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I really had no idea where to ask this but I figured a subreddit who would already understand the auDHD struggles would be a good start.
I'm just going to jump into this I guess? I have a hard time organizing my thoughts and I don't want this to be a super long post (it's going to be tho). I am at the end of my rope here and I don't know how to get help at this point.
Background info:

• I'm about to turn 27.
• I have autism (dx about 10 years ago now), I suspect co-morbid ADHD but haven't gotten assessed.
• I have CPTSD, and have had a lot of trauma.
• I live at home, and I'm still in the environment that traumatized me, and continue to be in a really tough spot with my family, who are extremely toxic, and struggling with their own mental health. They are not generally supportive and I can't lean on them for help. I have a step dad with (diagnosed) NPD, and I can't even explain my mom. It's daily fighting and screaming and threats of them breaking up (they're married) and us having to get rid of all of our things and pets. My step-dad is a real estate agent and was well off prior to coming into our lives but he's now in severe debt and the market is bad right now. When I tell you his bills are more than 15k a month I'm not exaggerating.
• I'm not new to the healing rodeo, and I've been through ~4 therapists. One was long term for about a year and a half. She was helpful but was new to her job and couldn't help me anymore at the point we parted ways.
• I am interested in starting somatic therapy/EMDR, and maybe DBT, but once again - lots of barriers to access.
• I've been on lots of medications, I am currently transitioning from Effexor (god awful) to Wellbutrin (jury's still out but I'm hella anxious atm as a side effect and can't sleep)
• I've been on a healing journey for 6 years now and I've done a lot of reading (books and online), practice mindfulness and meditation (on and off), understand the good effects of things like exercise and journaling. I just have no mental energy. I can never stick to anything, and I struggle to keep up with literally anything I need to do. My family thinks I'm defiant and lazy, and will not hear me out about who I am and why I'm like this.

I live at home, but home isn't a safe place. I need to move out, but I have no money, and I desperately need more. I have 3 jobs (two serving jobs, one WFH contract) but I'm barely making enough to live on right now, let alone save money. I am eternally exhausted (burnout? chronic fatigue? no idea), which makes it harder for me to work more. I have some other barriers to moving out as well that aren't financial.
My mental health is extremely poor, I was suicidal recently (okay at the moment). I have a family doctor but she is hard to access, and hasn't been much help anyways. Accessing another doctor, psychiatrist, therapist, anything, has been hard because of Ontario's increasingly shitty healthcare system and for money reasons. Between the CPTSD, and the autism it's hard to find the proper kind of help (basically, free or reduced-rate stuff usually aren't equipped to help me). Good luck getting a referral.
I'm in a spot where I just don't know what to do? I must have ruminated for thousands of hours over the years to figure out how I can get my life in order and I just.. I have no idea what to do. I need outside help but I can't afford it, and I can't work more because my brain is absolutely fried.
I have no degree. I'm an artist, I have a decent following on IG (nearing 40k now) and I wanted to be a tattoo artist for a long time. I have a ton of artists that I looked up to who are my buds now, but none are close (like different countries, or provinces). Getting into tattooing is tough, and it requires a lot of brain power to constantly draw flash designs, etc. I will ALWAYS be an artist, but drawing requires mental energy I do not have anymore. Like I genuinely feel like Kiki in Kiki's Delivery Service, when she lost her ability to fly. I cannot do it anymore. I do loose sketches every so often but that's it rn. I'm on a hiatus with my account at the moment, and I make some passive income from RedBubble sticker sales (~50-100 a month).
I love serving funnily enough, but god damn it burns me out, as you can all imagine. Right now I can barely handle working 3-4 days a week, and my shifts are short (like 2-4 hours). In Canada we make minimum wage AND tips, but the economy is bad and it's been so slow lately. I get called off often. In the past two weeks I've worked like 10 hours. Nowhere is hiring right now and it's just hard to get jobs in general. I recently took 2 MONTHS off work because I was legit delulu and feeling crazy and could not handle anything, and I rested plenty. No bueno still. My paychecks are pitiful and usually less than $100 lately. And like.. I bought a wrap today. It's my only meal of the day.. It cost almost $20. This is standard here. Even McDonald's would cost a family of four like $60 for a dinner. It's nuts.
My WFH job is a lifesaver (I train AI) but I cannot focus on it for more than 1-2 hours a day. It pays 20-24usd/h which is more like 27-30cad. I work when I want however much I want, but I have to be careful about completing tasks correctly or else I could risk losing the job (they have thousands of workers and I could get booted at any time with no warning). It is mentally taxing. I wish I could work 3-4h a day on it because I'd help out so much, but I physically feel unable.
None of my jobs have insurance for me.
My parents currently don't charge me rent, but I have $300 car insurance, and gas, and food. I struggle to grocery shop (the inflation in Canada is insane right now too) and so I eat out, but legitimately I eat once a day, which isn't healthy. I get cheap stuff, or eat at work. The adjustment period to the Wellbutrin rn makes me very not hungry as well. I have no debt anymore thankfully.
Rent here is ridiculous, and almost ALL of my friends live at home. My old best friend is a nurse and still lives with her mom. Same with another friend who is a highschool teacher. Basement apartment's are getting up to 2K a month. I don't even make enough money to rent with friends.
I HAD almost 10k saved up during covid but I had a year where I couldn't collect EI anymore and my family wouldn't let me work because I couldn't drive yet, so I drained all of it surviving for a year and paying bills.
I live up in an area in the countryside, and all my friends are ~1h or more away. My depression got so bad this year that I did isolate myself, and as a result I lost quite a few friends (longer story, don't want to write too much). I do have some close friends, but they cannot help me other than loving me.
My family is abusive and currently ignoring my entire existence, and I am lonely. All of the mental health struggles and the loneliness and the medications are making me feel so crazy, and I don't feel like I have any solid ground to walk on. I feel delusional half of the time, and I almost feel like I'm permanently dissociated, and depersonalized.
I also have 7 pet rabbits (long story again..) and I have like a thousand worries in regards to them, financially and moving out wise. Rehoming isn't an option (can elaborate if ya'll want). They are my babies. I have so much anxiety about any vet bills.
I see no way out of this. I'm so scared honestly - I can barely take care of myself, barely take care of my pets. I can barely work. My car's transmission went and so I drive my parent's "extra" smart car right now. They control when I use it and get upset if I drive too much. I'm surrounded by a family who is so chaotic and toxic and abusive, and relying on them is torture and brings me so much guilt. They hold it over my head. No matter how I communicate with them they do not hear me. I'm their scapegoat/black sheep. And yet they insist on (angrily) buying me a replacement car (used, obvi) and the guilt I feel is immense.
Like, does anyone have suggestions? What do I even do? The suicidal thoughts are essentially creeping up on me every so often because I'm suffering and I see no way out of this. I am of course wanting to get better and live my life, but it's all pain. It's been pain for years and years. I'm tired and broke and alone.
I know most of you can't help much. I just need a path forward. I wish I had a life coach that could walk me through the steps of accessing help, it's so hard on my own and I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like I know and understand all of the therapies, techniques, mindsets, tricks, etc that would be healing but every single one has some kind of barrier, mostly financial, or my physical/mental state.

1. ill just copy and paste.. your auto mod is standing up for filth like Cameron or backing paywall research.. wow thats not admirable.

