Bathroom dixie cup dispensers

wanted to share my experience as a 28 year old, F, on the very thin side, anxious, and autistic.
had to have colonoscopy due to positive fit test and anaemia diagnosis, and 6 months of heavily bloody multi-daily bathroom trips. I was starting to get very concerned about cancer.
I opted for no sedation because I'm extremely anxious about feeling 'out of it' or not in control of my body/brain or feeling dizzy.
The thought of waking up and not knowing what my body went through was also making me squeamish.
I did a lot of research, I watched full, unseated colonoscopy videos on YouTube, this post from this subreddit was also incredible and explains it all better than I could. but here's my detailed experience of each step.
Prep: The prep was not bad at all, I had Citrafleet.
I prepared the mixture and took it at 6pm (the leaflet said 5pm, appointment at 11am) It had a nice lemon taste and was pleasant. after I drunk it, my medication anxiety/dread kicked in, I was like, oh god, what did I just do to my body. (i've never experienced laxatives before) I was expecting it to be like a movie and to immediately poop lol. I did not have a bowel movement for 3-4 hours. then it was just on and off bathroom trips. Funnily enough the only time it bothered me was I had to leave a competitive computer-game mid-match because I suddenly had to go so bad LOL.other than that, didn't feel too different to my normal symptoms honestly.
then I slept at 3-4am, at 3am I started to suddenly feel queasy and shaky and awful, stayed up too late I think, but it passed and I drunk water and went to sleep.
I woke up at 7am for the second packet of prep, it acted faster this time and then I stopped my 2-hours-before water drinking, was totally empty and went to the hospital.
Hospital: I got lucky, I got a very nice NHS hospital. I had a lovely nurse. They started talking about sedation and I said "I've decided to do no sedation" She said "Ah, gas and air. alright" I said nono, no sedation at all. She was a bit like "ermmm, we'll see about that" haha.
but ultimately everyone was very very respectful of my wishes! they just didn't think I would actually manage.
My heart rate was really high for ages in the waiting/prep room when they took my pulse and honestly I was so stressed they wouldn't do the procedure because my heart rate was high, so I had no time to be worried about what lay ahead because I was so fixated on trying to slow my heart rate. So my advice would be just keep your mind occupied before going in.
I got given huge green shorts, a cozy disposable gown, an iv/canula thing (they assured me it was routine, but I wouldn't get sedation). I had to pee a bunch before and then in the surgery room and had a little blanket put over me.
I had a pillow that was super comfortable and was instructed into the relevant position.
Procedure: The nurses were ALL surprised I wasn't having sedation, they asked if I was really sure I didn't want the gas and air because it can be painful and stopping halfway would be very detrimental.
They said "I know you want to do it without gas and air, some people say say they will and then can't handle it. The nurses also said it's rare someone asks to do it no sedation.
I was mentally preparing myself for the pain of the gas(for inflating the colon). I will say imagining it and feeling it are two very different experiences.
once the camera was in and they inflated with gas. It kept feeling like it was never going to stop inflating. I felt at my bodily physical limit of gas, but it kept inflating, awful awful awful. I can't deny. about 8/10 discomfort, maybe 6-7/10 pain. I had the worst urge to fart that I've ever had in my life. like "If I don't fart I'm going to explode from the inside" levels of bad, which was a slightly panic inducing feeling. The nurses said to pass gas if I needed to, but I couldn't fart. Either because of the position I was in (on side, knees up to chest), the obstruction from the camera, the fear, or because I felt like if I tensed, I'd pop like a balloon.
so "if i dont fart i'll explode & die, if i tense to fart i'll explode & die" was basically my experience with the gas.
Next they said "You might feel a period cramp" and I did. BOY DID I.
I said: "Oh yeah, just like a bad period cramp" And she said "Yeah we can't really help the boys by telling them that" and I somehow managed a "haha"
I think they said "We're going to do some water" but I didn't feel that.
It just felt like just trying to survive and get through it, I was just breathing, I knew I could survive it once I knew the pain I was dealing with. It just stayed consistently awful and painful and terrible. with occasional very bad cramps and awful sensations in 40-50 second bouts in various places in the middle section of my body.
There was so much different noise too from the machine.
The sensations ranged from: Intense gas cramps, horribly inflated feeling, a sucking on my intestines feeling, stomach caving in feeling, terrible period pain, terrible stomach pain, and rippling sensations.
I could barely look at the camera screen because I was just so focused on getting through it. frankly I didn't care LOL. I think I glanced once I just couldn't handle looking on top of what was happening to me. side note: I'm now put off giving birth if its anything like this hahaha.
I fluctuated between tensing from the discomfort and trying to relax. sometimes the discomfort was so freaky and bad my body tensed just to deal with it. If you've ever had a dream where a zombie was eating your stomach guts alive, it was reminiscent of that.
side note: I'm like a cat when I'm in pain, I don't like to show it, and I didn't want the sedation. So I was so badly trying to play it cool.
The literal best way I can describe all of this, it was like the worst food poisoning of your life, the worst trapped wind of your life, and the worst period cramp of your life, all at once, x2 or x3.
A few times my stomach rippled really unpleasantly and I keep remembering that sensation and cringing today
I can also liken some of the feelings to someone sticking a henry hoover into my ovaries.
It wasn't anything I haven't 'naturally' felt in my body before, if that makes sense, they were "familiar" sensations, just not to that degree. I didn't expect it to be such a worse variation of familiar pains.
I also didn't expect to feel all of this SO HIGH UP IN MY BODY?! like the majority of it was felt above and around my belly button.
I don't understand how people say they knew what part of the colon they were in, I couldn't. but they did point when we were about halfway and I was relieved.
For the last part, turn or bend, I think it took 3 attempts, the nurse had to push onto my tummy to flatten something out, honestly, that made me feel so much better, the pressure was really relieving. and I swear to you, it poked my rib when it went through! it felt like it anyway.
There was no pain after that. I knew it wouldn't hurt going out, so my relief was immeasurable, I knew I'd done it.
the only feeling then was just "aughuhguhguh my insides" feeling, and slight gas bloating still. I just focused on my breathing.
They said "We're going to take the biopsies now." I didn't feel that (thank goodness) but I was mega-cringing at the idea. for some reason I felt hot and slight burning in my insides mostly towards the entrance. I'm not sure how they took the biopsies but I heard a tiny drill type sound, and it freaked me out lol. i imagined them frying it off with a tiny saw.
they took, either 6 or 12 biopsies, I'm not sure. it was a strip biopsy, on my report card it has 6 things and says "x2" for each one, so idk.
When the camera went out I asked "is it over?" I didn't really feel the camera go out and was in disbelief because it was quicker than I anticipated and I couldn't believe that I had done it and was feeling proud of myself, and they were all hyping me up so much, telling me I should be crowned as queen and that the nurse could never do what I did. I felt so on top of the world. I couldn't stop smiling with relief.
The nurse called me brave and I said I was only brave because I was so scared of the sedation. Everyone is brave in different ways! You're not any less brave than me if you opt for sedation or Entonox. :)
Genuinely the entire thing felt 10 minutes long, it was like they did a speed-run of my guts, and it FELT like that too lol. just absolutely crashing around the entire mario kart racetrack that was my bowel. I'm just kidding, the doctor was great, it's a baffling procedure and I admire any doctor that does it.
I'd be so curious how long it actually was.. I was mentally prepared for 44 minutes, but idk. I don't want to get your hopes up that it will be short. maybe the shorter, the more painful?
I walked to the bus stop with my mum, I was kind of in disbelief that I did that.
Post-non-sedated-colonoscopy-thoughts
I would do it again if I had to, un-sedated. It was worth it for me to avoid three types of sensations that make me panic (dizziness, sluggish or forgetful)
I'm also really happy that I was able to be there and experience what was happening to my body, personally, I feel like if I was sedated I would always be wondering what my body went through without me being present.
I liked being able to breathe, and follow any instructions.
I've spent the entirety of the following day cringing in reflection of what happened, feeling achy, and being embarrassed for doing it un-sedated (for some reason I feel like everyone thinks i'm crazy).
I hope this helps... someone.
My options of sedation were Entonox or Midazolam and Fentanyl through IV. Lots of people said those things made them so relaxed and the best relaxation they've ever felt. It made me remember the Lavender Liquid dispensed from SCP-294q-01, where they drank the perfect drink and afterwards said "I'm sorry, but at this point everything is just one big let-down"
My brain is immensely neurotic and always in 'go' mode, I was worried if I felt relaxation like that, I'd probably start chasing different drugs to recreate it lol.

