TW for mention of critical illness, hospitals, parental strife
This story spans over a few years so I'm sure I'll have to edit this to clarify.
When I was 17 years old I got diagnosed with a thing in my brain* through an MRI.
^\The shorthand is "AVM" for arteriovenous malformation, a tangle of blood vessels that irregularly connects arteries and veins. In the brain, it can cause brain bleeds which affect cognitive and motor function and can also result in death. The way i explain it is that you've got the blood pressure and flood of an artery going into a deformed clump of capillaires and veins with thin walls, deforming them further. The risk of rupture increases every year. Idk if it sounds scary enough like that, but it's like a ticking time bomb.)
I got gamma radiation shortly after, which is only relevant because they use a metal frame with metal spikes they drill against your skull so you can’t move your head during radiation. I chose this method of treatment because it was supposed to be quick and painless with no general anaesthesia but it turned out that the treatment experience was completely traumatising and I’m still living with a clinical PTSD diagnosis following that.
This mode of treatment aims at calcifying the inside of the veins in a specific zone and the gradual closing of vulnerable veins can take from 6 m to 3y.
I have siblings and we’ve all always been afraid of our dad. He was always extremely authoritative and we were very well behaved because of that. He got angry very easily, and the smallest thing would send him storming off screaming and breaking things, preceded by silent treatment (which was somehow the scariest all). He’d punish us extremely strictly, and would often drive up to 40km/h over the speed limit to scare or punish us, the reasoning was something like « if we all die it’s your fault because we made me angry).
All this to say my relationship with my father has always been extremely vertical and our relationship never grew into something like equal footing and I always got extremely nervous and scared whenever I was about to meet with him.
This being said, there is no amount of words I can use to describe the depth of my love for him. He drove us around without a protest for hours and hours and hours, gave us a beautiful luxurious life and never missed any of our important dates. Birthdays and chistmases were an avalanches of gifts and we were completely spoiled. He was extremely involved and I know he loves me so much. I’ve stopped speaking to him a few years ago but it truly breaks my heart because I love him so much and I miss the smell of his aftershave and I know he misses me very much too.
When the MRI result came back, my dad was there. He was the one who walked up to me and said « everything is fine, there is just a *little* thing.
I’m sure this was hard for him because his mom died of cancer when he was 28, but he never mentioned it in relation to my illness.
Pretty quickly, my dad stopped me whenever I mentioned illness and made sure I amended any mention of the experience by adding a sweetened positive twist at the end like « I’m glad I learned so much » or « but I grew so much from the experience ».
Gradually and too seamlessly for me to really notice, he decided I was « cured » and would no longer tolerate any mention of illness. He’s get impatient, tell me off, and even genuinely angry when I did. He’d say « you’re cured now » and « idk why you keep talking about this, it’s in the past now, you need to move on and live life ». Important note here : he is not a doctor, just a regular dad in the world with zero medical knowledge.
I don’t know if it was his own version of « manifesting » healing for me or a symptom of his fear. I wonder if he misunderstood the neurologist saying it could take up to three years to see if the treatment was effective. Before the 3 year mark, with no tests and MRIS to back it, he’s managed to completely convince himself and the rest of the family that I was cured and only still talking about it for attention. He even invented a pseudo-psychological term he dubbed the « syndrome of the sick child » to belittle my fear and worry and terror and loneliness, which if I understand his concept correctly meant I was clinging to an expired diagnosis in order to be babied and gat my parents attention. IDK maybe this can give you insight into his personality, how convincing he could be.
And it was just a really lonely experience for me. All of the « why are you still talking about this you ‘re cured and you need to move on now », while still trying to cope with so much fear of dying at all times, without having anywhere to talk about it. I wonder if the lack of parental support I experienced thought such a traumatising experience as a teenager and then as a young adult was what contributed to transform the trauma into clinical PTSD (diagnosed).
Eventually, I got my 3-year mark MRI. The radiologist was my dad’s BIL and he called my dad and gave him the result directly instead of contacting me directly. I was a legal adult and ab. 22 by then. My dad then called me on the phone, I remember the conversation so clearly, he said I was cured and I proceeded to call my mom and grandparents and best friend to share the news.
yay now you can move on. When he got home he popped a bottle of champagne open in celebration.
This was so tough because something didn’t quite sit right with me. Because of growing up hypervigilent I’m usually good at telling when someone is lying and twisitng the truth.
He seemed off on the phone, and in person, and I couldn’t tell if it wasn’t just that I couldn’t imagine life ebbing cured.
A few days later the BIL called me and said there was a lil persisting on the MRI. I wonder if I’d been brainwashed by my dad already by the time BIL called because when I asked dad if there was anything he didn’t tell me, he said « well you can’t expect to be 100% cured with things like this », and « 99% cured is the same as 100% » and other things of the sort. It was like he’d twisted the results in favour of his opinion.
By that time, I was stuck and really confused, and everyone was already convinced I was cured. And it got really hard for me to know what to do and where to turn because I was till so young and the hospital system was so confusing.
It took two years for me to decide to get a second opinion. Someone else looked at the MRI and said there was still something left, but since I’d heard my dad assure me it meant I was cured, it took considerable effort for me to reach out to my service in the hospital again for an appointment with the specialist I’d seen back when I was 17. This alone was extremely challenging because no one took be seriously, and I had to call the secretary office on a daily basis for a couple weeks to ask what I should do to get a confirmation I was cured. I’m quite headstrong and I wanted to hear from the specialist directly that I was cured do as to have no doubts at all. Throughout this, dad tried to discourage me and then eventually accepted it might be the only way for me to move on.
The MRI happened and I sat in the neurosurgeons office at the hospital of my nightmares asking if my results were conducive with full recovery. He confirmed there was something left, and then that the aim of treatment is to be completely cured. That the malformation should not be visible on an MRI once it was cured. He added that the risk of rupture increased each year. I soon had another more intrusive san done and it confirmed there was a little left, which meant I needed to get another round of Gamma radiation.
This hit me like a ton of bricks.
The second round of treatment was just as traumatising as I’d remembered the first round to be.
I don’t know what to do with how angry I am with my dad. He lied to me and invited all of us to live in a fiction of his making, thus endangering me. Every insistence I’d been cured and needed to move on when I wasn’t, and in fact the risk of me having an aneyrism was growing with every day.
The worst is that he never apologised. He instantly switched up his story and started pretending he’d never said I was cured. He created a whole new fiction where « he’d always insisted I’d get a more thorough MRI checkup ». It’s so unfair. How he can’t embrace a world where he’s wronged me, and not because it destroyed me but because he can’t be wrong. He has to be perfect. How unfair.
I most likely wouldn’t have mede it past the age of fifty if I’d believed of indeed obeyed him.
I used to check my memories again to make sure I hadn’t made it up, and eventually I accepted I’d never get an apology. And that I was wronged and I didn’t deserve that. And that I should’ve gotten the support I needed.
I’m cured now, I sat in another doctors office a year ago and he said my MRI came back normal and the AVM was no longer on the scan. I’m really proud I was so headstrong.
And eventually I decided to take distance from my dad, and life improved when I stopped talking to him. I know it hurts him, and that he’s extremely angry. He expresses this to my siblings, and I know they get punished in my stead and I feel so guilty. But I can’t be around my dad, I’m too angry. I’m trying to live with the love I have for him in my heart, with my childhood memories and the guilt and missing him and then more guilt for being happier now that I don’t have to talk to him and listen to his tirades. And I worry for my siblings who still talk to him, because he doesn’t treat them kindly and they deserve so much love and admiration and support, which he’d never give them.
I used to want to press charges and I wonder if he shouldn’t be in prison for what he did but he’s a vicious man and he’s go to much money and friends in high places that I couldn’t take him on. And things would get ugly, I know. I just wish he could pay for what he did.
I’ll update later for typos and clarifications :)

Ok so how many others are stupid as me and got sucked in back to the cycle and trauma bond? My very abusive ex almost killed me by strangulation and dr told me I was close to losing my life per the ultra ray light thing they use on neck. I lost control of my bladder and peed during the attack. I think I remember that I had to play dead for him to stop. But then when I tried to run out front he grabbed me threw me into the wall. Knee went thru and I still limp ( it’s been 2 years now) I was then on the ground being kicked in the ribs and hair pulled. Somehow I was able to get out back and scream for help. My ex heard the yelling and surprisingly he felt bad and handed me my cell phone as I sat across the yard hidden in bushes. Anyway he went to jail for a year. Stupid me even visited him in jail and put some money on his books several times. One time I told him I had to save my money bc I was going on vacation with my family. He called me a cunt and he was mad that I get to go on vacation and he can’t and that I shouldn’t save my money for that. Only for him. I even visited him a few times in jail. Now when he got out I went to see him at his family house. We weren’t back as a couple but I wanted to spend the week with him. Being there also reminded me of how I don’t want to be with him. He kept doing controlling shit. Grabbing the car steering wheel. Taking my phone. Fuck that I left. Anyway….. how many of u did what I did!!! I feel so stupid. Trauma bond is no joke. I see clearly now!!!!

