Quotes about family turning on you

Hey there. Giving this a try. I'm 29 years old, male, and live on the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires (AMBA).
I'm 6'0"/181cm tall and I'm super skinny (55kg). I have a gaunt, fairly attractive face (no mewing required) and a moustache and goatee. I also have 9 tattoos. I can provide a picture of me if you'd like.
I speak Spanish and English fluently and I can understand Italian and Portuguese pretty well but can't speak them or write them very well.
I work at a big pharma corpo, spreading evil all over the world and I work from home and I'm pretty introverted when alone IRL so I don't get to meet lots of people out there. I'd like to find someone to chat with, keep each other company during the the day and slowly build a relationship.
I'm in a weird period in my life where I'm fairly successful after being broke for 10 years (worked with my dad) and dropping out of university 3 times. The corpo world gave me a chance and things have slowly been turning around. I also did 9 years of therapy and got discharged on good terms so I know myself and my psyche pretty well. For the first time I feel confident and pleased with myself so I'm very picky to who I let into my life.
Disclaimer: I still live with my mother since I wasn't able to afford rent until some years ago and now I'm at the point where it makes more sense to save money and try to get a mortgage next year. If this bothers you, then feel free to catch the next train.
For hobbies: I'm into videogames (mostly old-school RPGs a la Morrowind or Baldur's Gate), cars and racing, Simracing, tabletop games (building a Drukhari Kill Team to play with my cousin) and a whole lot of nerdy stuff. I also practice photography from time to time and I like obscure or shitty horror films. I'm a pretty curious person and I love to learn trivia and tidbits about whatever my current interest is. I am also an ex Star Wars fan but hate Disney.
For my personality: I'm pretty chill and laid back. I care a lot about the people that I love and I really enjoy family gatherings, although they are getting rarer by the day. My friends have said that I'm kind and thoughtful. I have an edge and I love dark humor. I like to push the envelope when joking around with people that I trust so outsiders would think I'm insensitive or rude. In fact I'm very sensitive and I like to be sweet but life and stuff has made me build a cocoon around that so a select few get to see that side of me. I also have a tendency for negativity or depression, but I have the tools to handle it and not be a burden to others. I go from "it's so over" to "eff it we ball" many times a year so don't worry, I'm too stubborn to allow life to get me down. I'm not perfect and my main struggle has always been my fear of confrontation and repressed frustration and anger, but I'm working (literally) on the confrontation part and I've learnt to use my anger as fuel to go through whatever I need to go through, and I have never been violent btw.
I don't really have a set preference for women but I admit I'm more into tall girls with shoulder-length hair (I guess that's called a bob?) although it's not a hard requirement. I just want to meet someone that's interesting, fun and kind but, of course, physical attraction is important.
If anyone is reading this and are interested or feel like we'd have good chemistry,, feel free to shoot a message introducing yourselves.
Thank you for your time. Best regards,
A skeleton.

Throwaway account because I am not proud of the actions that took me out of my daughter’s life.
My daughter was born in 2005. In 2006 I was charged with some crimes. Originally got probation and my wife stayed with me. I violated probation and went to prison and my ex filed for divorce before I left county for the prison. But then she didn’t push the divorce. It just sat there. For almost two years. She also cut off contact with me and would not send me letters or allow me to have phone calls. I got zero information about my daughter.
I figured my wife just didn’t have time or money to finalize the divorce. And while I didn’t have any money, I had time and the ability to file motions in my divorce case for free. I accepted everything my wife asked for. She got our house, cars, what little money we had and full custody (until I got out and then it was supposed to be revisited). I got our divorce finalized about 25 months after she filed it. Then I still had another six years I spent locked up.
I got out at the end of 2016. I entered therapy and tried to make contact with my ex to try to set up some reunification with my daughter (who was 11 by then. I hadn’t seen her since she was 2). Because my charges were violent (but not domestic) my PO didn’t allow me to see my daughter unless her Mom said it was okay. And I was told that would not happen by my exes Dad.
I was on parole until February 2019. As soon as I got my termination papers I went to the court house and filed what I thought I needed to in order to see my daughter, or start the process. Found out I did it wrong. That took 6 months to get my incorrect filing dismissed so I could refile the right way. Hired a lawyer and filed parentage time papers. My ex already had a lawyer and the day after my wrong filing was dismissed she filed to have her new husband adopt my daughter.
Apparently that type of case has to be resolved before mine can be acted on. So I had to file as an intervenor in that case to object. They were using some procedural hurdles to delay delay delay. And then in March 2020 Covid struck and the court system ground to a halt for non criminal matters.
Remember my daughter was born in 05. So a few months after COVID started she turned 15. It took what seemed like forever to finally get to a hearing with the court. We had to try mediation and that was an absolute waste of money. I wouldn’t budge from wanting to have some contact with my daughter and my ex wouldn’t budge from me completely giving up parental rights. We finally were going to have a hearing in September 2021. She was almost 16. The night before court my exes lawyer reached out and said the adoption was what my daughter wanted. And regardless of any other evidence or argument the court was most likely going to heavily weight her decision and also most likely discriminate against an absent father who had been gone for so long and did I really want to keep fighting and pissing off my daughter.
That made a lot of sense. So I withdrew my objection to the adoption as long as the court asked her if that was her wish and I still be allowed to send letters and presents even if I got no reply about them.
That was almost three years ago. My daughter reached out to me over email almost six months ago and while many of her emails are coming from a place of pain I feel like there had also been a lot of healing too and some growth in our relationship. It’s possible she is just using me because I send her money and gifts. But I have a budget I discussed with my current wife that we feel comfortable spending on my oldest daughter and I don’t spend outside that without talking with my wife.
I found her TikTok account shortly after she emailed me. Her username on TikTok is the same as her Venmo. Several of her videos mentioned being a #csasurvivor.
I wasn’t sure until today if her stepdad did something, or someone else. Or if she thought I did something before getting locked up. It seems like my ex had not abided by the part of our divorce decree that says we can’t denigrate the other person in the presence of our child. Or allow family to do so either. Anyway, my daughter replied to an email I sent yesterday asking if she’d be ok with me going to her HS graduation this month as long as I didn’t upset her Mom (basically stay away so that her mom doesn’t know I am there). She said that would be fine. And then she told me her stepdad had abused her when she was little. And for a long time she’s been mad at me (rightly so) for not being there to treat her with the love and care a daughter deserves from her Dad.
I bought access to the web portal in my state where you can look up information on pending cases. And sure enough I found my ex filed for divorce last year in September and the StepDad was arrested last June. He’s out on pretrial release until he goes to trial in September.
I’m not gonna go vigilante. I have to much to lose by going back to prison, my current wife and younger kids as well as the opportunity to build a relationship with my older daughter.
And I don’t need therapy advice. I will definitely be talking to at least two therapists about this. I have different therapists that deal with different issues for me working in tandem.
But I just needed to vent. And scream. And wail. And cry. And tell people I don’t know that my actions set in motion my daughter’s eventual sexual assault. I’m not taking responsibility for his crimes obviously. That bastard can go to prison for as long as they can sentence him. But if I had been the father she needed and deserved, possibly she wouldn’t have been hurt so bad.
Any advice on how to empathize with my daughter and what kind of support she needs would be much appreciated.
Tl;dr
My actions indirectly eventually led to my daughter being abused by my ex wife’s new husband. Help!

I’m very new to reddit and I’m still trying to figure out how things work around here.
I didn’t know how exactly to title this post but i hope i make myself clear as I couldn’t find any post that addressed this issue yet.
Sorry for the long post BTW.
I’ve been with my husband for 11 years and married for 7 of those. We have two children (6m and 3f) and before getting married our sex life amazing, about 2-3 times a week, his sex drive has always been higher than mine and I’d consider mine normal. He’s always made me feel comfortable and safe, at times a bit too cautious in his effort to make me comfortable, that’s probably why I fell for him and still love him so much. He has always been the main initiator and I noticed from early on that whenever I turned him down he would take a long time to initiate again, I know that it’s not for any malicious reasons but to avoid pressuring me. The issue is that we got pregnant soon after getting married and during the pregnancy i was literally climbing the walls for how horny i was and he was reluctant to have sex especially when my belly started to show up. After the birth of our son my sex drive took a nose dive, and fortunately he very very rarely initiated it as we were very focused on the child and we only had sex after 2 years after, when my libido came back as we wanted another child. We got pregnant with our daughter and this time around my sex drive during pregnancy was non existent. It’s been over 3 years our daughter was born, we haven’t had sex and I still have no sex drive. I know he needs sex, he almost always exited “down there” around me and tries to hide it, puts pillows between us when cuddling, etc. I want to want to have sex but I can’t and i feel extremely guilty for my husband, so had a serious conversation with him. I asked him how he felt about our sex life or lack there of, and he said that he expected it to be like this. I was shocked and asked him to elaborate on it, he said when he decided he wanted to marry me and have a family he was implicitly accepting that sex would be a rare event and probably non existent, especially after kids. Showed me articles about women taking about 4 to 7 years to be completely recovered from birth and with their libido restored to have regular sex again, etc. The thing is that i sort of fall into that statistic but I don’t want to hurt my marriage and deprive him of sex. Years ago whenever I initiated and we had foreplay he could notice that i was forcing myself be into it and he stopped despite my insistence. I am scared that if my libido ever come back he will be reluctant to have sex again as he thinks because his married and has kids sex with his own wife will be out the table. It is as he’s settling or something, it is bothering me a lot. I want to know if any woman has ever been through this and how did you recover your sex drive?
Thank you for reading.
TL:DR - Husband doesn’t expect any sex after marriage and kids.

17-minute read.