ACT 1. Sunday afternoon after visiting the local market two brothers wait for their train to arrive. If they were even a minute late, they knew their mother would surely scold them and scold the elder of the two far worse. The idea of another beating did not bother the elder brother; he had been through far worse just dealing with the brat and his attempted jailbreaks, though something did begin to make him painfully nauseous forcing him to feel pressured by the light breeze as if gravity had suddenly been increased tenfold. All his senses were heightening beyond anything he had thought possible.All around him he saw that the once energetic and hyperactive passengers had become little more than mannequins; their movements slowing to a standstill. They had all gone silent. The station was no longer filled with the cries of children or the gentle laughs of their parents. He had never heard such silence in such a crowded location. He did not feel panicked, nor did he feel a need to act for this silence was oddly comforting to him. However, the newly calm atmosphere would quickly be the source of a lifetime of suffering.His hand began to reach for his brother in an attempt to call his attention. Though in a moment of both unprecedented shock and exhaustion John shoved his younger brother onto the rails of an oncoming train. Local news would report the incident as nothing more than a tragic manic episode of a young sixteen-year-old. However, for John this single visceral instant in which all of his brother's bones were instantly crushed was stretched into hours. He was painfully aware of how every bone in his brother's body contorted in inhuman ways some nearly resembling perfect right angles, until eventually, they snapped and sent insurmountable pain throughout his nervous system. His blood curling screams were made mute by the screech of the train coming to a halt, though, by the time they stopped, his brother had torn his every vocal cord and had long ago lost consciousness. Still on the platform, the elder brother stood still, attempting to process what exactly he had done. He had no idea what force had compelled him to push his brother, but that instant would forever define what he saw as reality.That however was nineteen years ago, in present day he lived in isolation far from any person. He spent his isolated days wandering the land around his cabin completing house chores that distracted him from reminiscing about his days in the asylum or as he liked to call it “The Echo Room” where he was transferred after the incident. He headed inside after spending a portion of his morning counting all one-hundred-and-thirty-two trees that were showing signs of life after the harsh winter that nearly forced him to cut down two of them for firewood. Once inside he began preparing his morning coffee when he heard a loud creak come from the hall. He (after many incidents) learnt to avoid the boards that creaked, so in his mind immediately an intruder was breaking into his cabin searching for food or his stash of special edition coffee. Deciding to investigate he walked towards the noise when suddenly he heard two knocks at his front door. Confused and slightly worried, he proceeded to walk towards the door making sure not to step on any of the annoyingly loud floorboards.He approached and looked through the peephole and saw only what remained of the melting snow outside. Opening the door, he saw that only his steps led to the doormat. He glanced around and saw no indication of any life aside a few dark patches on the snow. He was about to close the door when he noticed a tiny red package wrapped in a radiant red bow placed clear from where the door would open. Cautiously picking it up, he noticed how it had almost no weight to it; as if empty. He walked inside and sat at his desk planning to journal later about the weird morning he had been having. He examined the exterior of the package and saw how not only was it near perfect condition but it was also slightly warm to the touch; as if recently held. He undid the bow and cautiously opened the package, half expecting an explosive of some sort. Though, all he found was a ragged ripped piece of paper. Unremarkable aside from the fact that it was inside such a carefully constructed package. On the other side he saw that it had some scarlet lettering inscribed into it reading.“Ouroboros”. At first believing it to be a prank by the kids who had heard rumors about him, and his incident, nearly caused him to dismiss it entirely deeming it little more than a slightly humorous event. He decided to put it aside for now as he had coffee left to drink that was quickly getting cold. He walked back towards the kitchen still distracted by the idea of no trace being left by whoever had left the gift. Was it even a gift? Maybe it was just some well-executed prank? In any manner he would later have a better look at it. He absentmindedly, reached for his cup and immediately pulled his hand back shocked by the temperature of the cup. It was frozen! Almost to a complete solid. He thought himself slightly distracted but not enough to freeze his morning coffee especially not his special edition coffee. First The Box and now this, it was all adding up to an annoying morning. Was it still morning? No, that’s not right. He had just spent the day counting trees. How could it still possibly be morning?The thought of Dr. Lumis being correct about his mental condition after so many years sent a chill down his spine especially since last time they talked, he did not exactly behave amicably. He was sure that both incidents had been isolated events that could never happen again. Sure, he had heard the echoes every once in a while, but he was never insane like the others; this he knew to be a fact. If he was insane, how could he have ever left? Disoriented and beginning to sweat, his legs suddenly gave out causing him to fall backward landing on the cold wooden floorboards. He looked around hurriedly expecting to see an intruder that had somehow found him. After seeing nothing but his pristine furniture, he steadied himself and began to control his breathing. He slowly got up causing the wood underneath to creak under the sudden release of weight. Deciding to further assure himself he went around the cabin checking in all four rooms. He found nothing aside from his own disturbances. Still feeling slightly nervous and disturbed he headed back towards the living room in search for The Box with the red bow determining that it had somehow triggered his current situation. The Box was still where he placed it; much to his relief. He sat down. He looked once again at the scarlet lettering.
Act 2. Back in the asylum he would often spend his days wondering how he could have ever been grouped alongside individuals who had purposefully and viciously committed heinous crimes against innocent victims. He was not insane like them. Whatever had caused his hand to shove his brother had long abandoned him. His routine now consisted of cleaning whatever mess the older residents made in the halls and transporting lab waste to the crematorium. He would clean from the southern stalls all the way to the northern cemetery and make his rounds gathering the waste from the rooms. It was a simple job but lonely, nonetheless. The halls were often only illuminated by tiny flickering red lights that indicated the position of the cameras through which Dr.Lumis would often monitor John during his nightly crusades. Though incredibly distasteful, John did not mind, he accepted that odd situations would be easier to explain if someone of credit had seen them. Yet despite this, he felt he was being watched by someone other than the doctor. He assumed that this feeling was due to the paranoia he had been diagnosed with a few months back. On a particular night, moments after dumping another bag of soft solids and dense liquids down the chute, he heard footsteps, just outside the room. Expecting to see the doctor he begrudgingly walked towards the door. Exiting and seeing no one he called out for the doctor but got no response aside from the echo of his own voice. He began to walk towards where he had heard the footsteps come from when he suddenly collapsed out of exhaustion. The same exhaustion that had plagued him during the moment of his brother’s death. He tried to reach for his panic button (a gift from Lumis) but it had disappeared from his chain. He tried to scream but not a single whisper was heard. He gazed into the dark corridor where he had thought Dr.Lumis had gone, but saw nothing but soft shadows. Though something was unnervingly wrong about them. They moved as if following an order, all synchronized, all heading towards him. That night in the asylum had left him scared to even return to the disposal area; he feared that The Shadows might eventually be able to reach him. The Shadows did not haunt him unaccompanied: they followed alongside The Echo tormenting his nights. While The Shadows could not reach him during daylight, he could never escape The Echo. It followed wherever he went and tracked everything he did. Dr.Lumis explained that he merely suffered from an extreme case paranoia but John saw the others; who yelled and who screamed true nonsense, he was perfectly aware of himself and the ones around him. Dr. Lumis secretly believed patient #132 experienced Hyper-sanity though this he would never verbally confess. It was term he decided would for now adequately describe his patient’s acute awareness of The Shadows and The Echo. John would for many years go without hearing The Echo after that night, only ever hearing what seemed like the final moans of a dying voice. Back in present day, he hoped he wasn’t suffering another hallucination as they tended to leave him in an embarrassing shocked state. He questioned what “Ouroboros” could possibly mean in relation to himself. He considered the possibility of it being an early warning of some threat to the sanctity of his home. He quickly dismissed it as he had not interacted with anyone long enough to possibly annoy them. Weird them out? Sure. Offend them? Maybe with his sense of fashion. Following his incredibly fine-tuned survival instincts he put on a light coat and went outside to walk among the trees. A mundane task, but one he truly enjoyed especially since he hoped it would distract him for a short while. Just before he closed the door behind him, he took one more look at The Box sitting on his desk and decided to take it with him in case he met the person who had left it. The sun had begun to set marking the end of the day. He watched the sun hide behind the mountain range letting the world bathe in darkness for another night. John did not dislike the night (he had worked nightshifts in The Echo Room for years) but he didn’t find the freezing cold to be ideal. He had not left his land for what was a few years now and the idea of even slightly stepping out of his comfort was making him incredibly anxious. Still, he walked forward towards wherever the path took him. The night only got darker and quieter, and he only got colder. He did not see the lightning bugs that usually warded away the dark near the edge of his hill. Without the soft hum of bugs or soft breeze that would brush against his beard he felt alone. Even the nights back in the asylum did not possess this level of quiet. He kept moving hoping that eventually he would find something that could break the uncomfortable silence. As he continued down the hill, he realized he could no longer distinguish the path from the dirt surrounding it. He considered heading back when he realized he had not kept track of where he had come from. Not only was he lost but alone with his thoughts and whatever had been watching him from the start. He walked a step forward and then another one back repeatedly. What he was attempting to achieve was beyond reason. Had he gone mad? No, he was perfectly sane. “Wait, I can hear them clearly now” he spoke, his voice dried from the cold.“This is not a hallucination” he spoke softly.“i-I AM NOT HALLUCINATING” he proclaimed. He heard The Echo once more though they were not of his voice but rather of Another. He had long been aware of “The Echo” but he could never fully determine whether it was a dream or an effect of the chemicals but this Other was undoubtedly real. “I don’t know where you are but please. Are you real?” he asked the night. He could now hear The Echo or rather feel the pressure of its words upon his reality. Had it been trying to hide the Other? He walked forward and pulled out The Box. “You gave me this right? What for? What purpose does it serve?” No one responded.Annoyed, he threw it as far as he could down the hill. “THERE! THIS CAN’T CONTINUE WITHOUT IT, RIGHT?” He shouted at the endless empty. That’s when out of the darkness emerged a faint light. Was it a lightning bug or maybe a sign of civilization?
Act 3. Cautiously, he approached the cold light and saw that the light was artificial. The tube inside flickered before another appeared a few feet ahead, and then another and then another and then what seemed like an uncountable amount more. He took a step forward and noticed that the ground underneath had turned to hard white tile. Accepting that this was not the weirdest occurrence that had affected him he proceeded to walk forward making sure to keep a mental note to journal about it later. The surrounding landscape transformed into white walls that every so often had a window that let him peek at the other side. At first, he could still see the snowy landscape, but it to slowly changed; first having scattered papers and then chairs, cabinets, and desks until they eventually resembled a typical office. Its purpose was not obvious to him, and neither was the hallway but if they were changing surely, it possessed a deeper metaphorical meaning that related to his life. He saw a door at the very end of the hall and decided to not postpone the ploy of whatever “The Echo” was planning. He stood before the door wondering about what it could possibly contain. John proceeded to open the door. Inside was a desk along with a single cabinet. Walking inside he noticed that the room was illuminated by some otherworldly source that had no words that could possibly describe it. He walked towards the desk and a file he had not seen previously, sat open. Inside was a description of his physical appearance. “Age: 35. Height: 5’8. Weight: 185 lbs. Hair: Black with obvious signs of stress. Eyes: Brown. Character Aptitude: High.” “Okay, I get it. I’m old, you didn’t have to expose my hair like that” he said slightly embarrassed quickly restyling his hair. He noticed that even though they had an almost perfect description of his hobbies, dreams and wishes they did not have a single picture as if they for some reason were only able to use words. “SOOO you know about that one time in the asylum (don’t ask) BUT NOT A SINGLE PICTURE? That’s lame.” he said mockingly. On the final page he found what looked like an incomplete file; most of the personal attributes had not yet been filled and only a note was made reading. “They don’t need a complete story just one they can understand.” Besides the fact that whatever role he played in this act had been a mere afterthought; he was confused as to how anyone could have ever gathered such sensitive and personal information about his isolated life. Was it The Echo? Had it told them his life? A phone started to ring somewhere in the room abruptly breaking the silence he had become used to. He quickly rotated towards the source of the ringing but did not find anything. There was only him and the four walls that despite the lighting did not change a shade of grey. He walked towards one of them that seemed to be where the noise came from resting his hand on it and gently put his ear to it thinking that the ringing was from another room entirely. The wall he had just laid a hand on had no longer a physical representation and causing John to fall through to the other side. Disoriented he slowly looked up and saw The Telephone illuminated by what seemed to be the same light that illuminated the previous room. This one however was far more powerful and concentrated solely on The Telephone. He approached it expecting a chasm to somehow appear underneath his feet. The Telephone did not stop ringing and only seemed to increase in intensity (though this could have simply been a hallucination). He lifted it to cut the blaring noise and slowly put it to his ear. “hello?” “…” “…” “The protagonist only dies if the story ends” the voice said quietly. “HUH? YOU DRAGGED ME HERE TO TELL ME THAT OMINOUSLY ANNOYING LOAD OF *********!” “…I’m so sorry” The call disconnected not out of offense but rather out of completion. John slammed the phone back onto its stand and decided it was time for this nonsense to end. He walked out into the room he was in before anxiously attempting to find another exit: only to be met with solid walls. What wicked game had he been roped into? When would it end? These were questions he would answer far earlier than he expected. A door appeared in the center of the room. No, it was more of a two-dimensional plane that appeared to be a sort of portal. With no other options, John stepped into the newly opened portal.
Act 4. On the other side was a station, and his ears were immediately flooded with the cries of children and the laughs of their parents. He walked around moving through the crowd careful to not miss any indication of the location. His pace increased as he began to recognize the commuters shortly realizing exactly where he was. He rushed to a platform, the platform where he and his brother were to arrive after their day in the market. He sat on a nearby bench committed to saving his brother no matter who he would have to shove instead. Three agonizing days passed with the daily commuters repeating their routine with the slightest variations. One of these variations would be the key to preventing the day that haunted his nights. Something would soon cause him to shove his brother onto the tracks. He was determined to stop the fall or kill himself to keep his brother safe.He heard a familiar laughter and turned towards the source and saw his brothers face uncontrollably laughing and himself lightly smiling. He began to run towards them but felt once again suddenly exhausted. As if the air became a type of nonnewtonian sludge making his legs impossibly heavy. The crowd around him seemed to be moving just as easily as before; children laughing just as maniacally and just as carelessly. He tried to yell to them, but his lungs were filled with the dense fluid drowning any screams he attempted. He was forced to watch how his brother got closer and closer to the edge. Through much effort, he managed to get close enough to extend a hand towards his past trying to desperately push him away from his brother. The past reacted in what seemed to be a defensive system and sent a temporal anomaly throughout the space his past and present inhabited. Time began to exponentially speed forward. In a last desperate attempt to prevent his brother’s death he tried to distract the past long enough to let the train pass without incident, but the temporal anomaly caused the relative slow velocity of his touch to have the effect of a sudden jerk and in his final moments of consciousness he saw his brother accelerate towards the rails in a split second. He awoke back in the office alone with nothing, but the realization of what force had killed his brother. He curled into the fetal position and began to cry; still believing his lungs to be filled with the dense liquid he did not let out a single sigh. He spent several hours in this state of painful silence without even opening his eyes. His emotions were chaotic and his thoughts unending. They tormented him for hours far after he had run out of tears to let out. They were merciless and torturous forbidding him from resting, insisting on his suffering. Being the cause of his brother’s death nearly caused him to go insane yet part of him kept insisting that Another was to blame. Another had caused him to do it. The Other had forced his hand. Of this, he was now sure. The Other enjoyed his suffering, The Other forced him to kill his brother. He had not eaten nor slept in what seemed like years and yet he stood up defying the gravity that held him down. He took a deep breath of as much oxygen as his lungs allowed and began to speak. “Whoever you are. Whatever you are. Wherever you are. Just know I will no longer play for your entertainment the rest is entirely my choice” he said threateningly. He then began to walk forwards confidently towards the dark wall and through the hidden door that he was not supposed to see. He entered what seemed to be a studio room though, unlike the sterile office; it was trashed. Papers littered the floor and empty bottles populated the lone mattress. On it laid a journal that had recently had liquid spilt on it. He picked the journal and gently opened it and began to read. It was scratched with the stray ideas of a creator who seemed to have never decided upon an end or beginning to his story; yet possessing the journey. He saw many ideas that together seemed to create a way for the continuity to depend entirely on Another rather than itself. A thought described in a single word interested him enough to take it with him. The room started to dissolve around him transforming into a cold landscape. Armed with the knowledge of who he was he treaded what remained of the worn-out path. The sun began to rise signing the start of another day, yet John did not seem to notice as he was focused on something buried in the snow. He could not see much of it yet he knew it was The Box he had thrown the previous night. He dug it up and began his walk up the hill once more. He eventually arrived at his cabin and walked towards his front door….
Act 5.
If you wish to rebel; continue reading on the next page.
Begin the story once more on Truth 2.
If you wish to ward away The Other; don’t read any further
If you wish to follow The Echo read Truth 3
To understand turn to Truth 4
Truth 1
…Before deciding that no longer would he be a puppet for someone’s amusement. John arrogantly began marched back down the hill and headed north towards the nearest interstate a few miles from his home hoping that he had derailed The Echo’s plot. It took him hours on foot, but he would eventually come across the road and start his journey back to civilization no longer subject to the whims of an Otherworldly Audience. He believed his future was now his to decide. He decided what he would become. He decided when and what to think. This he was sure would be how he escaped his torment. John suddenly suffered a complete body collapse and fell forward landing face first onto the scorching road. It would be several sweltering hours before anyone would find him. But eventually someone did, john suffering heavy burns and on the brink of death was saved. He would awake months later in a hospital bed though no one would ever know of this. Weeks would pass as john laid in the hospital bed unable to speak or even move; alerting no one to his consciousness. The doctors and nurses were busy with whatever important patients needed immediate attention; they walked from one end to the other in what seemed like mere minutes. The entire time the only company he had was The Echo and yet slowly it too seemed to forget his existence as well. Eventually The Echo having no interest went away.Jane a third-year medical student had recently joined the staff a month prior and had already been assigned two elders and one child. Though overwhelmed she did not grow annoyed nor frustrated; she loved her job and by proxy her patients. Despite her benevolent nature there was a single patient she never went near as he always seemed to be watching her despite his eyes being shut for over four months. Any time she got near to patient #132 she would begin to get nauseous and quickly retreat. She had no ID on the man, but it seemed he was dehydrated for far longer than should’ve been possible and should be by all accounts dead if not near it. Whenever she worked nightshifts, she would swear that she heard the man whimper slightly as if to warn her of something. Even when she was on the opposite side of the building, she would hear the echo of his groans. She would eventually be transferred and would soon forget the man who after 6 months was officially declared braindead and was due to be disposed of, yet she would still every once in a while, still hear The Echo. Forgotten Ending
Truth 2…Realizing that there was no other choice John took a step forward while placing the note he ripped from the journal into The Box making sure to keep it neatly packaged. He saw the footprints he had left two nights before and carefully stepped into each one making sure to not disturb the surrounding snow. Whatever…Whoever had set him on this path allowed him to live a life of suffering, a life of loss, and a life of pain. This, he felt was the way things were intended to play out; the way it had to end. He placed The Box on the final step making sure it would not be knocked away whenever the door would eventually open. He walked away nearly to the edge of the property when he looked back once more. Managing to peek inside he saw his past still making his coffee when he saw an almost invisible distortion appear near the front door. He smiled and turned away only saying…Freedom ending
Truth 3…though spotting a disturbance near the back of the cabin distracted him from the front door. He decided to investigate for fear of losing a single blossoming tree. Arriving near the back fence he saw no indication of a disturbance giving him much needed reassurance. He heard noise emerge from inside the cabin giving him one more dilemma to deal with. He headed to the backdoor making sure to not disturb the recent snow and entered the cabin. Being sleep deprived and without coffee he had forgotten about the wooden floor and stepped on one that caused a creak to be heard throughout the cabin. He quickly hid in the bathroom fearing that he had disturbed the continuity that The Echo had established when suddenly a bright flash blinded him. He found himself at the front door next to The Box. Slightly amused he proceeded to knock on the door and was soon after transported once more to an empty hall. Both confused and entertained as he was being transported from one place in time to another he took a few steps forward alerting the past to his presence. Seeing his past enter the hall he ducked and quickly hid around the corner. His past seemed to believe that the doctor was in the halls and decided to investigate though just as he was nearing closer; his past collapsed. John saw how his fall was slowed as if moving through the dense liquid he had once gone through. He walked towards his past and noticed an old fashioned panic button that would instantly call Dr.Lumis to his location. Measuring the consequences, he decided to remove the panic button and head back towards The Shadows. For a third and final time he was transported to a final location, the bottom of a snowy hill. Taking in his surroundings he noticed burn marks on the snow where his past would eventually walk through the portal whenever the past caught up. He reached into his pocket and realized how the plot was supposed to move forward. He walked until he reached the exact point where his past would once again find The Box. He kneeled and buried The Box making sure to erase any evidence of his own disturbances. Fully fulfilling his purpose John collapsed. The End.
“Did the hero die?” “What?” “Did he die?” “No? He beat the bad guy and saved the day remember?” “Yea but like AFTER.” “Well, I guess after a few years he would.” “No” The young child said growing annoyed, “when you said, “The End” did he die?” “No.” responded the elder brother. “Then what happened to him? Is he still alive?” “The protagonist only dies if you stop reading.” concluded the elder brother as if possessed. Begin again?
Truth 4…Then just as he took his first step forward everything began to rot. His trees, his home, his coffee, all of it was slowly eroding into a fine dust. He knew that another temporal anomaly would be the likely cause, but he had not yet experienced one that possessed this level of molecular destruction. The fabric of his reality was slowly and thoroughly being untangled into its most simple of compositions. It separated the light from dark, gravity from time, and words from spaces.John could now comprehend what had defined his reality for so many painful years, he finally understood The Narrative and how all possible endings had been chosen long before his creation. John had been a slave from the moment The Narrative began; not once in his entire existence had he ever had a real choice only walking paths already treaded by Another. He was nothing but a plot device in an otherwise self-indulging tale written by a gentle master forced to be cruel for those above. From the moment this story began, John was in pain. He could never hope to truly escape; he could only die until he arose once more. Had John never understood what his life really was then maybe he could’ve found meaning in his suffering. Unfortunately, this choice has now forced John to become aware of how truly meaningless his existence was. His life was little more than entertainment for The Other; they were the ones truly in control. For as long as The Other remained, The Echo would doom John to eternal suffering. The Echo was never in control of The Narrative; he too was merely a subject to it by an even greater force. The Echo did not wish for John to suffer but The Other would not allow John to live if he did not. It is a toxic cycle of pain, suffering and realization that forces John to relive The Narrative lifetime after lifetime. The Narrative must have suffering intertwined into its foundation otherwise The Other would grow bored and erase the reality ending John in but a mere thought. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? This is reality; John cannot exist without pain, The Echo cannot live without a narrative, and The Other is you. THE END......
Intended to be a philosophical narrative detailing the tragic relationship between the reader, the narrator, and the character and how they cannot coexist without hurting each other.