PSYCHIC DRIVING: DYNAMIC IMPLANT BY D. EWEN CAMERON
In an earlier communication, the procedure of psychic driving has been described in some detail.** Briefly, it is the exposure of the patient to continued replaying, under controlled conditions, of a cue communication derived from one of the original areas from which his current difficulties arise. A major consequence of such exposure is to activate and bring progressively into his awareness more recollections and responses generally from this area. The ultimate result is the accelerating of therapeutic re- organization.
It was early noted that continued replaying of a cue communi- cation sets up a persistent tendency in the patient to act in a way which can be predetenaained with respect to its general characteristics. In other words, by driving a cue statement one can, without exception, set up in the patient a persisting tendency for the cue statement and other components of the relevant "com- nmnity of action tendencies" to return to his awareness. This tendency has been termed the dynamic implant. By "community of action tendencies," a group of related activities and attitudes is meant--such as, for instance, those existing between the patient and his mother, or those related to his feelings of inadequacy.
Since, clearly, this continuing result of psychic driving might greatly enhance its effects, considerable study has been directed to the conditions controlling the setting up of the dynamic implant and to the effects of the implant. The findings are reported here- with.
PROCEDURE
The dynamic implant may be set up either by autopsychic or heteropsychic driving. The first procedure consists in the repeated playing of a cue communication made by the patient. The second is the replaying of a communication devised by the therapist from his knowledge of the patient's dynamics.
*From the Allan ~emorial Institute of Psychiatry, Montreal, Canada. This paper was read at the l l l t h annual meeting 'of the American PSychiatric Association in Atlantic City, M~y 11, 1955.
*'*Cameron, D. Ewen: Psychic driving. Am. J. Psychiat., 112:7, 502-509, January 1956.
704 PSYCI-IIC DRIVING: DYNAMIC IMI'LAlX:T
Since autopsyehic driving is more easily carried out, this re- port has been based upon that type, with implants set up by means of periods of 10 to 30 minutes' driving--repeated, if neees- sary, once a week.
Preferably, the communication should deal with one topic only and should not be longer than about 20 seeonds. In practice, the material is derived from a psychotherapeutie hour whieh has been recorded on magnetic tape. It has been found useful to transfer these communications to 14-inch records and to reproduce them through a high fidelity phonograph adjusted for continuous playing.
The communication should be derived from a community of action tendencies which are of basic signifieanee to the patient. Moreover, it is most effeetive if taken from the time of origin of this eomlnunieation. It may, for instance, be selected as ex- pressive of one of the great formative relationships of the earlier part of the patient's life, as in the following eommunieation, in which the patient is reliving her early relationships with her mother :
"Everything about me was wrong--the way I acted, the way I spoke, the way I dressed.., everything, everything I did. Many times she [the patient's mother] would just talk and talk and talk, and . . . well, I ean't go thinking up these things."
Or it may be drawn from a long-eontinuing elimate of rejection, insecurity, or hostility whieh prevailed during a critical early period in the patient's personality growth:
"Now that I think about it, seems to me that my parents had me just to even up the family . . . not because they wanted me 9 . . because of eourse their attitude towards me . . . Gee, I don't remember the boys getting as much hell as I did.., or my sister." The signifieanee of the eue eommunieation must be assessed, not only in terms of the therapist's conception, but also in terms of the patient's response. The two do not neeessarily eoineide.
The second is the more realistic guide. The following is an example of the patient's immediate response
to the implanting of a eae eommunieation. For the purposes of presentation, a response at the upper level of intensity has been seleeted. The ease is that of a woman suffering from anxiety
D. E W E N CAMERON~ IVi.D. 705
hysteria with many conversion symptoms. The cue communica- tion ran as follows:
"I stayed home all the time when my mother lived. I stayed with her.., didn't want to leave her. I was always left staying home with her and... I didn't have any life like all.., the other girls."
On the first implanting on January 4, 1955, the patient, who had come in that day and rather gaily said that she had nothing on her mind and nothing to talk about, was silent. At the end of five sdnutes she said, "It makes me nervous, you'd better stop it... it makes me feel bad." She was now restless and anxious and very different from the gay person she had been when she came at the beginning of the hour. At eigl~t minutes: "Doctor doctor, I've had enough, please stop it." Holds head. Nine min- ut,es: "That's enough. It makes me nervous to hear that." Ten minut,es: "Why don't you stop it, doctor. I've heard enough. It is always the same."
At the end of 10 minutes, the patient was asked: "What did you think about it?" Answer : "It made me nervous all over again. Everything hurt me all over as it did before. My voice sounds like I am going to die." She then went on to bring out a great deal of new material, saying: ")~iy mother almost might not have had me, I was so quiet as a child." And again: "After my mother died, my father gave up his music and began to drink. I tried to take her place for him. I wanted so badly to please him and I cried every night and I tried to carry on. i kept everything very much to myself. My father was like a child. I had no friends by the time my mother died, I had stayed at home so much."
If the cue communication evokes too great a response from the patient, it will, in a measure, defeat its own purpose, since defenses will be erected which may take a considerable time to reduce.
The writer would like to state here clearly an answer to a question which he is sure will arise in everybody's mind. In two years of exploration into this new field, covering more than 100 cases, in only one has there been seen a possible persisting trauma resulting from the implant; and even here, current events ---such as the breakdown of a love affair and threatened deporta-
706 PSYCHIC DRIVING: DY~A~IIC IMPLA~:T
tion--undoubtedly contributed to, if they did not cause, the panic state through which the patient passed.
As an example of a cue communication which is not well chosen, the following is presented. It was selected earlier in the writer's experience and, as can be seen, is drawn from a period when the patient's personMity structure was already well developed; it is representative of current stress and is not expressive of those forces which brought about a formation of the early neurotic traits which have got the patient into continual dif~.culties through her insatiable seeking for affection and endless understanding:
"Well... because... I%obert doesn't care.., and I have always thought I would have it in time [a house] . . . and I have been very patient . . . and I don't know whether it has just suddenly 9 . . I realize now it is all so hopeless, thinking about it."
After considerable experimentation, two additional procedures which facilitate the establishment of the implant have been found. The first is tha~ the sound should be conducted to the patient's ears through headphones. This causes the patient to experience the driving with much greater impact, the more particularly since he frequently describes it as being like a voice within his head. For instance, one patient said: "I've heard enough. It goes right through my head." Another reported: "It's too close; it's horrible; I hear all the stuttering."
A second procedure is to produce a filtered record: that is, having a recording made of the cue communication with the emphasis first upon treble notes and then upon bass; or, again, with the emphasis upon a low volume or a high volume; or with spacing or repetition of key phrases; or with the introduction of an echo-back into the communication. All these variations serve to keep the patient continuously oriented toward each repe- tition and, hence, serve to diminish the most common defense-- not listening.
On November 9, 1954, the first attempt was made, using an ordinary record to implant the following communication:
"I was afraid of them all the time. I mean I didn't dare... talk anything over with them whenever I went out on a date or something like that . . . I mean a lot of kids . . . you know . . . they'd come home and tell everything they did and everything .,. I never.. 9I always felt as if I would be scolded, I mean if
D. E W E N CAMEIION~ M[.D. 707
I ever did mention what I had done and then I wouldn't do it." At the end of 10 minutes, the patient, who had shown no re- sponse, said, "Is that a record, doetorf' Asked what she felt, she said: "I had no feeling at all as I listened; I was thinking
of something else." The same communication was then set up in filtered form. To
this the patient's response was at once different. ,She eommented that she felt extremely tired after listening to it, that the voice sounded as though it were inside her head; and she said: "It brought back a lot of memories of my childhood days." A few weeks later, when it was used again, the patient said: "When I listen to that voice now, I feel like screaming and putting on a tantrum. The voice seems to scream at me all the time. It is like the voice of a stranger, though I know it is my own. It seems to say, 'I was afraid of being scolded.' It says it over and over again. It makes me think that even with my husband and my father and my father-in-law I have to hide things from them. I feel trapped. I feel I can't talk to anyone."
Experience shows that the implant can most readily be set up if the driving is carried out during the last 10 minutes of the psychotherapeutic period, the reason for this apparently being that best results are obtained if nothing is done to interrupt the ongoing response of the patient to the fresh implant--as would be the ease if one continued therapy afterward. It is some- times useful, however, to spend some five minutes asking the patient what fresh recollections the implant has brought up. This inm~ediately widens the area of the patient's response and probably tends to stabilize the implant.
A question which must be met at this juncture is: Why is it that statements which the patients have already made, had for- mulated in their own minds, and had listened to themselves utter- ing, should be so potentially disturbing when replayed to t h e m - f a r more so than when they first made them, never more than a week before and sometimes only 10 minutes before. This question has been explored in some detail and reported earlier. Discussion will be limited to three brief statements: (1) The work involved in listening is far less than the work involved in speaking; hence the patient, when listening, is much freer to respond to what he hears. (2) The law of the summation of subliminal stimuli
708 PSYCI-IIC DRIVI~rG : DYNA~[IC I~iPLANT
seems to be operative: The longer one listens to a statement, the more response it evokes. (3) In all of us, a defense is set up against responding to all the implications of what we say. This defense appears to be with respect to a synthesis of air- conducted and tissue-conducted sound. The recorder, making use as it does of air-conducted sound only, evades this defense.
A. Findings R,el;ative to Process of Setting up of Implant
Several factors governing the establishment of an implant have been identified:
Intensity of Response. The intensity of the response of the individual to the driving period tends to increase the dynamic character of the implant which is thus set up. This is true whether t h e response takes the form of tension, anxiety, hostility, un- happiness or any other facet of the intensification response. This statement must be qualified in that, as the area involved becomes progressively activated by the patient and worked through by him, the intensity of the response will, after having risen to its maximum intensity, graduMly decline. Factors limiting the in- tensity of the response are: the patient's defense, his stress toler- ance, and his capacity for desensitization. These will be discussed la~er.
Amount and R.epet#i:on of Driving. Repetition of the driving of the cue communication on subsequent days will reinforce the dynamic aspects of the implant. Less clear is what the optimum amount should be, either of the driving on any given day, or the frequency of the driving within a series of .days. The practice has been to limit driving to 10 or 15 minutes on any given day, as it is found that thereafter the patient usually succeeds in establishing defenses or becomes so disturbed as to be unwilling to continue. The repetition of the driving thus far has been limited to a maximum of once a week and a. minimum o~[ about once a month.
Defenses. The defenses against the setting up of an implant are essentially the defenses against psychic driving itself.* The chief of these defenses are: (a) inhibitory reaction to implanting by thinking of other things; (b) suppression of emotional reaction to the material; (e) denial of responsibility for the statement,
'~Cameron, D. Ewea: Ibid.
D. E W E N CAI~IEIIONj I~.D. 709
as where the patient states, "I listen to it as though it were a stranger talking"; and (d) misinterpretation; this is much less frequent, but on occasion patients succeed in completely reversing the sense of a statement, even when repeated 30 or 40 times, by changing it from an affirmative to a negation.
Methods of penetrating the defense which have been most successful are: (1) continued repetition; (2) the use of the ear- phones; and (3) the use of the filtered record, as indicated earlier in this paper. This last procedure, by its continuous shift in pitch, in volume, in spacing, and by other devices, penetrates the patient's defenses by repeated evoking of what Pavlov has termed in the animal the "orientation reflex." Other methods, such as psychic driving carried out during mild sodium amytal narcosis or during continuous sleep or during the induction phase of ni- trous oxide, have not been nearly so successful. In practice, the penetration of defenses has not been found to be a serious prob- lem.

1. Stress Tolerence. Knowledge concerning this is rather limited; but it would appear, from preliminary observations, that patients vary considerably in their ability to bear stress. Those who can tolerate stress well will, in general, show less tendency to react to psychic driving by the setting up of a lasting implant. On the other hand, those who tolerate stress very poorly are likely to respond, either by withdrawal from the driving situation alto- gether or by the setting up of powerful defenses.
   
2. Capacity for Desensitization. Concerning this phenomenon, there is still less information. But~ from experience in other fields, it would appear that here, again, patients vary considerably in their ability to desensitize themselves; and those who cannot de- sensitize themselves readily will show a persistence of the implant for longer periods.
   

B. Findings ReLativ:e to the Effects of the Dynamic Implan.t
Mobi:li.zation of Action Tendencies and Progressive Problem Identificc~tion. The dynamic implant, especially when reinforced by repeated driving, tends to mobilize more and more of the com- ponents of the community of action tendencies from which it was taken. These components tend to appear in the patient's awaxe- ness. This fact, in turn, facilitates problem identification by the
710 PSYCHIC DI~IVING : DYNAIViIC II~PLANT
patient and the therapist. This progress may be assessed in the following ways: (a) by the extent to which the patient thinks about the cue communication in the period between his treat- ments, and the extent to which his ruminating over the cue com- munication evokes new material; (b) by the new material which is evoked at the time of reinforcement of the implant--namely, by playing the material back again on a subsequent occasion; (c) possibly by general shifts in the behavior of ~he individual subsequent to implantation; for instance, it may be possible to demonstrate that the fact that the patient is now sleeping better is related tooreorganization brought about by the implant; (d) dreams and psyehologieM testing may also reveal the reorganiz- ing force being exerted by the hnplant.
The first two methods of assessment are obviously the most direct and scientifically satisfying.
Illustrative of the progressive problem identification brought about by the dynamic implant, is the case of a girl who had come to therapy suffering from long-term feelings of inadequacy, marked dependency and a highly ambivalent attitude toward the male figure. The cue statement was:
"... and there's . . . uh... there's still that tendency to idolize or despise.., that tendency still exists.., uh... I perhaps don't do either quite as strongly now.., or feel either, I should say... But...uh... there still is that feeling, that one is a king and the other is a piece of dirt. Well...I mean...uh.., as you very well know.., you know exactly the type of feltow that I go for, and.., uh... all others I just seem to have no use for."
Immediately after the first implanting, the patient stated: "I sound bitter and dissatisfied ; I sound as though I am reaching for something I can't have." A change in behavior took place follow- ing this first implanting. After reinforcement, a further change took pla~e, the patient saying that her boss whom she had hitherto found extremely attractive to her because of his ability and business drive was now no longer so;she did not think of him any more as being a tyeoon, and a love affair with him ter- minated. A third period of driving brought about no change at the time; but a week afterward the implant had most considerable consequences: She gave up, she sMd, the whole idea of a "king"; she had now fMlen in love with a man of her own age. Asked how
D. EWEN CAMERON~ 1Vf.D. 711
this came about, she said: "I simply made up my mind that since I can't get a 'king,' I would give myself a chance to like John. I don't put people on a pedestal like I used to.; I don't feel the same way I used to about the boss. I used to have a bitter grudge against my father for my troubles; now I see him as a weak person I don't admire."

1. Durability of Implant. The writer's experience has shown that the implant, if not reinforced, declines in its activity fairly rapidly after two weeks; although, on occasion, it can be found operative as long as two or three months after the first implant- ing. As indicated earlier in this paper, the intensity of the implant can actually be progressively increased by a suitable reinforce- ment at rates of once a week to once a month.
   
2. Shift.ing At~itud,es Towa.rd Cu.e Comm~nication. The writer has frequently encountered the interesting phenomenon of the according of negative values to the pattern of behavior repre- sented in the cue communication: "I hate my whining voice"; or: "I don't have to please people all the time; I'm not like that any more." This imparting of negative values is particularly likely to occur either after repeated implanting or with the progress of psychotherapy in general. A working premise concerning it is that, since the patient comes more clearly to identify the neurotic components in the cue communication and to organize more efficient behavioral patterns, he tends to reject the neurotic patterns and to express negative feelings toward them.
   
3. Mobilization of Action Tenc~e~c~es. An interesting question which arises is whether an implant can mobilize action tendencies laid down before the event embodied in the implant. Experience indicates that, while this does occur, it is much less usual than the mobilization of action tendencies laid down subsequent to the implant and derived from the basic situation outlined in the cue communication used in implanting.
   

By continued replaying of a cue communication, a persistent tendency to act in a way which can be predetermined in its general characteristics can be established. In other words~ by driving a cue communication, one can, without exception, set up in the patient a persisting tendency for that cue statement, and other
712 PSYCI-IIC DRIVING
components of the "community of action tendencies" from which it was drawn, to return to his awareness.

1. The dynamic implant thus established, and especially if re- inforced by repeated driving, tends to activate more and more of the components of the relevant community of action tend- encies. These components tend to appear in the patient's aware- heSS.
   
2. This materia]]y contributes to problem identification by the patient and the therapist, and, hence, facilitates the processes of therapeutic reorganization.
   
3. The dynamic qualities of the implant are functions of: (a) the amount and repetition of driving; (b) the intensity of the response; (c) defenses; (d) stress tolerance; (e) capacity for desensitization.
   