summarized segments from PM Pashinyan's 4-hour-long press conference

PASHINYAN: Over the last several years we came to realize that certain issues were incompatible with the idea of having an independent and sovereign Armenia. Certain agendas were shown to have a predetermined outcome with the goal of preventing Armenia's development as a state. I have shared details on numerous occasions. It became necessary to review Armenia's development strategy and the need to develop the "Real Armenia".
Today Armenia has and must have an independent foreign policy. Armenia's internal policy is driven by the will of the people.
The purpose of the existence of the Republic of Armenia is not to serve "historical justice". Its purpose is to establish personal freedoms, happiness, and prosperity for its citizens and diasporans who wish to repatriate.
We must have social justice in Armenia based on the idea of assisting those in need so they can have the skills and jobs necessary to make a living independently.
We must deepen our relations with neighboring Georgia and Iran, control and reduce the hostility with Turkey and Azerbaijan, and integrate with regional communication routes. The Crossroads of Peace logistics project would promote Armenia's integration into economic routes and reduce the likelihood of conflicts in the future.
In the area of defense, we are diversifying our foreign relations, reforming the army, and we need to implement and comprehensive defense system.
To be able to diversify foreign relations [closer ties with the West & the delivery of Indian weapons through the territory of Iran or Georgia], Armenia's stance must be based on legitimacy [no territorial claims against Azerbaijan]. We will never be able to diversify our relations or use the diversified relations effectively without having a position based on legitimacy.
The army reforms must also be based on legitimacy, and its purpose must be the protection of Armenia's territorial integrity and sovereignty. There will be no army reforms [Western advisory & assistance] if our stance is not based on legitimacy.
The economic development, which is a prerequisite for the achievement of other goals, must be based including on the development of human capital in Armenia.
The implementation of all of the above requires peace. The peace agenda has been a priority for us, partly because the mechanism of guarantees [by Russia] didn't work. Only peace can guarantee Armenia's security. The peace agenda is a tool to ensure Armenia's security.
We must create the conditions for peace, and we have launched that process in Tavush. The border posts installed in Tavush are "security guarantees" and we must do everything possible to strengthen those guarantees and multiply them. //
Border Commissions of Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed on April 19 to reproduce the borders based on the 1991 Almaty Declaration. During the upcoming meeting in Kazakhstan, foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan will discuss the inclusion of this principle in the larger peace agreement, said Pashinyan.
The demarcation is conducted based on the latest USSR maps that hold de jure power. That's the principle. They avoid pointing to a map from a specific year because each section of the border could have de jure maps prepared in different years. Pashinyan offered journalists to meet off the record to share more details about the de jure maps. He said it can't be publicized in order not to jeopardize the ongoing delimitation process.
Why are the parties delimiting the borders from the ground up instead of simply using the delimitation work carried out in 1988, during the final years of USSR? Pashinyan says the 1988 efforts were not legally finalized and "didn't have time" to undergo the necessary procedures to go into effect, hence the need for a new process.
PASHINYAN: Today we are using maps that reflect the borders between Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the Tavush process, we have chosen a path to exclude the possibility of a war. This isn't just about Kirants and Tavush, this is about the Republic of Armenia.
The border delimitation aims to make the possible war illogical, unlikely, and not worthwhile. Some 90% of the work is complete. The further it goes, the more illogical a war becomes. We are delivering on our 2021 promise of taking steps to establish peace.
This is the first time in history that we create security guarantees ourselves, no matter how challenging it is. This is part of being a sovereign state, when you face your own issues and make sovereign decisions to resolve your own issues. This is a major political and socio-psychological shift for Armenia. //
Pashinyan said it's necessary to ensure that Armenia is not viewed as an "occupier" of Azerbaijani villages, and explained why it was important to launch the delimitation from Tavush:
PASHINYAN: We are talking about actual [4 Soviet-era Azeri] communities where people lived. The escalations in 2021-2022 caught the interest of the international community, and sadly, on international platforms, the aggression against Armenia was "justified" including with the use of those Azerbaijani villages. It was both surprising and unfortunate that in a situation [20121-2022] when we thought we were the "plaintiff", we became the "defendant". We were asked whether we recognize each other's territorial integrity or not. "Then what is the problem that's preventing you from resolving the issue of these villages?" So we are launching the delimitation from Tavush to avoid a new war.
Critics and I look at this through different lenses. They talk about "surrendering trenches great for defense", and I'm talking about preventing a war so you won't even need to use those trenches. Today there is a process, including by the clergy, to stop the process of developing guarantees for peace, to stop the process of strengthening Armenia's sovereignty. There will be a war if we don't delimit these 4 villages. I'm confident that this was/is the goal of certain forces that wish to create conditions to allow them to hijack power so they can make some other decisions for Armenia [Tatarstan].
Are you paying attention to what the opposition members are saying? One of their leaders went on air and questioned the expediency of holding free and legitimate elections because they - and certain external forces [in Russia] - understand that they can't win power through legitimate elections so they need to destabilize the situation by inciting a new war so they can hijack power without elections. This is their plan:
(1) Derail the border delimitation and incite a war that will lead to the occupation of Armenian territories.
(2) Use that to overthrow the government.
(3) Install an illegitimate marionette government.
(4) De facto dissolution of Armenia's sovereignty and statehood, ahead of its de jure dissolution.
Who are the supporters of this process [rally against delimitation]? Narco-barons hiding in Russia [Panama Papers' Mihran Poghosyan]; criminal elements recruited by foreign intel agencies or at a minimum people acting under their influence; the former NSS chief Arthur Vanetsyan who was recorded on tape, which wasn't published in full, with the rest of the tape being kept to ensure he served their interests. What could be in the unpublished portion of the conversation? Could we find out one day that Vanetsyan was illegally negotiating with Kocharyan's son-in-law Mikael Minasyan to register part of the Zangezur copper combine's shares under his brother's name [Context: Pashinyan has accused the ex-regime of illegally appropriating the shares of Armenia's largest miner. There was an investigation by an independent media outlet about Vanetsyan's involvement in Zangezur. This was before the recent partial nationalization.]
These are the people who claim they are worried about the homeland today. Why don't they return those illegally obtained shares if they are worried about Armenia? It is inevitable. I want to inform you that these shares will belong to the Republic of Armenia. These illegal assets will be seized and returned under the ownership of the Republic of Armenia. //
Pashinyan vented about the quality of journalism in Armenia, accusing outlets of spreading unverified information as facts and not attempting to ask him directly for clarification when they were given the opportunity during one-on-one meetings.
PASHINYAN: You read these articles about my family members visiting somewhere and returning home with a "submarine", but when the opportunity is presented, these outlets never ask me to clarify whether it was true. Why don't you grill me right now for using a submarine to travel from Gyumri to Yerevan? It's as if these articles are being written for the sake of saying something rather than presenting facts. //
Back to borders.
PASHINYAN: Today the Border Commissions are tasked with reproducing the border on the ground. They are not engaged in politics, geopolitics, or proving the other side wrong. They are reproducing the de jure borders. In the Kirants section, 8 border markings have been clarified and installed. The other 3 are more sensitive [might pass through a house] and more detailed work will be done because, in those 3 points, every centimeter will matter. It has to have a centimeter precision. It's a laborious task but the problems of Kirants residents are our problems, my personal problems. For them, we have to come up with realistic and satisfactory solutions, even if not "ideal" solutions. We are reviewing the property ownership records as well. //
Pashinyan said he had to organize this press conference on May 7 instead of May 8 - the day when he became the PM - because tomorrow he has to visit Russia for the EAEU economic meeting during which he will also meet Putin. He said a number of issues have accumulated on the AM-RU agenda that need to be discussed.
The permanent housing assistance package for Nagorno-Karabakh refugees is being drafted and will be ready soon. Pashinyan said the refugees will receive help to build or buy housing, or a mortgage subsidy if they have already purchased a house. For refugees who are unable or do not wish to take part in the aforementioned programs, they will receive assistance in the form of social housing, meaning they will live for free but won't own it.
The amount of housing subsidy will be in the ֏3M-֏5M range, per family member. So a family of 6 would receive $41,000-$77,000 depending on the geographic location of their choice.
While speaking about the history of the Nagorno-Karabakh negotiation process, Pashinyan repeated that after 2016, the resolution package on the table required: the abolition of the governing system in Nagorno-Karabakh, the return of Azeris to Nagorno-Karabakh, the joint control of Nagorno-Karabakh by Armenians and Azeris, no independence, and the lingering possibility of war.
PASHINYAN: We had to surrender all of that, and even then there was no guarantee there wouldn't be a war because there would be no final resolution. This outcome was predetermined. Nevertheless, the Armenian people are overcoming the mentality of being a [Russian] fortpost today. This creates the groundwork for a lasting statehood for Armenia. Today we see the horizon after overcoming all these tragedies. Since taking office in 2018 I had the feeling that Armenia was in a deadlock. Today, for the first time, I feel that we have overcome that, thanks to the delimitation in Tavush. We are the ones creating the "guarantees" for us. //
When asked why he won't take part in Russia's May 9 celebrations, Pashinyan said he visited last year and that Armenian leaders don't have a record of attending every year.
Regarding the recent ban on Russian propagandist Solovyov from Armenian airwaves and possibly a wider ban on Russian channels, Pashinyan said foreign programs must respect Armenian laws:
PASHINYAN: Can you imagine the broadcasting of a channel in Russia that uses a similar language towards Russian law, the state, and its government? Do you think the channel would exist even if they used 5% of the same language? The AM-RU media agreement requires respect for Armenia and its interests. Since we have friendly relations with Russia, we can ask nicely once and twice, then demand once and twice, and if it's still ignored, they will all be shut down in Armenia. We are serious about defending Armenia as a sovereign state. I can GUARANTEE you, guar-an-tee, that these foreign channels won't be aired in Armenia if they continue to ignore these demands. It appears we have asked twice, demanded once, so there is one more "demand" left. //
QUESTION: Russia and Azerbaijan demand a Russian-controlled corridor from Armenia, citing the 9th paragraph of the Nov 9 statement.
PASHINYAN: (1) The other paragraphs of Nov. 9 were ignored. (2) The 9th paragraph is not about connecting Azerbaijan to Nakhijevan. That's the impression they are trying to create, but the 9th paragraph is in reality about the unblocking of ALL communication routes in the region. Azerbaijan has yet to unblock any of the routes for Armenia. Name one route that Azerbaijan has unblocked. We, on the other hand, proposed the installation of border checkpoints to establish connections, including between Azerbaijan and Nakhijevan. Azerbaijan is refusing to take advantage of this opportunity. Azerbaijan says if we don't give them a corridor they will build a route through Iran. Our response is that we are ready to provide a road similar to the one provided by Iran. There is not even a "hint" in the 9th paragraph that limits Armenia's sovereignty.
(3) There is an attempt to create the impression that under the 9th paragraph, a 3rd party [Russia] must guarantee the security through the territory of Armenia. Quite the contrary; it directly states that Armenia shall guarantee the security of connections.
(4) The 9th paragraph makes no mention of any part of Armenia becoming outside of the reach of the Armenian government and being "controlled" by Russia. It's written that Russia oversees the transport connection. What does that mean, you may ask? Pay attention to the Russian government decree adopted after the Nov. 9 statement, because it clarifies what the 9th paragraph says. The Russian decree instructs Russian agencies to "oversee the implementation of transportation guarantees provided by Armenia". In other words, the subject that provides the guarantees is Armenia, not Russia. This doesn't even mean that Russia must be present on the ground to oversee this, because it's possible to oversee the process by receiving regular reports from Armenia that Armenia is delivering the guarantees [Relevant: In 2022-2023 Armenia's NatSec Armen Grigoryan suggested that Russia could use "cameras" to oversee the process remotely. It appears Pashinyan today supports even less direct involvement by Russia, in the form of "regular reports", whatever that means.]
PASHINYAN (continues): There can be no comparison between this and the Lachin corridor. They are completely different. The Lachin corridor, under Nov. 9, was a territory with a specific width that had to remain under the direct control of Russian peacekeepers. Those who accuse us of violating paragraph 9 are making baseless claims. They must admit that this is an attempt by them to coerce an unacceptable concession from Armenia that is not described in paragraph 9. That is the truth.
There is a Lachin corridor in the Nov 9 statement. Is there a Lachin corridor on the ground today? It doesn't exist. Why?
There is a "line of contact" between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan in the Nov 9 state. Is there a LoC on the ground today? Where is it?
The Nov 9 says there is Nagorno-Karabakh. Where is Nagorno-Karabakh today?
The Nov 9 says there are peacekeepers that will ensure the security of the civilian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. Did they? They did not. Where is the ethnic Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh today? //
Regarding the delimitation of 3 problematic areas in Kirants where the border could pass through a couple of houses.
REPORTER: Kirants is my homeland. I grew up in these areas and my children spent their vacations there. We regularly visit Kirants and other villages with family without disclosing it. Do you know why I do not oppose delimiting the border even if it causes controversy and property issues for some residents? Because we were finally able to reach an agreement around the principle for the delimitation of the entire AM-AZ border, welcomed by the international community. We cannot throw away the hard work and the principles of delimitation.
There can be no external "security guarantees" for Armenia. Armenia itself must forge those "guarantees" with its own efforts. That is what we are doing today. These are the "security guarantees" that you asked for Kirants and Tavush. This is part of the peace agenda. //
When asked about police brutality, Pashinyan acknowledged some problems but said a legal force should be used when appropriate, citing the recent clearing of university campuses in the US. Pashinyan said the government has launched a process to clarify the rights and responsibilities of officers so they will avoid investigations and prosecutors while the public will be treated fairly.
Pashinyan accused "failed religious leaders" of attempting to pursue a political agenda.
PASHINYAN: They failed to connect people and God. There are sadly many ranking churchmen, not all, who failed. You can talk to them dozens of times and they will never make any mention of the Bible or verses from the Bible. They are focused on business dealings, cement and concrete transportation, customs clearance, moving money from one account to another, public transport ownership, comparing the latest model of Mercedes with the old model, etc. Who are these people?
I'm not really surprised that they are involved in politics because they have no place in the religious world; it's just not for them. I doubt they have read the Bible in full. Based on the language used by them, you can tell they haven't opened the New Testament for quite some time, and they don't possess the nuances of the gospel. I say this not as a Prime Minister but as a man who believes in God. I speak as a follower of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Our church leaders have failed in their mission. I'm probably the last person in Armenia who says this; everyone knows that's the case.
They are bored of religion, they want to be in politics. Under the old regime, the church members had their "quotas" [monopolistic privileges] to conduct business. Import and export of cars, Bentleys, Lexus, Mercedes... yev ayln. Today everyone is free to do business, which means economic competition for these church leaders. This sums up the whole story.
They say the "temple" [opposition] will defeat the "street" [Pashinyan's 2018 revolution]. How will the temple defeat the street? Who is on the streets? It's the citizens of Armenia. How do they plan to defeat the street? The people's will is unstoppable, and people want peace. Those who preach war are destined to fail. // [Should Pashinyan resign and lead the church? Leave your insightful opinion in the comment section below.]
When asked why he visited daddy Erdogan's inauguration ceremony but not papa Putin's, Pashinyan revealed that he didn't receive an invitation from Putin, but even if there was one, he said would likely miss it because of today's press conference.
When asked whether the church leader Garegin Beta should step down, Pashinyan said the Government should not interfere in those matters.
PASHINYAN: Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that Catholicos Garegin B is leading a political movement today. That is very obvious. Today we know the purpose of this movement from the spokesman of the church who said the goal of this movement is to bring back the former regime. This strategy was mentioned by the leader of Armenia Alliance [Robert Kocharyan] on how to use the church to replace the government. A churchman said he has the blessing of the Catholicos to proceed with the process. That means Catholicos is the real leader, with the primary beneficiary being Robert Kocharyan. This isn't even an assumption, this is based on their public statements.
We are aware that some members of the clergy oppose this process. You remember how there was a movement "New Armenia, new Catholicos" after the 2018 revolution. They attempted to accuse us of being behind it, but in reality, not only we did not sponsor it but we were against that process because we didn't believe the Government should meddle in those affairs. //
HOST: This just in. The administrative head of village Kirants was allowed to visit the border marking sites. During a follow-up interview with the press, he said their expectations have been met and exceeded, and that it's more positive than what they expected.
PASHINYAN: During my recent trip to Kirants, the scenario I presented to the residents was the worst-case scenario. I also informed the residents of Kirants about the positive aspects of the delimitation and the possible economic benefits. I won't rush to make more statements and politicize the work of the Border Commission. The head of the administrative district of Kirants is actually a member of a [recently formed] working group adjacent to the Border Commission [Context: Village mayors were invited to oversee the Commission's work to ensure transparency for residents].
source,

former ambassador-at-large Edmon Marutyan released a video praising the Armenian church for its "liberal values", criticizing the Pashinyan administration for a "Bolshevik" campaign against the church