My (27f) brother (22m) has a gf (28f) an a step kid (9f) . At the beginning of their relationship everything seamed fine and as if they got along well. He also dropped a few bad habits to spend more time with her and her kid. But soon enough the shitshow started. He wasn't allowed to meet female friends anymore, he wasn't allowed to continue his training as a paramedic (bc there might be other women) , after some time he wasn't allowed to meet his male friend either. Now she got as far as to forbade him even contact to our mother, our other brother, and me. It feels like he is a spectator to his own life and just goes with whatever she says. Every time we tried to talk to him, she had to be there to; doing basically all the talking (more like hysterical screaming) and he just stands beside everything, apathetically. Like he's an NPC now instead of the MC. She now made him change his phone number, which he won't give away to anyone but her and the people she allows him to. She's bringing him to work and picking him up so that there wouldn't be a possibility of him meeting or talking to anyone. He's not allowed to leave the house without her or at least her permission. They go shopping to towns away so they wouldn't run into someone he knows. There are rumors that she's given him drugs like crystal meth, as well as consuming them with him. Mind you that she has a daughter. She also accused her dad of child abuse when she was teenager (which was a lie as it turned out) - just because she wasn't allowed to go to some place, so her problems lay deep.
We don't know what to do or how to help him anymore. No one gets why he's letting her do this, he never let his previous gfs tell him anything (not good either I know but still)... so please if anyone has any advice on how to help him - I'd be very grateful.
Sorry for any mistakes, English is not my first language

Its taken me nearly 20 years to make sense of something I happened upon for the first time as a teenager.
There are said to be old service tunnels that run from the naval-shipyard to various locations under my hometown, believed to have been originally built around WWI. But In the early 1940s, the main tunnel was opened as a fallout shelter capable of holding 10,000 people . The rest of the tunnels were supposedly closed off when new construction around town occurred in the 1970s. My grandpa worked construction on what at the time was to be the tallest building in town, adorned with a clock at the peak. He like to brag about having "put a hand on nearly every rock in that build'n" or saying "I remember when that was a pile of rubble until we worked on it". He also liked to say "There are still many old places that hold many old secrets for those brave enough to seek them" but I assumed that he meant the bottom of a bottle.
The main streets are a reminder of the infrastructure built in the 1930s and 40s. Many of the businesses on the street were the ground level of a larger office or warehouse buildings. Some were single story buildings, shoehorned in between the larger ones. There is also a Masonic Lodge history with the town. They built the original temple way back then, and then a couple decades later, built another building and moved there. Their presence is clearly noticeable in the architecture all over the town. There are even plenty of houses in town that were built in the same fashion.
It's amazing how small town gossip can be passed down from generation to generation. I first heard about the tunnels as a young boy from a classmate in the second grade. She said that her dad worked on the base(it’s a naval shipyard) and was an important man because they had an escape tunnel under her house. I think I believed her at the time but I never really saw her after around that point. Even at that age I associated her as a Navy brat. I just assumed they moved.
I never really gave it much thought though until I was about 16, in the year 2005. I was a punk teen. I smoked weed and cigarettes as often as I could. I skipped a lot of school, choosing to go get fucked up and skateboard on private property somewhere. I spent a lot of time all over the town and in the most secluded locations. As a skater I'm telling you there were/are some sick spots! A majority of the buildings are that original brick masonry. Stair cases, gaps, banks, ledges, rails. The biggest problem is that skateboarding was a form of vandalism to public property. It was that year after enough people kept getting into trouble that the skaters of our community petitioned city-hall to have a skatepark built. They listened and even let us help design it. It definitely mimics some of the most popular aspects from downtown.
I stumbled upon the first of the tunnel entrances down an alleyway in downtown. The kicker is that, of course it was past midnight and of course I had been drinking and smoking pot. But that's also why I was in the alleys. Anyone hanging out there wasn't looking for any attention. Yes looking back I regret doing all the stupid things I did. I knew the area like the back of my hand but for some reason I was never able to find an entrance while sober. The alley way is particularly remarkable and I had been down it numerous times before. It’s the only one that has a man bridge over the alley connecting two separate buildings. It’s like a hallway fully enclosed with windows, matching the appearance of the buildings. I had just passed under it and to the next building where a smaller dumpster sat. The dumpster had one side pulled away from the building it was butted up against. It was dark but I could see a gaping dark hole behind and underneath the dumpster. I pulled my lighter out to reveal a staircase leading under the building. It was hard to see but I could tell from the edges of the opening that there was supposed to be a metal or wooden cover.
Intrigued I pulled out my old Nokia cellphone. The screen albeit small and dim, it did glow and in the dark-dark was better than nothing. I didn't want to burn myself and wanted to conserve my lighter for other things. I don't know why exactly I felt I needed to but I dropped down behind the dumpster to the stairwell and held my phone up high like a lantern. The stairs went down maybe 15 steps to a flat that went through a doorway on the left. Curiosity out weighed rationality in those days and I made my way down to the flat as quietly as I could. As the last bit of ambient light and noise from the dark quiet alley disappeared, the calm stagnant air in the concrete passage way that acted like an echo chamber was a stark shift in environment.
There was a hallway beyond the doorway that was extremely narrow and not very long. It was only wide enough for one person. It was probably 15 feet in length or so. As I slowly proceeded, the hallway dumped out into a much larger tunnel. I remember thinking "a bus could fit through here!" and it stretched far beyond the dim lights reach of my Nokia. I debated on whether I should just head back and decided now was an appropriate time to spark up a smoke, which didn't mix well with the stale air. Replacing my light source with the flame from my lighter provided enough light to see a panel of switches on the wall next to the smaller tunnel. I flipped one and the main tunnel lit up surprisingly, popping a humming to life. It was at least a football field in length. There were a few other similar little tunnels in various locations along this larger one.
As I was taking in just how long it was I peered from one end to the other and down at the farthest end was what looked like a person. The realization snapped me out of my wonderment. I was now uneasy at the thought that someone was down here just hanging out in the darkness. The more I focused on the figure the more it appeared that it was just standing down there staring at me. I looked the other direction but didn't notice anyone or anything. Taking a drag as I looked back towards the figure who I was now significantly closer to, I stopped in mid step. I hadn't been aware of it but I had been walking towards the figure. That's when everything in my body told me to leave now. And in that very moment the figure began running at me full sprint. There was no time to make sense of how or why I was walking towards the figure or why I was even down here in the first place as I turned running as fast as I could.
When I got to the smaller tunnel I took the opportunity to glance back over my shoulder while rounding the corner. To my absolute terror the figure was right where I was when I started running. I could hear the foot steps echoing off every surface followed with the creepiest snarling. I hit the stairs skipping three or four steps at a time. The light from the night city sky poured over the remaining steps and I nearly forgot the drop I had made getting down there. As I reached for the side of the stair well to pull my self up I could here that thing hit the stairs. With every ounce of adrenaline I heaved myself up and rolled out into the alley. Frantically I picked myself up and rammed into the dumpster closing the gap and began to head to the main street. That night I sprinted the nearly 1.5 miles back home without stopping or looking back.
I wish I could say that I forgot about that night and the tunnels to save myself some sanity in life. If I had only known this was the beginning of something much older and darker than I could have imagined. It took me a few weeks to shake the initial shock of that encounter. Eventually I went back during the day but couldn't even find the dumpster. I put it out of my mind until about six months later when an opportunity came up to visit with my grandpa...