(5) The major continuing effects of the dynamic implant are: (a) progressive problem identification; (b) resulting reorganiza- tion of behavioral patterns; (c) negative evaluation of the neu- rotic patterns present in the cue communication used in driving.
Allan Memorial Institute of Psychiatry 1025 Pine Avenue, West Montreal 2, Canada

Strap in, it's a long one. TL;DR at the end and I have a question at the end for the good folks of Reddit.
As a set up to this crazy email my dad/DNA-Donor, I'll give a brief background of what he's like/how growing up was like. Long version is here. My father and mother were always religious. Fundamentalist Christian, the extreme ones, that hate Harry Potter and Fantasy things because 'they come from the Devil!'. Couldn't listen to radio, watch most things on tv, and science was wrong. My 'dad' was the pick and chose type of christian, whereas he was always right and god said so. He doesn't agree with divorce, says that's not what god says you can do, so when my mom left him, it wasn't real, and once she is 'right with God, she would go back to him (my dad)'. So you know, just a little bit of an ego.
A quick way to describe his parenting style aside from extreme christian, it would be that he wanted the picture perfect family without any of the work of making it so, and to be the best christian helper at the church we went to. But we (the kids) never saw him, and he didn't help with our food, power, or rent situations. We had to move SO much because we couldn't afford staying in the place we were at.
After my mom left him, she converted to being a Christian Jew (yes, it is odd). But by then, I was done with religion. It didn't make sense, it could be changed far too easily, and if every religion said they were the one true religion, then no matter what, everyone is wrong and we're all doomed. So I've been non-religious since turning 18 (34 now) as soon as I could no longer be forced to go to churches or reading bibles. I've since learned that I'm bi-sexual and A-gendered (don't care what gender I am/what/how I am called), and since Christians don't typically like that, I've not bothered telling my 'dad' about it. I know he will go on a rant and rampage and rage at me, my mom, and my brothers. I haven't seen my dna-donor in over 9/10? years. And he would literally just show up for a day or so, take us out to eat and try to connect with us briefly, and then leave again. (We live in the USA and he's from Canada). He can sort of see what we are doing on facebook, and what little bits we're willing to tell him directly, but we've not bothered trying to keep the communication lines open. He sent emails to my mom at the end of march (only recently discovered) concerning myself, my younger brother (32M), and youngest brother (26M, AFAB). And it's the craziest thing I've read in a long time. Here is the direct thing, names changed/altered to keep privacy.
[Dearest (my mom):
Where to start... Well, I guess asking for news might be a good start. I’ve looked at the FB page for her store, and I know she is slowly recovering from the robbery. Has she shared anything with you recently about how it’s been affecting her? Has she visited you lately? Does she visit on a regular basis? How well do (middle brother) and (youngest brother) get along with her?
Now, to the “meat” of this email... As I mentioned for (middle brother) , I know that OP made a profession of faith at Abundant Live Assembly, in probably 97 or 98. Has she kept up with the faith? I know that the first time I visited you in Virginia, she was pretty into the whole Messianic Jewish stuff, even showing her friend and I, at the meal after the service, how she had tassels tied to the corners of her jeans, because of it.
But I get the feeling she is not currently living for God... I can’t pinpoint anything precise for that subjective statement. However, I do know that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34, Luke 6:45)... and the way she swears does concern me... I first became aware of it one time I was visiting and we went to watch a movie. She was one or two rows ahead of us, and you threw a few kernels of popcorn at her, and she called you a “fuckhead!” I didn’t say anything at the time, as I didn’t want to start an argument, and I didn’t want you to think I was questioning your parenting skills, or anything like that... Then she spent a few years with no contact. I even found her on Yahoo Messenger, and asked her a question I had for her. She answered the question, then told me to not try to contact her again.
It was only at your mother’s funerals that we spoke again. At that time, she warned me to not be surprised to hear her swear, as she apparently swears a lot, but would try to tone it down for the day (it almost sounded like she was bothered by it, and maybe embarrassed that I would find out, but maybe I was imagining things...) Anyway, she told me how when she plays online RPGs, the Elf language consists of swearing a lot, and people were amazed at how “fluent” she was in the language...
So of course, I am concerned about her spiritual well-being... Do you know anything about where she stands with God?
Another thing she told me, that day, was that she had wanted to write me a letter, as she had “issues with the way we raised her...” So she took down my email address, to send it to me later. (She later lost that email, but took the time to look me up on Facebook, which was an unexpected surprise... I guess she really did want to renew our ties, to a certain degree...) In the end, she never sent me anything like what she mentioned, so I don’t know what her feelings are on the subject. Did she ever mention anything to you, about “the way we raised her” ? Do you have any idea what that might have been about?
One more concern I have about her, is whether something happened, whether spiritually or physically, at the school she was going to when you guys were still in Montreal. At the end of the 2001-2002 school year, she had been saying that if they said she had not learned enough French, she wanted to continue learning. Yet when she went to school the following fall, she came back, during the very first week, wanting nothing more to do with French, and couldn’t wait for you guys to leave for the States. Whereas she had asked me for help with homework in the previous school year, now that she was at a new school (a high-school) and (middle brother) was still in the old school (an elementary school), she didn’t want my help, and barely put in any effort on her homework at all. She also didn’t seem to like her new (male, this time) teacher. So I’ve always wondered if something happened at that new school, whether in the physical or spiritual realm. Has she ever spoken to you about that? Do you have any idea what might have changed her outlook that radically in just a few days at her new school? I’m worried that if something happened in the spiritual realm, and it has never been dealt with, it may still be affecting her today, on an unconscious level. Any idea?
That’s all I can think of, for now. Thank you for your time.
Love always,]
The whole '97/'98 proclamation thing: I was 8. An 8 year old who had just seen 'A Thief in the Night' series about the end times and the rapture (scared the shit out of me). The 2001-2002 thing was me discovering that I was depressed and dissociating. I hated being in a city where you HAD to learn the language and if you didn't, you were looked down on and scorned. Also, there was nothing for us to do as we couldn't go out, nothing to watch (extreme Christians remember), and no one around our ages to hang out with where we lived. I didn't want to live there, and by the time the second year of being there, I was tired of the whole thing. I stopped doing homework, and technically failed 7th grade because literally every aspect of it was in french, even the art, gym, and math.
I stopped trying to talk with him and reconnect with dna-donor when I realized he didn't think women should be allowed to divorce their spouses. Even if the man was abusive or it was to help her, because 'they should work it out together' instead. And when I realized that, I realized that I did not want to associate with someone who would allow another person to be abused and hurt if their god said so.
So my question, do I respond to the email with a full list of what has happened and how I've changed? If I do, this will 200% mean that he will try and 'convert' me back, rant at my mom, rant at me, and be 1,000% more annoying. But it would be SO satisfying.
TL;DR: Crazy Fundamentalist Christian Father worried that I (Bi-sexual A-gender atheist) isn't with God and wants to know what has been going on after not doing anything like that for 10+ years. Should I tell him straight up or not bother as he would never change?
Also, the emails he sent about my brothers are just as bad. Though I only know what they are by paraphrasing from my mom. If this isn't meant to be here, please let me know.

Hey everyone! I picked up an old set of cookie cutters with a crappy chrome job on them, I am getting them stripped then powder coated, I plan on painting them like the photo below and clear coating them. These would be for an auto-cross / track day setup. Wondering if there are any preferred setups for tire and spacer combos? Thanks gang!
Also, car is an 86’ N/A, picked up from the states (Nevada) if anyone has any connection for a vehicle search that would be awesome. I can’t get much past history on it now being in Canada.
Thanks in advance, happy driving!
-M

I live in Canada, specifically Ontario. I’ve been a financial advisor (mutual funds and life insurance) for just over 5 years now and I’m honestly just tired of what appears to be more of a sales role than an actual advisory role.
I spent 4 years with a large well known company, and made a move about a year ago to a firm with a different company. At my first company it was full commission, basically self employed, although there were some leads from the company and other supports. At the new firm I have a salary plus commission of sorts depending on the products, but in this role I’m receiving 0 leads of any kind and it’s basically your typical “get your friends and family in and cold call your life away to hit targets”.
I love the topic of finance and am the go to guy in my circle for anything finance related which I love. I love helping people with debt and personal finances and how to invest intelligently and build a plan to reach financial goals.
What I don’t love is that it’s literally just a sales job. Convince people to meet with you, get all their money and sell them as much life insurance as you can. Rinse and repeat. I know, I’m not cut out for it and I don’t have what it takes and all that, no need to tell me it’s a numbers game and give me the lecture.
I have clients that love me and we’re happy to move over with me to the new company, but finding new clients is now a slog due to already mining my friends and family and their friends and family over the last 5 years.
So, this brings us to my question. Is there any kind of similar role out there that’s more customer service focused? Maybe a support or relationship manager type role? Something where I can still help people with their finances in some way, but I’m not constantly trying to convince people to talk to me.
The only thing in my mind at this point is to go sole proprietor under a dealer that will leave me alone and let me do my own thing. I would likely take on a second job to sustain myself, while trying to grow my financial services business organically via online marketing and referrals.
I’m open to all types of opportunities out there!

I’ve been struggling with my weight for years. There are emails I can trace back to from when I was 11 years old, sending myself diet plans and ways to lose weight. When I was really young, I used to be thin, but since moving to Canada almost 15 years ago, I’ve struggled with my weight so much. I’m not fat, but I’m on the cusp of normal weight/overweight according to the BMI scale, which I know isn’t always accurate. But just simply looking at myself in the mirror, I know I’m slightly overweight. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m only “slightly” overweight, but I genuinely cannot lose weight. I know the basics of pretty much everything that has to do with weight loss. I mean I’ve been trying since I was 11 years old. I’m now 21. When I was 15/16, I remember I lost 10 pounds and I remember being able to hold off on foods so well. I don’t know how I did it because nowadays I feel like I can’t resist anything. I don’t think I necessarily eat that unhealthy either. My family has always told me they think it’s simply my portion sizes being slightly too large. Back when I lost those pounds, I was able to lower my portion size to one that was more “normal”. Nowadays, I feel less and less motivated. When I lost those pounds, a few months later, I gained it back and ever since I’ve been unable to lose it. I had a personal trainer and that helped, but then when I couldn’t afford the trainer anymore, I got so overwhelmed with my final year in college that I stopped going. I started eating like shit. Now that I've graduated and moved back to home, I’m starting to go back to the gym and trying to eat healthier. I haven’t been going as much as I want (to the gym), but I guess a start is better than nothing. But that’s the thing. I hate that I’m always starting from the same point. In a few months, I’ll probably gain all of it back and have to restart it. It’s so fucking exhausting and I don’t think I’ll ever lose the weight. There are days I wake up and I try to force myself to eat 1200 calories, but that doesn’t work (and obviously, I don’t know why I even stoop this low). There are times where I eat healthy and go to the gym, but it feels like I’m making zero progress no matter how hard I try. I eventually give in to the desires I'm having. I feel ugly every single fucking day. I wish I could just be like a normal human being and not have to worry constantly about how fat I’m going to get for eating a treat.
As of today, I’m going to walk my dog. I’m planning on going to the gym and mentally, I feel so unprepared. I hate going to the gym because it makes me so anxious, but I also hate it because I feel as if it forces me to acknowledge all the flaws I have. I have to look in the mirror and look at how much I dislike my body. I have to be surrounded by people who are a lot better looking than I am, which fuels this really specific anxious habit that I do, which I'm too embarrassed to actually explain what it is.
Every day I tell myself “What is the point? I’ll probably gain it all back”. I’m tired of this. I want it to just end. So I guess with that being said:
If anyone has a similar experience to mine, what exactly did you do to lose the weight? I want to just fucking lose this weight and live a normal life. I want to have a sustainable lifestyle. Everything I try, I simply cannot sustain and I’m getting so frustrated. I want to give up so bad. I feel like I’ve tried fucking everything and I cannot commit to anything. Am I just not mentally strong enough? I have so many questions. So many doubts and I just want to do something that doesn't constantly make me feel like I'm a failure.