Marukyan is upset that the ruling faction accuses the church leaders of being "Russian agents" and for dismissing them without engaging with them.
Marukyan says it's normal for the church to be in politics and for deeply religious figures to be members of the government. He brings the example of Donald Trump, who is selling Bibles for a buck; Erdogan, whose party is deeply religious; Israel, whose coalition has right-wing religious figures; the United Kingdom, which has Bishops, etc.
In related news. Former Ombudsman Arman Tatoyan has joined the anti-delimitation march organized by the ARF/church.
source, source, source, source, source, [կանսեռվա]

mayor of Tavush village Kirants about the ongoing delimitation process

REPORTER: Eight border markers have been installed. Where are they, what's the latest news?
MAYOR (Kamo Shahinyan): I've seen the markers. There is a height called Khachi located right on the cross. They moved the border about 25 meters down from there, for which we are grateful to whoever was able to accomplish this. Some of the territory went under our control, and some under Azerbaijani control.
The "nose" part is what's left, the area immediately neighboring the village, the most difficult part. The 9.5 hectares that we were supposed to lose were moved down the river; not a centimeter of land belonging to us passes through there. On the back side, there are 3 personal properties and if you draw the line straight they will be inside Azerbaijan but they said they plan to curve the line. With this technique, we can maintain control of our lands.
REPORTER: Where is the most problematic area?
MAYOR: The bridge and the [area immediately next to the village where the border protrudes into the village]. Most of the work has been done near other markers. Moreover, some of the areas that were part of Azerbaijan under the 1985 map went to our side.
Near the Gholi Chal area, we were expecting them to draw the line to pass through our side of the river, but it passes on the Azeri side.
Most of the concern is with the "nose" and the personal properties of villagers in this area. As of right now, there is no Armenian-owned registered property that has fallen under the Azeri side as long as they curve that aforementioned area instead of drawing a straight line.
Do you see this large 9-hectare orchard? Not one centimeter of it goes under Azeri control.
REPORTER: Is that Ms. Karine's property?
MAYOR: Yes, people. Ms. Karine's lands remain under her control. I'm satisfied with how it's been handled so far.
REPORTER: [The groups were home today]. Is it possible they have frozen the activities on the nose section to distract you and buy some time? Because you are assuming a responsibility, you are presenting this in a positive light...
MAYOR: I'm telling you what has been done so far. I'm not the one to provide guarantees. They are going to deploy people [border guards] near the border markers to protect the area. For now, I think they will deploy NSS agents.
REPORTER (Azatutyun): So we haven't made concessions at this time?
MAYOR: We have not made concessions. There are only 3 land plots with uncertainty and it depends on how curved the line will be. That is the latest. It's going normal so far. //
In other news. Opposition outlets reported that Azerbaijani special forces were seen in village Kirants. It turned out they were Armenian agents. The ruling party accused the opposition of recklessly amplifying the anxieties of the residents.
source,source,

mayor of village Voskepar about the ongoing delimitation

REPORTER: What was lost during the delimitation near Voskepar? Did any territories of Voskepar go under Azerbaijani control?
MAYOR: No part of Voskepar has gone under Azeri control.
REPORTER: How did the border change after the installation of border posts?
MAYOR: Do you really think people knew where the border was BEFORE this process? The process is so far in line with our expectations and understanding. There are areas where we keep more than we thought we would. Azeris moved further back in some locations so instead of a 120-meter distance it turned out to be 170.
REPORTER: What about the army positions?
MAYOR: We have not left any of the positions.
REPORTER: In other words, there has been no damage as of now and you are not displeased with the demarcation works?
MAYOR: I'm not displeased with the work so far.
REPORTER: In that case, why was there a noise generated by the opposition and the church, why did people take to the streets?
MAYOR: Ask them, but I support the fight against unilateral concessions to protect our lands.
source,

Donald Trump defends Azerbaijan's good boy U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar, accused of taking $600,000 in bribes to promote pro-Azerbaijan and anti-Armenian legislation

Trump claims without evidence that Cuellar is under attack for wanting to defend the southern U.S. border.
source,

Armenia will receive $100 million from the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development to fund the Government's economic reform plan

efficiency of the labor market and sustainable development

source,

Yerevan State University has a cleanroom certified under ISO 7: VIDEO

It's being used for nanotech and semiconductor research, practice for students, and projects funded by grants.
video,

Armenia will host the World Weightlifting Championship in 2027: VIDEO

It will be the first major Olympic sports to be held in Armenia.
video,

foreign trade stats: Q1 2024

Exports 2.7x ($4.4B)
Imports +76% ($4.7B)
source, source,

I really need someone to just vent this out to and maybe get advice on what I could do because right no I feel so trapped and it feels like theres only one way out. I cant afford a therapist even tho I really wish I could see one.
When I was younger around 8ish my parents split and my dads job had him moving all over the US from New York, to Arkansas, to Texas, to South Carolina, etc. Because of all the moving I rarely got to be put into public school, and was forced into homeschooling for most of my prior years. Instead of actually properly engaging with me tho, I just got handed a text book and had to solve it myself while my father worked or played his MMO Warcraft. I got my first laptop at around the age of 8-10 maybe and because I had nothing else to do I guess I just started getting really big into gaming and being online.
Then when I was about 15 we settled down in a ghost town in Texas. Some stupid college town with literally nothing to do. We have 1 street with fast food chains, an empty abandoned mall, and 1 or 2 bars, 1 of which recently shut down. I had a kind of hard time fitting in at school since it was my first time in an actual public school and it was my Freshman year in college. My father forced me and my brother to play football and while I was athletic, I couldnt catch for shit but my father was so proud anytime I was on the field so I just stopped fighting it and forced myself to get through it. Im about 5'6-5'7 range of height and that made it much harder as well.
Anyway, about in my sophomore year or so, maybe a bit earlier I started getting in trouble. Like a lot of trouble, running away, fights, tresppassing, breaking into cars and stealing, destruction of property. Thinking back on it, a lot of it was just me acting out for attention because it seemed like the only time my father or really anyone would pay attention was when I forced them to. My father was on his 5th new girlfriend who I hated and I had 2 awful step siblings that got the golden treatment while me and my 2 younger brothers were treated much worse. Around this time I also sort of came to terms with the my mother not caring about us. She would visit every summer or so or we'd go down once a year to visit thanksgiving with her side of the family and for the most part that was always fun.
But my mom was a major hippie. Like a real junkie. Every year or 2 it was a new abusive horrible boyfriend that would treat me and my brothers like shit and my mom and him were always shifting between being super lovey and cute with eachother when they were drunk or high out of their minds, to the inveitable fighting and yelling at eachother about how he treats her and us kids, or how she is always yelling at him over little things whenever their high or buzz eventually wore off. I could never really understand it. Why she couldnt come see us more often as she only lived a little over an hour and a half away. She would use the excuse that she didnt have that kind of money to take us down and feed us and what not or had no one to watch us. But I saw and I knew how much she spent on weed and alcohol and it must have been at least 250 a month bare minimum. It always felt like she didnt *want* to see us.
And my father, Ive already eluded to how he was very dismissive of me and my brothers but he also had anger issues. He wasnt necessarily abusive but he would yell and he would scream about how fucking stupid I was for doing x and x or how I need to treat his girlfriends better. And Id yell back. His mother, my grandma has extremely bad mental health disorder (I dont know what specifically) but it causes her to go manic when shes off her medication and seeing as my grandpa didnt believe in that (the 1900s am I right) and seeing as they were both extreme christians she often would not take them and this caused her to lash out and abuse my father by both yelling and screaming but also by beating him with a belt or a pan or her hands.
I think this is why my father is the way he is, why hes so emotionally stunted and closed off.
When I was 17 my life was actually at its peak, I was finally starting to do better in school, I had a solid group of friends with and just a lot of really healthy relationships. But then I met this girl, and she sort of clung to me, presumably because she had a crush on me (duh). And would pester me all the time. This really got to me because for the first time in my life there was someone prying for MY attention instead of the other way around. She was extremely forward, texting me all the time, holding onto my arm while we walked down the halls, waiting for me at lunch, after school, after class, etc. I was starting to fall for her hard.
At this time I actually had a best friend who I really liked because despite all my flaws she seemed to genuinely care about me. I liked her at the time but I wasnt sure if she liked me back and I was too scared to ask. And so, when I met this new girl who seemed to be very clearly into me I folded and sooner than later we were officially dating. This is where everything went down hill. My friends stopped hanging out with me as much because they thought she was "very sexual" for a lack of better wrods or whatever and didnt approve, and Id push them away when I argued that she wasnt and that she was misunderstood and abused.
This relationship would end up being extremely toxic. She made me block friends, If my friend was a woman, I had to cut ties with them. (which was a lot of my friends that I had left). And then things started getting really bad. She was very obsessive and abusive, if I looked at a girl the wrong way, if I was too nice to a waiter, or she thought they were too nice to me, it was somehow my fault and she'd start acting distant. Replying with small answers, leaving me on open, until eventually I apologized and then BOOM she was all over me again. And this continued anytime I did something she didnt like she'd withhold any affection, refused to talk it out, would scream and throw things, lock herself in rooms, threaten to hurt herself. She also pulled me into smoking weed which became a constant thing for us.
Around this time I should also mention, my father had disenrolled me from school early into my Junior year due to skipping classes and fighting, and also my girlfriend had gotten in a huge fight with her parents and she got kicked out and came to live with us.
She was VERY intimate, and would often hurt me at my most vulnerable. When I would break down about things in my past or because of a really shitty day she would waste no time using that in later conversations. And during sex she would often scratch or bite or keep going even when I told her to stop because it hurt or I was uncomfortable or not in the mood and when I finally would get physical and push her off she would just throw something at me or hit me and say something like "Fucking Vagina ( She obv used the P-word instead), Youre such a loser" and then would spend the next few hours acting like Im the bad guy saying things like "You think Im ugly" "You dont wanna fuck me anymore" etc etc. And she was pretty much with me 24/7 as she lived with me at this point, eveyr morning, every night.
Things continued like this for about a year and right when I was gonna break up with her, and I think she could tell because I was starting to be more standoffish, I had finally reconnected with some friends. She got pregnant. I was too fucking naive and horny I guess and so extremely dumb hat I just believed her when she told me she was on birth control. I mean we'd had sex many many times before hand without a condom and there was never any issue.
Anyway, this was the real downfall. I couldnt make her get an abortion, and I didnt wanna be forced to pay 40% child support for the rest of my young life. So I stuck with her, and I got a job working about 50hrs a week at a chicken factory. I made pretty good money but I came home miserable. On the bright side I finally kicked my weed addiction for both my sake but more importantly my sons. I wasnt gonna be the same as my mother or father. But once our attentions wernt on eachother anymore, it became all about the kid.
We had an agreement, that since Im on my feet and using my back and hands all day Id usually come home with very swollen hands and feet and I just wanted 30m to an hour to myself to just relax and calm down after work but this only lasted for maybe a month or 2 before she started pawning our son off on me the moment I was home. I came home to dishes all over the room, clothes sitting in the bin for weeks without being washed, overflowing trash. It was horrible.
Things pressed on like that while the relationship just deteriorated further and further and before I knew it, 3 years had passed. Now Im 21, and we basically dont talk to eachother at this point and just share a space and a kid together. But one day I wake up and my ex is gone, and so is my son. She had left in the middle of the night and all I had was a text from one of her friends saying she breaks up with me and shes leaving with my son. I try to contact her but Im blocked on literally everything with no way of knowing where they went. I didnt care that she was gone, but not knowing where my son was killed me. I spent 3 long months hiring a lawyer and tracking her down and eventually found her staying in a womens shelter claiming I was abusive.
Eventually our day in court came even tho I paid 9k for a lawyer with a really high success rate, and I had an actual home, and a good system of connections for the kids, and a family that Im actually in contact with, and a job and a car. I had photos, videos of her breakdowns, screenshots of her message threatening myself and herself. I had witnesses, and even court documents about her being sent to a mental hospital for her issues and her parents both having gone to jail for possession of drugs and YET even despite all of this, she was able to walk in with no legal support, coming from a shelter with no home and no body to reach out to and yet somehow she still fucking won custody of our son. I promise you Im not being biased in this explination, she somehow won and I blame it on the fact that we lived in good ol sexist Texas where the mother always get the kid no matter what and because they wanted me to pay child support. I cant explain it in any way that makes sense.
Anyway, I wallowed in defeat drunk for about 3 months after that until I got a message from my ex saying that she's being evicted from the shelter and she has nowhere left to go but her uncles house. Thing is, our court doc had a special restriction to being within 30m of eachother, and though she absolutely could have found a way around it I was somehow able to convince her to sign custody over to me since she has no other options as she was gonna be kicked from the shelter and would be breaking the border restriction if she left. And it actually worked and for the first time in months I had my kid back.
Now flashforward a year and a half, Im 22 now and turning 23 in a about 6 months. But my life feels so empty. I live with my parents because I cant afford childcare, and also work and pay off a home and a car at the same time. I have no friends and no girlfriend and its so fucking lonely. And anytime I try to talk to people I just fuck it all up because I dont use social media, Im not familiar with the current trends, I dont have time to hang out or go drinking or smoking, or just go on trips because I have to stay home and watch my son. I have a group of friends Ive known for about 4 years online and some of us from the group finally met up in Chicago for a 4 day weekend trip Fri-Mon last weekend and while I felt a little akward because it was my first time out in years where I could actually enjoy myself and it was my first time really in a big city.
I really did have the best time of my life in years and I really really enjoyed it for the most part, it was my first taste of real freedom and fun in as long as I can remember. But then when we got home and we called the next day and shared stories and photos, it was all just talking about how akward I was or how it felt like I hated the trip and that Id just wander off or just seemed anti-social. These wernt just jokes either, they were actively being outwardly mean for what seemed like no reason. Saying they were happy the trip was over and saying they could never go on a trip with us again. All very mean spirited jokes and jabs, and then came the videos and photos where they took of me just kinda sitting akwardly or when I was drunk. And it would just go back to them making a "Yikes" face.
A little bit of context- so there are 5 of us in the GC that have known eachother and called almost every other day for about 4 years. 3 out of 5 of us went on the trip, It was a girl and her boyfriend and then there was another man that we had added to the GC maybe a few months prior. The entire trip, it seemed like the 2 in a couple were sort of othering us, they were doing there thing and we were along for the ride. They would take photos of themselves only, they would whisper and just talk to eachother mostly the entire time, and anytime we would say something it was usually just 1 note response before they would go back to talking to eachother. All of this combined with me just gawking at the fact that I was ACTUALLY there and I would just kinda of zone out sometimes and admire the city and foot traffic and just appreciate the fact I was there. (These were the moments they would capture on camera and say that I was being awkward or anti-social) but they didnt capture all the moments we were actively talking and walking or any of the other good moments like back in the hotel room when we were all just chilling and laughing it up.
When I got home and they just broke out all the insults and were being super mean out of nowhere for literally no reason it just got to me. I wanna be mad at them but Im not Im just super depressed. It was such a fun trip and they basically just ruined it saying the entire time they felt weirded out or they felt like I was sad or unhappy the entire trip. To be fair, Im really stoic, in the sense that I dont show a lot of emotion, seemingly getting that from my father, and I do have a resting frown. So when theyre sitting there talking about the latest Kendrick Lamar vs Drake drama or some tiktok trend or something I didnt understand I would just be kinda left sitting there without knowing what was going on.
The other guy we added to the GC, he was actually really cool to be around, he could hold a convo, and we talked a lot about morals, and shows, and politics, and video games, and things I could relate to and when I asked him about the Drama or Tiktok trend he would actually go out of his way to fill me in and explain it and answer my questions where as the other 2 would just kinda respond with a simple answer and act annoyed when I was like "Ah that makes sense" or "Oh ok I get it". I deleted snapchat awhile back because my son kept posting photos on my story. But when I redownloaded it yesterday I was able to watch all the snaps from the moment our planes landed and we met, to the moment we said goodbye at the airport and all my feelings were validated. The entire time they were sneaking bad photos and recordings of me, and captioning it with things about how they think Im upset or that Im being awkward and sending it to the snap GC.
And my whole world kinda crumbled as I just went through 30 minutes of photos and videos of all of them just talking about me that way behind my back the entire time and seeing how they really felt. During the trip I kept apologizing and telling them Im not upset and that its all just very new to me and I dont get out often and I already felt terrible because my feet were extremely blistered and bruised from all the walking and I felt like I was ruining their fun on the trip and they just kept saying "No its fine!" "Dw about it" "No seriously we're ok, just tried".
Anyway in our call I kind of called them out saying I dont get why theyre acting this way even tho on the trip we seemed to be having a good time and they just got mad at me like "oh my god relax, its not that big of a deal" and yea.
It feels like Im trapped in this cycle where my depression and isolation causes me to act awkward or have a hard time conversing and connecting to people and that makes it hard to make friends or find a girlfriend, but also the loneliness and isolation is whats causing my depression and Ive tried looking up all the advice on how to be more confident or talk to people or whatever but I just cant do it. When Im talkative I come off as "too much" or annoying and yappy but when I dont try as hard Im too quiet. I cant get out of this hole that I spent my entire life digging and now it feels like I might never get out.
I wanna go to college, I want the life that I see everyone my age living, active on social media, travelling, participating in trends, going out to clubs and just enjoying their 20-30s. The worst part is, is that even tho I love my son with every ounce of my being, Im often negligent towards him. He brings toys to me and asks me to play with him and I just tell him not right now while I watch my latest yt video or show, or play games with friends online, and I just feel myself becoming my father and repeating his mistakes. I dont make sure my sons is well clothed and showered, I wear the same clothes multiple days in a row sometimes, and I can already see my son lashing out for attention the same way I did in my teens. Hes 4, some attitude is to be expected, but I know this an attention thing because he acts so good with my aunt or my step mother.
I feel horrible because I wanna do better, I wanna be better but idk how. Ive been considering that it may be in my sons best interest if I give him back to my ex. She has a good life right now with a good car, job, and home and shes finally been clean for awhile. Both of her parents are dead and she has no connection to immediate family but when she sees him she treats him so well and hes always begging to see her again. She genuinely shows him the kind of love and attention he needs. But a part of my feels like if I give him up, Im just like my mother. Abandoning my kid for my own selfish reasons. I could move to the big city with my saved up cash or even camp out of my car as Ive always dreamed of that kind of life. Maybe stay in a dorm or get a roomate while I study in college with a part time job. So Im not left behind in the world
Ive tried justifying it by saying that its better for both of us, and that at this rate Ill be a nobody and he'll grow up just as fucked up as I am. But maybe if I can get out and change the course of my life, I could actually be successful and pay for his college when hes ready, and take him on trips around the world and buy him things. And he'd have a loving mother, and I could still come visit more often than my mother did. Im just so scared. I dont wanna be my father but I dont wanna be my mother either and I cant imagine coming to terms that maybe she wasnt horrible after all. And then I get worried about the logistic, what could go wrong if I give him up. What if my ex decides randomly that she wants child support even tho we agreed no child support was needed. And then my life is fucked all over again but I also lose my son.
I tried researching and In Texas, the judge can decide its "not in the childs best interest" for me not to pay child support or for me to terminate my parental rights even if BOTH me and my ex agree to the terms. So I could be forced into having my life ruined even if we both agree that I dont need to.
I feel alone, and isolated and I have no one to talk to about this and I have no help. No matter how I look at it, my life feels like its over before it even got started and all I can think about is ending it all because it feels like whats the point. Please help me know what to do