I'm 14 turning 15, before you say that I should enjoy my youth and teen years, I KNOW THAT!
I hate being a teenager with every fiber of my being, if life had a "skip life stage" button I would be pressing it as fast as humanly possible just to get out of this. I hate the hormones, I hate the mood swings, I'm not gonna give out any info on the physical puberty part since I don't want creeps, but I just hate everything about my body and my mind changing. I don't like all of this and I just want to skip all of this, how do you guys just simply grow up so quickly?
Even outside of the physical and mental changes I also absolutely hate the era I'm growing up in. The 2020s are something every cell of my being hates, it's the worst decade I have ever lived so far. Not even in a doom and gloom way (Okay, maybe some of it), like everything's bland, people my age are so apathetic, media in general has been shit with only a few gems that come once in a blue moon. Unless if you have a hobby that always keeps you occupied I always see myself rotting on my phone or at the computer, and I don't even go to school.
I really miss the 2010s, it just felt easier, happier and more fun. Knowing I'll never get that back pains me.
I'm gonna stop writing now before I make an entire essay about this.

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Just had kind of a breakdown I guess. In my garage by myself drinking whiskey as I usually do when I'm not working. My wife and 2 kids are inside drifting off to sleep for work and school tommorow. Was watching tik toks on my phone. Came across a video about Zach bryans new Song Eulogy. Went down the worm hole of videos featuring it.
My life has been shit for the past 10 years or so. Married for 8 to a woman that was the love of my life who after 6 months of marriage told me in the middle of a pointless fight that she only Married me so she wouldn't have to share custody of our kids and that this wasn't a real marriage. Then told me she was waiting until our youngest turned 18 to file for divorce. Everything past that point was pretty much a blur. Around 4 years after that I adopted a dog from a shelter with her knowledge but not permission.
After about 2 weeks after the dog came home it peed on the couch she was sitting on after she invited the dog up. She freaked out and in front of our young kids, demanded I take the dog back to the shelter or she would divorce me and take the kids. She stopmed upstairs while our children were crying and our young daughter came up to me with tears in her eyes asking if I was going to take the dog back to the shelter. Fighting back tears myself, I told her that yes I was and that I had to. Just then, my wife walked to the top of the stairs crying and said that if I took the dog back to the shelter she would leave me and take the kids away from me.
I didn't know what to do or say at that point. She told me if I did what she told me to do then we were done. I told her fine, we are done. She asked me what I meant by that. I told her I didn't care anymore and that I was going to file for divorce. Then she screamed at me for abandoning her.
A few days later we were back to normal. No affection, just being cordial to eachother. Maybe a year later we had another fight and I brought up that our marriage isn't real she asked me what the hell I was talking about. I reminded her about what she said 6 months after we got married and what I had been basing every decision financial or otherwise on since then and her response was something along the lines of "oh my God it was just a fight get over it".
That's been my life ever since. Zero love Zero affection. My kids are teenagers now and they basically want nothing to do with me. I almost hung myself when I was 13 in the midst of my parents divorce. My youngest brother caught me and asked what I was doing. I told him I was hanging a rope swing in a tree. He didn't know any better so that's what I did. Over 20 years later while visiting my mom and step dad, my kids swung and played on the rope that I was going to hang myself with. Nobody knows about that. I'm constantly laid off from work. Deeply in debt. Getting harder and harder to pay the bills. Only talk to 2 of my 4 brothers and even then it's just every so often. Not that I'd ever tell them about of this. My dad passed 3 years ago. Don't talk to my mom. Have 1 good freind that I can talk to about this but don't want to burden him with this.
I dont want to kill myself. I love my children and I don't want to put them through this. I would rather die 1000 times than put them through this. I'm just tired. I'm tired of everything. I'm tired of just barely getting by. I'm tired of not being loved or being worthy of love. Tired of being treated like nothing but a paycheck. I drink whiskey to escape and am afraid ill actually talk myself into suicide one of these weekends. My weekends and any time off are spent alone in my garage. I distill my own liquor. It's a nice escape. I only drink when I'm not working the next day. Being laid off after about a week I sink back into a deep depression of feeling worthless and not worthy. That's been happening more often than not lately.
I cant talk to anybody about these feelings. Once about 4 years ago my wife demanded that I talk to somebody anybody about my "trauma " I went through growing up. I talked to her about a fist fight i had with my older brother once and she told me I was not welcome in my own home until I saw a professional. I had opened up to her as she had always wanted and she immediately used it against me. That was the day I stopped telling her about any of my problems. She didn't seem to mind.
I hate how my life turned out. I always pictured myself happily married to the love of my life. Growing old together and facing whatever life threw at us together. I'm only 39. After looking at the online child support calculator for my state i learned I would be paying $1200 per month per child. As far as I can see their is just no escape for me. I can wait until our kids are 18 but then I'm stuck with alimony. The simplest outcome I can see is if I'm no longer here. I am scared that I will either talk myself into killing myself or at some point just stop caring about it and do it.

Though I am new to limerence as a concept, I'm pretty confident that I'm prone to it to some extent. All my life I've crushed hard, but the situation I'm currently in is so much more severe than I've ever experienced. This post is here largely to vent but also I'd really love insights from this community, if anybody has the time to read all this. Apologies in advance for how long this is, but there's a TL;DR at the bottom if you wish.
Four years ago, LO and I were coworkers. I had a bit of a crush on her from the first time we met, but it wasn't much more than that until we started hanging out. It started out with drinks on her birthday, then turned into her coming over damn near once a week for dinner and a movie, just the two of us. We'd cuddle a little bit on the couch sometimes but that's as far as things ever went. At this point I was harboring pretty intense feelings for this girl. Because I was busy and because we were coworkers and I was afraid of things getting messy, we stayed in that holding pattern for a few months. Eventually, a situation arose where a mutual friend made it clear to me that they were interested in her, which lit the fire under my ass to finally actually ask her out. Turns out I was too late, however, and the two of them had already begun seeing each other. I was pretty beat up about it for a while but then the COVID-19 pandemic happened and kind of took my focus away from my romantic woes. We didn't speak with any kind of regularity for 4 years, with the last 2 being entirely NC.
Until two weeks ago, when she messages me out of the blue. She happened to be visiting my city and wanted to know if I'd like to get together and catch up. By the time my brain finished processing the thought that this was a bad idea, my thumbs had already said yes. We got together for dinner and drinks, then spent a few hours wandering around and catching up. We ended up back at the place where she was staying. We sat and talked for hours, slipping into the late hours of the night. We started a movie. I asked her if she'd like to sit closer to me. She said yes. One thing led to another, and we slept together for the first time. Later on, we lied in bed talking about what could have been all those years ago. A couple days later, I came back over, we cooked dinner together, and we did it all over again. Spending time with her like this felt incredible-- the same as it did years ago but this time actually being able to act on how I felt. I felt at peace in a way that I hadn't in a long time. She actually checked in on me often, making sure that I was okay when things got emotionally heavy. I am a big, tall, masculine presenting person. Partners don't really ever do that for me. Hell, she offered to be big spoon! I'm getting emotional as I sit here thinking about how perfect that night was.
The next morning, we had a conversation about the future. I said I didn't want to do long distance, but if she ever ends up living closer by, I think it could really work. She told me that she thinks it could potentially work too, but doesn't have the space for a relationship right now, let alone have plans to move away from where she lives (on the other side of the country) anytime soon. I nodded, gathered my things, we kissed goodbye, I shook her hand like an idiot, and then I left. Later that night I'd send a text message spilling my guts in a way that I avoided doing in person earlier, as I was trying to keep my cool. I thanked her for spending the time and providing me closure for the way things ended years ago. She responded with a paragraph in kind. And that was that. The next day, she left.
It's been two weeks and not a day has gone by that I haven't thought about her. Not an hour, probably! For the first handful of nights after, I dreamt about marrying her-- carrying her over the threshold of my home, the whole 9. We've texted back and forth a bit but I'm very busy with work and she's a space cadet. The other night, we spent 5 hours on the phone together. We made each other playlists. It feels like being a teenager in love again, and I'm almost 30. The fact remains, though, that we live 15 hours away from one another and she says she isn't looking for a relationship. My higher order brain tells me that I need to let this go, but it feels so insanely good to talk to her, listen to her playlist, think about her. I've been heartbroken before, both by exes and ones who got away, but this is different. I don't dream about people like this. I open up her Instagram sometimes just to stare at her photos longingly. I haven't felt right looking at porn since I saw her. If I thought it was possible for something real to exist between us right now, I'd jump on a flight to her city tomorrow. I've thought a lot about how we can stay in contact, maybe I can take a long weekend and visit, maybe I can ask her join me for a road trip in the fall and maybe we fall in love in some dusty motel in Oklahoma and just figure out what's next from there. I want her in my life so, so bad. I know that she feels something for me, though it's incredibly unlikely she has the bug as bad as I do. I don't think I could let this go right now if I tried.
TL;DR: An old unrequited love came knocking on my door after 4 years, we spent a couple of incredible nights together, its not quite unrequited anymore but a real relationship can't happen anytime soon if at all, but now I'm twitterpated so bad that it hurts. I don't know how much to beat myself up over this.