There's a "dad joke" I heard that goes: My therapist told me to write out a big long rant letter to everyone I have a problem with, burn them all to ashes, and scatter the ashes into the wind. I did all that last weekend, but now I'm not sure what to do with the letters.
This post feels like that big, long rant, but I genuinely could really use some help/ideas beyond "go to marriage counseling." I provide so much to the family and household that isn't reciprocated, but trying to set boundaries to feel more balanced gets passive-aggressive and/or silent treatment. I'm not writing all this here just to vent, I've actually edited this down pretty significantly to summarize what I'm going through and giving some examples.
Thanks for giving me the space to share this.
Me (50/M), Wife (45/F), two kids 15 and 13. We have no family who live anywhere close to us. We're in the middle of America, her divorced parents are on the coast, and mine's in Canada where I'm originally from (in case my username didn't give that away).
TLDR at the bottom.
Trigger warnings: a ruined birthday, shared/not-shared finances, me losing my cool and walking out on my family and getting the silent treatment since, and apparently being the only parent/grown-up in the house.
To this family, I feel that all I am to them is the income/paycheck and personal chef, and I'm ready to walk away. My wife won't communicate, gets defensive and angry, and doesn't contribute to the marriage or teach our kids about responsibility, so I look like a jerk all the time. If I speak up and ask her to help, I'm treated like a jerk. If I don't speak up, she does nothing.
Background about physicality, work and finances
I work in tech, typically 50-70 hours per week, and take on occasional (< 5 hrs/week) contract work as a side business to pay for my 3D printing hobby that I'm also trying to turn into a side business. She works part-time maybe one full day of work throughout the week on an as-needed basis.
My job pays the benefits, and I've established a retirement fund for us, plus a 401K and Roth IRA, plus a 529 account for each of the kids that I've been investing in since they were born. I paid off both cars. We're debt-free except for our mortgage, and we have enough assets to pay off the house if we choose to.
We each have a bank account for ourselves, plus a joint bank account. Her part-time paychecks and other money from an inheritance, goes 100% into her account only, and I use my account for my 3D printing business to maintain an LLC. Just about everything financial is paid for from my paychecks. I've always treated this as "our" money. All bills, mortgage, memberships, subscriptions (Netflix, etc), things the kids need (clothing, shoes, school supplies, etc), furniture, medical bills, etc are all paid from a joint account that is funded 100% by my paycheck. She makes no contributions to this account, but she does withdraw from it for fast food, snacks she buys just for herself, her own crafting hobbies, and she'll pick up maybe $100/month for some groceries.
I promised her before we were even married that if she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom or, at any point, go back to work, she'd have my full support either way, and I've kept that promise. She worked full-time for about 2 years before we had kids and worked a fair bit of part-time work before the kids started school in 2013. She's been at her part-time job for 2 years, so quite a span where she didn't work at all.
She works as a 1099 contractor and, despite repeatedly being asked to, won't reserve money for tax time. So, not only does she spend 100% of her paycheck, but I have to be sure that we save enough to cover her tax bill every year. She's never offered to contribute to tax payments we have to make.
I had gallbladder surgery and bariatric surgery, so I've had pretty restrictive dietary needs for the past 5-6 years. She often made comments about me being heavy and having a shortened life span, but since my bariatric surgery, she's expressed resentment about my body changing (I lost 120+lbs) and now doesn't care to learn what kinds of protein/carb/fat balance I need, and gained about 80lbs herself. As such, she does not contribute to any meal planning, which means I'm doing 95% of all meal planning, groceries, and cooking.
When it comes to cooking, I'm a damn good cook, and it's 100% because of YouTube. She grew up in an environment where she wasn't encouraged to cook or even learn to, so she lived on PBJ through college until we started dating and I would cook or take her out. When the kids were in their "picky" stages of 4yrs-9yrs of age, she got frustrated with cooking but years later still holds to that "NOBODY likes what I cook". So she makes maybe 2 or 3 meals per month now, and it's always the same meals. Last night, she cooked 10 people's worth of macaroni with a single pound of ground beef and more than a pound of cheese. I had to pick out the meat to get my protein and then drink a protein shake afterward, and then got offended that I threw away the noodles/cheese. (My diet needs high protein, low carbs, and almost no fat, she knows this because I tell her quite often, but she won't do anything about it; she's bought maybe 3 shelves worth of cookbooks and won't even open them or go take a class or anything.)
Our oldest kid has shown an interest in cooking and will maybe cook one meal per week and ask me to help him out, so I share what I've learned, things I've tried, experimented with, lessons learned, etc., and we have a good time, and they really appreciate the learning opportunity. On the rare occasion I do see my wife making dinner in the kitchen, I show her that I'm really happy about what she's making and ask if she wants help chopping or anything and I only get "no" as an answer and completely shut down like I'm not supposed to be in the kitchen. I'll try to have conversation with her but then she can't concentrate on cooking, chopping, etc, and then "ruined" dinner is my fault.
"Her" money versus "our" money, and how we spend our days/weekends
My wife had a relative die quite a few years ago and in the fall of 2018 was given a $250k inheritance. She has always referred to this as "her" money, "her" retirement, in case "she" needs a nursing home later. I'm not in her future plans, apparently. She gave $50k of it to a cousin who was deliberately left out of that relative's will. My wife's will leaves any remaining inheritance money to the kids. No mention of me anywhere whatsoever.
Once the inheritance money hit her bank account, she decides to buy a horse from halfway across the country and put it in a boarding stable 20 minutes from the house. It was a childhood dream of hers. Apparently, she's allowed to pursue her dreams and interests, it's "her" money, I'm not allowed to tell her what to do with it, but she complains when my 3D printing business makes enough money to buy another printer to keep up with demand... And my hobby takes up less time per week than she spends at the barn.
When she's not working her one-day-a-week job, she's at the boarding stable for a few hours per day, playing with her horse, taking selfies, taking him on walks, not actually riding him. With her remaining time at home, and when she gets home with the kids, she's lying on the couch, acting worn out and tired like she just bench-pressed the friggin' horse. (And yes, I know horse training CAN be exhausting, but she's not doing anything exhausting with him. She literally walks him on a path, or walks him in circles in an arena enclosure, or she's brushing him down and bathing him to look nice for Instagram)
In the summer of 2018, right before she got this inheritance money, she spent $50k of "our" money on a kitchen renovation that she insisted she designs herself, and then felt guilty about the bill and me having to take on more side contracting work to pay off the HELOC in a reasonable amount of time, and contributed back $10k to the whole project from "her" money afterward. "Her" money paid for the kids' orthodontics, about $3k each. But she literally contributes NOTHING else financially to the family.
If I had to guess, she's got about $150k left of that inheritance money, maybe less, she won't ever tell me about it. And we don't get a notice from the bank about interest gained at tax time every year because she put it in an account that makes ZERO interest. She sees my investments with 25%-40% gains, but won't ever ask for my help or input. Instead, she asked 3 other guys at work who told her to at least get a Vanguard account, but almost 6 years later she's never done it.
I work full-time as mentioned, and work from home. Work is typically 50+ hours per week but I try to cap it at 60-ish if I can. For the past month I've been on a project with a tight deadline, and working more like 10-14 hours per day 6 days per week. It's like that in tech, she's been understanding of this in the past, and I'm sure to take jobs where this is NOT the norm. Still, I'm always happy to help drive the kids to/from school or to music lessons or doctors, but I'm usually treated like "how dare you," that's "her" job, like that's her contribution to everything.
She works a part-time job doing marketing. Maybe 2-3 hours a day, one or two days per week. Sometimes busier in Q1 as they prep/plan most of the year, but then very low-lift afterward. She spends maybe 40 minutes per day taking the kids to/from school. Other than that, she's at the barn or on the couch. (have I mentioned we've gone through several couches that "our" money pays for??)
The marital imbalance I'm dealing with
She won't enforce chores for the kids, remind them to do laundry, or clean their rooms, or even shower. She'll text me "one of the boys smells" after taking them to school, but won't insist they shower, or back me up on the whole "c'mon guys, brush twice a day at least, and shower at least every 2 days with actual some soap on your bodies and actual shampoo on your hair, and use deodorant..." She'll make remarks like "Didn't you wear and sleep in those clothes for the past 3 days?" but won't make them change, or tell them to do their laundry.
She might do dishes 2 to 3 times per month, it's normally a chore we give to the kids, but she never enforces it. If they stack up for 3 days she'll do some of them but not all of them. One kid was born on an odd-numbered day, the other on an even-numbered day, so the rule is if today is an even or odd day, we know whose turn it is to do the dishes. And if the month has an odd number of days, I do the dishes on the 31st/29th day. But they're teenagers, they'd rather be in their rooms being teenagers, so I have to constantly remind them. Neither of them checks that the dishes are even clean before putting them away, something she specifically called out being embarrassed about when we were dating and visiting her mom's house where half of the dishes in the cupboard still had dried food all over them.
And then garbage day, or yard work, or vacuuming, cleaning a bathroom, cleaning their room, shoveling snow. She doesn't help enforce ANY of the chores that we agreed on. So I'm the sole disciplinarian around here, which makes the kids grow up thinking they better avoid me or I'm the jerk who's gonna put them to work.
Nothing happens around here unless I ask the rest of the family. I've purposefully left chores undone for "that's almost a health hazard" amounts of time and still nobody takes the initiative, nor will she ask the kids to help. They all see the work needs to be done, but they won't choose to help, and they're probably learning from her example of just sitting in some other room/area of the house and someone else will do it someday.
Even asking them "what kind of meals do you want this week, what haven't we had in a while, what's your favorite meal," you'd swear I was asking them to cure cancer every Saturday so I could start to plan meals for the following week and get groceries on Sunday, which has been our routine since the kids could talk.
Their cop-out is to skip the 3 shelves of cookbooks and flip through a binder we kept from a few months of Hello Fresh meals but then it's the same 10-12 meals that get kinda old after a while.
I feel like I have no help from anyone.
I reached my tipping point, and recently walked out on my family
A little over three weeks ago, I'm on this tight deadline at work, getting maybe 3-4 hours of sleep at night, pulling 10-14 hour days. It's a Wednesday, I remember about 430pm that I should commit my code, as I usually do 'cause I need to make dinner because nobody else is gonna do it. Oh, wait, tonight was grilled cheese and tomato soup -- literally, ANYONE ELSE in the house, including our 13yr old who has never shown any interest in cooking, could heat a can of soup and melt cheese between bread, right??? Surely SOMOENE else in the family will handle dinner, so I keep working (note, without asking anyone else to help with dinner), hoping someone else will handle the meal. (and yes, I know this is typically against my diet, but I indulge in this low-protein, high-carb, higher-fat meal about once a month.)
At 730pm my wife comes STOMPING into my office area, "I can't make the grilled cheese like you do." No politeness, just turns and stomps back to the kitchen. I follow her to the kitchen, where the tomato soup is on a RAPID boil, yet she hasn't even started making the grilled cheese sandwiches. I turn the soup off, take it off the burner, and start to describe what to do for the grilled cheese. It's honestly nothing special; I put shredded cheese in the pan to get crusty on the outside of the bread, then stack up the the grilled cheese, put break on top, let the inner cheese melt, and flip it onto more shredded cheese. Highly recommended.
She says "Oh" and ... LEAVES THE KITCHEN, leaving me there expecting me to make dinner... and I'm pissed. I should have just gone back to my work area, but she parks herself back on the couch.
I get everything made, and of course nobody sets the table, ever. Now I'm seriously pissed off, so I slam some dishes in the middle of the table and go back into the kitchen to get the pot of soup and plate of sandwiches. I get back to the dinner table, where my wife and youngest are just standing there, STILL not setting the table despite me standing there with food that I can't even put down. So I drop the food on the table wherever I can, soup splashes everywhere, and I start setting the table while they stand there and watch and ... I lost my cool. I flung bowls and spoons in the general area where they're supposed to be at the table, and I walked out of the house. I returned 4 or 5 hours later once they were all in bed.
The ONE meal in my busy schedule that ANY of them could have made, and her contribution was putting a can of soup in a pot.
She still didn't make any meals for the rest of the week. That Sunday she put a meal plan together for the whole following week. Again, all super carb-heavy when she knows my own diet can't handle that. And then she stopped planning ANYTHING ELSE SINCE THEN. The following week's "meal plan" was just a list of who was home on which night because of end-of-school-year events going on. No meals, no grocery list. Meanwhile I'm still on my deadline... Last week, no help at all. This week, zero help.
So this week's meal plan I finally set a boundary for myself that was VERY clear to them: I'm planning to cook 3 meals for the whole week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and left the rest open with no meal planned. Last night at 6pm she made her "hamburger helper" and plans "ramen" for tomorrow (again, all noodles and broth, very little protein), but no other help from her for the rest of the meal plan for the remainder of the week.
My recently ruined 50th birthday
My birthday was a little over a week ago. I turned 50. Send me your favorite dad jokes, please, I beg of you.
My wife asked me 2 or 3 months ago if I wanted any kind of party, etc. to which I said yeah, I'd love to have a few friends over, named several of them, all of whom she either has in her phone, or are guys married to women that I know she stays in regular contact with. I mentioned some all-you-can-eat places that we could go, just the 4 of us, where I could pick out good proteins etc. and they could eat whatever they wanted.
I got nothing. No dinner out. No party. No friends.
The night before my birthday, she was too lazy to get off the couch, so I went to bed alone. I woke up in bed alone. I told the family the day before that I wanted French Toast for breakfast, normally something we'd do on Christmas Day, but it was my 50th birthday gosh darn it, and I was even thawing bacon. I even bought all the groceries needed. Nope, had to cook that alone too, so I only made enough for me, and ate alone. Showered alone, 'cause we haven't been intimate in ... 3 months? 4 months? And who cares that it's my birthday.
Nobody asked if I wanted to go out anywhere, go see a movie, go for a hike with the dog, nothing. So I went out with the dog, alone.
That night I had to make dinner for the family, again, on my own friggin' birthday. Alone in the kitchen. AND I had to remind the kids to clean up the kitchen afterward 'cause they won't do it unless they're told. She bought tiny pieces of cheesecake for dessert, which she knows I don't like and can't eat because of my diet. I had one tiny piece, she and the kids ate the rest.
No cake, no candle, no balloons. It was my FIFTIETH birthday ...
We have some serious communication breakdown going on
Since I walked out of the house a few weeks back, she only talks to me when she wants something, and that comes across more as a demand, "I need you to pick the kids up from school, I have to be at work" and walks away She won't say good morning or even hi, unless I say it first. Lately, I say "hi" or "hey" as we're passing in the house and I get no response at all. I get literal one-word responses when I ask her a question. A few nights ago, several nights in a row, I'm in the living room on my laptop trying to get more work done, she'll come in the room, not ask me what I'm doing or if I'm working, and blast a TV show on her phone at near-maximum volume, and fall asleep on the couch.
She gets mad and offended any time I offer constructive criticism of any kind. And it doesn't matter how delicately I try to phrase things, I'll agonize for days over exactly which words to use, she'll get super defensive, angry and lash out, and give me the silent treatment for weeks.
Last Tuesday was an end-of-year awards show for our youngest, who's finishing 8th grade. He's really into music and he stayed after school to practice for the event. She comes home to get ready then decides to leave for the event by herself. I only noticed when the garage opened and closed. She doesn't say anything to me or our oldest kid about what time she wanted to leave or if we're ready to go, she just ... left. Well of COURSE we both want to go, but now we have to drive there separately. And he wins a TON of awards, one from his classmates, one from his teacher, and one from the school. I'd have been PISSED to have missed that. "Oh, I thought you didn't want to go..." was her reason later.
This past Saturday, I do ALL the yardwork 'cause she won't tell the kids to help and I'm frankly tired of having to ask for help. A few hours of yard work later, I tell my youngest to vacuum 'cause nobody vacuums around here unless I tell them to and honestly it's gross. I hop in the shower to clean up and cool down from the yard work. Youngest decides it's "too hot in the house" and sits in the kitchen to eat a popsicle instead of vacuuming. No backup from my wife at all on this, who's still parked on the couch. So I get upset with him, he does a half-assed job, says he's "tired' (from watching YouTube all day) and goes back to his room and we don't see him again the rest of the day. Again, no help or backup from my wife.
It's now 7pm in the house Saturday night, and -- shocker -- NOBODY has bothered to even ASK about dinner much less put any kind of food together. 8pm rolls around and my oldest finally emerges from his own room, starts thawing some chicken, and comes to ask me for help to make a meal, which I happily do. Until I get grumbly comments about "why are we eating so late." And my wife makes her way back to the couch. Not so much as a "thanks for cooking" or offer to clean up. And of COURSE nobody is doing the dishes, because DAD didn't remind anyone.
WHAT DO I DO??
19 years ago when we got married, this felt like a marriage. We did stuff together, we split things evenly, shared responsibility and chores, we both cooked, we bought groceries together. The first few years with kids were rough, but it at least FELT like a partnership once we figured out how to be parents. But something has shifted over the past decade, and this feels less and less like a partnership, much less feeling like a marriage. This whole relationship feels very one-sided, I get no appreciation for any of my constant hard work and being a provider. Instead, she's accused me, twice, of having an affair, once to the point of giving me anxiety/panic attacks for which I was almost hospitalized.
Now, she and the kids are noticing and talking behind my back (like I can't hear them) about the fact that I'm not wearing my wedding band anymore. Of course, the kids won't ask me directly, and I'm not bringing it up myself, and my wife's not talking to me anyway. Maybe she's still mad that I got mad a few weeks ago and walked out? Hard to know when the person won't talk to you unless they want something from you.
I'll put the damn ring back on when it feels like a marriage again. But then the next time it comes off, I think it'll stay off.
TL;DR! To this family, I feel that all I am to them is the income/paycheck and personal chef, and I'm ready to walk away. I can see why parents stay together "for the kids." As with most marriages, it started great; we've had bumpy times, but we always got through it together. Nothing like this, though. My wife won't communicate, gets defensive and angry, and doesn't contribute to the marriage or teach our kids about responsibility, so I look like a jerk all the time. Something has shifted over the past decade, and this feels less and less like a partnership. This whole relationship feels very one-sided, I get no appreciation for any of my constant hard work and being a provider.