My name is Jack and I have been teaching myself about electronical engineering by way of the internet. Not sure we're to begin I chose to dive in to batteries having Life experience with it little did I know that working with electricity is very much like the boardgame surgery but in stead of the red light 🚨 going on and that buzzer you get a blinding blue flashing and your screams replace the buzzing. 😂 At 47 years old I was I the mood for a change in my life witch had become lukewarm. my wandering mind was getting me could up. So to counter act it I did a personal inventory of my life and what made me happy. It was around 1987 and I was living in Rialto California. My mother had us ( her kids) living in a decent house in the hood. Her family was one of 4 other Hispanic households on the block with the white people being the minority with only two families this rest was black I was under my bed hiding from my mother. I couldn't tell you what time it was or how long I was there other than the shadows had moved halfway over the room and I remember being very hungry. In front of me was my parents à track player. Mom and Dad had gotten a new entertainment system for the TV room and put this one outside at the wet bar they had in the backyard fully stocked for BBQ's until I took it the night before smudging it through my window and putting it under my bed in anticipation of the following day. I was suspended from school for fighting and staff couldn't get a hold of my folks so I was sent home at the end of the day with paperwork about the incident and the punishment. The staff knew me very well because our family's. The baby boomers built the school's and the neighborhoods I grew up at. My Stepdad ran the 8737 VFW on the edge of town and with the majority of the city's veterans were part of the. Community that In turn made me a high value target with a extensive profile that was handled openly at the bar with the advice of my drunk antes and uncles at any given time when ever the need arised I don't know if you know this but being part of a VFW makes everybody's family my family. So that meant that every drunk veteran that was part of the VFW that worked in the community ratted on me. And this included the fucking cops. So when they sent you home with just paperwork my criminal survival skills kicked in and took over. It was nothing new for me to get sent home for fighting or being in trouble and some way shape or form either deliver to my mom at home or delivered to the VFW I knew that sooner or later it'll come back to me and would need to have my ass reattached to my body soon after I thought I'm already in trouble so I was going to hide the next day and just not tell them so I put that stereo underneath my bed to have something to do. I love taking electronical stuff apart I don't know what it was but I have always able to take something apart and put it back together with no problems and it had me dude. so there I lay my stomach with this entire stereo in pieces nice and neat little piles. I had a transformer and was using it to pop cockroaches spiders and anything else that was running around underneath my bed I think about it kind of scary how many things were crawling around my room. well one of these little pops just went a little too far and I'm not exactly sure what happened but I threw the breaker to the house . I could hear my mom but I didn't really know where she was in the house. my bedroom window was directly over the wet bar and on that same wall was the breaker box the access panel was on the outside of the house on the porch. I thought that I could climb out the window reset the breaker and then climb back it was pretty easy bringing in the stereo I didn't think it would be that hard for me to take my little narrow butt in and out of that window before she was the wiser and I knew I had only a couple of minutes maybe it best before she started looking on her own to see what just happened cuz I could hear her upset I didn't know about what and I could only guess. I was 12 at the time so there I flew out the window had the break reset and then made it back into my room in a flash. I shit you not telling you that I damn near had a heart attack when I came to a landing on the floor. There in front of me was my mother who had a cigarette in her mouth rollers in her hair and make up half done apparently they were going to go to the bar like they did every night and she was in the middle of getting gussied up when her power went out in her bathroom so I did what any normal kid would do I turned around and jump back out that damn window and started running I head her feet, all I had to do was make it across the backyard and then jump an 8 ft wooden fence to the front yard and then I was free she couldn't catch me after that I knew that. the problem was is there's a 10 ft brick wall that's surrounded the backyard and the 8 ft fence was the only way to the front besides going throigh the house. it just so happened at the garage back door was right next to this fence. me being me I flew to the top of this damn wooden fence and was smiles and teeth all the way up and as I was getting ready to jump over the top of it I felt something grab my ankle my mom had ran through the house knowing where I was going and fucking grabbed me and would let me go so there I dangled on the other side of the fence with a bed of rocks as the pathway on side of the house. she was whipping my ass with my dad's belt that he hung up in the hallway. She had grabbed it and she went from my room to the other end of the house. she was just whipping me over and over and over again, holding me at the top she still had enough Force to make me scream. Mom is no joke I remember her cussing at me and talking all kinds of smack and laughing at me at same time I hung there. I was begging her to let me go, she glared at me and sure enough that bitch let me go I fell eight damn feet onto my back and as I started to get up to run away the rocks took away my traction and I fell like six times before I was able to make it to the driveway now by then my mind told me I got away I was I was free just a little cuts and scrapes. I was wrong I don't know how but I think they set me up. my Pops pulled into damn driveway I don't really remember anything after that except for waking up again there already had reattached my ass. but I remember taking apart that stereo and how much it entertained me for hours my brother's and sisters came home shortly after so it had to be close to 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon I put that stereo back together and kept it for the next 10 years I want to recreate that calm I had back then when I was taken apart that stereo and placing everything into little inventory piles. I put it all back together with no problems I remember how exciting it was to get the cockroaches to pop with the transformer and the blue light that it would make when it snapped. I was a inventory specialist out of high school and I did janitorial for 21 years this was going to be my first major skill change now with everything online I can learn about electricity. I really like it. The work is tuff there's a lot to remember. I have not been this excited since I was a little kid you know screwing around taking shit apart. I have eight solar panels 150 volt 45 amp charge controller 2000 watt inverter and a 24 volt 50 ah battery I live on the side of a mountain at 1600 ft I built myself my own home I've been there for 4 years and this is my journey.