Masaya ako para sa mga nakababata kong kapatid pero hindi ko maiwasang malungkot para sa batang ako.
My parents were teenagers when they had me- they were 19 and 20. They literally grew up with me. I saw all their immaturity, spontaneity, impulsivity, and sadly, even their violence and other extremes. Nasundan lang ako nung 7 years old na ako. Kumbaga e nasa tamang edad na sila. Apat kaming magkakapatid at malaki ang age gap nila sa akin.
My father already passed away 4 years ago, and my mom is alive and well. Now, my mom is so different.
She's no longer the mom who berates her kid for her 99/100 exams (sabi niya sa mga kapatid ko, basta makapasa, ok na yun. but during my time, fuck me if I even have a line of 8), no longer the mom who confiscate her kid's phone and invades her privacy (she used to read my diaries even during college lmao), no longer the mom who hates her kid for showing vulnerability and negative emotions.
It sucks. But only for me.
I see her treat my siblings with so much gentleness and understanding that my heart hurts for the kid (me) who needed that. Fuck I'm even crying as I'm typing all these right now. A lot will be so different for me if I wasn't a victim to my parents' naivety and immaturity. If only I was given the chance to have the mom my siblings now have.
Pero wala e. For some reason, she treats me the same. Well, old habits die hard. Natuto na rin naman ako so we are not on speaking terms but we still interact in person pero civil na lang. Hindi ko naman na rin kailangan ng tough love niya.
I'm just really so fucking sad para sa batang ako. Hindi niya deserve lahat ng katarantaduhang nawitness at naranasan niya. I am just hoping that one day she finally heals.

CONTEXT: I (17f) have two elder sisters who are twins (20f). We are going to call them sister A and sister B. They always hated me because they always thought that our mom always spoiled me, even though this was never the case. Hence, they always resented me. And I actually quite adored them, I wanted to be like them, always respected them as my two lovely big sisters. Other than this, we were quite the happy family, our parents always showered us with love equally.
Now, fast forward to when sister A was 15. She met a girl in high school. And all of a sudden, sister A started to resent all of us. And started sh. My mom never understood that, because she and our father did their darn best to give us the universe. Here’s the thing: the sh never came from her having life contemplations, but her “friend” encouraged her to do it, and when she’d show it to her, her “friend” would say: “ just 5? Should’ve gone for 10.” This is something my sister A has actively told. Now that the readers have an idea about how it all started, my sister still does sh. She also has been going to professional therapy since she was 16. Hence, she was diagnosed with bpd.
Now, her behaviour never really affected me other than my parents just ignoring me to give her the attention , to the point that I haven’t had a heart-to-heart with either of my parents in 4 years, since, I was 13. And of course I am crazy jealous, but my love for my sister still remains. The thing is, my sisters, as twins, always operated as a team hence, they always had each other and still do things together (excluding me). And hence, I only ever had my mom to talk my feelings with, which I haven’t been able to do since, I was 13. And even if I have, she has told about it to my sisters who come confront me and start a whole other argument. And that has taken a toll on me and I have been failing my classes. I went from a straight A+ student and now, recently I got a 19/100 in maths. Hence, I have been quite bitter to my family. And obv I also had my own petty arguments with my parents. TLDR: I also have my own teenage issues that have formed due to the lack of communication with my parents.
Now, here comes in my sister. Whenever, I have any disagreement with my parents, big or small, in the middle of my argument, even if my voice isn’t raised, my sister would jump in and SCREAM on the top of her lungs and say that I should lower my voice. And there have been instances that she would even shout slurs at me in front our mother and she wouldn’t even bat an eye. And in all of this, my problem would still be unresolved. This example comes from my following problem: I had private classes, but I had an extra-curricular event going on in my school. So, I was trying to convince my mom to let me skip private classes.
Now, there was another instance where my mom was condemning me from using my phone cause of my grades, and again; my sister started to not shout but, scream at me to lower my voice. And started crying, telling our parents that they don’t deserve a child like me. And at the end of the night, my mom was cuddling her.
These type of things happen quite frequently now, even this morning. As much as I love my sister, I really do. But I am growing frustrated of this. I don’t wish any harm on my sister but I do wish my sister never met that “friend”.
I do not need any sympathy or hateful comments, I just want constructive criticism. How shall I handle such situations?
Point to note: I might be an ah, because when I get frustrated of her antics, I do snap back at her. And my mom does tell me to quite down.
Please, tell me if I am in the wrong, and how to handle this, I want my old loving family back.

A global, 16-year study1 of 2.4 million people has found that Internet use might boost measures of well-being, such as life satisfaction and sense of purpose — challenging the commonly held idea that Internet use has negative effects on people’s welfare.
“It’s an important piece of the puzzle on digital-media use and mental health,” says psychologist Markus Appel at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “If social media and Internet and mobile-phone use is really such a devastating force in our society, we should see it on this bird’s-eye view [study] — but we don’t.” Such concerns are typically related to behaviours linked to social-media use, such as cyberbullying, social-media addiction and body-image issues. But the best studies have so far shown small negative effects, if any2,3, of Internet use on well-being, says Appel.
From separate Gallup polls:
Pryzbylski and his colleagues analysed data on how Internet access was related to eight measures of well-being from the Gallup World Poll, conducted by analytics company Gallup, based in Washington DC. The data were collected annually from 2006 to 2021 from 1,000 people, aged 15 and above, in 168 countries, through phone or in-person interviews. The researchers controlled for factors that might affect Internet use and welfare, including income level, employment status, education level and health problems.
…The team found that, on average, people who had access to the Internet scored 8% higher on measures of life satisfaction, positive experiences and contentment with their social life, compared with people who lacked web access. Online activities can help people to learn new things and make friends, and this could contribute to the beneficial effects, suggests Appel.
Do note that in these latter data sets women ages 15-24 still are worse off from internet access.
Here is the Nature piece, via Clara B. Jones.
The post Is the internet bad for you? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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I had this idea based on a reddit comment - I was wondering if people might be interested in reading a mini-memoir by me where each chapter is about how a Lana album influenced my life?
I realized it could also kind of be a chronicle of Lana's career (I could go into her backstory, her influences, & how she made each album), the internet's evolution, sad girl music culture and how Lana has shaped a whole generation of artists + people ...
The trajectory would go something like this:
Born to Die/Paradise: This would chronicle Lana's origin story, my suburban upbringing, the Facebook/early cell phone years, my Tumblr obsession, and when I first discovered Lana on SNL (and how she and that performance, in particular, appealed to a certain outsider impulse latent within me and many others)
Ultraviolence: This would chronicle my summer at Berklee College of Music, the dawn of Spotify/streaming, my unrequited queer first love that made me start writing music, and how I became obsessed with Ultraviolence, Allen Ginsberg, the counterculture, and living life on the edge at this time
Unreleased: This would chronicle Lana's early days making music, my senior year of high school, how I fell into her unreleased music, became obsessed with The Four Quartets (and Mitski), and had another quasi-romance with a fellow Lana fan as well as my unrequited queer love for my best friend that wound up being the biggest heartbreak of my life
Honeymoon: This would follow how I began college in New York City, made pilgrimages to Coney island and the Chelsea Hotel, started working with music producers, launched a Lana Instagram fanpage that went semi-viral, and developed depression/an eating disorder (and met Lana along the way)
Lust For Life: This would chronicle how Love and the Virgin Mary informed my ill-fated romance with a Brooklyn music producer, my adventures in Tinder and New Jersey, and how I eventually decided to leave Lana behind so I could try to be happier
Norman Fucking Rockwell: This would follow my graduation from college, my rediscovery of Lana (and Taylor Swift), my eventual realization that I'd have to rely on myself for my music career, and my forays into climate activism and feeling like I'm part of something greater than myself; it would also explore my pill addiction and the pandemic
Chemtrails: This would follow Lana's and my move to California, where I ended up living in an absolutely wild artist collective and tried psychedelics for the first time and had many other wild adventures
Blue Banisters: This would follow how I tried to leave Lana behind once again because of her problematic antics (and how I spent time in Yosemite amid a very toxic relationship and fell in love with Lana once again while in Los Angeles in spite of myself)
Ocean Blvd: This would explore my move back to New York City, my feelings about aging/getting older and not being a successful artist yet, my journeys into spirituality, my work in entertainment journalism (including a disastrous interview with Margaret Qualley herself), bad sexual encounters, my first forays into TikTok, not being able to walk for 8 months, my decision to quit my job and travel the world, and my feelings about Lana's resurgence and how she influenced the culture 10 years on.
Lasso: TBD!!
what do you think, would you read?