I really need some help. PLEASE hear me out. I literally have NO ONE to talk to about this.
I should probably go to the nearest masjid, but before I take the matter that far, I feel like I should ask someone else who is knowledgeable here. It's about someone I suspect is a magician disguising as a raqi and my parents are being trapped in it (this wont be the first time in my parents' history. I am so TIRED of this crap. They have very little religious knowledge and believe anything. It's futile to discuss anything with them or try to make them understand. Typical South Asians).
We have sihr done to us by our relatives for decades and it is a fact. We have been dealing with that stuff for a long time. I myself am on a good path now through following the Qur'an and the Sunnah and doing my part as a Muslim and only turning to Allah.
Now in the middle of all these, my parents got somehow introduced to some Pakistani guy who is apparantly "very good" and told my mom who our enemies are. He is right. I will give him that. We KNOW for a fact that these are, in fact, the people who do various sht. What I have an issue with is....HOW did he know if he ain't dealing with jinns? I haven't met the guy yet. But from how fascinated my mother is with him...I am 99% sure he is a magician disguising as a raqi. Because, that's the sht she tends to fall for. Its just her thing.
There was a raqi my dad and I went to for years but couldn't drag her to him. He wasnt the one to tell you things. He gives ruqya water and/or oil and tells you to do adhkars, make du'as etc. things like that. He doesn't ask you for names or articles of clothing etc. So I KNOW that guy is a proper raqi. My mom always refused to go to him. I couldn't make her go. She always dismissed and still dismisses him saying "he doesn't know much" or "I don't need to see him. I'm fine". She is NOT fine. She's the main person the original sihr has been put on and its by the member of HER families. As a result...me and my siblings and dad are suffering for decades (my dad also had things done to him by people from his side but BIGGEST prob is my mom. Woman...I'm sure is highly possessed).
This new guy...she's crossing into another city to go see every week. I know my mom. When we lived back in South Asia, she had a habit in her 20s and 30s (when I was a baby/very young child) to visit palmists, astrologers etc. and she ALWAYS got attached to these types. She'd even take me to them to know my future...and even bring them INTO OUR HOME. I think after 30 years or so...she found another one here in Canada. She doesn't gimme full information about their conversation but she told me the guy told her very confidential things.
He also gave some written duas to my dad and her to carry at all times. Also said he will give her some written duas to hang on the door of the house. From the questions I asked her and from what I could pry out of her about the guy's process....apparantly, he doesn't charge $, but people have to bring him milk (I'm 99% sure it's for the jinns. Listen. I have extremely strong sense of such things being a spiritual person myself. I'm 99% sure this guy is a freaking sahir himself).
He also apparantly told her things about me and my life which she refuses to divulge. Last Friday, she gave me a tiny folded up piece of paper saying there's a dua in it and that I should keep it with me all the time to fix my probs etc. I did not open it out of fear and other things but I do keep it with me and pray everyday to Allah to keep me safe from any evil it might be associated with. I'm scared to mishandle it and unleash some more crap on me than what I already am dealing with man. Its in a tiny plastic bag in my pocket.
Today...I kinda checked it carefully without opening the paper...and it looked like I saw an Arabic number. I know numbers and symbols = trouble. It's possibly something shirky. And now I'm seriously worried about WHAT THE HECK my parents have gotten involved in in an desperate attempt to fix the problems we got (we really do have some serious bad cases of evil eyes and sihr from relatives, like I said. Not all our relatives are good people. They never were. We're going through generational sihrs).
I want to open the paper and show someone knowledgeable to tell me what's written on it. But I dont know how I should go about it and whether I should open it at all and simply just discard it....and if I discard it...how should I discard it? It should be destroyed properly first right? Depending on WHAT it is...it should be burnt, thrown into water or something else. And I should always ALWAYS protect myself before, during, and after...right? I REALLY need someone knowledgeable. I could go to a masjid...but is there anyone here I can perhaps DM and discuss about the thing first?!
I'm REALLY worried. And knowing my parents...I can't tell them to stop going to the guy because they will just blow up and do whatever they also do (they are pretty narcissistic and suffer from big egos. Which does not help any of our situation. Its like whatever they know is the absolute truth. Even if Jibreel A.S. comes down and tells them otherwise...they'd argue with him too).

I ran over a nail and need to replace my tire. It holds air as it is but I have to pump it up a few times a day.
In the past, I bought tires at the Athens Walmart and had no problems. The specific tire I have that I’m trying to replace with the identical model is also from Walmart.
Just three weeks ago, I replaced one of my tires that was excessively worn at a different Walmart out of state. No problems. Also, last year, I had the Walmart in Delaware replace another one single tire that had a nail in it. No problems.
When I had the tire replaced a few weeks ago, I ordered the tire on the Walmart website and it then prompted me to schedule an appointment to have it installed. However, when I try to do this for Athens, it says that the Athens location does not install tires. That’s obviously not true.
So I thought I’d try the app. The app will let me buy the tire, but will only let me ship it to my house. It says that pick up at the store of the item is not allowed.
So I just go in person since the website won’t work, and they agree to sell me the tire, But after looking at my car, he says he will only sell me three tires. He said that it is a Walmart corporate policy that they are not allowed to sell single tires. This doesn’t explain why I’ve had them do that twice before or why he couldn’t sell me just two tires.
I called corporate, and they agreed with me that it is not corporate policy. The store manager was supposed to call me, but never did.
Has anyone else had this experience in Athens? Have they replaced just one tire for you? What about Logan or Parkersburg?
I should note that I got scammed by this once before years ago. Back when Sears existed. I was naïve and desperately broke, and they forced me to buy two tires, because they would not only sell me one and I had a flat.
Edit: I contacted corporate and they confirmed this is NOT a corporate policy.
Edit 2: About an hour after I posted this, the app will now magically allow me to schedule an installation for the Athens location. Earlier today it said that this location does not install tires. However, since they have already refused to do it, I’m going to wait for corporate to direct them to do it.

Curious to know if anyone else finds when the weather changes drastically (this happens often in Western Canada) they feel physically ill? I’ve found when the weather maintains relatively the same - I haven’t felt sick (as in vomiting, tired, lethargy, etc.)
I previously suffered from migraines - but luckily I was able to get treatment for that. So the migraines aren’t an issue anymore.
Just thought I’d reach out and ask if others have the same experience!