Well, as the title says I (48M) have been labelled as something akin to a heartless bastard, petty shithead, or as y’all like to put it, an asshole by my sister who I guess I can refer to as Jan (43F) regarding our Mother (60sF).
Now I haven’t spoken much with my Mother in a number of years, which I can attribute to both my complete disinterest in keeping any kind of communication open to family in the way of retired folk (They just have too much time on their hands and I don’t), but also because my Mother is, to put it kindly, a massive cunt. She regularly berates workers, complains at every little inconvenience (most times in a racist way), and has dabbled in that unbearable MAGA crap, which I’m pretty sure is how this all started. Don’t get me wrong, she was a real pill before, but after Trump descended on red states like a second coming of christ her cold little heart shriveled to near ash. Due to this, I haven’t been within 10 feet of that woman since Christmas 2018 (Which was a whole other debacle), even when she complained on FaceBook about how “all her children abandoned her” she couldn’t see how a lick of it was cause of her own actions.
Well, I got a nice little phone call the other day from my sister Jan, who is one of the only siblings that stayed in our home state, practically begging me to take her off her hands. Turns out that post plucked a few of Jans heartstrings and she decided it would be nice to have our Mother come up to visit them for a couple weeks in the city… I think you can see where this is going.
From what I could make out from the blubbering mess on the other side of the phone, Our mother has made her life a living hell. From the dinners Jan would cook that would be ‘too sweet for a diabetic’ despite being specially tailored recipes, to the traffic where Jan nearly had a heart attack when our Mother picked a fight with some homeless guy at a stoplight with Jan’s daughter in the car, to the racist tirades that would start like fairly normal conversations before taking a turn, making poor Jan afraid to say something as simple as ‘The sky is blue’ for what that could end up setting off.
All this came to a head when Jan’s daughter, Christy (16F) fell victim to the witches ways somewhere between the day before and this phone call. As it was explained to me, Christy happened to be listening to some music in our Mothers proximity, who, having an abnormal moment of normal human behavior, decided to ask her what kind of music she was listening to, and if she could hear some. Just one of those nice little gestures right? Well, Christy obliged and switched the speaker on her phone, it was a slow song, but one of her favorites by her favorite artist, which I introduced to her accidentally, and she was happy to explain it all to our Mother as they listened together. Well, our Mother, the lovely woman that she is, decided to break up the bonding moment with a brutal “this sucks” and to shut it off. In response, Christy took some expected offense and told her off with something to the effect of, “Why you gotta act like that?” and snatched her phone up. Now Jan wasn’t entirely sure what was said after that, as any explanation by either party wasn’t very scientific in describing the exact wording but all in all the argument peaked with the inevitable smashing of Christy’s Phone. Thankfully Jan came in then, cause she could tell it was about to get physical (her words not mine) and she managed to separate the two by sending Christy to her room.
As of right now, our mother is staying in a hotel, far enough away to not be a worry right? Well the witch is knocking, and by knocking, I mean ringing Jan up to complain about her room, the service, the cleanliness, just everything under the sun to the point that my sister just can’t take it anymore.
By her logic this means that I should call our Mother up and ask her to come stay with me for while, And well, I don’t mean to say I laughed in her face, but… I laughed in her face. Basically I’m working under the assumption that she knew the kind of devil she was inviting into her home and I can give her the number to a priest, but I ain’t no sacrificial lamb here. At this point, I could hear Jan’s tears start up again and before I had to listen to anymore of that I told her to talk to one of our other family members, specifically the ones that might actually give a damn about her situation but as far as my stance was on our mother it was and still is going to be a “See no evil, Hear no evil,” situation. Since then, I’ve had texts from all sorts coming out of the woodwork about how unsupportive and heartless I am to not help Jan out, but honestly it seems like she’s dug her own grave here. The only one I really feel for has gotta be Christy who definitely did not choose to live with such a nasty and mean presence and unfortunately paid a price she shouldn’t have. I’m thinking of sending her my old Apple Phone, to make up for it if her parents aren’t getting her one themselves, but we’ll have to see.
What do y’all think? It’s not like I haven’t already been badgered enough by third opinions, but I’m curious, could I have done better here?

Hey there. Giving this a try. I'm 29 years old, male, and live on the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires.
I'm 6'0"/181cm tall and I'm super skinny. I have a gaunt, fairly attractive face (no mewing required) and a moustache and goatee. I also have 9 tattoos. I can provide a picture of me if you'd like. This subreddit won't allow me to link pictures.
I speak Spanish and English fluently and I can understand Italian and Portuguese but can't speak them.
I work at a big pharma corpo, spreading evil all over the world and I work from home and I'm pretty introverted when alone IRL so I don't get to meet lots of people out there. I'd like to find someone to chat with and keep each other company doing the day. I'll also accept flirting and if we hit it off and really like each other, I'm not closed to the idea of a relationship.
I'm in a weird period in my life where I'm fairly successful after being broke for 10 years (worked with my dad) and dropping out of university 3 times. The corpo world gave me a chance and things have slowly been turning around. I also did 9 years of therapy and got discharged on good terms so I know myself and my psyche pretty well.
Disclaimer: I still live with my mother since I wasn't able to afford rent until some years ago and now that I'm able to save money I'm looking to get a mortgage next year. If this bothers you, then feel free to catch the next train.
For hobbies: I'm into videogames (mostly old-school RPGs a la Morrowind or Baldur's Gate), cars and racing, Simracing, tabletop games (building a Drukhari Kill Team to play with my cousin) and a whole lot of nerdy stuff. I also practice photography from time to time and I like obscure or shitty horror films. I'm a pretty curious person and I love to learn trivia and tidbits about whatever my current interest is. I am also an ex Star Wars fan but hate Disney.
For my personality: I'm pretty chill and laid back. I care a lot about the people that I love and I really enjoy family gatherings, although they are getting rarer by the day. My friends have said that I'm kind and thoughtful. I have an edge and I love dark humor. I like to push the envelope when joking around with people that I trust so outsiders would think I'm insensitive or rude but I'm not. In fact I'm very sensitive and I like to be sweet but life and stuff has made me build a cocoon around that so a select few get to see that side of me. I also have a tendency for negativity or depression, but I have the tools to handle it and not be a burden to others. I go from it's so over to fuck it we ball many times a year so don't worry, I'm too stubborn to allow life to get me down. I'm not perfect and my main struggle has always been my fear of confrontation and repressed frustration and anger, but I'm working (literally) on the confrontation part and I've learnt to use my anger as fuel to go through whatever I need to go through.
I don't really have a set preference for women but I admit I'm more into tall girls with shoulder-length hair, although it's not a hard requirement. I just want to meet someone that's interesting and fun but of course, physical attraction is important.
If anyone is reading this (I doubt it) and are interested, feel free to shoot a message introducing yourselves.
Thank you for your time Best regards,
A skeleton.

I wanted to address this to you in particular, amd call out some pretty significant ant damage you've done, but let's just work on how it should really go:
I forgive you. I forgive you of all those masks you felt you needed to wear in front of me. Stop. You are beautiful without any of that nonsense you seem so wrapped up into. It's just life. It happens to all of us.
Out of all this mess you left inside my heart and mind still I clean up my thoughts about you, still I seem to look at just your positives. Its hard not to, knowing all that you went through when you finally ended up at the seat of my life. I saw how broken and mangled you were, and how strong you had become in order to fight each day just for survival. And to translate that beautifully into your works of art was so impressive. But I wasn't supposed to have a happy ending I guess. Things got tough for me, and in the middle of my suffering, you stopped the intimacy. Things got worse when you started seeing chances in other people. It was like all that time you needed me and leaned on me didn't matter the moment I needed you and needed you to be my rock. You had family and friends that I wish I had. You had love and support in your life that I wish I had. Maybe it would've turned out a bit different but let's set the what ifs aside for now. I'm probably the only one between us who still considers them gravely.
I can't remember the last time I actually considered loving someone. I walk into to opportunities left and right but I can't help but feel spent of all my chances to love and be loved. I can't help but be bitter and alone and away from the sickening mess of people I'm surrounded by. And why I even still think of you when I know it's only me abusing myself and not being honest about how you treated me.
There's another side to me thats come up from below, one that sees it all.. differently. Who sees potential and wants change. He sees the potential in someone new, and knows to do right by them. I'm still scared to feed him. He breaks through after drinks and late nights perusing these miserable onslaught of shaded memories I try to avoid. The ones you painted over so tragically. To him, it's all about what should be better. This may be the last you see and hear of this me, the last I bare my neck out for your bite.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to let him out, what else do I have but up from here?