First, Product innovation of Chainless systems

Leave a Comment / By WeishaZhu / November 2, 2023

Enter the white paper series
We start today to unveil the mystery of the chainless system and introduce the relevant contents of the white paper. Many programmers have had close encounters with Bitcoin and ended up empty-handed. We are destined to meet each other and believe your wealth is proportional to your cognition. Our airdrop design does not require you to spend money, but you must spend time reading articles to improve your cognition and contribute to your strength; otherwise, you will miss wealth. Interpreting the innovation of chainless systems” is divided into five sections.
Introduction
The WEB3.0 chainless financial platform is referred to as the chainless platform. Its design breaks out of the constraints of the blockchain, and there is no limit to the impossible triangle of the blockchain. Cryptocurrency is better than advanced ideas, but its development is slow. According to statistics from PANews, at the end of 2022, there are 1,259 active DAPPs in Ethereum, which is really pitiful. The chainless platform adopts the idea of ​​cryptocurrency and designs a transparent and centralized platform. The external characteristics are no different from the blockchain ledger. It is also a platform that implements openness and fairness and cannot be tampered with. Only in this way can the design compete with the ease of use of Web2, be popularized on a large scale, and make the number of DAPPs jump by an order of magnitude. Chainless design has no technical innovation and uses mature technology; it has unique innovations in products, incentives, communities, and core teams. This series has 5 sections in total. One is product innovation; the second is production relationship innovation; the third is business model innovation; the fourth is the role of the core team; and the fifth is the Interesting Reads Chainless Platform.
First, Product innovation of chainless systems
Innovation in unilateral accounting methods
Projects that adopt blockchain accounting methods, without exception, use multi-party accounting and centralized ledgers. Its ledgers are all balance ledgers. The so-called balance ledger means that unspent tokens are recorded in the ledger. All improvements in blockchain are improvements in accounting methods. The purpose is to improve ease of use while ensuring the accuracy of the ledger. This accounting method is blameless as a currency issuance system, but it has two flaws as an accounting system:

1. The fastest accounting time is no less than one second;
   
2. Sky-high accounting costs.
   

With the Bitcoin and Ethereum systems already serving as the root of credit, it would be unwise for any application-focused project to use multi-party accounting. Because any account page can be hashed, and the hash value is on chain to the credit root, thus ensuring that the ledger cannot be tampered with. The running account corresponding to the hash value is public. Even if there is no multi-party accounting, the account book can be verified by any party and is, therefore, credible. The root of credit means that the data that enters the root of credit cannot be tampered with. Readers who have difficulty reading this can refer to “What Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t think of, what he didn’t say… Series 2: Openness and transparency are the core, but decentralization only summarizes less than half of it.” The Road to Innovation in Cryptocurrency” Series 1-11 (chainless.hk).
Account Verification
The flaw in the third-party verification of Bitcoin design is that if A transfers tokens to B, B may not receive them if the address is wrong. Bitcoin’s third-party verification is only formal, regardless of whether B gets it. As a centralized ledger, the transfer from A to B is an internal transfer of the “bank.” It is very easy for A and B to confirm the transfer. After A and B confirm that the transfer is correct, the chainless system will confirm it again, and there will be no dispute. It is very easy to achieve this improvement in Bitcoin, but there is no threshold for transfers for technicians, so they do not think there will be operational problems here.
Index general ledger to ensure ledger balance
All personal sub-ledgers constitute a reconciliation with the general ledger coin indicator, and the sum of all sub-ledger coins is always equal to the data of the general ledger indicator. This point is the point of invention and the starting point of general ledger innovation.
The hash value of the journal is uploaded to the chain
Chainless calculates the hash value of an account page in one minute, then uploads it to the Bitcoin system, and the account is made public. The transaction confirmation time is not the account page formation time but the three-party confirmation time of A, B, and the chainless system. This confirmation time is in milliseconds. It is consistent with the speed of centralized transfer systems.
Multiple signatures and multiple backup wallets
It is equivalent to the user controlling an online multi-sign project by himself. Multi-signing is more troublesome. Chainless has designed multi-signing grading, so small quantities do not require multiple signings.
Inherit
With the multi-sign and multi-backup functions, inheritance is realized by the way. The inheritance time can be modified, and inheritance can be automatically started when the time is up.
Support real-name and anonymous
The chainless data format is a public key and private key system, with real names grafted onto anonymity. If real names are not supported, it is impossible to integrate with real finance. The right to disclose privacy lies with the user.
The user controls external transfers
When the chainless system makes an external transfer, the chainless system and the user jointly control the multi-signature. If the user does not sign, the chainless system’s signature will be invalid and cannot be transferred; even if the user signs, the chainless system will not make an external transfer if the verification exceeds the user’s number of coins. When making an external transfer, the user must use his mobile phone to confirm twice.
Contract accounts and deposit accounts are not directly related
Ethereum accounts can be driven externally or by contracts. They are on the same account, which is inconvenient when designing applications. Chainless separates contract accounts and deposit accounts, allowing flexibility in contract design.
Issuance of decentralized currency DW20
The issuance principle of DW20 is the same as that of Bitcoin. It is ownerless and has no management team. It is a transaction token of a chainless system. Used to implement Bitcoin standards. DW20 is different from stablecoins. In addition to the white paper, readers can refer to series 1-4 of “Comparison of Decentralized Standard Currency DW20 with Bitcoin, Stablecoin DAI, and Standard Currency USD”. (chainless.hk)
Issue chainless system token CLY
CLY represents the value of the chainless system and is an equity token.
Advances beyond blockchain
In short, the chainless system captures the essence of cryptocurrency ideas, achieves the payment speed of centralized systems, and aligns with the views of Web3. The chainless system inherits the technical advantages of Web2, with meager accounting costs. The accounting system can automatically expand on demand, and the throughput is not limited. Smart contracts are easy to write and upgrade, and the wallet is safe and easy to use. The ease of use is the same as that of centralized wallets.
The chainless system combines the ideas of Bitcoin and hopes to become an effective payment platform and the infrastructure of Web3 to make up for the payment deficiencies of the Bitcoin system.
The chainless system began to be conceived in 2018, a preliminary plan was formed in 2019, a patent was applied for in 2020, the first draft of the white paper was produced in 2021, and implementation of the plan began in 2022. Open source after public beta. After open source, quoting the code within 18 months requires the written consent of the project team.
https://chainless.hk/2023/11/02/first-product-innovation-of-chainless-systems/

Hi,
I'm looking to get fit. I lost good amount of weight 240 to 175 since January through CICO. I've hit a plateau and need to start strength training and cardio.
Anyone have a fitness trainer they can recommend me? I'll pay $100/day for 2 months if they show up from 6-8am daily at equinox. 1 hour cardio, do whatever you want while I'm doing my cardio, if I don't show up call my cell phone to make sure I didn't hit snooze on the alarm. 1 hour strength training. Help me max out reps and spot me and teach me proper techniques/lifting stuff.
I think this is a decent deal but did I price too low? I don't think they need to be an offical personal trainer just someone that knows fitness and wants 3k/mo.