The daily dose of pornoslop played on, the moans ricocheting off of his blocky skull which was too preoccupied by a string of the day’s worries.
Credit card overdue payment rent past due work too starts too early blood sugar too high IQ too low.
Most of the worries were made reality manifest by a string of unread notifications, omens sent directly by the invisible hand itself. Smooth and sinewy like his own palm it was abstracted from real life, only callused by pressing buttons.
But the invisible hand was on a losing streak. It was getting some kind of GMO cheeto corn product dusted gamer rage for being unable to manipulate the downtrodden, broken, bugged out NPC. “Pay, up loser” it screamed. The threats were closer than ever before, but never less unreal. Handcrafted eviction notices, cryptic phone calls from shifty lenders, recruitment letters from the army. Uneasy, but unworried, the threats were realer than him at this point; they had to live with him, but he refused to exist in their world. His credit score was 410, but he felt it to be less than 0. His bank account was negative; to him it was monopoly money — to spend it would entail going outside —being — an act he had long grown tired of.
He pawwed past the onslaught of social credit infractions, trying to focus on the boobs, the plot, his chummy manhood, anything that could provide a lapse. His whole life was a lapse in the wheels of progress, a bug on the windshield of a crazy bullet train. Dopamine depleted, restlessly apathetic he scanned the screen for something, anything different that wouldn’t require too much of his withered attention.
He opened and close tab after tab, ready to start but not to do. youtube onlyfans tik tok instagam reddit twitter, typing automatically the words seared into his hands. He couldn’t control them, it was all muscle memory. Eventually he found himself scrolling through a “forbidden” video playlist, surely for only two outliers demographics: the numbly depraved and the depravingly numb. The former watches them because they’re compelled to, the latter because why not. The cursed algorithm, trained on God knows what horrors to serve this outcome, had surely delivered. For at least 1 and a half hours of car crash compilations, his mind was like the audio on a dashcam, absolutely silent. But it was not enough to stave off the rest insomnia that kept him uneased.
He darted video to video looking for something, anything that was nothing in particular. Bleary eyed, tired, and high strung, something had piqued his inquiet interest. Suicide speedrun compliation. It had been on his mind for a while, despite the content he consumed day in day out dancing around the matter. Too taboo, more of that means less eyes on a screen. This video: a real showstopper, something that could keep his hands busy for at least a few minutes. Perhaps he had just found a way to shush the shackling slog of time.
A flurry of choppily edited cuts projected not on, but into his eyes. Forbidden knowledge passed on through the ages by wisened cowards, depressed dreamers too pathetic to commit to the act like the characters on the screen. Shot after shot of desperate narration mostly in the more shady languages from the global down and out. They walked so he could run. He tried to guess which the next would be? Gunshot, bathtub, concrete cannonball? He was finally keeping himself busy. His mind pacified, but his thumbs still twiddling. Eventually they found their way to the sheet he was wrapped in, one of the only furnishings in his squalid abode — usually used as a table cloth for his delivery box coffee table.
Fidgeting, staring at the screen, something stirred in him. The desperate souls all seemed so unreal, but in a manner much different than his pending obligations— less of a forgotten nightmare, more of a deja vu. The videos got shorter and shorter. More and more brutal, more shodilly recorded. It took a while to decipher what exactly was happening, making the realization hit harder. He had surely reached the dark side of the algorithm, some kind of demon numerology rising out of the bits and bytes that were all but foreign to his simpleton shattered mind. The angel of death itself rising out his router in the form of cancerous 5G waves.
The video went through a lull, and in that moment he had disengaged, realizing that his hands had stopped fidgeting. They were holding his bedsheet, in the shape of a noose. He almost thought nothing of it, like tying a shoe. He cursed his lame attention span for interrupting the daze. If this video couldn’t get his mind off things, nothing could. He had to step in.
He fastened the reaper’s bowtie against his neck, tightening the knot like a good scout. The content picked up speed. Shot for shot soul after lost soul he tightened the slack. The invisible hand had played rough, choked him too hard, gone too far. It served up something too forbidden, eyes slammed open are great for business but begets the risk of them recoiling wide shut forever. Now it will pay with the price it had put on him.
Free at last, he felt a sense of relief long forgotten as the content reached its climax. The light faded as he pushed on his pressure points, giving himself a stork factory reset. A sacrifice not to the market, but to nothing. One last fuck you to his debtors, creditors, and imagined critics. Muscles limp, he could feel the spirits of his digital compatriots in mortal coil base jumping pulling him away, far away from the computer, away from the akathisia that haunted his unfortunate chassis, away from any worries past and future.
Closing time, the lights were almost out, but there was one more customer brimming with entitled rage. The invisible hand, too proud to be mocked even by death, commandeered his screen. The broadcast was interrupted by an advertisement. Thus began an arm wrestle between it and the reaper. Death versus undead capital, demise against demiurge.
etc

I slowly drift from my sleep and think to myself, ow, why is everything warm? I check the thermostat and see that it is at a temperature as cool as canada and when I turn back to go back to bed so that I can sleep in, I see that my stuff has been knocked over? Oh sorry, where are my manners? I'm James O’Maley, I put everything back into place, and lay down on my bed but nothing is comfortable! I just decide, you know what, whatever, I’m just gonna get ready for work, and with that i get dressed, everything feels harder to put on, but it really hits me when I go to brush my teeth, when I looked into the mirror, I saw that their were, wings on my back, and a tail, growing out my butt like a lizard, I obviously spend several minutes having an existential crisis about this shocking revelation, and I decide to look at what these wings can do, I open a window, crawl out, with some difficulty and some slamming the window on my tail. I go to the edge of the fire escape railing, hop on, and jump, and I flew, higher and higher, until i nearly flew into a mountain but that's when I suddenly breathed fire, from my mouth, and bore a hole straight through the cliffside, I could spend all day flying, breathing fire, and fiddling with my tail, but I began to feel as tired as if I’d just gotten back from lifting weights with tigers, I landed on a cliffside and fell asleep. When I woke up I wasn’t on the cliffside anymore, there were monitors and scientists all around me. I tried to show some sign that I was awake, but I was chained up! I spent several moments struggling to get free, I must be free, I am not something they can chain down! I struggle, I roar, I attempt to move my head enough to burn the surrounding area, but I can’t, until someone finally talks to me,
“Hello there, James, please forgive us for our caution, but with your kind we can never be too careful.” I can see the scientist, I read his name tag, Dr. Crane William, I roar out
“My kind!? Get me out of these chains!” I breathe fire, claw, kick and swing my tail, trying to free myself, until I see two other people watching, one with weird whiskers, a long tail and a smug look on his face, and the other with a similar appearance to me but her wings are her arms. The next few days go by, until the two finally decide to talk to me, and in those days, My face becomes a snout like a komodo dragon’s, the one with the whiskers opens his mouth first and I already hate him
“Would you look at that, he’s even uglier up close!” I glare at him with absolute hatred, that seems to anger him more,
“What are you mute or something? Speak before I tear you apart!” he takes one step closer and that's all I need, I Bite his shoulder and use his head to break the chains on my right arm, I continue to break the rest of them with ease, and tell whiskers
“You want to fight? Let’s fight!” I leap on top of him, clawing at his face, he tries to slash me with a blade on his tail but I grab it and stab the wall with it, until I feel a burning sensation in my veins, The girl had bitten me! She looks at me with sadness,
“Sorry about this,” I look at her and drift into unconsciousness, when I wake up next I’m in some kind of, medical wing, ha, wing, as I look around I feel that my mouth is bound shut, but other than that, I can move my body, I get up off the gurney and just when I think it looks nice, whiskers shows his face,
“Well thanks a lot freak, now I’m on probation with Dr. Crane.” I motion to my mouth and he seems to have enough brain cells to understand what I mean
“Ha! You got the boot, Lily had that on her when she wouldn’t stop biting staff, I’m Ryan Mist.” I just walk away and try getting this muzzle off, That's when Crane walks in,
“Well, I must say it has been a while since we’ve had to use the boot, Ryan, your behavior was unacceptable!” I can tell that Crane is annoyed, and right as he finishes his sentence, click, the boot falls off my face and clatters to the ground. I don’t bother trying to fight Ryan again, I’m just happy to be able to talk!
“Well that’s a lot better, now, talk, I want answers.” I growl, Crane and Ryan seem surprised that I got the boot off but they talk, turns out, I’m what’s called a dragonkin a Human who has dragon genes in their genome, Lily and Ryan are also dragonkin, although they can’t breath fire, Lily has fangs and a venomous bite, turns out she’s the girl that bit me, and Ryan just looks weird, apparently we are the only dragonkin who evaded the organization that Crane works for, Called ‘Kadmus,’ into adulthood, Lily being found at 22, Ryan at 20, and me at 24, on top of that, we are the only dragonkin who have survived that long, it’s at that moment that I notice Lily looking at us from behind some glass, I decide that I’ve heard enough and open the door, and I leave the room.
As I leave the room I can tell that Lily was not expecting me from the look on her face, I start a conversation with her, trying desperately to be friendly and not notice all the scientists glancing at me nervously.
“Hey, Lily, Right?” I say in the friendliest tone I can, “I’m James.” Lily looks at me with a calculating look before answering
“Hello, yeah my name is Lily, Lily Megan.” she clearly is wary of me, but I can tell a few things about her, making herself look small, clearly smarter than she lets on, seems shy,
“How did you get it off?” Lily breaks into my train of thought with the question,
“What?” I ask her, confused,
“The Boot, how did you get it off?” She gestures to the room where Crane and Ryan were having an argument, but more specifically to The Boot, laying on the ground
“Oh that? I once took a lock-picking class when I was younger.” I explain
“Huh, you mind teaching me that sometime?” She catches me off guard with that one, I can tell that she is being genuine so I agree, And we begin working out what time works best.
—————————————————————————————Unfinished———————————————————————————
Because of rule 2 I should explain the dragonkin, The dragon kin are humans who have dragon ancestry, the three dragon races are: Flying flame drakes, The basic dragon you see in wings of fire, and most other media, wyverns, venomous bite, front legs are the wings you get it, the eastern long tails, look kinda like the luck dragon from everlasting story and the wisest of the three (Ryan inherited none of that wisdom) The flying flame drakes are from Africa and Europe, the eastern long tails are from Asia, and the wyverns are from the Americas, and the dragonkin characters have ancestry in those areas, James has European ancestry, Ireland specifically, Ryan has Asian ancestry, Japanese and Chinese, and Lily is native american either, Sioux, Navajo, or Lakota, And Crane, While not a dragonkin, Is from Africa along with his family, all the dragons are near extinct, with small pockets all over the world.

Warning: I will not message you first. If you were messaged by someone claiming to be me you are in the process of being scammed.

You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.
Desktop Users: Comment on this post and Click here to start a trade App Users, please include the following in your PM (Remember to comment on this post as well):

• Type of card(s) and amount of each.
• What payment method you accept.
• How you acquired the GC and why you're getting rid of it.

Crypto^4, Paypal^1, Apple Pay, Chime, Cashapp, Varo, Venmo, and Western Union
I only have Steam as a substitute for cash payments in gift card trades.

Want ↓	Cash or a Gift Card ↓	Crypto4 ↓
Apple	60%3	NA
Amazon.ca	50%	50%
Amazon.co.uk	50%	50%
Amazon.com	70%	55%
Amazon.de	50%	50%
Amazon.es	50%	50%
Amazon.fr	50%	50%
Amazon.it	50%	50%
Amazon.jp	30%	30%
Arrow Films	65%	60%
Barnes & Noble	50%	50%
Baskin Robbins	60%	60%
Best Buy	25%	25%
BJ's (not BJ's restaurant)3	60%	NA
Bloomingdales	50%	50%
Burger King4	60%	NA
Clothing Shops (Small Boutique)	contact me	contact me
Dell3	60%	NA
Delta gift cards3	65%	NA
Delta Sky Miles3	PM me	NA
Delta Vouchers3	65%	NA
Dicks Sporting Goods 3	PM me	NA
Disney Plus	PM me	PM me
Dunkin Donuts3	60%	NA
eBay	70%	70%
Fandango3	10%	NA
Five Guys3	60%	NA
Gamestop	60%	60%
Gas Station Cards3	PM me	NA
Gyft	70%	70%
Half Price Books	50%	50%
iTunes3	60%	NA
J crew	40%	40%
JCPenney	25%	25%
Jersey Mike Subs3	60%	NA
KFC3	60%	NA
Khols	30%	30%
Macys	35%	35%
Magazines.com	40%	40%
McDonald's 3	60%	NA
Microsoft3	60%	NA
Moe’s Southwestern Grill3	60%	NA
Nintendo Eshop3	70%	NA
Nordstrom	50%	50%
Panera bread3	60%	NA
PSN3	60	NA
PSN Plus 12 month3	NA	NA
Saks Fifth Avenue	50%	50%
Sears	50%	50%
Sephora	50%	50%
Speedway (must be able to use on fuel)3	80%	NA
Staples	50%	50%
Starbucks US only	55%	55%
Steam3	60%	NA
Subway 3	PM me	NA
Taco Bell	60%	NA
Target	50%	50%
Urban Outfitters	50%	50%
Vudu3	50%	NA
Walmart	60%	60%
Wendys3	60%	NA
Xbox (gift cards)3	60%	NA
Other Clothing Stores, Gas Stations, Grocery Stores, Restaurant, & Fast Food gift cards	PM me

¹ When paying via PayPal, I can only send payments via Goods and Services, thus you will be charged a fee. If you'd rather not face this fee there are plenty of alternatives. ² Larger denominated gift cards preferred. ³ PayPal is the only payment option. ⁴ All crypto payments come from Coinbase. Any fees associated with it are built into the price.