For background, I do not own an apple device so any kind of maintenance modes unique to IOS is a no-go.
I was listening to a music while washing dishes and one of them fell out of my ear and into a cup of water. I quickly fished it out and dried it in a towel and proceeded to run to the bathroom to vigorously clean the openings with cotton swabs.
At the time of typing, I have them off to the side, speakers pointed downwards blasting music at max volume in hope that I can vibrate any extra moisture out.
What would you recommend I do next?

So I matched with this guy on hinge about a month or so ago. We decided to go out after I got off work one day. We went to painting with a twist. We were texting that day about it and know we needed to bring wine.
He told me he had this red wine that he’s had for a while and never opened that he could bring. I for one hate red wines but I told him sure he could bring it. When I got to the date the class was already there as well as him so I had to go to the back and put my things up. When I came back to our table he had just opened the wine and poured us both a cup
. I watched him pour the cups as well as watched him drink first(because you never know ). The date was going smooth but like 30’minutes into it I started to feel very weird. Like I felt like I was about to pass out. I immediately excused myself to the bathroom and sat on the floor for about 5 minutes trying to regroup.
The side of my neck started to heat up and I just felt like I was gonna pass out. That had never happened to me before when drinking. I literally only took a small sip. So I was on high alert but I didn’t want to just accuse him of doing anything to my drink because I watched him drink as well and he had no reaction. I gathered myself and went back to the table and he asked if I was ok because I was probably in the bathroom for a while.
I told him I was fine and he noticed I wasn’t drinking. He offered me more and I declined . He brought it up a few more times throughout the date saying how he was the only one drinking the wine. He was a very sweet guy and I would like to think he wouldn’t do anything like that but I unmatched with him after and blocked him.
I just rather be safe than sorry. I don’t think I’ll ever drink on the first date again because that experience freaked me out.

So I matched with this guy on hinge about a month or so ago. We decided to go out after I got off work one day. We went to painting with a twist. We were texting that day about it and know we needed to bring wine. He told me he had this red wine that he’s had for a while and never opened that he could bring. I for one hate red wines but I told him sure he could bring it. When I got to the date the class was already there as well as him so I had to go to the back and put my things up. When I came back to our table he had just opened the wine and poured us both a cup. I watched him pour the cups as well as watched him drink first(because you never know ). The date was going smooth but like 30’minutes into it I started to feel very weird. Like I felt like I was about to pass out. I immediately excused myself to the bathroom and sat on the floor for about 5 minutes trying to regroup. The side of my neck started to heat up and I just felt like I was gonna pass out. That had never happened to me before when drinking. I literally only took a small sip. So I was on high alert but I didn’t want to just accuse him of doing anything to my drink because I watched him drink as well and he had no reaction. I gathered myself and went back to the table and he asked if I was ok because I was probably in the bathroom for a while. I told him I was fine and he noticed I wasn’t drinking. He offered me more and I declined . He brought it up a few more times throughout the date saying how he was the only one drinking the wine. He was a very sweet guy and I would like to think he wouldn’t do anything like that but I unmatched with him after and blocked him. I just rather be safe than sorry. I don’t think I’ll ever drink on the first date again because that experience freaked me out.

My mom and I went to McDonald's for lunch. We ordered our food and sat down waiting for the employees to deliver it to our table.
All of a sudden, 2 women walk in with 3 small kids, (two of them were no younger than 4 or 5, one looked about 7 or 8.) and a baby in a stroller.
One of the little kids is just SCREAMING for her mom to look at her (doing something stupid of course) and the other kids are just staring me down. OK, whatever, it's probably just this once.
The 2 smaller kids start bickering, and the same screaming child starts screaming again and crying, and the mother and I'm assuming grandma (?) does absolutely nothing about it.
The well-behaved older child walks back to their seat after filling her cup with soda, one of the kids grab it from her, almost spilling it everywhere. Kid starts crying again.
The kid has her drink taken away from her so her mom could get a sip, kid cries again.
And on top of all that, they each had french fries and a filet-o-fish, and they were just picking pieces of the bun off and throwing it. They ripped up napkins, left them all over the floor along with disgusting, mashed up fries.
One of the kids took an umbrella out of the stroller and waves it everywhere, almost hitting my mom.
I don't understand how these parents take these offspring into public knowing they can't go a single second without screaming their heads off over something dumb. And why can't they just calm the kid down outside or in the bathroom? I can't stand it. I really can't.

I wasn't feeling okay, I felt some mild pressure around my chest and heart and I decided to fast for 36h like have been doing for the last few years occasionally when I wasn't feeling that hot.
Only this time I still wasn't feeling totally okay after the 36h so I decided to continue until I would. But then at some point I was like what the heck I'm just way too fat and I better put some weight down so I decided to cut 10kg off. My scale wouldn't even read my initial weight of 150+kg. So yeah time to drop some weight.
Summary:
Day 1-2: No issues except hunger around the 30h mark as usual for me.
Day 3: No hunger but food obsession. I spent my whole spare time checking recipe videos.
Day 4: Bad day. Struggled not to faint at times throughout the day and nausea.
Day 5: All malaise subsided. Surprisingly good day.
Day 6-8: Pretty stable. I did get occasionally lightheaded after physical effort.
At day 7 I already expected to reach the 140kg goal by the end of day 8 and despite not feeling hunger it seems like my psyche had an effect on my stomach as I've been feeling a mild heartburn in anticipation for the food.
I broke the fast with a cup of broth and a flat teaspoon of unsweetened Greek yogurt, then after an hour another cup of broth and two flat tsps of yogurt, and so on and so forth, that's my plan. I'm not going into keto but regular food. I'll just leave out gluten this time since I suspect I may be sensitive to it.
Tomorrow I will have (other than that) one scrambled egg and a whole cup (125g) of yogurt for lunch, then two scrambled eggs and two yogurts for dinner and I'll call it broken and resume to regular eating next day.
I'm not sure I'm being overly cautious for such a short fast but this is my longest fast ever and when I fasted for 5 days previously I didn't know much about fasting and I had some pretty bad experience, dizzy and struggling to even drive and I broke it all at once by ordering and eating like 3 plates, meatballs, pasta and croquettes IIRC. I thought I would regain my strength after eating but I continued to feel dizzy if not more. I may have had some degree of refeeding syndrome and I'm not sure it's related but I spent the next year or so having some sort of panic attacks around meals. Like I remember even once it happened in anticipation of eating a mandarin. This was really shitty stuff. The sudden and unexpected feeling one's gonna die is something hard to describe and I don't wish anyone. Only lying down and closing my eyes would help. But that's past and I got over it so I'm really hoping I won't have anything happen this time around.
I tried taking the recommend amount of electrolytes but they make me nauseous and make me go to the bathroom all the time so I quit and just took the occasional gulp whenever I was feeling lightheaded. That worked for me.
Thanks for reading.