Tl;dr: My (29F) husband (30M) was emotionally, financially, technologically, and spiritually abusive—and borderline physically abusive—all throughout my pregnancy and postpartum. It’s made me feel so detached as a mother. I take good care of my baby (3mo) but I feel like a robot. Looking for commiseration, advice on how to cope, suggestions for how to bond, etc.
I’ve gotten myself into a complete mess. My husband pretty much shat the bed during my pregnancy. It’s both of our first child. The very first day I found out I was pregnant he was in my face over a really, really trivial problem, accusing me of being a liar and then berating me when I cried, telling me I was acting like a victim when I had wronged him so badly (really, I had just misremembered a detail of a completely benign conversation he and I had had when I texted friends to ask for advice on how to handle the issue). He checked my phone all through my pregnancy and when I was 8.5 months along he cut off my cell service because he was upset that a male friend from college had called me to congratulate me on my pregnancy. I spent the first 4.5 months of pregnancy deeply ill and unable to do much because my blood count tanked, but when I finally got some energy back I began to have panic attacks because I was so stressed about his anger and how it was affecting the baby. When I would have an attack, he would get in my face and tell me, “You are so fucking weak.” I am a Christian and in those moments he would often dismiss me saying I should take my pain to God, or he would tell me I’m a bad Christian because we talk big talk about peace but I can’t even handle criticism from him without panicking. He suspected I was trying to leave and he said he would cut off my access to my credit cards. He told me repeatedly he didn’t care about me and only cared that I was carrying his daughter. He watched porn in our bed while I slept and continued to look at pornographic images of women throughout the pregnancy even though he promised me before we got married that he wouldn’t look at porn anymore. After we had the baby things continued… for instance, I have been exclusively pumping to feed our baby, and it has been extremely stressful, so when I went to talk to him about stopping or only pumping a few times a day and supplementing breast milk with formula, he said that if I did that he could leave with my daughter and she wouldn’t need me anymore. These days when we fight he often will take my belongings off of my person and stand in my face, boss me around, and threaten me saying, “Do X or see what happens.”
I feel like he attacked me in the most vulnerable season of my whole life and injured a really deep and central part of who I am, the part of me that is a mother. I feel robbed of these times that I wanted to be so joyful.
The worst part is that the cumulative effect of this constant stress and pain has impacted my ability to feel bonded to my daughter. I am so worried all the time that he’s going to take her from me that I almost feel like I can’t fully emotionally invest. I can’t focus, I’m exhausted and on edge all the time. I feel like the “motherhood” part of my identity is so wounded that I have had to close that part of me off and detach from it to avoid being hurt there anymore.
I don’t have a job and we live overseas where we don’t know anybody. I feel completely broken down psychologically. He has recently admitted he has been abusive and said he will change, and partly out of hope, partly out of necessity, and partly out of love I have decided to give him a chance to prove to himself, to our daughter, and to me that he can be a better man, even though I cannot be optimistic.
But I feel awful that I’m in a fog when I care for and spend time with our daughter. I take good care of her at least on paper: I pick her up when she cries and change her and feed her and bathe her and read and sing to her, but I think some deep part of her knows that I am not fully “there.” I know that must be affecting her pretty deeply and will likely have an impact on the whole rest of her life. I want to be better for her but I truly don’t know how. When I think about opening my heart up to her more I begin to cry and feel like I’m on the verge of another panic attack. I look at her and I do feel love and protectiveness but it’s as if it’s stifled and scattered and maimed, for both of our sakes, and the positive feelings I have for her are full of sadness.
Has anyone been through anything like this? How do you even begin to heal a mother-child bond that has been violated and all but severed in this way?
Thanks everyone and sorry this is such a huge bummer of a post.

I remember like 15 years ago, I had a landline. I had it on "do not disturb", so it wouldn't ring, but people could leave messages. If I was away, people could leave a message and I could check it when I got home. Even if I was home, and my boss called to see if I could fill in for someone, I could just tell him later "sorry, I wasn't home"
Now it seems like you always have to keep it with you and on. If someone sends you a text, and you don't get back to them, they might take it like you're ignoring them. If you keep your phone off, you feel guilty. Even when I'm at work, it's now the primary way my supervisor communicates with me, when just a few years ago, they may have even said "No cell phones while you're working!". It's ironic. Now I want to get away from it, but it feels like I can't.

She stared at the scratch off tickets on the counter in her apartment. It would have solved all her problems.
She wanted to leave, to escape her life. It was so normal she could scream. She had become boring, almost solemn, just there being. Not a main character anymore, just an extra in the background drinking coffee, reading a book.
She often wondered if she was alone in these thoughts. Afraid to tell anyone worried it would sound privileged or she would get responses like, “I wish I could be bored” or even “common it’s not so bad.”
She did not feel privileged. She felt like she was trapped in another persons story. Like she was meant to be the hero but instead got cast as a hermit.
Although it’s hard to pinpoint when those feelings started. Was it after her breakup and rejection from her shitty x that she still couldn’t get out of her head? Funny the universe won’t let that one go. She wondered if she was alone in her thoughts? When the thoughts popped up in her head, was it because he was thinking of her too? Or was she just constantly remembering him because he rejected her when she tried to go back?
She likes to think that he sits alone and listens to sad songs when he’s alone and looks at old pictures. That he feels trapped and that his life is boring and monotonous like hers. That they are both living parallel boring lives that could almost match up on a split screen shot in a movie.
But it doesn’t matter, because they can’t be together anyway because he wants children and she does not. While she doubted he understood the responsibility, it was a hard line for him.
She always had the uncanny ability to see farther in the future, that it wouldn’t work out. Or maybe it was all self sabotage because she eventually always came to that conclusion with everyone she dated.
Was she afraid of who she really was? Who was that really? She had become so many different people that she didn’t know who she was anymore.
She started to envy those who got witness protection and got to restart their life. It wasn’t even that she had anything to run away from. Just the disappointment. She had so many lofty goals that she never accomplished. She had accepted that those goals were probably not going to happen and felt that was worse than never trying at all.
She felt like a failure, a fraud, a loser. She had become tired of complaining to her friends. She felt like a broken record, and the plot was tired. Maybe this time she would act as her alter ego and have better luck.
So what now? She asked herself. She had hoped to win one of the scratch offs so that it could fund her disapearance. Now the $5k in her savings would have to do.
That amount wouldn’t give her the glamorous exit she was hoping for. She had imagined leaving everything. Her cell phone, clothes, food, furniture…getting a blackmarket new identity w/ a real passport, boarding a private jet and slipping away to a far away country. But a trek across the border would have to suffice.
Not telling a soul. Not updating social media or posting she would be going off the grid. Just poof gone. Acquaintances would only notice months later when randomly wondering about the radio silence, visit her page and notice there had been no updates in a while. Further research would reveal more silence. They’d wonder but not ask.
She wanted to disappear without leaving a note. Walking to a gas station and buying a burner phone w/ cash at gas station with a cap looking down. She sell her car and buy a bus ticket with cash to the border.
***Would love to know thoughts/critiques*** (I'm sure there are grammatical errors)