What I don’t buy:

• Amazon.au
• Bass Pro Shop
• buffalo wild wing
• California Pizza Kitchen
• Canadian tire
• Cold Stone
• Dairy Queen
• Fanatics
• Giant Foods
• Google Play
• Grub Hub
• Gymshark
• Hilton Honors
• Hot Topic
• Krispy Kreme
• old navy/gap/banana republic
• Patxi's pizza
• PSN Canada or UK
• publix
• Raceway
• Scheels
• Shell Gas Stations
• Spotify
• Starbucks Canada
• Tractor supply
• Xbox Canada or UK
• Xbox live gold

Any fees are built into the price.

Selling

I have:
Up to $1000 in Amazon.com (can be broken up into smaller denominations) and am selling at

• 85%: WesternUnion, Wise, Airtm (You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.)
• 90%: LTC

Up to $500 in eBay (can be broken up into smaller denominations) and am selling at

• 90%: WesternUnion, Wise, Airtm (You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.)

Up to $500 in Apple.com ($15 and $50 denomination) and am selling at

• 90%: WesternUnion, Wise, Airtm (You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.)

Important: before you send your codes please make sure your account is secure (if your password is not uniqe it's best to assume your account has already been compromised. Scams where compromised accounts are used to leverage reputation to scam an unsuspecting user, used to steal codes during the middle of the trade, and steal unused gift cards the victim was saving for later are increasingly commonplace. If you have any concerns as to your account's security, please reset your password now and force logout of all sessions. Thanks

Warning: I will not message you first. If you were messaged by someone claiming to be me you are in the process of being scammed.

You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.
Desktop Users: Comment on this post and Click here to start a trade App Users, please include the following in your PM (Remember to comment on this post as well):

• Type of card(s) and amount of each.
• What payment method you accept.
• How you acquired the GC and why you're getting rid of it.

Crypto^4, Paypal^1, Apple Pay, Chime, Cashapp, Varo, Venmo, and Western Union
I only have Steam as a substitute for cash payments in gift card trades.

Want ↓	Cash or a Gift Card ↓	Crypto4 ↓
Apple	60%3	NA
Amazon.ca	50%	50%
Amazon.co.uk	50%	50%
Amazon.com	70%	55%
Amazon.de	50%	50%
Amazon.es	50%	50%
Amazon.fr	50%	50%
Amazon.it	50%	50%
Amazon.jp	30%	30%
Arrow Films	65%	60%
Barnes & Noble	50%	50%
Baskin Robbins	60%	60%
Best Buy	25%	25%
BJ's (not BJ's restaurant)3	60%	NA
Bloomingdales	50%	50%
Burger King4	60%	NA
Clothing Shops (Small Boutique)	contact me	contact me
Dell3	60%	NA
Delta gift cards3	65%	NA
Delta Sky Miles3	PM me	NA
Delta Vouchers3	65%	NA
Dicks Sporting Goods 3	PM me	NA
Disney Plus	PM me	PM me
Dunkin Donuts3	60%	NA
eBay	70%	70%
Fandango3	10%	NA
Five Guys3	60%	NA
Gamestop	60%	60%
Gas Station Cards3	PM me	NA
Gyft	70%	70%
Half Price Books	50%	50%
iTunes3	60%	NA
J crew	40%	40%
JCPenney	25%	25%
Jersey Mike Subs3	60%	NA
KFC3	60%	NA
Khols	30%	30%
Macys	35%	35%
Magazines.com	40%	40%
McDonald's 3	60%	NA
Microsoft3	60%	NA
Moe’s Southwestern Grill3	60%	NA
Nintendo Eshop3	70%	NA
Nordstrom	50%	50%
Panera bread3	60%	NA
PSN3	60	NA
PSN Plus 12 month3	NA	NA
Saks Fifth Avenue	50%	50%
Sears	50%	50%
Sephora	50%	50%
Speedway (must be able to use on fuel)3	80%	NA
Staples	50%	50%
Starbucks US only	55%	55%
Steam3	60%	NA
Subway 3	PM me	NA
Taco Bell	60%	NA
Target	50%	50%
Urban Outfitters	50%	50%
Vudu3	50%	NA
Walmart	60%	60%
Wendys3	60%	NA
Xbox (gift cards)3	60%	NA
Other Clothing Stores, Gas Stations, Grocery Stores, Restaurant, & Fast Food gift cards	PM me

¹ When paying via PayPal, I can only send payments via Goods and Services, thus you will be charged a fee. If you'd rather not face this fee there are plenty of alternatives. ² Larger denominated gift cards preferred. ³ PayPal is the only payment option. ⁴ All crypto payments come from Coinbase. Any fees associated with it are built into the price.

What I don’t buy:

• Amazon.au
• Bass Pro Shop
• buffalo wild wing
• California Pizza Kitchen
• Canadian tire
• Cold Stone
• Dairy Queen
• Fanatics
• Giant Foods
• Google Play
• Grub Hub
• Gymshark
• Hilton Honors
• Hot Topic
• Krispy Kreme
• old navy/gap/banana republic
• Patxi's pizza
• PSN Canada or UK
• publix
• Raceway
• Scheels
• Shell Gas Stations
• Spotify
• Starbucks Canada
• Tractor supply
• Xbox Canada or UK
• Xbox live gold

Any fees are built into the price.

Selling

I have:
Up to $1000 in Amazon.com (can be broken up into smaller denominations) and am selling at

• 85%: WesternUnion, Wise, Airtm (You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.)
• 90%: LTC

Up to $500 in eBay (can be broken up into smaller denominations) and am selling at

• 90%: WesternUnion, Wise, Airtm (You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.)

Up to $500 in Apple.com ($15 and $50 denomination) and am selling at

• 90%: WesternUnion, Wise, Airtm (You can download the WesternUnion app and send the payment from your phone and I will pay the fees.)

Important: before you send your codes please make sure your account is secure (if your password is not uniqe it's best to assume your account has already been compromised. Scams where compromised accounts are used to leverage reputation to scam an unsuspecting user, used to steal codes during the middle of the trade, and steal unused gift cards the victim was saving for later are increasingly commonplace. If you have any concerns as to your account's security, please reset your password now and force logout of all sessions. Thanks

I'm sure you get these all the times, but I'm asking anyway. As far as bikes go, I've always ridden heavy cheap bikes from Canadian Tire or hand me downs. My knees burn when I ride. I'm 33 and have two sons, 5 and 3. We go on bike rides lots, especially now that my 5 year old learned to ride a 2 wheeler! I usually pull the 'buddy bike' on mine where my 3 year old sits. Anyway, for the first time I started looking at better bikes, specifically the low end of better bikes, $1000 CAD range and it's opened up a world I never paid attention to. I'm interested in the Gravel bikes, I live in a town, gravel and paved roads and go camping sometimes but is something we plan on doing more often now the boys are getting older. The Swiss army factor of the Gravel bikes seem like a good fit.
Do you think jumping into the world of higher end bikes is worth it for my purposes? I can only relate to guitars or tools. As a plumber I think of pump pliers, a regular home owner would be fine to own some mastercraft pump pliers, for the few times they might use them a year. They won't know any different. If they needed to use them often, and upgraded to Channellocks, the difference would be significantly better and all the pump pliers they would ever need. Now, they could still upgrade to something like Knipex pump pliers, that's yet again, a whole different level. I use Knipex at work, the grip and longevity over Channels is significant, even though the Channels over the mastercraft is significant. That's a long winded way of suggesting the Channellocks are probably more than ideal for me, a $3000 bike is going to be beyond what I can appreciate I think.
I was looking at Moose Gravel Express, Made in Canada, $1200, looks great, steel tube but is probably still going to feel like a massive upgrade toy $250 CCM Canadian Tire bike.
Any pointers, suggestions, tips, thoughts for someone interested in opening this door?