When I was ten, I formed a junior detective squad.
Mom bought me the entire box set of What's New Scooby Doo, and I was inspired to start my very own detective gang. I held auditions outside the gymnasium at recess (serious enquiries only) after a number of kids tried to apply for the role of Scooby Doo despite me reiterating I was not interested in playing make believe.
When I was laughed at in class, I made posters strictly asking for SERIOUS wannabe detectives, even going as far as using my Mom’s printer to make flyers, sticking them all over the school.
Auditions were simple. I asked them to solve a simple riddle.
Whoever impressed me got to sign their name down, and I’d get back to them.
I spent three days sifting through kids who definitely had charm, but they lacked the intelligence of a junior detective. Most kids were only auditioning to make fun of me, anyway.
Still, though, I didn't give up.
My flyers had five requirements:
1). You had to be smart.
2). You were not allowed to be a scaredy cat.
3). You had to accept your inevitable death at the hands of our town’s evil villains.
4). You had to have a fully registered driving licence (I quickly changed this to a bike).
5). You cannot have a criminal record.
(I later scribbled this one out, writing over it. *“You cannot have any tardies.”
Narrowing the applicants down to three kids, all of whom failed to share my enthusiasm for solving cases. The kids I picked didn't even know how to make plans, and when I invited them to my house, they stole my Mom’s necklace.
I didn't even need to solve the mystery of who stole Mom’s necklace. The girl was wearing it at school. I punched her in the face, and was immediately sent to the principal’s office. When I was being given the mother all lectures, the door quietly opened, a head peeking through.
It was Ben Callows, a freckly kid with overgrown brown hair hanging in his eyes. Ben really needed a haircut.
He was always wearing the exact same baseball cap, and I found myself wondering if it was permanently glued to his head, stuck on top of unruly brown curls practically matted to his forehead.
In class, Ben was also known as Bloody Ben. In the second grade, the boy had a nosebleed in the middle of a spelling test, bleeding all over his paper.
It's not like he didn't try and detach himself from the name.
Ben brought in Digimon cards, so kids would call him Digimon Ben instead.
Then he “accidentally” spilled yoghurt down his shirt in hopes we would call him Yoghurt Ben. But no. The kids in our class were relentless in reminding him of his name. No matter what he did, he was still Bloody Ben, and when anything related to blood came up in class, fifteen pairs of eyes would swivel to him, like he had invented the concept of bleeding.
I feared the nickname would follow him to junior high.
Ben didn't wait to be let in. He didn't even knock, striding in with his arms folded. Over the years, Bloody Ben, had definitely soured his personality.
He smiled rarely, and when he did smile, someone was falling over or hurting themselves.
Which definitely strengthened the claims of him being a sociopath.
The rumor mill was churning, with the latest claiming Bloody Ben killed his cat. That wasn't true. Ben’s cat was seventeen with cancer, and that was why he was sobbing all the way through reading time.
According to Ellie Daly, however, Ben had killed and dissected his kitty, and buried her in his Mom’s flowers.
Now, my principal did not like being interrupted, especially when she was in the middle of screaming at me.
Principal Marrow was old old (like, thirty, in my ten year old mind) stick thin like a pencil, and always wore the same stained sweater.
She used to be pretty, but I was convinced she had kissed a frog and been cursed. After our old principal suffered a stroke, she stepped in as a temporary replacement, and since becoming principal, had banned my favorite book series, colored shoe laces, and hamburger helper, even officiating a uniform.
(vomit green shorts and a tee, and plain white sneakers).
Kids were convinced she was a witch, and I kind of believed it.
Principal Marrow’s whole existence was built on sucking the fun out of school.
I was already reprimanded for my mystery gang flyers.
Her office smelled of peppermint and she was definitely sneaking sips of whisky in her coffee cup. I could see the bottle sticking out of the trash.
She straightened up, folding her arms across her chest, squinty eyes narrowing at the boy. I had spent the whole time she was lecturing me trying not to cry, my fists bunched in my lap.
I took the distraction as the perfect opportunity to swipe at my eyes, allowing myself to breathe.
Ben Callows was her victim now.
I was right. The woman's voice was like a thunderclap in my ears.
“You better have a good reason for not knocking, young man.”
Ben wasn't fazed by her tone. “You took my Switch two weeks ago,” he said, “I want it back, or I’m telling my Mom.”
At first, I thought I'd misheard him.
No, I was pretty sure he'd threatened our principal.
I swore I heard all of the breath sucked from the room.
“I'm sorry,” Principal Marrow cleared her throat. Her soft tone was dangerous.
She wasn't being nice. The lady was about to explode.
I could see visible veins straining in her temples, her right eye twitching.
It was straight out of a cartoon.
“Did you forget something, Ben?”
Ben sighed, like she was inconveniencing him.
He held out his hand. “Please can I have my Switch back? It counts as stolen property. Give it back, or I'm telling my Mom.”
The kid put so much emphasis on the word please, I couldn't resist a smile.
I think our principal was too shocked to get angry.
“Get out.” She said, firmly. “I don't have your gaming device.”
“It's in your drawer.” Ben nodded to her desk, “Under your divorce papers and the restraining order ordered by Jake Willow, the seventeen year old boy you've been having math ‘tutoring sessions’ with.” He quoted the air, his gaze lazily rolling to me. “Tutoring”
Principal Marrow went deathly pale, her eyes darkening.
“Benjamin Callows–”
“The school already knows about the restraining order, but your uncle is the head of the Board of Education, so all you get is a slap on the wrist and a warning to leave the boy alone."
Ben continued, and I found myself mesmerised by his words. He was a natural, his expression stoic, mouth curved with satisfaction that wasn't quite a smile. “However.” He held up his phone, pulling it away at the exact moment the teacher attempted to grab it. “You were outside Jake Willow’s house at 6:12am, drunk, and trying to climb through his window, which, I think violates the restraining order, does it not?”
Ben pretended to think real hard, his gaze flicking to the ceiling.
“I mean, I'm just a kid, right?” His mouth curled into the hint of a smirk
“What do I know, huh?”
Principal Marrow’s expression twisted, her lip wobbling.
“Mr Callows, remove yourself from my office, or I am calling your father.”
Leaning comfortably against the door, Ben’s lip twitched.
“Why? Are you planning on telling my Dad about your relations with a teenage boy, or will I have to tell him instead?”
I was enthralled, and fully disgusted, making a move to inch away from the woman.
“But it doesn't end there.” Ben continued. He straightened up, taking slow, intimidating steps towards the woman's desk. “You don't even want Jake, do you? Because, once upon a time, you were in love with his father. Jason Willow. You despised him for rejecting you, so you decided to defile his son.” Ben leaned over the principal’s desk, slipping his hand into the drawer, and pulling out his switch.
Painfully slowly.
She stood there, speechless, her shoulders trembling.
Ben smiled, and I found myself liking it.
“Thank you!” He said, waving the console in her face. Ben mimed locking his mouth and throwing away the key.
“My lips are sealed.”
Ben’s half lidded eyes found mine. “Are ya coming, Panda?”
I forgot my own nickname.
Panda.
I wore my Mom’s eyeliner because I thought it looked cool.
It did not.
Finding my breath, I snapped out of it.
Jumping up, I followed him out of the office, and when the two of us were safely on the hallway, I burst into hysterical giggles. “How did you know all of that?!” I whisper- shrieked.
Ben surprised me with a splutter. “Wait. You believed me?”
Something very cold trickled down my spine.
I stopped walking. “You lied?”
He shrugged. “I had a dig around her office before she caught me a few days ago,” Ben swung his arms, a smile curling on his mouth. “There's no restraining order, but there is prescription anti-psychosis medicine, and an extremely detailed story on her laptop about a teachestudent romance, which I presume is a self insert.”
Ben shot me a sickly grin. “The school refused to make her condition public.”
He prodded at his own cotton shirt embroidered with the school emblem.
“Why do you think she's made all these dumb rules? The woman is a certified Looney Tune.”
I nodded slowly. “Wait. What about Jake and his dad?”
“I made them up.”
I choked out a laugh. “And… the video?”
Ben walked faster, pulling out his phone and shoving it in my face. The video was real. Principal Marrow was walking around in circles, draped in her nightgown. “It's her own house,” he explained. “She locked herself out.”
Nodding slowly, I was in awe. Bloody Ben was kind of fucking amazing.
“But the restraining order isn't real.”
Ben raised a brow, coming to an abrupt halt. It was his smile that cemented his place in my gang. His lack of empathy for a woman he had gaslit into being a disgusting human being. Ben Callows wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but he fascinated me. Maybe for the wrong reasons. “Her filing cabinets are filled with tinned cat food, Panda,” he said with an exaggerated sigh, “I’m not psychic, but I thiiiiink we’ll be okay.”
I turned to him, unable to stop myself jumping up and down with excitement.
“Will you be my first?!”
Ben inclined his head. “Will I be your what?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. I mean, will you join my mystery gang?”
The boy’s eyes lit up, and I shoved him playfully.
“To solve real cases,” I corrected myself. “Not make them up.”
Ben wore a real, proper smile. But there was something in his eyes, a darkness that was so hollow and polluted and wrong, I pretended not to see it for the sake of his smarts and intellect. “Well, if you insist, sure!” Ben held out his hand, and I shook it. I'll be your first.”
We found our second member, who was, ironically, looking for her glasses under the table in class. Lucy Prescott, the quiet girl, was born to be with us.
The class eraser went missing, and she found it in the blink of an eye.
When questioned, Lucy’s face turned as red as her hair. “I asked everyone in the class and followed the clues to the last person who had it,” she pointed to Chase Simpson. “Which was Chase, who was throwing it at Marcus Calvin.”
Twisting around in my chair, I aimed to get Ben’s attention. But he was already looking at me, chin resting on his fist, eyes ignited with excitement.
The two of us cornered Lucy after class, and when she motioned for us to get back, I dragged Ben (who was a little too excited) to my side.
Lucy looked mildly horrified when I said, dangerous cases, though her expression pricked with intrigue.
She agreed, her gaze lingering on Ben, cheeks smouldering.
Our last two members were a surprise.
Violet Evergreen was what you would call popular on the middle school hierarchy. Not just because her mother was the mayor, but because Violet could get away with murder. The girl refused to wear the school uniform, coloring a single purple streak in her hair to cement herself as the it girl.
She was also one of the girls who started the Bloody Ben rumor.
Ben, Lucy, and I were sitting on the grass during recess, trying to come up with a name for our detective service, when Violet came storming over, hands planted on her hips. She was copying how her mother held herself during town meetings.
“What are you doing?” Violet demanded.
Lucy opened her mouth to answer, Ben nudging her to shut up.
“Making a mystery gang.” I told her. “Why?”
Violet inclined her head. “Oh.” She folded her arms. “Well, can I join?”
Ben stood up, stepping in front of the girl. Violet didn't move, stubbornly standing her ground. “Sure.” Ben flashed a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. He stepped closer to her, his smile widening. “If you can pass the test.”
Violet’s lip curled. She took a single step back. “What kind of test?”
Ben nodded to me. “Meet us at the swimming pool at 8pm.”
To my surprise, Violet nodded. “Do I need to bring anything?”
“Nope!”
8pm. The four of us met outside the local swimming pool.
Violet was already on the other side of the fence, waving.
“Hey guys!”
I noticed Ben’s expression, his eyes darkening, lip curling.
Still though, he maintained positivity, vaulting over the fence.
“You made it!”
I followed him, helping Lucy, who was immediately freaking out. I didn't blame her. The pool looked cold and dark, a hollow oblivion carved into the ground.
Ben and Violet stood on the edge, the two of them shoulder to shoulder.
Violet Evergreen was braver than I thought.
Standing with her arms at her sides, Violet's hands clenched into fists.
“What's the test?” Violet said, her gaze glued to bleeding black depths.
“I don't know,” Ben said, his voice teetering on a giggle. He leaned forwards, arms spread out. “I didn't think you'd actually come and meet us.”
Violet hummed, stretching out her leg, teasing it across the surface. “Was that the test?”
The boy leaned back. I caught the glint of a grin under the floodlights. “Nah.”
Before I knew what was happening, he shoved Violet into the pool. The girl didn't scream or shriek, she just hit the surface, sinking into pitch dark nothing.
“Sink or swim,” Ben said in a low murmur, when Violet’s head bobbed under water. I could see her shadow under the surface, imagining the freezing cold depths pulling her down.
“Drown, and you can't join us.”
It was so quiet, suddenly. The three of us staring into rippling water.
A minute passed, and my tummy started to twist.
“Fuck.” Ben’s expression stayed stoic. I wasn't expecting him to say a bad word.
He cocked his head. “I thought she could swim.”
I hit him, holding in a cry. “You need to get our parents!”
But he didn't listen to me, taking a single step, and dropping into the pool.
I fell to my knees, scanning the water.
Lucy was crying. “Are they dead?!” she shrieked.
“Shhh!” I was watching two shadows lingering under the water.
Violet broke through. I expected her to be crying, but her expression was unwavering. She was silent. I thought the splashing underneath her was her legs trying and struggling to tread water, before Lucy shoved me. Hard.
“Panda! What do we do?!”
Looking closer, Violet was perfectly still, her gaze on the sky.
While she shoved Ben under the water, drowning him.
Violet’s eyes found mine, and somehow, I knew she belonged in my gang.
Her eyes found mine, glinting with that darkness, that poisonous streak I found myself drawn to. It was a starving, insatiable need to understand a fractured mind. Know your enemy.
“Do you want to see if Ben’s a witch?” Violet asked me, her tone something else entirely. This girl did not make sense, using barely her finger to drown Ben Callows. I knew she was wrong.
I knew there was something loose, something unlocked and unbridled and drowning inside her mind and heart.
But I wanted more of her. I wanted Violet Evergreen in my detective gang.
I think that is why I stood there, frozen.
When the thrashing stopped, Ben broke through.
He wasn't coughing or spluttering, his head inclined. “You didn't drown.”
Violet climbed out of the pool, offering her hand. “And you're not a witch.”
He declined her hand, taking the steps instead.
I asked Violet in a shaky voice. I was trembling with terror, but I was excited.
Exhilarated.
“Violet, will you join my gang?”
She didn't answer me until we were sharing hot cocoa in my house. I told Mom we fell in the pool, and she believed me. I should have told her that my friends were sociopaths, and I was kind of maybe in love. Violet sipped her cocoa, nodding with a smile I didn't recognise. Violet never smiled at school.
Well, she did. But it was always the prick of a cruel smirk.
I don't think her smile was genuine, but she was definitely enjoying herself.
Our last member came to us, instead of finding him.
Jules Howell, a straggly brunette pushed his way in front of me in the lunch line. I didn't really know the kid.
He sat at the back of the classroom and slept through most of class. I did like his accent though.
Jules had moved from Melbourne in the second grade. He didn't talk much.
When he did, I found myself enveloped in his voice, which sounded like water to me, a bleeding cadence to his tone.
Jules piled his plate with fries, smiling widely at the lunch ladies.
“I saw you last night.” He murmured through that perfectly moulded grin.
“Saw me where?”
“At the pool,” Jules said. “You, Bloody Ben, Violet Evergreen, and that Lucy girl. You were doing a suiciding pact.”
“That's not what we were doing.” I said, “What's a suiciding pact?”
“When you kill yourself together.” Jules said. “I saw it in a scary movie my Mom was watching.”
I grabbed a fork. “We weren't doing that.”
His eyes were strange when I took the time to notice them. The excited gleam had fizzled out. Jules’s hands tightened around the tray. “Then what were you doing?”
I didn't reply, making my way over to our usual table. Ben was already waving me over, Violet and Lucy holding up the flyers we were making.
**THE REDBLOOD DETECTIVES.”
Do YOU need our help? We can find/solve anything! Contact us on the number below. (We take donations!)
When I bothered turning around, the boy was lost in the crowd of kids.
We were on our first official case, searching for Mrs Lake’s missing mail, when Jules appeared seemingly out of nowhere. And with him, a golden retriever puppy he introduced as Arlo.
It took a dog jumping up at them for Violet and Ben to find their real smiles, their real selves slowly seeping through these facades they had built around themselves. Ben dropped to a crouch, ruffling the dog's ears, his smile faint.
“Who's a good boy?” He chuckled.
Arlo didn't move, tail wagging, eyes bright.
Ben motioned the dog towards him, but Arlo stayed put.
Jules joined us…quietly.
I don't remember asking him, or even him asking me.
He just became part of us, side by side with Arlo.
We soon came to quickly realize that our town was boring.
There were no monsters or thieves, or soul sucking demons. No criminals or serial killers. Not even one missing person. We did, however, get calls about missing cats. I turned eleven years old, patiently waiting for a murder or a kid going missing. But there was nothing.
All we did was chase cats, and the occasional dog. Maybe a budgie if we were lucky. Twelve years old, our detective club became a joke.
The five of us (and Arlo hiding under the table) were trying to pinpoint Mrs Tracy's lost hamster, when three girls came over, dumping their soda all over us.
We watched crime shows for inspiration on catching killers.
Ben’s favorite crime was one that happened in the 80’s in our town.
2 girls murdered.
Their intestines stuffed into envelopes and mailed to family members.
“That's what we should be solving,” he told me one night, “Not missing cats.”
Thirteen years old, we lay in Violet’s backyard under the cruel glare of the summer sun. We called it working and didn't like to admit it was hanging out, or that we were even friends. However.
That didn't stop us growing closer.
Even if it wasn't quite the way I’d expected.
I proposed a plan, standing up, wobbling a little off balance.
“I've got it.” I said, my voice kinda slurry from Violet’s special summer cocktail, which was just a random alcoholic beverages we found, thrown into a blender, and diluted with water.
The town wasn't taking us seriously.
So, we were going to make our own mysteries.
I ordered a full-scale assault on our small town. One that they could not ignore. Ben stamped on Mrs Mason’s flowers, and Lucy threw mud pies at people's cars. Jules trashed the high school gym, and Violet and I spray painted threats and warnings on every store window. Now, this did cause panic, but also an official curfew.
Thirty minutes before curfew, we met in our usual spot, deep in the forest near the lake. Ben yelled at me when I was three minutes late. He was real passionate about finding a real mystery.
“You're late.” Ben was sitting on a rock waving a stick in Arlo’s face.
The dog still wasn't going near him, whining softly.
I took my place, muttering an apology. “I had to lie to my Mom.”
Violet, sitting with her legs crossed, idly digging her manicure into the dirt, suggested we buy mannequins and masquerade them as dead bodies, hanging them from the school rafters.
Lucy, who had slowly grown out of her shell, becoming a lot more outspoken, nudged her. “That's a stupid idea.”
The girl groaned, leaning into her. “Urgh. You're right.”
Jules was the only energetic one, standing on the tireswing.
He jumped down, definitely twisting his ankle.
But his smile only widened, kind of like he enjoyed being in pain.
“Why don't we pretend to be kidnapped?” He said, pulling the hood of his sweatshirt over blondish curls growing out. Jules did a dramatic spin, his eyes shining. “We can ‘go missing’ for like a week, and then when our parents are really scared, we can turn up, and tell them we escaped a kidnapping.” His lips split into a grin.
“And then we solve our own kidnapping!”
Ben awkwardly patted Arlos head, only for the dog to pull away with a snort.
“I like it,” he murmured. “I'm in.”
Jules’s idea was stupid.
But.
It was worth a shot.
The five of us agreed to meet the morning after with enough food and supplies for a week. Then we were going to hike to the next town, and hide out for a week. It was an almost perfect plan, using ourselves as victims of our own mystery.
Packing as much as I could, I kissed my mother goodbye (I told her my pack was for a picnic) and set off to the rendezvous we agreed on.
When I arrived, I was the first one there. I checked and re-checked my pack.
I waited ten minutes, unable to contain my excitement.
Then 20 minutes.
It was getting kind of cold.
One hour.
I sat on a rock for enough time to watch the sky change color.
When the clouds were orange, I stood up and stumbled back home. They had gone without me. Mom lectured me when I got home, and I stuck to the plan of pretending my friends had gone missing, even if I they had betrayed me.
Ben said he'd text me when he arrived at the redervous. I at least expected him to text an explanation, but there was nothing. I was in the dark, and after three days of nothing, our town finally began to take us seriously.
“Our children have been kidnapped!” The adults were screaming.
Mom was crying in the kitchen, praying to a god I knew she didn't believe in that I wasn't taken next. I was interviewed and stuck with the exact same story I came up with when I was with the others. Our plan was to return after a week, claiming to be locked up in a dark room with a masked man.
I told my Mother and the other parents that I didn't know where my friends were, repeating the same thing over and over again until I was tongue tied.
“I saw them the day before they went missing, and… yes, everything seemed okay.” I slowly sipped my class of milk provided, looking the sheriff directly in the eyes. “No, I didn't notice anything suspicious, sheriff. Yes, I'm sure, sir. No, they didn't tell me anything.”
It was Ben’s mother who shattered my mask.
“Did I know about… what?” I whispered.
Something warm filled the back of my mouth, foul tasting milk erupting up my throat. I leaned forward, trying to look Mrs Callows in the eye. “No, I… I didn't know about Ben’s…condition.”
Mrs Callows was screaming at me about her son’s troubled past when I barfed all over myself, my eyes burning.
In the privacy of my own room, I sobbed until I couldn't breathe.
I tried to tell Mom, but we had come so close.
One more day, and the others would be back.
But that day came. I sat cross legged at our usual spot, which was now covered in police tape. I waited for their thudding footsteps, their laughter congratulating each other for coming up with a great plan. I waited, my face buried in my knees, for my friends.
It was dark when my phone vibrated, and I'd fallen asleep.
I wasn't scared, forcing myself to my feet.
“Where are you?” Mom sobbed down the phone, when I tapped answer.
“Coming home now.” I muttered. “Sorry.” I paused, holding my breath against a cry. “Mom.” I broke down, forcing my fist into my mouth to hide my sobs. “Mom, did they come back?”
Mom didn't reply for a moment.
“I'm so sorry, baby.” She whispered, ending the call.
I took my time walking home that night.
There were no stars in the sky.
When a hand clamped over my mouth, I could smell him.
When he dragged me back, stabbing a kitchen knife into my throat, I stared at the sky and looked for stars. His arms were warm around me, violently pulling me into the back of a pickup truck. The pickup truck he'd said he was bringing.
It was his grandfather's, and he could just about drive it.
Hitting the backseat, my body was numb, my thoughts in a whirlwind.
The pickup flew forwards, and I remembered how to move.
I rolled off the seat, my hands pinned behind my back.
Twisting around, blinking in the dim, I could feel something warm, something seeping across upholstery seats. Blood. It was everywhere, sticky on my hands and wet on my face when I struggled to get up. I was lying in someone's blood.
A scream clawed its way out of my throat.
The pickup flew over a pothole, and something dropped off the seat.
Arlo’s leash.
I screamed again, this time his name gritted between my teeth.
I didn't stop screaming until the jerking movement stopped. The doors opened, pale light hitting me in the face.
Flashlight. Warm arms wrapped around me, pulling me from the car, and then, pulling me by my hair, into our old tree house. It was always our secret place, our saving grace on the edge of town.
The flickering candlelight caught me off guard, illuminating my surroundings.
Two bodies slumped over each other, lying in stemming red.
I felt suffocated, like I was going to die. I screamed, and that warm hand cradled my mouth again, gagging my cries.
Violet and Jules.
There was something wrong with them. And it was only when I forced myself to look closer, when I realized their insides had been carved out, heart, stomach, everything, pulled out.
There was paper on the floor.
No, not paper. Envelopes.
Envelopes stuffed with gore, bright red leaking through white.
Shuffling back, my brain was too slow to react, while my body was trying to vault to my feet, only to be violently pulled back by my ponytail.
I felt his fingers twining around my hair, revelling in my screams.
With another tug, my head was forced forwards.
Orange candlelight felt almost homely, this time lighting up a third body.
Lying on their back, curled up, pooling scarlet dried into the floorboards, their wrists restricted with duct-tape.
I could feel blood underneath me, sticky, a congealing paste.
“Do you know what happened on October 3rd, 1987, in our town?”
Lucy Prescott stood over me, her arms folded across her chest.
I managed to shake my head, when she grabbed Ben’s legs, dragging him under the candlelight. I dazedly watched her stroke the blade of a carving knife, the teeth already stained scarlet. “The intestine murders.” Lucy hummed, tracing the knife down the floorboards.
“A man murdered two high school girls, carving out their insides and sending their pieces to their loved ones.”
Lucy's eyes found mine, ignited in a familiar gleam. I saw it in Principal Marrow’s office. Then the swimming pool. The cafeteria. “It was the sheriff's only murder case, Panda. Ever since then, our town has been boring. There's no mysteries to solve. Nothing to find.”
The girl jumped to her feet, retrieving a blood stained envelope.
She held it up, a smile curved on her lips. The girl turned around, and I heard a horrific squelching sound. Lucy held up a bright red sausage, ripped into it, and slipped it into the white paper.
“But I can change that.” she said, in a giggle.
“I can create a real serial killer, who we can hunt down together.”
Lucy stabbed the blade into the floor, laughing.
“Or! I can bring a fan-favorite back! I can bring the intestine killer back from the dead!”
Her gaze flicked to the others. “There are casualties, of course. The story is, I was kidnapped with Ben, Violet, and Jules. The scary intestine killer killed them, and I managed to get away.”
Lucy shuffled over to me, her eyes wide. “Then! He came back and struck again!”
With those words, she shoved me onto my back.
“First he took Violet,” Lucy hummed, tracing the blade down my shirt. “Then… Jules.” I squeezed my eyes shut, pulling at the restraints around my wrists. “Then Ben.” her breath tickled my cheek. “And finally… Panda.”
Lucy lifted the knife, and I accepted my death.
Until a low rumble in my ears.
Shouting.
Thundering footsteps, followed by the pitter-patter of paws.
“Lucy!” The sheriff was screaming, and the girl stumbled to her feet, the knife slipping from her fingers. Lucy stumbled, tripping over Ben’s body.
“He got away!” she shrieked. “He…he killed them! Oh, god, please help me!”
I don't think Lucy even realised the traces she'd left behind.
The blood slick on her fingers, her manic, grinning smile full of mania.
I was looking for stars when an officer crouched over me.
I couldn't understand what she was saying.
Her voice was white noise.
“Rachel? Hey, try and sit up, honey. You Mom is on her way.”
Instead of listening to her, I curled into myself.
My gaze found Arlo sticking his nose in Ben’s hair, trying to nudge the boy awake.
I didn't fully register the next few days.
They went by in a confusing blur.
Part of me tried to eat, and spent hours with my head pressed against the toilet seat.
I could still see the slithering, scarlet remains of my friends every time I closed my eyes. There was so much red, soaked in that hunting orange light.
Blood that I could still see, a starless sky that stretched on forever.
Weeks went by.
Then months.
I think I turned 14. I wasn't sure. I didn't feel alive anymore.
I stood at my friend’s funerals with a single rose I dropped into their casket.
Violet’s mother was quick to cover the whole thing up.
Lucy's plan didn't work after all.
Our town’s murder cases stayed stagnant at one.
It's been four years since my friends were murdered by our ’Velma’.
Now, at seventeen, Mom asked if I wanted to visit Lucy in juvie.
I'm not even upset or angry anymore.
I want to know why.
Ben picked me up. Arlo was at his side, wagging his tail.
Ben was…different. He'd dumped his baseball cap and gotten a haircut, swapping his old wardrobe of drab colors for an attempt at changing style.
That day, he looked awkward in a short sleeved tee and shorts.
At school, Ben is no longer Bloody Ben.
Now, he is Survivor Ben.
I’m still Panda.
Every time I was with him, I felt like my soul was being sucked out.
Guilt so deep, so fucking painful, I lost my breath.
I live every day knowing that I immediately assumed it was him that day. Ben was barely alive when I found him. Lucy had started to carve into him before remembering she needed me.
After admitting it to him, his lips formed a small smile.
“Can I tell you a secret?” He said to me, at sixteen.
Yeah?
Whatever the boy was going to say, Ben never told me.
Presently, I nodded at the dog’s new collar.
“Peppa Pig themed?”
The boy shrugged, ruffling Arlo’s ears. “FYI, he chose it.”
“It's cute.” I said. “Very… chic.”
We didn't speak the whole ride, but Ben did entangle his hand in mine.
We spent half an hour outside the detention centre. I was panicking, and Ben was trying to hide that he was panicking. In the end, we joined hands, and strode through the doors together.
Lucy greeted us with a wide smile. Just as psychotic.
The orange jumpsuit suited her, though I had zero idea why.
“Hey Arlo!” she giggled at the dog, and Ben pulled the pup onto his lap.
“Ben.” She sighed. “I wish I got to finish you. I would have loved to solve the mystery of your gutted corpse.”
Ben’s smile was wry. “Nice to see you too.”
Behind a glass screen, I asked Lucy one simple question.
“Why?”
Lucy didn't reply. Or she did, but it was just nonsensical bullshit.
But there was one thing she said has stuck with me, chilling me to the core.
I am fucking terrified of Lucy. Of what's she's done, and what she's capable of doing.
It was a throwaway line, and I don't even think Ben noticed.
Or he did, and was in denial.
Lucy's smile was wide, her eyes empty pools of nothing.
The exact same glint in Ben’s eyes.
Jules’s eyes.
Violet’s eyes.
Like something was gnawing away at their psyche, twisting and contorting it, filling them with darkness, poison, that was so vast, so endless, I had craved it as a child. I still don't know what it is.
But I'm going to find it.
Lucy's laugh was shrill, and next to me, Ben didn't move a muscle.
“I don't even wear glasses!”