The familiar sounds of the office fill the ears of the "Adventurer" as he steps into his home away from home. To him "Familiar sounds" means the voices of about three-quarters of the hundreds of employees who work in this building, thanks to the progressive, passive, perpetual boosts to his senses that he has simply always been accruing. He still can't quite hear everything in the office, indeed as powerful as his senses are he can only actively sense enough space around him to be firmly aware of events occurring about half of the building's length and width away from him at a time, but those are still incredibly powerful senses.
Lucas steps past several cubicles and heads to his own with a calm smile on his face. He actually enjoys his job, not because he finds the work fulfilling but because it presents him with a chance to level up his skills and work towards becoming altogether stronger in a hilariously safe environment. The figure sits in his cubicle and logs into his work computer with a bright grin on his face. As he grabs the last pieces of paper in the backlog that was a big problem when he began to work for this company he feels a pang of pride.
The workday is pleasant enough. He successfully finishes the last pile of paperwork that was considered part of the backlog and this effort is celebrated by his direct supervisor and a few of the friends he's made in his department, a group composed of several men and only a few pair of women, who have been working here for years but lacked the abilities he possesses that allow him to grind out progress at a rapid rate and allow him to improve the work he does every single day without fail. The news quickly spreads throughout the office, and various people, including other departmental supervisors and managers, come to him and congratulate him.
When the day ends Lucas is one of the first people out the door. This is commonly expected Lucas-like behavior at this point so no one bats an eye at it. The figure works and then leaves, and he seems to have an incredibly strict policy about work-life balance to the point that no one from the office has seen his apartment or even seen him outside of the office aside from on social media.
The lad walks towards a nearby mall even as he checks his phone. When the decently cautious man is sure he's not being watched he uses his inventory to swap outfits, changing into something much more casual than his work uniform so he can do his equivalent of trolling. His clothes go from being the professional outfit someone might expect to see an accountant in, to the much more casual clothes of someone who works at a Game Station the local equivalent of a Game Stop.
The minute the figure reaches the mall he relaxes and steps into it with a smile on his face as he is suddenly and powerfully aware of events going on all around him now that the sounds he's been passively hearing for the last few minutes are not muffled by layers of solid American construction. The mall is a favorite haunt of his, a place where there are enough people that even if something goes awry he can pretty easily escape in the chaos and commotion that any sort of hostile actions would necessarily cause. Still, to the figure's credit he has not been caught yet.
The thief begins his training by carefully studying the department store he's in. He can be a bit bolder now than he could weeks ago, as in the time since he began to hone this skill he's enhanced it in such a way that he can teleport objects directly into his inventory, which is a tremendous improvement even if he can't take anything bigger or heavier than a cleaver. He eventually spots a teenager with a wallet that is just visible out of the corner of his pockets. Lucas diligently uses "Observe" on him and the powerful skill is strong enough now that Lucas can use it to determine someone's affiliations. When the young adult spots that the teen belongs to a gang he decides it's worth taking his potentially ill-gotten gains.
The clever trickster points a single finger in the direction of the teen's pocket and silently casts the handy spell. A thin line of energy lances out of his extended digit and sails through the air toward the teenager. When the teen begins to move Lucas hisses in annoyance and expends a bit more magical energy to take advantage of the first skill he's gained as a result of an attribute hitting 50: arcane manipulation.
Days ago the young adventurer's passion for magic and healing resulted in two classes leveling up on the same day: mage and white mage. This resulted in his intelligence going from 49 to 52, and as a result of that he gained the ability to manipulate magical energy, so long as he can detect the magic in question and is willing to spend some magic of his own. In this world, where the figure is reasonably certain that no other magical beings exist, this means that to hone this skill the wizard needs to manipulate his own magic. Still, that hasn't stopped the young professional from tirelessly doing just that.
With a significant amount of focus the mage is able to manipulate the thin beam and twists and turns it so that it circles around the teen before snaking into his pocket and striking the young gangster's wallet. When Lucas feels the wallet enter his inventory he chuckles and makes his way out of the department store. The rest of this particular bout of training is filled with similar feats of arcane finesse and hilariously minor acts that will steal from those willing to enact violence on others in exchange for money. Lucas's clever usage of his skills coupled with his willingness to act in stunningly petty and annoying ways make him great at harassing those he designates his foes. Lucas, lacking an ability to kill those he fights thanks to a drawback affecting him, has thus far refused to actually engage those he has marked as his foes in direct battle but his desire to annoy them has led to willingly target people associated with criminal groups with some of his spatial magic.
In hours the figure is back home and he is toying with the newest toy he's received from his gacha system. A guitar sits on his lap and he fiddles with the instrument, even he listens to a video about how to tune the thing. Lucas is experimenting with something, and behind the tablet he gained some time ago is a book that contains information on tuning guitars. The tablet is in use, recording what the man is up to. An app is in use and it records the sounds the guitar chords make. The self-taught musician relies on some of his new skills for this, as he has only recently gained the "Guitar" and "Guitar Maintenance" skills, and he got them at different times so they are different levels. Nonetheless, the figure patiently records himself, occasionally stopping the recording and examining it. He is diligently using his long-term planning skills and sticking to his broad plan. At the same time the figure patiently uses magic and steadily hones the "Mage" class, using his magic skills to farm multiple sources of experience while adhering to the schedule he has informally given himself.
Eventually the next day rolls around and the figure, predictably, gets out of his apartment and goes to work. If you had explained the concept of "Jumping" to Lucas a year ago and asked him if he thought so much of it would be just working a 9-5 job he'd not have believed you and yet in the context of his experience with the unusual profession a stunning amount of time has just been him being a regular employee of a perfectly mundane business.
Time continues to pass for the would-be adventurer at a steady pace. In this mundane world a figure with legitimate supernatural abilities is a uniquely powerful presence, and this is especially true of one that is determined to keep his head down and nose clean. Lucas's determination to live a regular, relatively risk-free life does not stop him from living, but it does stop him from suffering from some sort of "Middle School Second Year Syndrome" as a result of the fact that he has gained trainable superpowers. Instead of going mad with power or gaining an unhealthy mentality Lucas has just enough knowledge of how jumping works to know that while he might be a big fish in this world he is not a big fish in other worlds like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, or even something as aggressively hostile and oppressive as the general setting of Minecraft is.
If an objective, impartial onlooker viewing Lucas's life is given the chance to describe the sort of "Television Show" that they are watching, they'd say it could easily be considered slice-of-life. For the first few months of his time here the most exciting times are the rare moments he adds something new to his slowly expanding list of activities and the even more slowly growing list of things he can do, such as when he begins to walk the streets of the city he lives in at night and cast healing, positive, restorative magic on the sleeping homeless people he encounters. This activity ultimately earns him the peculiar title of "Unsung Saint", a title which enhances the effectiveness of his restorative or otherwise beneficial magic on those not aware of the fact that he is using magic on them.
Days of work, training, and controlled, planned forays into new pastimes, turn into weeks of steady and anticipated progress. Weeks of steady and anticipated progress turn into months of upward mobility and the healthy establishments of new baseline feats. That said, eventually progress slows and becomes more difficult for the jumper in a world as relatively safe, for supernatural beings, as this one. It doesn't take terribly long for Lucas to go from a somewhat predictable, fairly focused figure who is very specialized in a number of areas, to a somewhat more well-rounded figure with a steadily increasing repository of skills and abilities, thanks to a subtle shift in growth strategies.
​Just a few days short of eleven months into his stay in this jump, the jumper is facing a new foe but is participating in an activity he's come to enjoy; sparring.
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I dodge a well-aimed right-handed punch intended for my face, though thanks to my agility I easily had enough time to dodge it, It took a long time, from my viewpoint, for it to get close to me so long enough that I only let it get this close on purpose. I'm holding back in terms of my speed and strength but my opponent, a friend I made at the gym a few weeks ago, doesn't need to know that. I have way too many supernatural advantages for it to be a fair fight if I don't hold back.
I give my opponent enough time to register that I've dodged the blow before I begin to telegraph, purposefully, my next attack. I purposefully overextend my left arm and launch a powerful, but slow, strike. The man grits his teeth and moves to intercept my strike. He is fast enough to position his arm in front of it but that is still a mistake. I guide my blow into his arm and watch as he lets out a sincere, pained, grunt. Even with me holding back I still allow DPS to work its magic, and that perk coupled with both my trained and perk-enhanced strength is enough for me to deal him a decently powerful blow.
I retract my fist with a sly smile and note that the bars that cover my field of view are all going up at different rates. The bar for "Brawler", a class that's the result of "Fighter" giving me access to a new class when it hit level 10, my currently equipped class, is going up at a healthy clip as I spar with this man, as is the bar for "Precision Strikes" and "Acting", some of my skills. Most of the things going up at a decent clip are affected by "Jack of All Trades" a perk thatreduces the time and effort it takes for me to train up new skills to around the level of my average. Most of my other bars are only slightly going up, but this is acceptable. This sort of training is vital, long term, for my very survival, and thanks to my perks is pretty easy for me to do.
Behind me I hear a familiar voice cheering; Hannah's. The lovely redhead has begun to accompany me to the gym, but this is a somewhat recent development. Before a few weeks ago we only occasionally saw each other on Saturdays at the cafe she worked at, though we have been texting buddies ever since we met. Marcus, my sparring partner, grins savagely at me as he listens to my friend and gym buddy's cheers.
"I can't let you show me up in front of your girl, Lucas. We're not close like that." Marcus tells me, though the words are insincere. Marcus is a friend of mine, one who has even tasted my food, and that's something I don't let others do as much as I once did, barring people who go to the soup kitchen when I'm one of the volunteers on duty. My cooking can now do some decent stuff so I don't want to get anyone who isn't an ally or someone I need in my pocket overly reliant on my skills. I grin at the muscular bruiser of a warrior and dart back before gesturing for him to come at me like he means it. The man lets out a hearty laugh as he begins to pursue me. He is a touch taller than me and he has muscular, wide arms that take up a lot of space.
I watch, diligently, as he swings them at me when he is in the martial sweet spot of being close enough to hit me with a fully extended fist and being far enough away for me to strike back in an effort to preempt or counter his blow. I dart forward even as he stops advancing and duck underneath the strike before I use an active skill from my "Dancer" class to infuse my agility into my strength and hit him with a blow that disorients him. He steps back, a look of pain and confusion on his face as I step forward and move close enough to hit the man with a much softer blow to the chest. I feel his solid muscles block part of the harm done to him, but the blow is still solid enough that I watch his HP lower.
He gasps in pain and staggers back, and I smile at him and sense my triumph. He's only lost a small portion of his total hit points, but for normal people, one's total stock of HP is an abstraction of their physical health. For me, my HP serves as a skillful shield that protects me at all times, and for me to fall in battle someone has to whittle away my entire bar before they take me out. In fact, right now my HP is not maxed out; earlier I took a hit from Marcus that I'm still recovering from.
I take a step forward before Marcus signals that he needs a break. I laugh, the sound filling the part of the gym we're fighting in, and stop approaching the man. Hannah walks up to the ring and offers me some of her water as I walk toward one of the corners of the small ring. I silently gesture that I'll accept it and she tosses it at me. When the object is in my hand I use subtle telekinesis to mess with my boxing glove just enough to more easily hold onto the water bottle and sip from it. The cool water tastes good, and I smile as I feel it helping me relax as I wait to continue the fight. This is the sixth time I've beaten Marcus, but I'll give the man one bit of praise: he's persistent. He likes fighting enough that he is always eager to try and fight me, and I like fighting just enough to appreciate his resistance to the idea that I can beat him. It's not always easy for me to keep on finding partners that I can spar with.
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In the days that follow this fight, the young jumper continues to spar with Marcus. He steadily trains his "Brawler" class, and takes on class skills that do things like make him a more efficient hand-to-hand fighter, even gaining skills that he suspects, and hopes that he won't need here; like the ability to launch a punch that can inflict damage at a distance.
The figure's volunteering remains a steadfast facet of his in-jump identity. The man gains popularity throughout the place that is, functionally, his hometown, as he becomes a well-known volunteer. He even makes the places he volunteers at more popular, using a steadily increasing amount of local and online popularity to advocate for the organizations he supports. This first began to occur about three months into his stay in the jump, but he really begins to leverage it at the six month mark and he quickly begins to slowly become a minor force in the community, taking advantage of his heavy charisma build to sway hearts and minds to his cause.
His days at work continue to remain fairly unchanged from how they were at the start of his time in the jump, though on very rare occasions he creates reports and the in-jump equivalent of PowerPoint presentations about the data he has compiled to his supervisor. He has also overseen a day of service for members of his department to go and volunteer at the soup kitchen where he volunteered on the day he met Hannah, allowing him a pleasant chance to practice his leadership skills. He earns his first pay raise just under a year into his stay in this setting.
Minor missteps occur along the way, such as the figure overbooking himself during one particularly hectic weekend, which annoys his friends and fellow volunteers but serves as a decently humbling experience for the overly eager adventurer and also shows his friends that he is, ultimately, human.
Lucas continues his relaxed, fairly peaceful days for more and more time. By the time he has been in the jump for a full two years his pre-jump life feels like a memory or a strange dream, though this change to his state of mind does not actually mean he cannot recall such a time only that he has fully acclimated to the realities of being a jumper. At least as much as someone who is still on their first jump can acclimate to such a thing.
A/N: I like this episodic style for the necessary time skips that a standard (or mostly standard) jumpchain story will require. Now I'm gonna say that this style won't be universal across all jumps since some jumps may be better suited to shorter timeframes. Heck some more story-intensive jumps may benefit from longer focuses on individual events and sequences of events, but we've gone past the tutorial phase for this jump and I think minor episodic looks at broad timescales is better than a thousand chapter story that only hits one year in a jump and ultimately gets dropped. That said, I know that I'm not doing this style of writing PERFECTLY, so I hope that I can use this to grow as a writer and to become better able to convey how long time skips affect the characters, relationships, and strengths of the people involved over time. Still, if nothing else this was fun.
ALSO, as an author's note that is unique to the subreddit: this story is being published on Spacebattles and the white line that cuts through parts of the story indicates a narration/viewpoint shift. On Spacebattles and several other places I write there are in-built formatting options that allow you to cut through a textbox with a horizontal line which serves as a visual marker for some significant change to some aspect of the story. The line I made was my attempt to do that here on Reddit. It's... not perfect, but hey I'm trying.

