Ultimately I broke down and gave away a vulnerable detail from my past relationship. He then asked what would reassure me in the relationship with him and I said any indication that he isn't pulling away from his overall commitment to the relationship. He then laughed and said okay, we have reached a resolution! His laugh was so unfitting to the cold/distant way he was behaving for the past few hours, it scared me a little. I wanted to leave his apartment but somehow thought maybe I am overthinking and that I should give him a chance. Every time we'd have an argument, he somehow focused on my reaction (crying, raising my voice), than what we were actually fighting about (him pulling away from commitments), leaving me feeling blamed and confused.
I noticed on more than one occasion that he couldn't provide care. When I was feeling low and called him requesting him to come over, he'd say "I am watching xyz show" or first say he'd come over and call up a few hours later and say "I am tired and if you're feeling better now then maybe I won't come today". I started to feel uncared for and lonely in the relationship.
As time passed, I noticed that he tried in very subtle ways to adopt his best friends as my friends. He kept saying "I don't want you to think they are my friends, I want them to be your friends too. You are new to the country and this will help you". Again my instincts warned me there was something off here, even though his friends appeared sweet and friendly and had been in his life for 10+ years. There were days when our previous argument about moving in resurfaced and we were having a bad day, but once we'd reconciled, he would compel me to socialize with his friends even if I said I needed some downtime/ time alone. When I got through a good university and told him about the news, he had a lukewarm reaction. He then went to these friends and took some advice after which, he showed up at my place with what sounded like very rehearsed lines of supporting my academic pursuits (without moving cities or taking any risks in the relationship- he suggested a long distance relationship).
In the past month I noticed being on eggshells around him, being confused about my thoughts and memories and blamed myself for the conflicts we were having. I raised these with him and broke up with him saying my emotional needs aren't being met. He didn't take any responsibility for his part. He often also brought up my anxiety issues/ trauma during arguments packaging it as concern for my wellbeing. His reaction during our fights/disagreements, he said "I can't cycle through arguments- I don't want to be that kind of a couple", "I can't change who I am, if I am not meeting your needs there's nothing we can do". After we broke up, I got a message from his best friend's partner who said she understands we are going through a difficult time and that she is here to support me if I needed a friend for a walk/ talk. I fell for it thinking she genuinely came across as a caring person. When I did meet her for a walk, she seemed to shut me down if I tried to talk about the breakup or my reasons for it and said focused on how much he cared for me and wants to remain friends with me.
I spoke to him after the walk saying somehow meeting his friend's partner felt uncomfortable. He admitted she had just gone over to his place before seeing me (she never mentioned it when she met me). It seemed to be a way for him to retain contact with me and reinforce his side of things in the breakup. He also kept insisting we stay friends as I meant a lot to him. I told him I was uncomfortable with the idea as I am hurting.
I shared all this with a trusted friend who said I may have been in a relationship with a narcissist. Would be great to get any insights from you if this seems to be the case. I am seeking help to recover from this as I often find myself still questioning and blaming myself.

I’m posting here to see if anyone else aligns with this belief. My partner is extremely convinced that the Earth is fake, but not exactly in a computer simulation way. It seems that everything we know about the Earth has been told to us. I don’t exactly know how to put all of this into words, so bear with me. We know the government lies, the 1% pretty much controls everything and that we can’t believe everything the media tells us. I do believe many of the things we know to be facts could potentially be be lies. She feels as though we’re in some sort of realm. Everything in this realm has been given to us. If there are others, everything could be different. She doesn’t believe that everything on Earth is fake, but believes that all things that exist here have been created by some higher force outside of this realm. She believes we are being observed and that this is almost like a giant experiment. We are real beings who reproduce. How we operate, think (psychology) and interact is real. We aren’t being controlled and we have free will. They watch our collective behaviors, what we do within this realm that humans were placed in long ago, and how we advance as a species. She believes that whoever is observing / controlling things manipulates the world we live in to further the experiment. She genuinely thinks all life on Earth has also been placed here. She feels as though we are trapped in this realm that is the Earth. The part I struggle with is where she isn’t convinced that space exists. We don’t really have definitive proof of anything to a degree and that everything could very easily be a lie,. All the evidence we have has been given to us and if it’s true, it’s only true in this realm. She thinks the sky is simulated, HAARP is actively causing natural disasters and affecting human behavior and that so many things just don’t make sense in a real way. We have scientific “evidence” to back up a lot of our ideas and things we understand to be true, but what if this isn’t 100% accurate? Everything we know to be true is an observation that has been confirmed to the point where things can be considered factual. There is never a way to be 100% certain that scientific facts are completely and undeniably true. She gives very specific examples and I wish I memorized all of them so I could convey exactly what she means. She can be extremely convincing when sharing her theories with the people she speaks to. She make a lot of relevant points I’m not her, so it’s hard to fully explain this correctly. I feel as though some of the things she says contradict each other. When people try to dispute her claims with scientific facts it obviously doesn’t sway her because she feels as though we’ve all as a society been brainwashed into believing the people in positions of power who confirm and supply us with all of the information we know. I can’t say I fully believe everything she says to be true, but she makes some good points. The belief that we are trapped here and that none of what we do really matters because it’s a giant experiment takes a toll on her. She feels like there’s so few who think like her that she’s alone. People thinking she’s crazy just makes her feel even more alone because she’s convinced that nearly everyone subconsciously has this sheep mentality. There’s been so many cases of people who have had seemingly outrageous theories and being ridiculed, dismissed and labeled as insane, but they turned out to be correct about things and now their beliefs are understood to be facts. Consistently, people in power have silenced those who spoke the truth to avoid information they don’t want out from being exposed. So she feels as though people are ignoring signs and are too afraid to question reality because it would be too hard to come to terms with. It would be a scary, sad realization that leaves you feeling hopeless. I’m not looking for proof that her theory is incorrect. I’m wondering if there are others whose takes align with hers. Every time we talk about this over the phone her the call drops randomly. We call each other again and the same happens each time. It’s facetime and she leans her phone against something every time we talk. Her hands are in view and I would be able to see if she were touching her phone and ending the call. This doesn’t happen during any other conversations, ever. Literally every time we talk about it in person in detail she gets strange, almost cryptic phone calls. One time she was explaining her thoughts to me ( I ask about her theories often, I want to understand her mindset and make her feel heard without necessarily agreeing with her statements. I often dispute things she says and ask her to explain in more detail), anyway we were talking about something very dark regarding this topic and then I got a phone call that said “Sfop” and nothing else. Seriously freaked me out. She will start talking about how the world is a stage (which is true imo). Everything seems to be a distraction from reality. Every form of entertainment we have is a distraction. She’ll bring up inconsistencies with things that are commonly told to the us. I’m sure we could all do this, it’s pretty universally understood that lies and misinformation circulate constantly. Some of the things she says makes sense, some don’t. At least not to me. I think about the things she says a lot. She’s extremely articulate, so that alone causes people to consider the things she’s saying. I’m genuinely curious about if this is a shared belief. Are thefe communities of people who think like this? Subs even? I really want to know if this is something others ponder.