We killed Joseph Glass for the first time on August 18th, 1999.
I knew he was a strange case since day one. Never seen a guy so happy to die before. It was like we were doing him a favor. He refused the automatic appeal. He refused to be seen by a chaplain. He just wanted it over with. It had only taken a little over a year, and it was already time for him to make his appointment with God.
He freaked me out, just passing by his cell. He was like our very own Hannibal Lector, the way he just stood there in the back of his cell like he’d been waiting for you. The lights always burned out in any cell he was in, and maintenance had gotten tired of fixing them. Not that he seemed to mind in the slightest. The darkness seemed to swallow his top half, and all I could see were the whites of his beady little eyes poking out of all that black.
Billy drummed his baton against the bars. “Up and at ‘em, cowpoke,” he called in that mocking tone. “Time finally come for you to pay what you owe, you sick son of a—”
“Billy.” Warden Taft silenced him with a word. “If you can’t act like a professional, you’re going to have to sit this one out.”
Billy paused… and licked his chapped lips. “Naw,” he muttered. “This a show I can’t miss.”
Glass seemed to tick Billy off more than any prisoner before him. He liked ‘em to at least pretend to feel sorry for what they’ve done, or act scared of what’s coming to ‘em. This one didn’t even have the common decency to shed a tear. He was as stone-faced as a statue, even while being marched to the chair. Billy liked to joke sometimes that we ought to take the guy out back with some car batteries and really put the fear of God into him, get him to cut out that stoic act. I think he was only half-joking.
After what this guy did to those girls… well, Billy has a daughter, so I guess it struck a chord.
We all watched him fry. The warden, his closest men. The thin-faced man representing the Commissioner of Corrections. The prison physician. The families of those poor girls. It couldn’t have gone more by the book. Only oddity I’d noticed at the time was that the stench of death never quite left the clothes I’d worn that day.
And then the next morning, we came into work to see the whites of those beady little eyes staring at us from the darkness again. “Good morning, sirs,” he said, just as he did every morning, in that airy, hoarse little voice.
I’ll admit it. I dropped everything I was carrying, stumbled back, stammered like a confused child. Hell, I almost screamed. “You… you’re not… y-you’re supposed to be…”
“I don’t know what you mean, sir.” He leaned in like he was trying to stare a hole through my chest. His tone almost sounded disappointed. “You never came for me. You promised me that yesterday would be the end, sir, but you never came. I waited all night long. Why did you lie to me?”
Me and Taft looked at eachother. We both had the exact same question on our minds. If Glass was still alive… who the hell did we roll into the morgue last night?
“Jesus Christ.” Taft gagged when he pulled back the cadaver cover, stumbling away. “It’s Billy.”
I looked. I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it. And I’ll be forever haunted by the sight of my friend lying there on his back, mouth agape and cloudy eyes staring into the ceiling, open wide as if he’d spent his last moments in a state of terror.
The public never found out what happened. The cover up story was that poor Billy had been taken by cardiac arrest. Internally? It was the scandal to end all scandals. Worst case of incompetence and negligence in history, they called it. They brought the hammer down on anyone even tangentially involved. Me and Taft were out on our ears, and they would’ve prosecuted us too, but that would’ve required admitting it ever happened.
But I just could never wrap my head around it. Of those dozens of witnesses, not a single person noticed we were strapping a guard to the chair, not an inmate? It was impossible to the point of absurdity. Glass had been the man in that chair. I’d never been more certain of anything in my life.
Some months later, I noticed power flickering off all over the city one evening. It was brief, so I thought nothing of it. At least until I got a call from a familiar number the very next morning. “I understand you were one of the staff who regularly worked with one Joseph Glass. We would like to consult with you about an… evolving situation.”
“Oh?”
“At 7 PM yesterday, we attempted the execution of Joseph Glass for the second time.” There was a long pause, and when the voice returned, the professionalism had melted away, replaced with a baffled anxiety. “And, well… it, uh, it didn’t… it didn’t work.”
I blinked. “It didn’t… what?”
There came a long sigh. “Perhaps… it’d be best if you saw for yourself.”
And just like that, me and Taft had our jobs back.
Officially, Joseph Glass had been successfully executed on August 18th, 1999. Unofficially, they’d tried again six months later, just to tie up loose ends. This time, he hadn’t even had the courtesy to pretend to die. He just sat there on the chair, motionless and unaffected, while the CO who’d flipped the switch suddenly seized up and began to convulse, screaming and gnashing and wailing as electricity seared him beneath his skin, clawing at his chest until his eyes popped in his skull and rolled down his face like melted candle wax. All around him, lights flickering, machines bursting from pressure, electrical panels vomiting arcs of static. It was a mess.
The feds were crawling all over this case now, from a department I’ve never heard of. Something about investigating ‘preternatural activity’. They told me Glass was refusing to speak with anybody but the CO’s who’d once cared for him. Being walked into that interrogation room almost made me feel like I, myself, was a convict being marched to his execution.
Glass was staring at me when I walked in, like he’d been sat there, motionless, waiting for me. I expected nothing less. I took a shuddering breath as I sat across from him. I’d sat across from serial killers and psychos before and showed no hint of fear. But how could I not, now, sitting across from a man who can kill people without touching them? “Glass.”
“Officer Mendez.” His tone betrayed no emotion. “I had thought you’d abandoned me.”
I winced. “No. No, Glass, I’d just been… temporarily relieved. It’s… good to see you again. Would you like a glass of water?” I offered it to him. He didn’t even look at it. His eyes just bored into mine, relentless. “I… I’m here to ask you a few questions.”
Silence.
“Okay. Um… Glass, I need to know… how you killed Billy and Cramer.”
“I didn’t,” he replied. “It did.”
“It?”
“The thing standing behind you.”
I didn’t bother to turn around. I had enough experience with prisoners trying to trick me into looking the other way while they pulled off some half-baked escape plan. “Glass, please, let’s take this seriously,” I replied. “I’ve always treated you with respect, haven’t I? You’ve never had any problems with me.”
“Actually, I do. I have a problem with all of you.”
“Oh?”
“You here all believe that… death is a punishment.” There was the first hint of emotion I’d ever heard in his voice. “It’s not. It’s freedom — the only freedom. You promised me that gift. You promised me you’d let me die. You’ve given it to so many other prisoners, while leaving me behind. With all of your machines and your science and your knowledge… surely you can find a way, if anyone.”
My throat felt suddenly dry. I had to take a sip of the water myself, and hoped it would quell my burning nerves. “I… we’re… we’re trying our best, Glass. But you have to work with us. It may help if you told us… what, exactly, is preventing us from executing you?”
He moved for the first time. Leaning in, so slow as to be almost imperceptible. “It won’t let me die.”
And that’s when I felt a hand settle on my shoulder from behind.
Everything stopped. My lungs stopped inflating. I swear, my heart stopped beating, and my blood froze in place in my veins, and it all felt so cold. I could see the hand in the corner of my eyes, long and veiny and black. I could feel the breath on the back of my neck.
I’d once mocked the way deers froze in headlights. Now I understood. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t blink, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even take a single breath. Even as my lungs began to cry out for air, and my vision blurred, and my thoughts melded together. All I could see was Joseph’s eyes staring into mine. Those infinite fathoms of darkness, that stygian sea that swirled and stormed and thundered in the blackness of his iris, and the eyes of things waiting a million leagues below the waters.
And I would have suffocated there, too terrified to even breathe, if those agents in black had not called off the interrogation then and come storming into the room.
Later, they showed me the tapes from the security camera. There’d been nothing behind me. Nothing placing its thin hand upon my shoulder. Nothing at all.
On May 7th, 2001, Glass was set to be executed for the third time — via hanging, or so I heard — in some government blacksite somewhere, far from prying eyes.
While it was set to happen, me and Taft were sharing glasses of scotch in his office, nominally to celebrate. Really, because we were scared. Taft always struck me as young at heart despite his years, but this was the first time the warden had ever looked truly, properly old. He watched the yard below as he had a drink. “Did I ever tell you why I chose this line of work, Mendez?”
I shook my head, and he sighed. “Back in `63, they found a woman’s body in the back seat of a burnt out car, in some state park near my neighborhood. A prostitute. One of her johns had… chopped her up. Burned all the evidence. And you know what got me, Mendez? Nobody cared. Nobody bothered to investigate. Who will notice one less hooker on the corner of 5th Avenue, right?”
“It… didn’t sit right with me. The way I see it, Mendez, every life matters. Even the ones we try and cast aside. Everybody’s got people who love them, and childhood memories, and all that. Everybody deserves justice. No matter who they were.” He set down his glass and looked me in the eyes. “So I joined the force. Got the case reopened. Found the guy. And I watched him fry. And I like to imagine she was there watching, too, as he burned.”
There was a tense moment. And then a chuckle. “Course, after that bullet to the hip in `71, I couldn’t walk the beat anymore. But I’ve been just as happy here. Watching justice be served… it makes me feel like there’s some kind of karmic order to the world. Good deeds and bad deeds get repaid in kind.”
It was clear there was something lurking beneath his words, some unspoken thesis. Eventually, with old, wrinkled, tired eyes, he said it. “I’ve thought about it, and… if Glass doesn’t die tonight, I’m finally going to retire, Mendez,” he confessed. “After what he did to those girls, what kind of… what kind of order can there be in a world, where a monster like that is just… beyond justice?”
I was shocked. Warden Taft always struck me as an unmoving fixture. What would we do without him? “He’ll die, sir,” I promised. “It’ll work this time. It has to.”
But he seemed deeply uncertain. With one last shuddering drink, he leaned forward. “His eyes.” He stared at my expression, as if desperate for me to understand, for me to know. “Those things… in his eyes. Haven’t you seen them?”
And at that moment, Taft was yanked up out of his chair.
It was so sudden, so inexplicable, I could barely register what I was witnessing. Some unseen force lifted him two or three feet above the ground, dangling him there. He choked, coughed and sputtered, desperate to gasp down air which would not come, and clawed at something around his neck which I could not see. He was hanging, I realized. And with wide, horrified eyes — the same as Billy’s had been — he silently begged me for help.
I sprang from my chair and wrapped my arms around his dangling legs. At first I tried to pull him down to the floor, but I realized it was only tightening the invisible noose around his neck. Then I tried lifting him as high as I could, which gave him some relief, but not much. Tears rolled down his face as it swelled and turned blue, and even though I could not see the noose, I could see the bruised purple skin where it had squeezed around his neck. All the while, I screamed myself hoarse. “Help! Somebody, please! Jesus Christ, we need help in here!” But nobody came.
And all of a sudden, some unseen forced seemed to sweep my feet out from under me.
I dropped like a bag of bricks, but I was so startled I maintained my grip around the warden’s legs. I fell and yanked him down with me, and his body suddenly jolted with a sickening crack.
It took me a while to manage the courage to look up at him. His neck had been stretched far too long, and his head was bent to the side at almost a 90 degree angle. Eyes wide, round and bloated tongue hanging from dry lips. And then whatever force had suspended him disappeared, and his body fell upon me while I screamed and screamed.
I came bursting from his office to find my coworkers casually chatting and working just outside. Somehow, despite all my screaming and begging while Taft was dying, none of them had heard a thing.
I took a page from Taft. I wanted out. We were dealing with something unholy here, something whose tendrils could reach any distance, and my life — who knows, maybe even my soul — was at hazard. But the agents in the sharp suits made one thing clear: if I refused to cooperate, well, I would make the perfect scapegoat for the murder of Warden Taft.
I was marched into the interrogation room to find a Joseph Glass that had abandoned all pretense of humanity. His eyes had darkened to a pure black. Or perhaps he had no eyes at all, only windows into some place of outer darkness. I was shaking like a leaf as I sat in front of him, feeling more like a prisoner than he was.
“M-m-mister… Glass.” No reply. I shuddered, trying to focus on my little piece of paper to distract myself from the blackness of his eyes. “I… I-I have some… questions I’m supposed to ask you. Is… is that okay?”
Silence. I take a deep breath. “How… old are you, Glass?” I thought it was just one of those basic questions. Conversation starters, really. I couldn’t have prepared myself for his answer.
“I am old, child.” His voice was nothing like I remembered. It was deep and low and rumbling, like there were multiple people speaking in unison, and all were equally ancient. “Older than you could possibly know. Older than this nation, and older even than the empire that once bore it.”
I had to fight the basic animal instinct to flee. Focus on the questions, I thought. “Why did you do… what you did to those girls?”
“Just so I could feel something again,” he whispered. “Anything.”
“Did you not feel the slightest bit of… guilt? Remorse?”
“You ask that… of me? Me, who has watched empires rise and fall?” He almost sounded amused. “Does time feel remorse? For time has killed far more than I. But mankind is like the hydra. All I’ve killed will be replaced by, essentially, identical stock, and in greater numbers. And then they will die and be replaced. And so the cycle will continue forever.”
“Did you expect me to pity them for being given the death I, myself, covet? Only the dead are given leave of the cycle. It is a blessing.” And suddenly, he stood from his chair, as if he’d never been restrained at all. “A blessing you promised me, Officer Mendes.”
I stared up at him in disbelief. “What — how did you —“ But I couldn’t even stammer a sentence out before he was upon me, crawling over the table with the eerie grace of a spider.
These were no longer the imperceptible hints of emotions I’d come to expect. It was like a switch had been flipped. Tears streamed down his cheeks, snarling with genuine rage, hurt, betrayal. And beneath those black seas in his eyes, all the things that haunted the fathoms below were rising to the surface. “You owe me a death. Make good on your word. Pay your debt.”
I cried out and recoiled from his every touch with disgust, but he was stronger than he looked. I couldn’t worm my way out of his impossible grip. “I won’t! Get off of me, you sick bastard!”
“Do it! Pay me what you owe!” It was like a thousand different voices screaming in my ear. Straining and weeping, I locked my hands around his neck and pressed my thumbs against his throat, trying to strangle him. But instead, I could just feel that grip upon my own neck, squeezing the life out of myself as my lungs burned for air. Yet I kept pressing harder and harder, as if hoping I might somehow break through whatever unholy force was protecting him.
And then those terrible hands grasped my shoulders again, and I was paralyzed by a terror that could be called nothing but ancient and primal. Like the thing standing behind me was the same force that had kept my ancestors huddled terrified in their caves a hundred thousand years ago, and every one of those voices was crying out to me through my very blood. And it pulled me from my chair, threw me as though I were weightless… and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the infirmary.
Once more, none of this was captured on the security camera. In the footage, I just enter the room and have a seat with strange, almost robotic movements. And then the both us just sit there, staring at eachother, without speaking, without moving, without blinking. For an hour.
After this, Joseph Glass entered a catatonic state, and from then on refused to converse with even me. Now that my usefulness had ended, the agents discarded me like yesterday’s trash. Don’t even seem to care if I tell anybody. Who would believe me?
I thought I’d gotten lucky. That my nightmare was over. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Go sorting through any public records, and you won’t find a single mention of the name Joseph Glass. They’ve squirreled him away in that off-the-books blacksite and scrubbed away every other trace of him. I’d say he’d been unpersoned, if indeed he could ever be called a person at all. But they’re still trying every execution method in the book. I don’t know quite why. Maybe it’s for research. I’m sure the US military would love to find the secret to making its men as unkillable as Glass. And besides, they’re not the ones who have to deal with the consequences.
On June 3rd, 2005, they tried a firing squad. I know this because me and my wife were out on our second honeymoon, slow dancing by the lake at night to our favorite song, when I felt a wetness against my chest. I looked down to see her eyes as gray and dull as foggy glass, and her chest shredded to swiss cheese by rounds that made no sound.
On December 23rd, 2012, they tried lethal injection. That was the day they found my son’s car wrapped around a tree, and baffled coroners discovered that he was dead before the accident even occurred, his bloodstream polluted with Pavulon and potassium chloride.
It’s been years since I’ve isolated myself from everyone I knew, hermiting away in this cabin out in the middle of nowhere, and yet the stench of death still follows me. Just a couple years ago, I found a news report mentioning my nephew. Apparently, he’d been found completely exsanguinated, his veins emptied utterly despite no signs of a struggle. God knows what kind of arcane methods of execution they’re trying by now.
He’s not going to let me walk away from this. Not while I still owe him a debt.
But I’ve been doing some research, too. Research into those untold legions of things I witnessed staring up from that blackened sea in Glass’s eyes. I’ve learned things men were not meant to know. Practiced rites, assembled tools, ingredients. And I think I know where they’re keeping him. Even though they blindfolded me, I counted the second between every turn on our way to the blacksite, and I’ve since spent weeks watching the place, cataloging every entry point.
Maybe I’m slipping into madness. Or maybe I’ve truly found the way to put an end to the horror. To finally give this monster the justice that Taft would have wanted for him. Joseph Glass had been right about one, single thing: I have to pay what I owe.
Even if it kills me.