Innovis will not accept my telephone number. I tried my regular cell phone, and my Google Voice. It finally accepted an old cell phone number for me. I then got the following error:
"Cannot Fulfill Request Online. We apologize for the inconvenience but we cannot fulfill your request online at this time."
Help! How afraid should I be? I have never heard of Innovis before and only attempted to freeze my credit report with them after reading about them on this sub-reddit.
Please advice.

TW: csa, and manipulation. Also, drug use.
So, without giving too many details but still in the spirit of getting things off my chest: my mom and I don’t have the best relationship currently, but it’s getting better. Mostly because I was a little asshole of a teenager, and also because she couldn’t handle it (I don’t blame her. I was THAT bad) but we have been working on it, and it’s actually been going rather well so far recently!
Anyway, last night during our now weekly phone call, she let something slip and it’s bothered me ever since.
So back when I was barely just 13, I met a man that was MUCH older than me, and you can guess the rest… I actually lied and told him I was 16, and I remember the disappointment in his response, and my dumb ass thought the disappointment was because I wasn’t 18 yet…
Until yesterday, I thought I was only #2 victim, but I wasn’t 100% sure.
Turns out there were 4… FOUR (reported, mind you) before me, and the authorities already had their eyes on this guy even before I finally came forward to file a report months after the fact.
Here’s the thing. MY testimony woulda been enough to put him in jail. If not for the rape, but at the very least a Contributing to the Delinquence of a Minor type charge… but I wasn’t around.
At the time, I’d decided that running away so that I could do drugs freely and be a little homeless asshole, was the most important thing at the time.
I didn’t know. I didn’t fucking know that at the time, I was somehow caught in the middle of something much MUCH bigger than me.
Originally I’d declined to testify in person (and now thinking back, the detective on the case was grateful about it, fuckin pos), but my mom told me last night about how many times the prosecuting attorney called her, hoping and waiting and prolonging things as long as she could, in order to get my testimony… bit I wasn’t around.
I could’ve been there. I could’ve been the key, the turning point, the proverbial slam dunk (I literally met this guy’s mother back then, at the time, and looking back I could tell she wasn’t comfortable with me around).
I literally could’ve ended this whole fucked up saga of pedo bullshit! But I didn’t know, because I was too busy numbing my mind, and pretending that it wasn’t an issue at all to me, other than the fact that I lied and told him that I was older than I really was.