Need advice pls, Also TW possibly ahead. Had a real Shit day today.

Started off aight. Had a dream I was spiderman, and this time didn’t run outta my web fluid mid-swing 🤣😭

I had a shower was all good but after that. Shit only went down hill. (In the shit way) So I showered, and got ready to go get my T shot. Because I’m due today. (This was on Monday and it’s now Thursday 😭) So I got ready all except my shoes and grabbing the actual box of T to take with me. Went to look for the box. It’s gone.

(For context my mum had been in my room, had admitted to “cleaning up the floor a little and taking out the rubbish”)

Right so ideally id like to assume my mum hasn’t taken it. Because I’d like to assume my mum wouldn’t push her opinions of my decisions on me like that. So I’m just gonna say it was on the floor and she put it in the medicine cabinet or in the bathroom with my other ointments n meds n stuff (or where my morning meds are next to the bench.) Not in any of those places. Right so I thought right I’ll call mum. Coz she’d probably just moved it and hadn’t known that id put it in a very specific location for a very SPECIFIC REASON. Call her. “Nah idk I havnt seen it” Right. Then I’m just fuckin blind coz I’m rushing and looking for it. It’s gotta be here somewhere. Aggressive loud and panicked rummaging Bout 20 mins goes past. (Queue the bin/recycling truck noises this will be useful later I promise) I call her again. “Mum can you please promise me you didn’t see it and that you didn’t take it.” “deadname stop calling me I’m at work. I’ll talk to you later” Right she didn’t promise. She was either actually stressed at work or was trying to get me to stop talking about it. So I go looking in the places she used to hide my phone / iPad / DS / Computer / whatever when she took things off me. Not anywhere. Right now I think back to the last time I saw it or something similar and brushed my eyes over it. Last I KNOW I saw it. It was in the chemist warehouse (Australian chemist place) bag on the floor beside my bed. Right well she cleared the floor. So I’ll go look in all the places she stuffed shit in while I wasn’t here. Not in the backpack, not on the top bunk of my bed, not under my bed. Not in any drawers. Ok well my appointment to get my injection is in 30 mins and I’ve been searching for 30mind stressed asf coz I needa get on the bus. So let’s see if I can move that appointment. Moved the appointment back 2 hours. Right now I got 2.5h to find it. Now I have a very thorough look for it in my room in all the places that have been TOUCHED recently. Incase I’m just stupid and put it there to HIDE it. Coz doggy brain (and trauma) say “hide precious thing so nobody take. Coz precious thing good and need to keep safe.” Ok. I look in those places. Not there. Right well she cleared out the RUBBISH and a plastic chemist warehouse bag with a box and a receipt could be “rubbish” right well I took out the recycling yesturday and saw a blue and white somethin in the recycling maybe it’s in the recycling bin. …. •-• the bins 2 houses up. Has already been. Fook me dead. Right well literally EVERY OPTION of me getting the box I collected last week at the pharmacy hasn’t worked. Aight well what’re my options? Call the hospital see if they can get me an emergency script. Nope they said call ur GP. I call my GP, ask them what to do coz I havnt had my T shot, and they have literal proof coz I booked the injection with them. Had havnt had it…..

so I call em up. They said “yeah come in we’ll see what we can do” they get me a script. I’m brilliant I could KISS the gp rn :D!!

Get to the chemist. They make me wait 45mins. “Sorry we gotta call the dr coz he didn’t put the interval of how often you take this” Aight sure I’ll just wait. … Sorry you already have a script for this, and you picked it up the other day, so we can’t give it to you. Aight. Well I literally got the second proscription, so that I could get a new bottle… because I’ve LOST / HAD IT TAKEN FROM ME / IT HAD BEEN THROWN AWAY BY ACCIDENT That’s why u got the second proscription paper thingy. “Yeah nah I can’t do that” “Tf you mean nu-uh.” “Well we called ur GP on the script.

Told him (coz why wouldn’t you) you picked it up the other day and he said not to dispense it”

Dawggggg I literally came into the fucking medical centre told y’all the situation and u gave me the script not even 20 mother fucking minutes ago. Aight can I take my script back? Yeah. Aight well I still have the bit of paper of me needing my T. (Mind you, he didn’t put the fucking concession on it. So would’ve costed me 150$ instead of S E V E N which is how much u usually pay.) I call the medical centre I was literally JUST AT 20 mins ago “hey yeah he just told the chemist NOT to give it to me after I literally just left to come get it.” “Aight brb I’ll go talk to him” … “Yeah nah sorry can’t do anything…” “Aight well what am I gonna do then?”

“Idk hangs up”

WELL FUCK ME SIDEWAYS (don’t actually but it’s too late coz my days already FUCKED ME SO WHY NOT JOIN IN )

Aight well what are my other options. I’ll ring my endo see if he can call the pharmacy and tell them to gimme my fuckin boy juice. Aight he’s not in today. Right well reception sent him an email. He’s on leave for another fuckin 3 weeks. Right. Only other option. Is to go to another pharmacy. And try use this script which chemist warehouse already scribbled all over.!!!! See if they’ll give it to me. Priceline (another pharmacy) doesn’t have any. Right try the other one. They’re confused as to why they’d scribbled on it and DIDNT give it to me. I explain my situation. They said “also btw how much you usually pay for this..?” “Like 7 bucks..” “He hasn’t put the concession on this. And he can’t cos he’s not a specialist. And I’d have to ring him to ask if I can give this to you.” “Right then nvm I’ll try something else. Coz he’s just gonna tell you not to give it to me :)” Ok well I’m fucked now. It’s not at home. They won’t give it to me. I’ve tried every pharmacy in the area and they’ve all told me to get fucked. Right idk what else to do so I’ll go to safe haven (where mentally ill people go when they’re having / about to have a crisis. And need help coz they’re feeling unstable.) I go there. Chat to the chick there she suggested I try the gender centre or 20ten or whatever. Call the gender centre. They gimme a list of numbers to try. Tried all of em. One calls me back and says to call MY endo’s place coz SURELY he’s not the only endo there. So I do. They shut THREE MINUTES AGO. (4.03pm) :))) Aight guess that’s all I can fuckin DO FOR TODAY :))) So now I’m sitting here (bbq sauce in my tiddies) / ref And idk what to do.
OH and coz the day wasn’t COOKED enough.

The buses I signed by waving for a solid 8 seconds. Both changed lanes (to make the next turn in the route) AND DROVE PAST ME!!!!! So I WALKED to safe haven!!!!

Anyways. It’s Now Thursday I have some more info. Still have the problem UNSOLVED.

Called the endo. They said they’d see if they can get the other endo to call the chemist.

Mum didn’t chuck it out on purpose but thinks I could’ve been thrown away by accident when she was cleaning (it has to have been coz it’s not in my room or any-bloody-where else.

Ive called the endo up multiple times. I’ve called my GP and he just said “you could’ve sold it so we can’t get you another one” BUT WHY WOULD I SELL IT?! W h Y?!! And it has MY NAME ON IT. NOBODYS GONNA GIVE SOMEONE AN INJECTION THAT DOESNT HAVE THEIR NAME ON IT🤌🏻 bro the fuck just gimme my boy juice 😭😭😭

So I’ve had a pretty fucked week stressing over this so I’d appreciate any ideas anyone has on how I can get my T 😭

I live in Australia so we gotta abide by those laws with giving meds n shit but if u know a way around it… or somethin pls comment at lmk I really needed this like a hole in the head 😭😭😭