Just another vent and wondering if anyone has used your trauma against you in a fight/etc I feel like alot of women here have medical trauma from doctors. I’ve already sort of talked about my story here a few times about how during my daughters birth I attempted a home birth, was transferred to the hospital against my will less than half way through my labor, and SA’d by the doctonurses there during the rest of my labor and delivery which has left me more than traumatized. Prior to then I’d managed to avoid the horrible exams and paps they try to thrust on women my entire young adult life (I was 22 when I got pregnant and 23 when I my baby- now I’m 29 almost 30). Like I picked a midwife who didn’t harass me in the beginning to do a pap, and I declined all cervical checks until they were done against My will at the hospital.
I am no longer with my daughter’s piece of shit father. There’s so many reasons the top being that he’s a narcissistic abuser and he actually started being abusive prior to me getting pregnant, but I ignored it/blamed myself/thought if I could be better he’d be nice to me again. He toned it down during my pregnancy by about half but was still pretty mean and emotionally abusive and verbally abusive. The next reason is because I never ever forgave him for standing aside and watching as I was sa’d during labor, begging to him multiple times to help me and him ignoring me and even helping them to hold my legs down so I would stop kicking.
Point blank I told him he was as much of a rapist as the doctor and the nurses and while I love my baby despite everything I hated him and I wished that every single one of them that did that to me I hope they burn in hell, and have the worst most tragic thing happen to them and that if I could pay someone to assault all of them back and get away with it I would.
He also tried to gaslight me afterwards saying that I had a normal good birth and what happened to me was normal and I’m Insane and even if something did happen to me I didn’t like I deserved it because I spread my legs for him and got pregnant and that women deserve the bad parts of childbirth for being whores.
From there our relationship never recovered and he went into to extra crazy behavior where he would have severe mood swings of wanting to keep me under his control and be the housewife/homemaker and mom roles and give him sex, cooked meals every day, a clean home and the baby taken care of always by me never by him, praise him for working hard, and never talk about my trauma to another mood swing of I hate you, get out of my house (because we decided I would be a stay at home mom I gave up my job because I didn’t want anyone else taking care of my baby) I wish I never met You, I should have made you have an abortion etc etc then he would turn around and be like but baby I love you we are a family we have to stay together right back to another shift whenever I shower severe ppd getting angry/ trying to control me/telling me never to talk about my made up trauma.
Obviously the idea of sex really traumatized me so we never had sex again. I hated my body so much for gaining weight, stretch marks, my boobs being ruined due to getting big and saggy by breastfeeding but most of all hated my vagina. I was so traumatized I couldn’t even look down there for well over a year. I didn’t even have the desire to masturbate for like 3-4 years. I hated the sensation of even me wiping myself to pee like if I could have cut my vagina out and threw it in the garbage I would have because all I could feel every time I would even wipe was phantom sensations of being penetrated against my will.
Well my daughters dad and I kept hating each other until I got sick of the abuse and sick of the fact I lived with the man who let that happen to me and on top of it he was living the dream of having a woman he could abuse and still not have to take care of himself or the child all he had to do was work and pay rent/bills. So not only was I a victim of abuse but he also never lifted a finger to do anything in regards to taking care of our child. I was basically taking care of two children and I was done with it. Every time I tried leaving, he would threaten to take my daughter away from me. He would threaten to take me to court and say that I’m never gonna see my daughter again and she was the only weapon that he had to try to make me stay as much as I didn’t want him to have any custody I knew that the courts likely wouldn’t believe me that he was abusive, but I at least knew it would be 50-50, so I basically told him to get out of my house. I told him it was my house because I was the one that took care of it, I was the one that found it when we were living in a small apartment to move into, and I told him that I wanted him gone and he took a couple months, but he did leave at the beginning of 2022.
So since then he has been trying to take full custody and so far hasn’t gained it, but he filed multiple things against me, including an ex parte, Took me back to mediation twice, and he just took me to a 3111 evaluation which we go back to court on December. He has tried listing my birth trauma in every court document filed. He tried telling the judge, the court mediators and the evaluator in both paperwork and to their faces that one of reasons I shouldn’t get full custody is because “she believes she was raped during our daughters birth that makes her psychologically unstable as I did not witness any such horrible act and neither did the doctors or nurses, and if somebody would’ve called the police so clearly she is actually mentally insane.”
During court, I knew he would play and try to say anything and make up any lie against me, and there were many other horrible lies about my character and about how I am as a mother that just simply were not true he made up, but I couldn’t believe that he would take one of the worst things that had ever happened to me and try to use it in a attempt to make me seem crazy.
However not once did the judges, mediators or evaluator try asking me about it. He got ignored on that subject every time. I wish even more every day he would just drop dead. He even tried to use it to have me psychologically evaluated, but the judge would not order psychological testing on me, he left it up to the evaluator, and the evaluator didn’t deem that either one of us needed to be psychologically evaluated to be proven to be to have custody. Personally on my side that’s because I’m definitely psychologically stable and I haven’t been deemed unworthy to have custody so far.