You guys know what an alpine coaster is? They are like a small roller coaster you find in the mountains. They are also called summer toboggans or mountain coasters and I think there’s some long German compound word they are called in parts of Europe. They are like a roller coaster, but with much smaller one or two person sleds you just sit on instead of multi-person cars you ride in, and instead of being built with like a scaffolding or a framework the tracks are just on the ground, using the elevation of the mountain. Basically it’s a coaster track on the side of a mountain where you ride a sled down.
They are pretty fun. Or at least I used to think so. They are more “personal” than roller coasters and although you get nowhere near the speed on them that you do on a good traditional roller coaster and they can’t do corkscrews or loops or anything like that the openness and simplicity of the ride gives an impression of a much greater speed. You’re just sitting there with nothing but a little plastic sled and the track between you and the ground as it goes zooming by. It’s like the difference between how fast a go-cart feels compared to how fast a sports car feels. You know the sports car goes faster but the open, simpleness of a go-cart feels a different kind of fast. There’s plenty of POV Youtube videos if you want to get the basic idea of what they are.
I used to love alpine coasters. Used to.
My family used to go to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge and up and down the Smokey Mountains for vacations when I was a kid and they are common in that area and I’d always rode them every chance I got.
But as with so many things after I grew up and went to college they just became part of my childhood that slipped away. They aren’t exactly common once you get away from the mountains.
Until one cool spring afternoon in 2004. I was in my final year at college and I was driving back to campus in Tennessee after a short visit to my folks in North Carolina. It was only like a 4 or 5 hour drive via the most efficient route and I had no need to be back at campus early so instead of taking the freeway all the way I got off and took part of my trip through the mountains. The scenery was nicer and I admit I liked pushing my Camaro just a little faster than I should through the twisty mountain roads.
Just after lunchtime happened upon one of those little by-the-highway tourist towns deep somewhere in the Smoky Mountains near the Carolina/Tennessee border. Nothing fancy, a gas station/truck stop, a diner, a couple of places selling tourist merch nestled deep in the mountains. I pulled into the gas station. My tank was getting low and I needed to stretch my legs, maybe grab something to eat. It was still early and I only had another couple of hours. I could kill an hour or so and still make it back to campus at a decent hour.
I pulled into the gas station and was filling my tank when I happened to glance across the road and… well I’ll be damned. There it was. “The Blue Ridge Alpine Coaster.” Nestled on the side of the mountain was a building, a mockup of a red barn, where a single railed track that led up into the mountains, where it soon got lost in the greenery. Wooden hand painted standees of cartoon character bears dressed in stereotypical “Hillbilly” getup stood around, some of them holding signs showing the ride hours and ticket costs and other info. I had to admit, as silly as it was, it made me smile.I finished pumping my gas and, well, nostalgia is a helluva thing. I decided then and there I could waste a little time riding an Alpine Coaster again after all these years before getting back on the road.
I parked my car in a corner of the truck stop's parking lot, put my phone in the center console, this being the days before smart phones when people didn’t keep their phones with them 24/7 and I didn’t want my old Nokia brick phone to fall out during the ride, locked my car and walked across the mountain highway to the Alpine Coaster building.
Getting closer, the place was less inviting. The half hearted attempt at a whimsical faux-Americana kitsch was far less effective when it brushed up against the actual decaying, run down wooden building. Hell calling it a building was generous. It was a wood frame holding up a long roof that covered the area where you got on the sleds. The wood boards creaked under my footsteps.
The only real enclosed structure was a shack that held, what I assumed, was a ticket booth. A door on the side had both a single occupancy bathroom with an out of order sign on it. An old Pepsi machine buzzed and glowed next to it.
Still the place looked alive. Ahead of me a bored looking attendant was helping a mother and her young son into one of the sleds while in a bored monotone repeating the safety brief. A few people were waiting in line at the ticket booth. Up in the mountains the playful shouts of people on the ride echoed down. Fond memories of my own childhood rides flooded my mind.10 minutes and 15 dollars later I was settling into the hard plastic seat of a bright red sled sat atop a simple aluminum rail.
I couldn’t help but grin as the sled slowly climbed the track up the mountains, making click-clack ratcheting sounds that hit my nostalgia centers hard. I felt good. The air was cool and crisp and smelled of pine.Higher and higher in the mountains we went. I don’t know if this is my mind trying to make sense of it after the fact but when I remember these moments, the last good moments, I sometimes think I remember a very slight, very subtle pit of fear in my stomach. I honestly don’t know if I felt it at the time or not or it’s just how my mind tries to make sense of it looking back at.
But either way mostly I was enjoying myself. I smiled. I was a kid again. I could hear riders in front of me let out that initial yell of terrified glee you get at the first drop of any good ride.
It peaked. I glanced around. I could see for miles, rolling hills and mountains. I the sled tipped over and zoomed down the mountain and I let out the same happy yell I heard from the other passengers.The ride zoomed down the mountain, catching speed. The mountain forest floor zoomed past, only a few feet under me. Trees zoomed past. I gave out a happy whoop as the ride banked hard around a curve and then looped back under itself.Another dip, another curve. I closed my eyes, enjoying the feel of the G-forces pulling me every which way.
There was no one exact single moment where things started to go “wrong.” The ride kept going. And going. At this point the first creeping thought entered my head.
The ride… was still going.
It just started to hit me… this ride was going on for a really long time. I had taken a dozen rides on various coasters of this type before that day and they topped out at about 5 minutes or so, and that was the long ones. Longer than a traditional roller coaster but not that long. This one had been going on for what felt like 10, maybe even 15 minutes.
I looked back over my shoulder and could only see trees, moving too fast to really get a bearing on where I was at in relation to anything.
I wasn't exactly really worried yet. Okay so I had found a particularly long alpine coaster. At the time I wasn’t 100% wasn't sure they didn’t exist or anything like that. I was a little… unnerved but nothing was happening that was impossible. Yet.
I was trying to talk myself back into just enjoying the ride and stop overthinking it, and halfway succeeded, when out of nowhere I suddenly banked hard, the track jutting out almost over a sheer cliffside. I gripped the sled more tightly as I was whipped around. The ride then dipped hard and picked up speed, barreling down the side of the mountain.
I was pushed back against the seat by the force of the drop. Jesus I didn’t remember them being this rough. I was feeling slightly nauseous. And where had this elevation drop come from I wondered? I was still in the foothills and I didn’t remember seeing anything but gentle rolling hills and light drops from looking at the ride’s route earlier. How the ride had managed such a long, steep drop in this area I didn’t know. . For the first time I hoped that the ride would be over soon. I had no idea then how much I would want that same hope to be true so much more as time went on.
With a whiplash motion I was whipped forward and then back as the ride leveled out on flat ground again, but by this point I was going fast, too fast. My neck hurt from the mild whiplash and I felt sour in my throat and for a moment the contents of my stomach threatened to come back up. For the first, but hardly the last time the ride felt unsafe. Alpine Coasters are tame affairs, much slower and gentler than full on roller coasters but this thing was throwing me around like no thrill ride I had ever been on.
I looked around. I mean I wasn’t that deep into the woods. I should have been able to see a glimpse of something; the highway, the gas station, the tourist shops, the Alpine Coaster office, something, anything. But nothing. Just trees.
I forced back some panic for the first time. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. The ride zoomed along. I counted to 60. I counted to 60 again. And again. Okay this was getting uncomfortably harder and harder to explain.
Suddenly I noticed that up ahead the track seemed to just end, for one brief, terrible moment I thought the track just ended but I was wrong. Almost without warning the track dipped in an almost vertical drop. I almost screamed as I plummeted for 20, maybe 30 seconds before flattening out again.
By this point the voice in my head that was telling me something was wrong was louder and I could no longer tell myself it was wrong. This ride could not have been this long. I tried to make sense of it, wondering if somehow I had gotten diverted onto some kind of maintenance track or, hell for one brief irrational moment even entertaining the idea that I had wound up on an actual train track somehow. But that was absurd. The rail below me was not a train track, it was still just the simple, aluminum rail of an alpine coaster and there had been no diversions or junctions in the track. I was still on the ride, as insane as that was starting to feel. Had the ride somehow looped? Again after having the thought I immediately dismissed it as crazy. There’s no way I could have missed the ride building where I got on. And what kind of ride loops over and over?
The sled zoomed through the forest, oddly never seeming to lose speed despite the relatively flat grade of the track. I cursed myself for leaving my phone in the car and not wearing a watch. I don’t know exactly how long I had been on the ride at that point but it felt like I had been on the ride for a half hour, maybe more. But time is a funny thing when you’re in a situation you’ve never been in. Could have been more, could have been less, at that point.
My pride finally failed me. I started to scream for help. I screamed out that the ride was broken, to stop it, that I needed help. I did that for about ten minutes or so I think. The ride kept going. Mostly flat, level track with occasional mild dips and turns. But the simple length of the ride grew more and more unnerving and unexplainable.
I thought about just bailing out. But the ride, impossibly, was still not slowing down and chunks of mountain rock and thick tree trunks were all around me. Bailing out without risking smashing into a rock or a tree seemed impossible.
The ride kept going.
Up ahead the forest was clearing out some, I could see the forest brightening, more sunlight making it through the canopy.
I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
The trees stopped and I had just enough time to take in a flat, open area of rock maybe 40, 50 yards at most before another sheer cliff. The tracks twisted and turned and then shot straight down. But that wasn’t the worst of it. For a moment, a very short moment, I had a clear view for miles and the landscape was, to be blunt, totally impossible. Any possibility that I had just stumbled on some incredibly long ride was blasted out of my head. Barren, volcanic looking rock stretched for miles. Jagged, black rocky outcroppings as far as the eye could see. I was in the goddamn Smoky Mountains. They don’t look like that.
I had a few moments for the terror of that view to settle in before the cart plunged into another horrifying drop. I gripped the handles of the cheap plastic sled until my knuckles turned white. The drop felt completely vertical, like I was falling at terminal velocity. I screamed. My stomach dropped and turned. I imagined the sled coming away from the track and me just plummeting screaming to my death on the rocks below. But somehow the ride still functioned. I closed my eyes tightly and just waited for whatever was going to happen. Eventually after several what felt like a full minute of steep plunging the track again leveled out, and I opened my eyes to see myself moving at breakneck speed over that black, rocky landscape.
Now that I was moving on a more or less flat horizontal track again I took a few deep breaths. I looked over the edge of the track. Nothing but that black, jagged rock, almost looking like obsidian, zooming past. I had no idea how fast the sled was moving now. Fast. Faster than a gravity powered sled should be moving. And the track was higher off the ground now. Alpine slides usually stick pretty close to the ground, but I was 20 feet or so in the air, the track suspended in the air, a simple metal tube tower like a power pylon every few yards.
Without any immediate threat and the sled moving fast but steadily and level I was able to think about my situation again, for all the good that did me. Ahead of me the track just continued to the horizon, nothing but the same rocky landscape as far as I could see. I craned my neck to look back over my shoulder and looked back behind me and it looked the same. Even the mountains were but distant specs on the horizon behind me.
This was insane. There’s not a giant seemingly endless field of black jagged rock in the goddamn Smoky Mountains. There’s no cliff faces tall and steep enough for a multi-minute vertical drop. And alpine coasters were small affairs, not major engineering projects that span miles with pylons and vertical tracks. It made no sense.
Sadly it wasn’t going to start making any more sense anytime soon.
The ride kept going.
I was on this rocky landscape for several hours. I feel comfortable saying this because I could actually notice the sun getting lower in the sky. And the sled wasn’t slowing down despite the grade of the track being flat. I was getting cramped from sitting and stretched my legs and twisted my back as best I could. Didn’t do much help. My eyes were starting to get irritated from the constant wind in them. Worst of all it was starting to get chilly. I only had on a light jacket, a windbreaker, just something to keep the breeze off me, no real insulation. I was cold, my joints were stiff, I was hungry and thirsty. My eyes watered and my throat was so dry it was sore.
But none of that was as bad as just how little sense this all made. There’s nothing like this place anywhere near the Smoky Mountains. This was like some volcanic rock landscape. The more I thought about it the less sense it made.
The ride kept going.
My mind didn’t even try to process this. Whatever I was experiencing simply couldn’t be possible. I was crazy. I was dreaming. The CIA had kidnapped me and dosed me with some new version of LSD and I was in a straightjacket in a padded room at Area 51.
The sled kept zooming along as the sky turned to dusk. Soon the bridge disappeared from my view and I continued on along the endless, rocky, featureless landscape.
I sat back against the sled, mentally and physically numb. I was exhausted. I was thirsty. I was cramping up. I was hungry. I had to pee. I held it for as long as I could, then had no choice but just wet myself. I cried until I had no more tears left. Then I just sat there.
The ride kept going.
By the time the sun dipped below the horizon my throat felt like sandpaper. I dug around in my jacket pockets hoping to find a stick of gum or piece of candy. Nothing. I checked again, having nothing else to do. Under a crumpled store receipt in the inner pocket of my jacket was a single old, forgotten cough drop. I unwrapped it from the paper and popped it in my mouth. Saliva flooded back into my mouth and I was overwhelmed by the methanol and medicine taste. It was something at least, although I knew it would be a brief and temporary fix at best.
I felt my eyes get heavy. It was getting colder. That mountain cold. That deep cold the mountains have even into the early spring when the sun goes down. That kind that just pulls the heat right out of you. I shivered. A terrible, horrible certainty came to me. I would ride until I passed out from exhaustion or the hypothermia set in. My body would tumble off the sled to fall and skip across the rocky ground like a stone skipping across a lake, my bones breaking as I tumbled until my body finally came to a stop. If I was lucky I would be killed and not have to lie for days, broken and bruised, on the ground until death took me.
The ride kept going. The ride kept going. The fucking ride kept going.
“Fuck you” I said to the ride, my voice a horse whisper. I pulled my jacket closer around me, for all the good it did. The cold wind was slowly but surely pulling my body heat away. My shivering got worse, crossing the line from a simple normal shiver into those deep, almost violent full body ones.. I wasn’t anything you could call an experienced outdoorsman, but I knew enough to know that wasn’t a good sign.
It was getting dark. There was a full moon at least so I wasn’t totally in the dark.
About then I noticed something. The landscape, what little I could see in the fading light, was changing. It was smoothing out, becoming less rocky and craggy. Up ahead an odd, shimmering light was starting to appear on the ground.
I was over it before I even realized what it was. The tracks were going over a smooth surface.
Water. It was a lake. The odd lights I had seen were the moon, reflected in ripples on the lake.
Within minutes I was out of the view of the land. After the nearly endless rocky landscape and everything else I had seen, it scared me how little I was shocked. I didn’t like how mentally numb I was getting. I leaned over. There was enough moonlight to see the water, 15 or 20 feet below the track. The pylons holding up the track went into the water, the light wasn’t good enough to even make a guess at how far they went down or how deep the water was.I leaned back in the sled. My eyes were red and bloodshot from the constant wind. I closed them. This was a mistake.I jerked awake. I don’t know if I dozed off for a split second or an hour. My weight had shifted and I caught myself as my center of gravity was in danger of sending me off the sled and into the water.
I screamed in anger. A deep primal scream. I hurt so bad. My joints felt like they were full of glass. My limbs were full of pins and needles. I glanced over at the water. For the first time on the very edges of my brain a tiny voice started to speak up, telling me that I could be all over if I just jumped. I shut the voice up, but it scared me still.
I sat there as the ride went on. It felt like hours. Eventually the lake ended in a rocky shore line. The damned ride. There was no safe place to bail out. If the ride slowed down, it was high in the air, if it moved toward the ground it sped up. Sharp rocks, big trees, nothing you could safely bail out into.
I kept having to force myself awake. I kept dozing off. Once I felt myself falling asleep and drove a vicious uppercut into my own nose to stave it off.
I seriously started to think about how much longer I could hang on. The voice came back again. This time I didn’t shut it up. I wasn’t admitting it to myself yet, but I was starting to think about the best way to land that would end it quickly if I needed to.
Something was ahead. The track seemed to dip into the ground. I was too tired, too beaten to even get scared. I was just resigned to whatever happened at this point.
With little warning the track took my sled into a tunnel in the ground. Everything went completely pitch black. After several moments even the dim moonlight was gone.
This was the worst part. The creepy forest, the immense rocky landscape, the eerie lake… those were bad. But this was just nothing. Nothing to look at, nothing to hear, nothing for reference or sense of where I was going. The walls of the tunnel felt like they were inches from me in every direction. The air felt thick, like there wasn’t enough oxygen.
With every moment I was in that tunnel I lost a little more hope. After a long, long time I made a decision. When I got out of this tunnel, I would jump. I didn’t care anymore. Hopefully there would be a spot where I could be certain the fall would instantly kill me. I was done. The ride had beaten me. I sat there, waiting for a chance to end this on my terms. That was all I had left.
Eventually up ahead, a tiny speck of light appeared. I gathered my strength, ready to end it. I sat up, getting my legs under me so I could jump as soon as we were clear. The sled burst out of the tunnel. The dim light of the full moon was enough to be momentarily blinding after the pitch black of the tunnel.. I gave my eyes a moment to adjust.
I was back in a normal looking Appalachian forest. Rolling hills, green trees. The air smelled of pine again. I heard an owl hoot off somewhere.
Slowly I lowered myself back into a setting position, in shock. At first I refused to believe it but the ride was slowing down. I held still, making sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me, but no, the cheap plastic sled that had been my world for what felt like an eternity was slowing down.
Up ahead, a structure was visible, peeking out from among the trees in the dim lighting as the sled moved down the track.
It was the Alpine Slide building. The crappy fake red barn where I had boarded this cursed ride so long ago. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, sure it was either my mind or the cursed ride playing tricks with me. But the building stayed there.
It grew closer and closer. The track leveled completely out. The sled slowed down more. Before I had the time to really come to terms with it I arrived back at the building.
The sled slowed to a stop, gently pumping against another sled parked on the track. I sat there for a few moments, gasping in great big gulping fear breaths, trying to assure myself the ride didn’t have one last trick of its sleeve.
I looked around. The place was empty, deserted. The overhead lights were still on and the old Pepsi machine still glowed and buzzed, but the ticket booth was dark and empty, a metal gate pulled down over the ticket window.
Suddenly it hit me that I was free and I practically leapt out of the sled and onto the platform. I immediately collapsed. My legs were jelly and my head was spinning. I tried to stand up again and doubled over, dry heaving. Have you ever been out on a boat for a day and have that weird reverse motion sickness when you’re back on solid land? It was like that times a hundred. My inner ear was literally pounding, all the motion had really done a number on it.
I laid there for a few moments and eventually forced myself to stand up on my two wobbling legs. I looked around, a horrible certainty creeping into my mind that there would be no exit, no way off the platform but to my relief an exit turnstyle, one of those full height ones, was set into the fence that surrounded the ride property.
I went through it and found myself back on the main road. The truckstop was still there, still open but far less busy. My car sat in the same corner of the parking lot I had left it.
I allowed myself one look back, just one quick one. The metal skeleton of the Alpine Slide track sat there, dark and quiet but otherwise normal.
I stumbled-ran back to my car, dug the keys out of my pocket, and collapsed inside. When the door shut I let out a primal scream, the tons of fear and confusion and anger all fusing into a single, raw emotion. I screamed again and again.
After a few moments I felt like I was emotionally at least back to a place where I could act, although I wasn’t sure yet what to do next. Not really knowing what to do I cranked the car. The A/C had been on low when I shut off the car and it came roaring back to life and cold air blowing on me almost sent me back into a full on panic attack. I fumbled with the climate controls until the air stopped blowing directly on me, then calmed down enough to turn the heat on, helping to get the chill out of my bones. There was a half full bottle of water in the center console cup holder and I grabbed it and chugged it. Nothing ever tasted as good before or sense as that few ounces of water.
That was when I noticed the clock on the radio head unit. It was 4:17 in the morning. It had been about one, one thirty or so in the afternoon when I got on the accursed ride.
Over 15 hours. I had been on the goddamn ride for over 15 hours. Over half a day.
I just sat there. Warming up. Calming down. I was exhausted. I was dehydrated. I can’t even describe how my head felt. I probably had at least a minor case of hypothermia. I thought about going into the gas station and asking for help but what would I even say, and more than anything I just wanted to get away from this place. And I just wanted to get away. I wanted to be nowhere near that damn ride.
I put the Camaro in gear and pulled into the street and in panic I immediately slammed on the brakes. I was lucky there was no traffic on the road at that moment. The feeling of accelerating to just normal surface street speeds made me sick to my stomach. I gathered myself and very slowly accelerated the car I usually treated with a very heavy foot up to 30 miles an hour. Every time I tried to accelerate at a pace faster than “Old Lady Going to Church, Uphill” I would have a panic attack. I was okay once I was up to speed, but accelerating freaked me out after being on that ride.
I drove about 30 minutes, putting some arbitrary amount of distance between myself and the coaster. Eventually I made it back to where the twisty mountain road met back up with a major road that would eventually meet back up with the highway. After a few more minutes of driving I saw the onramp for the highway. There was one of those big truckstop travel plazas and pulled in, parking right up at the door. I smelled like pee and I can only imagine how I looked, but I didn’t care.
I kept a couple of emergency 20s in the back of my wallet and spent it on the biggest bottle of water the store had, an overpriced bottle of eye drops, and a huge travel mug of coffee. The clerk looked at me as if he was expecting me to either drop dead or rob him the entire time.
Back in my car I downed the coffee. I put a few eye drops in each of my eyes and sat there as the caffeine took effect until I felt like I could make it back to my apartment. The sun was just coming up when I finally pulled out of the truck stop and got on the freeway. I slowly, very slowly, accelerated up to highway speed, put the Camaro in cruise control, and let the miles start to drift away. I turned on the radio, I needed to hear human voices. Every time my mind went back to what had just happened I turned the radio up louder, eventually drowning it out with painful levels of rock music. I wasn’t ready to think about it yet. Yes looking back I know I was just in denial. I finally made it back to the crappy little apartment I had off campus, a little two story walk up studio. I let myself in and collapsed on the cheap couch. I was asleep before I even had the time to decide whether or not to do anything else. I woke up later that afternoon. I took a shower and ate a meal and didn’t think about the ride. I washed the pee stained filthy clothes I had been wearing and didn’t think about the ride. I went back to class and didn’t think about the ride. Every time I thought about the ride I forced it out of my head. I’m sure this wasn’t the most mentally healthy thing to do but what can you say?
I didn’t forget about it, don’t be silly. This isn’t the kind of thing you forget. One day while looking up something else in the university’s library my curiosity got the better of me and I looked up the Alpine Slide. No website but a few Google Map and Yelp mentions. None of them mentioned anything weird, certainly nothing even remotely like what I experienced. Near as I can tell it closed sometimes in the winter of 2012.
Life went on. I mean, that’s what it does. The next day was a little better. And the day after that a little better. And the day after that a little better still. I met a nice girl. Graduated. Got married. Got a nice house in the suburbs. Got a dog. Had a daughter. Spent a lot of time happy and not thinking about being trapped on an endless alpine coaster.And that was my life for many, many years after that.
Until a few weeks back when as a very different person I found myself driving a boring and safe mid sized family SUV through those same mountains. My wife Carol, 5 months pregnant, sat in the passenger seat, our 6 year old daughter Emily in a booster seat in the back, and Max our mixed breed mutt next to her. It had been a nice pleasant trip, driving back from visiting her folks.
I hadn’t thought about that fucking ride in so long I barely registered that I was in the same general area until it was too late. Suddenly I realized that little mountain tourist trap town was only a few minutes down the road. I swallowed hard and gripped the steering wheel hard. Carol was looking out the window at the scenery and Emily was deep into some kid’s Youtube video on an iPad. I forced myself to keep my breath steady as we rounded the corner.The town was still there, sorta. Time had not been kind to it. The gas station was still there, at some point it had been bought out by Shell. The tourist trap shops were still there. One of them was now a vape shop. The diner was closed, the building looking like it sat unused for a long time.
But of course that’s not what I cared about. A looked over at the site where the Alpine Coaster once stood. It was gone. The kitschy fake barn was gone. The site was just a bare concrete slab with a chainlink fence around it. Faded “no trespassing” and “for sale” signs hung off the fence. A pile of old, decaying lumber that might have once long ago been part of the structure covered part of the old lot. No sign of the track remained outside of some old concrete support posts dotting the side of the mountain.
I exhaled out a breath I hadn’t even realized I had been holding in. Soon the little town disappeared in my rear view mirror.
About a half hour later we stopped for gas. I pulled up to a gas pump across from a massive motorhome. Max stuck his head out the window and started barking at a little white dog, a toy breed of some kind, in the window of the motorhome. Carol and Emily immediately headed into the store to restock on snacks while I fueled up.
I stood there, a half smile on my lips as Max barked and wagged his tail in an attempt to attract the attention of the other dog while I filled up the tank, said dog doing an admirable job of ignoring him.
Right about the time I finished fueling up and cleaning the bugs off the windshield Carol returned from inside the store, Emily in tow, arms filled with two full sized bags of Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips and what looked to be a half dozen individually wrapped pickles.
I raised an eyebrow at the collection of food but knew better than to question a pregnant woman's snack choices.
“Should we take Max for a quick walk?” Carol asked. The travel plaza had a nice little gated dog walking area off to the side.
“Yeah probably not a bad idea, he’s been cooped up in the car for a few hours.” I said. Max, upon hearing his name and the word “walk” , forgot about the other dog and upgraded from wagging his tail to wagging his entire body while making whining sounds and staring right at me.
About this time I became half aware that the big motor home next to us was pulling away. I didn’t think much of it, outside of doing a quick automatic mental check to make sure Emily was well clear of the moving vehicle, but she was safely between me and our SUV, well out of the way.
But that was when Emily looked behind me and cheerfully yelled “Daddy look a roller coaster! Can I ride the coaster?”
It’s cliche as fuck I know but my blood went cold.
I turned around slowly, certain in my knowledge that terrible old decrepit Alpine Coaster would be there, having just popped into existence to trap me again.
That.. is not what I saw. Sure enough there was a coaster there, one I hadn’t noticed earlier because it had mostly been blocked by the motor home, but there it was. It was even an Alpine Coaster.
But it was not the same coaster I had encountered those years ago. That was immediately obvious. It was a small but modern and newish looking setup with neon lights and a bunch of people. There was an actual building where you bought tickets and a little snack stand.
“Daddy! Can we go on the coaster!” Emily asked again.
My mouth made motions but no words came out. I glanced over at Carol, hoping she’d say we didn’t have time but to my horror she smiled and said “You know what? That does sound like fun. Daddy will take you while I take Max for a walk.”
My mind raced, trying to think of a way to get out of it. But Emily was already dragging me across the parking lot to the entrance.
I patted my pocket, making sure my phone was in it. Every fiber of my being was screaming to run away. I slept walked through the line and the ticket booth while Emily bounced happily.
We got into a two seat plastic sled. This one was actually a lot nicer than the one my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about. It had two nice cushioned seats, big grab handles, even a nice rollbar.
The sled started up the track. I fought back the panic. I swerved my head around, keeping the building in my view. I was terrified of losing sight of it. We made it to the top and Emily did a happy squeal as we started down the side of the mountain.
My heart raced. Any second, any second my mind told me we’d lose sight of the building and then the ride would never end. The ride sped down the mountain. My mind tortured me with thoughts of not only going through it again, but seeing Emily go through it. The ride went around a big, banking turn. Emily kept shouting happily. How long before Carol reported us missing I wondered? Could I keep Emily calm? What if it lasted even longer this time? What if this time it never ended?
And then we were back at the start of the ride. The same attendant who had helped us into the sled was helping Emily out. I stepped out. The attendant gave me a brief look but said nothing. I guess I looked a little wild eyed.
I was fine. Emily was fine. It had been a perfectly normal, fun ride.
“That was fun Daddy! Thank you!” Emily said. I forced a smile back. “It was fun.” I responded, hoping like I sounded like I meant it.
I took Emily’s hand and we walked back to the car. Max saw us coming and barked happily. Carol looked up from the pint of Ben and Jerry’s she had somehow acquired and added to her snack collection while we were gone and smiled at us.
“Did you have fun?” she asked.
“It was so fun Mommy!” Emily said.
Carol smiled down at her, but then looked at me and frowned. “Are you okay?” Carol could read my face a lot better than the attendant could. “You’re pale.”
I smiled and this time the smile felt real. “Ya know what. Yeah, I think I am okay.”
Carol looked a little puzzled, but didn’t press it. We loaded Emily back in her booster seat, stopped Max from trying desperately to eat half a discarded gas station hot dog off the ground and got him back in the car. Carol and her small collection of snack food took her place in the passenger seat and I got in the driver's seat.I smiled. I cranked the car. I put it in gear. I pulled out of the gas station and back on the road, this time accelerating just a little faster than I had in years.

I'm sure youve all heard before:
"The cup cost more than the actual soda" or "The cost of the soda comes out to like a nickel or dime per cup".
But if you actually look into it then it those numbers don't quite make sense. Those Bag in Box syrups are EXPENSIVE!
https://www.cartnut.com/soft-drink-concentrates-dispensed
You're looking at over $100 for 2.5 gals, mixing 5:1 gives you 15 gallons of soda. So that's over $6 a gallon! It would be cheaper to buy 2 liters at that point. So I'm obviously missing something here or else restaurants would lose money. I know there are certain restaurant supply stores that require a business license to buy at, but are they really selling BiBs at some insane markdown? Anyone know roughly what they do sell them for there?

I compiled these a long time ago in response to a relevant article about St. Chrysostom. I'm posting them here again since several people since then said they were immensely helpful and that they merit a post of their own. Feel free to discuss them and post other Church Father's social teaching in the comments below.

You eat in excess. Christ eats not even what he needs. You eat a variety of cakes. He eats not even a piece of dried bread. You drink fine Thracian wine. On Him you have not bestowed so much as a cup of cold water. You lie on a soft and embroidered bed. He is perishing in the cold….
You live in luxury on things that properly belong to Him….
....At the moment, you have taken possession of the resources that belong to Christ and you consume them aimlessly. Don’t you realize that you are going to be held accountable?
St. John Chrysostom's Homily on the Gospel of Matthew XLVIII

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Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise Him when He is naked. Do not honor Him in church with silk vestments while outside He is naked and numb with cold. He who said, "This is my body." and made it so by His word, is the same that said, "You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me." Honor Him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.
.…It is such a slight thing I beg….
....nothing very expensive…
....bread, a roof, words of comfort. If the rewards I promised hold no appeal for you, then show at least a natural compassion when you see me naked, and remember the nakedness I endured for you on the cross….
....I fasted for you then, and I suffer for you now. I was thirsty when I hung on the cross, and I thirst still in the poor, in both ways to draw you to myself to make you humane for your own salvation.
St. John Chrysostom's Homily on the Gospel of Matthew L

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....When Christ is famishing, do you revel in such luxury, act so foolishly?....
....Another, made after the image of God, is perishing of cold. Yet, you’re furnishing yourself with such things as these? Oh the senseless pride!....
St. John Chrysostom's Homily on the Letter to the Colossians VII

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....He is not rich who is surrounded by many possessions, but he who does not need many possessions. He is not poor who possesses nothing, but he who requires many things. We ought to consider this to be the distinction between poverty and wealth. When, therefore, you see any one longing for many things, esteem him of all men the poorest, even though he possess all manner of wealth. Again, when you see one who does not wish for many things, judge him to be of all men most affluent, even if he possess nothing. For by the condition of our mind, not by the quantity of our material wealth, should it be our custom to distinguish between poverty and affluence….
....It's as if we were sitting in a theater, and looking at the players on the stage. Do not, when you see many abounding in wealth, think that they are in reality wealthy, but dressed up in the semblance of wealth. And as one man, representing on the stage a king or a general, often may prove to be a household servant, or one of those who sell figs or grapes in the market. Therefore the rich man may often chance to be the poorest of all. For if you remove his mask and examine his conscience, and enter into his inner mind, you will find there great poverty as to virtue, and ascertain that he is the meanest of men. As also, in the theater, as evening closes in, and the spectators depart, those who come forth divested of their theatrical ornaments, who seemed to all to be kings and generals, now are seen to be whatever they are in reality. Even so with respect to this life, when death comes, and the theater is deserted, when all, having put off their masks of wealth or of poverty, depart hence, being judged only by their works, they appear, some really rich, some poor. Some appear in honor, some in dishonor. Therefore it often happens, that one of those who are here the most wealthy, is there most poor…
....This also is robber, not to impart our good things to others….
....It is said to be deprivation when we retain things taken from others. And in this way, therefore, we are taught that if we do not bestow alms, we shall be treated in the same way as those who have been extortioners. Our Lord’s things they are, from whenever we may obtain them. And if we distribute to the needy we shall obtain for ourselves great abundance. And for this it is that God has permitted you to possess much. This doesn't mean you should spend it in fornication, in drunkenness, in gluttony, in rich clothing, or any other mode of luxury, but that you should distribute it to the needy. And just as if a receiver of taxes, having in charge the king’s property, should not distribute it to those for whom it is ordered, but should spend it for his own enjoyment, he would pay the penalty and come to ruin. Therefore also the rich man is, as it were, a receiver of goods which are destined to be dispensed to the poor, to those of his fellow-servants who are in want. If he then should spend upon himself more than he really needs, he will pay hereafter a heavy penalty. For the things he has are not his own, but are the things of his fellow-servants.
....Not to share our own riches with the poor is a robbery of the poor, and a depriving them of their livelihood. That which we possess is not only our own, but also theirs.
St. John Chrysostom's Discourse on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus II

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....Do you wish to see His altar?....
....This altar is composed of the very members of Christ…This altar you can see lying everywhere, in the alleys and in the markets and you can sacrifice upon it anytime.
....invoke the spirit not with words but with deeds.
St. John Chrysostom's Homily on the Second Letter to the Corinthians XX

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....Tell me, then, what is the source of your wealth? From whom did you receive it, and from whom the one who transmitted it to you? From his father and his grandfather." Yet can you go back through the many generations and show the acquisition just? It cannot be. The root and origin of it must have been injustice. Why? Because God in the beginning did not make one man rich and another poor. Nor did He later show one treasures of gold and deny the other the right to search for it. He left the earth free to all alike. Why then, if it is common, do you have so many acres of land, while your neighbor has no portion of it?....
St. John Chrysostom's Homily on the First Letter to Timothy XII

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....I am often reproached for continually attacking the rich. Yes, because the rich are continually attacking the poor. But those I attack are not the rich as such, only those who misuse their wealth. I point out constantly that those I accuse are not the rich but the rapacious. Wealth is one thing, covetousness another. Learn to distinguish....
St. John Chrysostom's Homily on the Fall of Consul Eutropius

We recently moved out of a house in California where we had lived as tenants for 10 years. I reached out to our former landlord about the return of our $2,500 security deposit but didn't hear back for three weeks after we moved out. Four weeks after moving out, the landlord finally responded with an email invoice charging us nearly $6,100 for various damages, cleaning, plus charges for mirror damage, replacement of switches, light bulbs, a dish soap dispenser, and bathroom and mirror repairs. After deducting our security deposit, they demanded an additional $3,600 and gave us 15 days to pay.
I sent a certified mail disputing the charges, stating that since they didn't provide an itemized statement within the required 21 days, they forfeited any right to withhold our security deposit. However, the certified mail failed to be delivered even after redelivery attempts. I followed up with an email but have not received any response. I gave them 10 days to return our security deposit.
I'm considering taking this to small claims court, but my husband is against it. He thinks I'm blowing this out of proportion and that it's better to drop it to avoid making our lives more complicated. He has past experience with small claims court and warns that the landlord, who is short-tempered, might escalate to a serious lawsuit.
I need practical advice on how to proceed. Should I have sent a regular mail after the certified one failed? Should I pursue small claims or heed my husband's advice and drop it?

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This machine brews a great cup of coffee. I’ve used the Omni reusable dripper for about 90% of my brews. Dial in your beans and you have an infinitely repeatable pour over brew!
Happy to answer any question!

As stated in previous post, an investigator showed up at my house on Monday while we were not there.
Tuesday and Wednesday I went through and made sure my fire extinguishers were still charged and in date and made sure my smoke detector batteries were still good. Didn’t need to clean my house since it wasn’t dirty. Tidied up the kids’ rooms some since they’re pigs lol. Went to work Thursday (working Thursday-Sunday on day shift this week) worried sick my wife would have to deal with the investigator my herself. Never showed.
She ended up showing up yesterday afternoon around 2pm. My wife immediately called me cussing that the dhs lady was there. She put me on speaker and let her in. I heard her say our house looks nice and clean, but immediately began accusing my wife of being on drugs other than what she’s prescribed (meth and fentanyl were mentioned explicitly). Wife has some health issues we’re in the process of sorting out that’s causing her to lose weight, so she’s a little thinner than she needs to be for her stature.
She checked to make sure we had lights and running water in bedrooms and bathrooms and immediately said my wife needed to take a drug test right this second. Wife showed her letters from psychiatrist and therapist that stated there was no suspicion of medication abuse and she had never asked for early refills, and sometimes even skipped refills. She peed, cup showed zero drugs other than what’s prescribed. Lady’s tune changed real fast. She apologized profusely for making assumptions, because the report that was made said my wife laid around the house like a zombie and didn’t do anything for the kids when left alone with them. She also spoke to our kids together and separately. They answered well.
She went on to check the fridges and freezer and pantry to ensure we had food and then began asking for mine and the kids personal info (full name, dob, ssn, etc). Then she proceeded to ask about medical history, citing that another part of the complaint was medical neglect. That tipped us off to efectos who called, even though we already had a good idea.
They were told we were informed my daughter had severe hip dysplasia at birth and that we had refused corrective surgery. We provided documentation that showed we were informed and told that it was extremely minor and should clear up as she ages. Then we provided proof of when we discovered it had not gone away, x-rays, mri and surgical consult dates, and her tune changed again.
Then she asked about my son’s school attendance. We changed schools mid year, but the old school kept reporting him absent, even after providing all necessary documentation to the new school. She started saying she could take our kids because my son had missed 90+ consecutive days of school. We had to provide documentation of the move, start day, etc. she apologized again for being a little rude about it.
She wraps things up and says this seems like an open and shut case, pending further investigation into the medical stuff and talking to some references we gave her, and that we’d receive a letter within 45 days informing if the case was closed or if we’d receive a case worker if they find we medically neglected my daughter.
Apologies for formatting, I’m on mobile and my app is freezing typing out this long post.

FTM. 36+ 4 I woke up this morning at 8 AM, got out of bed, and immediately felt a (small) gush of fluid fall on my feet along with mucus plug bits. Maybe not more than a table spoon - 1/8 of a cup. It was thin, water like, and had no smell. I went to the bathroom and cleaned up, and when I came and sat on the bed (bare butt) I left a little wet spot. I do have contractions, but have been having them for weeks. They’ve been painful, but nothing more than about a 6. Background: I went to LD on wednesday and got checked for what i thought was leaking. However it was just a crazy amount of discharge per dr. I would rather not have to go back if it’s the same thing. I have not had anymore leaking down my legs today or anything like that. just mild dampness, moderate contractions, and back/hip pain.
Any ideas what could have happened this morning? (it’s 2pm now) or is this the beginning of labor?
ETA: on tuesday i was 2, 50%, -2.

Every time I close with this girl I do all the hard side-work like mopping, sweeping, washing the dishes, cleaning the bathrooms, wiping the tables, pre-bussing, etc. While she just does the easy things like count the drawer, run the cups through the dishwasher, and wipe the taps. I mean I get it those things have to be done too but I’m so tired of doing all the dirty work when I close with her.
We don’t have a dishwasher or busser because it’s a small place, and if you split those duties up it’s honestly not bad!
I’ve only been there a couple months and her years, so it’s like who am I to tell her what to do? (that and she is feisty and hates being told what to do) It’s a small place so I see her a lot and I don’t want any animosity. I’m just wondering what could be a way to talk to her about splitting up the side-work in a more even way?

Preface: After doing some digging, I now see that Rythmia is a very controversial place. And frankly I think some of that is warranted. My intention with this review is not to suggest you go or not go to Rythmia. I don't really care what you decide to do with your life. I just hope this helps someone out there make the decision one way or the other. I think I have a very nuanced perspective and I feel like it's worth sharing for any people - like me - who are researching for their first trip. Thanks for reading this far! I'm going to try to make this as brief as possible, and limit how deep I go into my own personal experience.
My first impressions of Rythmia:

• Pretty nice digs, but I wouldn't call them 5-Star from resort standards. That being said, I'm pretty sure this is the nicest, most comfortable experience out there, in terms of just the facilities.
• Resort support staff are amazing. Leadership seems a little disconnected and culty. The program itself seemed pretty comprehensive and valuable at first. The "medical staff" I met with did not seem like doctors at all. They were extremely pretty, young, tattoo'd costa rican women. But maybe it's different down there? Immediately made me dubious of the whole "medically licensed facility" thing, but definitely nice people. The fact they do any sort of medical screening is probably a good sign.
• The food is amazing
• Immediately gained some insight and value from their classes. But by Monday I was starting to get a little turned off by some of what I was seeing/hearing (more on this below).
• I really thought the Shamans, especially 2 of the 4, did a pretty good job facilitating - all things considered. I will mention, that on the first day my immediate thought was "wow these shamans are really young!". I would have liked someone who seemed a little more seasoned, but I'm not entirely familiar with all of the shaman industry/culture, like some people.
• This place clearly calls out to the sick & hopeless. I expected some of that, but did not realize the extent of both physical & emotional trauma, baggage, and overall bad energy would be at a place like this. I grew to have a lot of love and compassion for the people I spent the week with, but I have to say it was pretty intense at times.
• The group experience, which they promote endlessly, is actually pretty horrifying. I would never do this as a solo person, especially if I was a woman. While I think I would probably come back, I’m definitely bringing a bigger group next time.
• Overall, I had a wonderful experience there with my girlfriend, but I don't think everyone would have the same experience as me. If you are in a dark place in your life, I could totally see this doing you more harm than good.

Facilities
Won't say much here, but from what I've seen, Rythmia has the best lodgings, food, etc. It's pretty expensive, even for what it is, but I rationalized it as you are paying for the safety. Which, at the end of the day may or may not even be true. I've read those stories too. But it definitely gives off a safer vibe than some of the more rustic scenarios. This is, obviously, a totally subjective and personal decision on what you would want more - modern or rustic. I personally thought Rythmia was a good first time location.
Staff/Leadership
All the support staff were wonderful and extremely helpful. Most of them had experience at the top resorts on the coast.
The specialty staff - massage therapists, breathework coaches, healers/shamans, etc. - were all equally amazing. I had amazing experiences with each of these people and I felt very deeply that they were there to help me be a better person. They really cared and it showed. Again, some of them seemed very young, but since I'm so new to this type of stuff, I felt like I really got some value from them. This includes the medical staff, but I just want to reiterate, none of the medical staff seemed like any doctor I had ever met. In fact, I didn't feel like 1 person I met the whole weekend was really skilled or experienced in dealing with crazy people or any real health concern. But, there were plenty of hands on deck at least.
The leadership, I have to say, was not impressive. For starters, half the people they brag about being involved in Rythmia, you never get any contact with. You're essentially guided through the program by the same 3-4 people, plus a few special guest speakers they have. I felt like leadership was fairly cold and uninterested in actually facilitating healing. Which makes perfect sense. They see 80 new people every week. But for whatever reason, the support staff are able to get it right, and these people can't. The only person who appeared to care was the 1 woman they have on staff (don't want to say her name). She's the only one that truly mingled with, and gave up her time for the residents. A lot has been said on this reddit about leadership, and I can't really confirm any of that, but I did come away feeling like they were a bunch of self-centered, ego-driven people.
Program
Like I said, I initially thought the program was amazing. You stay 7-8 days, 4 days of aya, and every day is full of classes. It just seems like there are so many resources at your disposal. I think, on some level, this is probably a good thing. I've read a lot about the more rustic experiences and people just having 0 tools to go into this process. So I think they've obviously put some effort into it, which is nice.
That being said, I think most of their classes ended up being pretty redundant for me, and borderline cultish. There were a lot of "hype" stories, including the owner's story, which I found to be an incredibly arrogant creation myth. You never hear about him actually making amends with all the people he apparently was terrible to in his previous life. He just ran away to Costa Rica. A lot of the leadership gave off vibes that they’re running from something. Idk, I just found it all kinda odd and it sort of hit me wrong.
For one, their intentions, and all the advice they give is necessarily vague and not really that helpful at giving context to the situation we are all about to experience. Beyond that, I really felt strongly that they were pushing the whole trauma thing a little heavy. Having heard a few different experiences from other people, I was shocked to not hear a damn thing about finding self love, acceptance, or a higher power in these required classes. It was all about how fucked up this journey is about to be, and you guys better strap in and face your fears head on. I just feel like this was a very iresponsible way of preparing a bunch of clearly traumatized people. They also REAAALLLY pushed consuming a lot of the medicine. The basic rule is, don't think, drink. Sounds like some weird frat rule. I feel like they are so focused on pushing people to the edge, just to induce this vague "miracle" they keep talkiing about. Anyways, didn't like that aspect.
By Tuesday night after my experience, I decided to stop going to the classes/meetings and just spent that time relaxing and integrating my experiences from the night before. After reflecting on it a bit, I really feel like the program is sort of dangerous for certain types of people - anyone who is highly unstable as it is. I just feel like it's not really the setting to have a highly unstable person (of which there seemed to be a handful) do 6-8 cups of medicine or whatever... I feel like it’s just asking for bad things to happen.
Last thing I’ll say is that it was abundantly clear to me that this program was meant to be some cookie-cutter thing. They don't have any real 1-on-1 support available. I talked to the "integration specialist" and it was a joke - just sat there and tried to sell me his books and shit. If you have a bad experience, I think you will be lucky to get any real help on that front.
Shaman Quality
I'm very torn about this aspect of the trip. I will say that I really felt like these people were there for the right reasons. There was only one head shaman I didn't care for out of the four nights (yage night, night 4). Overall, I got pretty good vibes from all the groups and saw numerous people make amazing connections with some of the healers that helped them throughout the week. That being said, all but 1 of the shaman groups seemed to have a lot of trouble keeping watch over our group. And we only had 45 people, rather than the usual 70-80. The thought of having that many people is terrifying to me.
Both night 1 & 2 got very hectic, and included them shutting down the "bar" early in the night. Multiple staff commented on how "fucked up" we must be the next day. I just felt like the shamans lost the rooms on those days. However, Day 3 - the divine feminine night - was absolutely amazing and the energy was entirely different. Some of the shares from that night were just incredible.
I've read reports on what is going on with rythmia and the shaman "industry" and how they've pushed out a lot of good ones and now it's all inexperienced people that don't really have a connection to the lineage. I could definitely see that. I do feel like they did a great job at other aspects of the ceremony though, like cleaning up and just responding to people that needed help. I'm not sure they always knew how to help but the vibe I got was that they were there to genuinely help.
I also felt very connected to the shaman's approach to the medicine - which seemed to differ immensely from Rythmia's approach - and I was saddened by the fact we don't really get to interact with the shaman or healers much throughout the program. Only when we are in a fucked up state at the end of the night do we get any sort of real wisdom from them. That side was a little disappointing. I wish the shaman were more involved in the program itself.
The Ceremony
There were parts of the ceremony I loved and thought were really cool, but overall I would say it was ruined by the number of random, traumatized people you're forced to do this with. Love all you guys, but damn that was horrifying at times. I can't imagine doing it with 80 people. The energy in the maloca was so dark come midnight, especially on the male side. I think if you can find a solid group to go with, it wouldn't be so bad, but I would not want to go solo, especially if I was a woman. I can't exactly describe it but there was just a lot of bad energy coming from the male side and the women there seemed so vulnerable. I've already heard one story of sexual assault from the week I was there and I heard of multiple people sleeping together during this retreat, which I just feel like is a terrible idea on something like this. So yeah, that weird sexual energy is there and worth watching out for.
Beyond that, I did actually have a pretty incredible experience. First, I want to say that I was totally into the music. I thought they did an amazing job curating the music and it was obviously very intentional at certain times of the night. I had a tough time telling what was being played live and what was on the speakers at times, but I think that points to how good of musicians they had there. The weird thing is you could definitely tell certain songs agitated the room. The harmonica in particular seemed to rile up the bad spirits. But yeah, overall I really enjoyed the music.
I also really liked the ritual aspect of it all. I thought the shamans really gave it an authentic feel. I’ve obviously never done it with a super legit well known shaman, but it definitely beats doing it in some guys apartment off the freeway. There was something special about the ritual itself. I found myself, throughout the process, imagining being in some maloca in a jungle 1500 years ago, and what that might have looked like or felt. I also felt like they had enough healers/facilitators to manage the room, which was nice. I’d say it was probably 2.5-3:1. If they didn’t exactly have experience, at least they had numbers and overall did a fantastic job given how crazy the scene was at times.
My Personal Experience
I want to preface this by saying I don’t consider myself a deeply troubled person. I have my fair share of “normal” traumas - past drug/alcohol abuses, toxic romantic relationships, parent traumas, etc. But I feel like I’m at a really great point in my life and feel very at peace with many of my past experiences. Also, I didn’t really buy into what Rythmia was pushing as far as their process and approach. Not that I think it was inherently bad, I just didn’t feel like it was right for me. As a result, I think I had a much different experience than most people.
First off, I didn’t really purge on the same level that most people did. Most nights I pooped once, and I only puked once in the 4 nights. They kept the bathrooms surprisingly clean. According to rythmia, I wasn’t “purging my traumas” but for the most part I didn’t have to fight it. I just focused on relaxing and trying to stay calm when I felt sick and most of the time it subsided. And a lot of the trauma stuff I wanted to work on going in, seems so insignificant now.
On average I did 2-3 cups per night. Of course, each night's brew seemed to be different. I had my most beautiful experience on just 1.5 cups (day 2). I didn’t appreciate all the pressure to consume so much, but I suppose it might make sense for some people.
Day 1, I had 3 cups and nothing really happened. I would equate it to taking about 3 grams of shrooms in terms of the body high. And then I just basically had pretty chill conversations with myself all night. Little did I know that most of those conversations would come back up in night 2 with much more significance.
The main theme for me day 1 was just managing my own energy in a room full of very fucked up energy. The energy was DARK and there was a very palpable sense that things were just barely in control of the shamans.
Day 2 was very nerve wracking for me. I was confused and frustrated with my lack of results the night before but I focused on just trying to stay centered in my own energy, and to surrender fully to whatever the medicine wanted to show me. Early in the night I had a mantra - “you are loved, you are protected, you are safe”. I pulled on the unconditional love from my mother and my beautiful girlfriend and this gave me an incredible sense of peace to start out the night.
Ultimately I was able to stay centered and received a full download from the universe that night. It was revealed to me what my purpose was in life, and the meaning/nature of life in general. I was shown my previous life as a healeshaman, and the medicine taught me to focus inward in order to project my positive energy into the world. I had visions about my girlfriend and our relationship. I had the most incredibly spiritual experience, where I felt like I was communicating directly with god (I’m not religious in the slightest). It was honestly amazing. I felt the deepest sense of gratitude and self love I had ever felt in my life.
That lasted probably half the night and then I was bitten by some bug and had to seek help. Through that sequence of events, I ended up connecting with an amazing healer who was working there and she was able to help me break down what I had just experienced and put it into perspectives for me. The last 3-4 hours of the night I just spent outside on a blanket staring up at the stars. Partly because I was called to nature, but partly because the maloca was a fucking horror show and I couldn’t focus on my own shit while in there lol.
Day 3 was interesting. I got no pintas, and no consultations. The best way I can describe it is I got to know myself more intimately and I experienced the most amazing sense of peace & joy. The energy inside and outside the maloca was beautiful. I got some downloads from the universe on how to live my life, and mainly spent the night in a hammock integrating my experience from the night before. I did 4 cups that night and had an amazing time.
One thing I do want to bring up is the number of people that were just calmly walking around outside, staring into nothing, touching trees, etc. I saw such a deep appreciation that night for nature and it was a beautiful thing.
Day 4, again, nothing much happened. It was a slightly more difficult night in terms of the physical discomfort. I also just didn’t feel connected to the medicine at all. I think part of this was the fact they didn’t really play music most of the night and a lot of time was spent on these group blessings which I just felt were kinda useless. By the time they got to me, even the shamans didn’t seem that interested. I was not a fan of how the day 4 shamans ran things, even tho I think they were the most experienced group of the week. Personal preference.
Overall, I’m incredibly happy with my personal experience. It seemed like most of my peers were going thru hell and back, and I felt pretty lucky to have had such a beautiful experience. As much shit as people seemed to be going thru in ceremony, I have to say I could really feel the healing in the room, especially on the 3rd night. A lot of people seemed to have breakthroughs by the end of it, which was a beautiful thing to see.
Final Thoughts

• Rythmia is one of the nicer options out there, but there does seem to be a disconnect between the support staff & healers vs. leadership. I didn’t really care for the vibes of the place, but I do feel like a lot of the healers and what not really did have the best intentions for you.
• I would personally never go here alone, especially if I was a woman. I really feel like you need some sort of support on this journey.
• While I did see a lot of healing going on over the last couple days, I wouldn’t necessarily suggest this for people who haven’t done a significant amount of work before their first ceremony. It just doesn’t seem like the right thing to do if you’re unstable as is.
• I’m very interested in the shaman tradition and what they believe. Just from hearing them talk a bit each night, I could sense they took a little different approach to it than Rythmia. They talked about it in much different ways. I would have loved to hear more from them throughout the week.
• To me, the medicine is about connecting with your true self (not “who you’ve become”). It’s about realizing your purpose, your special gift on this earth. It’s about finally realizing all the small joys we miss out on by being in our head. It’s about connecting to the deepest sense of self-love, peace, compassion, etc. - all of the higher level energies. It’s about forgiveness, not just for others but for yourself. It’s about letting go of this person you think you are and accepting that there is better out there for you. It’s about feeling worthy. It’s about connecting to nature on an entirely different level. It's about understanding what’s sacred in your life and worth fighting for. I can totally see why they focus so much on trauma, but I feel like you miss out on this much deeper experience. But that’s just my perspective…

And 6 bathroom trips altogether in the 40 minutes cause one of the times I just felt like I needed a wee but couldn’t actually go. I was trying not to force any wee out and when I didn’t need to go I just went back to bed but I did actually go 5 times so I couldn’t just stay in bed incase I wet myself. I only had a couple of small cups of water in the evening. I don’t drink loads. Mum doesn’t think it’s a normal wee infection cause I’m not getting pain actually weeing. I was getting some mild tummy pain that night and getting a bubbling feeling mainly in the left side. If it’s not a normal wee infection then all I can think it could be is that IC thing or endometriosis has affected my bladder cause I never used to wee so much. I’m a bit worried that the suspected endometriosis could have damaged my bladder though.