Someone said I was completely wrong about this so I'm putting my observations out there.
Okay, first of all, let's clear something up - Dumbledore was not only the Headmaster of Hogwarts, he was on the Wizengamot, part of the International Confederation of Wizards, and however much he acted like the kindly grandfather figure he was probably the most politically powerful wizard in Britain, besides being magically powerful. He said he turned down the Minister's job because he didn't want the power, but he was actually just as powerful where he already was.
And he was the one who put Harry with his aunt. By leaving a baby on her doorstep in the middle of the night in NOVEMBER with a letter that seems to have basically said "Hey, your sister died, here's your nephew, you need to take him in because there's a mega-evil wizard out to kill him and while the guy's semi-dead right now, he'll be back and your sister did some fancy blood magic so the mega-evil wizard can't touch him if he lives with you." Then everyone stays miles away, except Dumbledore's assigned babysitter and spy, Arabella Figg, who was Harry's childhood babysitter every time the Dursleys went somewhere. She saw how he wasn't part of the family and how miserable he was, and must have told Dumbledore. Who left Harry where he was. So, Arabella must have told Dumbledore about Dudley's bullying, Harry being out in the yard all day without a break, Harry being in massively oversized hand-me-downs while Dudley was in brand new things, Harry being left behind on every single family outing, Harry being too thin, Harry being treated as lesser, and how she had to be barely tolerable in order to get the Dursleys to keep leaving him with her. And Dumbledore ignored it. The blood wards only protected Harry inside the boundaries of #4, they did NOT protect him at primary school or the library or even the rest of the neighborhood, and the wards also don't protect him from threats inside the house, only from the Dark Lord.
Then first year, Harry gets his dad's invisibility cloak and then just so happens to find the classroom with an enchanted mirror that shows you your heart's desire. And people have died obsessing over it. What does Dumbledore do when he finds Harry in front of it after curfew? Has a friendly chat and tells him the Mirror's about to be moved. Harry is not punished for being out of bed after hours, like he should have been. Later, three first years are able to get past obstacles meant to stop the greatest dark wizard in living memory. THEY ARE ELEVEN AND TWELVE. And the obstacles are conveniently aligned with their skills, aren't they? A flying task, a chess task, and a logic task, not to mention there's a task by their friend the loose-lipped gamekeeper (nothing against Hagrid). And they go in after curfew. Do they get in trouble for being so irresponsible and nearly getting themselves killed? No! They get 160 points and win the House Cup, yanking it out from under Slytherin at the Leaving Feast! You had days before that to award those points, why wait til then?
Second Year, Harry and Ron get 400 points and Special Awards for Services to the School for taking the most incompetent teacher they could find and taking him to go face off with a gigantic snake that can kill you just by looking at you. Harry nearly died. Several people and a ghost were petrified for months. IF YOU HAVE A SOLUTION, GO TO THE HEADMASTER AND NOT THE IDIOT FRAUD! And besides that, the information was RIGHT THERE in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which is an assigned textbook! A thirteen-year-old witch figured it out! And they left people petrified for months when they probably could have just ordered mature mandrakes, or even just the Mandrake Restorative Draught already made. Harry and Ron should have gotten the awards, sure, but not the points and it should have been tempered with several detentions of writing "I will be responsible and inform an actual teacher or the Headmaster next time I have school-saving information, and not do it myself and take along the dunderhead playing professor." Maybe that would teach them a modicum of responsibility or common sense.
Third year, after Sirius gets arrested, Dumbledore sent a thirteen-year-old and a fourteen-year-old back in time where there's a hangry werewolf on the loose (sorry Remus) and a swarm of dementors on its way, to save a hippogriff and break a man out of jail. Wow, great responsibility there Dumbledore! Hermione never should have had that Time Turner, it nearly drove her mad and she was working herself to exhaustion. And since it was so important to save Sirius, Dumbledore should have sent someone OTHER THAN TWO TEENAGERS into a very dangerous time in the past to do it! Meddling with time is extremely dangerous, especially if you see your past self, which can get you killed, and he had them following their past selves around. He should have done it himself, or sent an actual trained adult.
Fourth year, the Triwizard Tournament, Harry's name in the Goblet, and how in the world is a magical contract binding if you didn't enter it willingly? There's something missing here. And it only said Harry had to participate, not try his best, just tell him to make a weak attempt and then give up instead of making him do the whole thing. Anything other than "do your absolute best and try to win so Hogwarts actually has two seriously competing Champions and the other schools are at a disadvantage."
Fifth year, instead of helping Harry from the start, he ignores him and makes an already upset teenager even more upset, on the off-chance Harry might get possessed and try to kill him. And Umbridge was torturing students! Permanently scarring them! And singling out Harry for her sadistic punishments! He's the Headmaster, he should be able to do something, like he did to help Trelawney! On top of that, he assigns Harry Occlumency lessons with someone who actively hates him. Why would you have someone try and teach mental defense to a student they hate and who hates them back, especially when it involves repeatedly invading their mind? And then, what, half an hour after Harry loses his godfather and is in a raging grief and is injured and upset, Dumbledore drops the bombshell about Harry being destined to either kill the Dark Lord or be killed by him. Great move, adding more weight on a grieving boy's shoulders, brilliant idea! Actually, this is one of the worst ways you can possibly deal with someone who is grieving.
Sixth year wasn't so bad but he did expect a seventeen-year-old and two eighteen-year-olds to hunt down four Horcruxes, one of which was with the Dark Lord at all times, and then kill said Dark Lord. And he left the information that Harry had to die because he was an accidental seventh Horcrux, and he had to die by the Dark Lord's hand. Wow, raising him like a pig for slaughter was absolutely right, because that's what happened. He got a boy to commit suicide by Dark Lord for the greater good of the wizarding world.
Dumbledore was playing chess with people's lives. He was not a responsible Headmaster, and he routinely endangered students' lives. Specifically, Harry's life, and occasionally his friends. And in the first, third, and sixth books in particular, he clearly sets Harry up to play the hero. The rest of the time Harry does it because it's become second nature.

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If you're in the Woodinville/Bothell area, beware of Amanda Schmitt. Talk about a pretty girl superiority complex paired with an intense victim mentality and compulsive lying habit.
She is the walking definition of toxic white sorority girl. Don't be fooled by the "You Are Exactly Where You Need To Be" phone case and "See the Good in All Things" bs she spews. She is a snake in the grass.
She is constantly telling people different stories to gain sympathy, empathy, attention and approval. When I first met her, she was constantly complaining about how clingy her boyfriend was and how she wanted to breakup with him... but after Valentine's Day because her birthday was around the corner and she knew he got her something.
She then immediately broke up with her boyfriend to pursue a coworker who was going through a divorce but seemed stoked about a girl he had started dating. Amanda was like "oh I know I'll win" boldly claiming she had never been turned down before. She wrote him these insane love letters of how she never met anyone like him and how he means more than life to her. She got obsessed with the girl he was seeing. She'd pull up this girl's instagram at work, laughing at it trying to get coworkers to side with her in some lame attempt to get validation or hear someone say she was prettier or better in any kind of way.
When the guy tried to call things off with her, she got so desperate, she ended up faking a pregnancy. Like literally the same day. She lost her shit and messaged the girl and simultaneously threatened the guy, yet refused financial assistance or accompaniment to the clinic when he offered to help. The same afternoon of her alleged abortion, she sat at the bar while he worked to do a multi-hour winetasting. Like dude... if you've ever had an abortion, you are physically and emotionally wrecked for days. Idk it was insane. He got so flustered and upset, he ended up leaving work early and she chased after him like a psycho claiming a manager sent her to check on him.
From what I can tell, Amanda only cares about and is nice to people she can benefit from. She has social media followers but hardly any real friends. She hasn't posted anything in over a year (I don't think she can get as many "likes" on her posts now as she did when she was in college). Any friends she does have, she treats like her flying monkeys. She doesn't want anyone outshining her in any way. It's like mentally, she never left high school.
Amanda needs to appear perfect at all times. This girl went to school to be a special education teacher, but couldn't even keep at it for more than a couple years after graduation because she couldn't stand being around special ed kids. Her twin sister (of course there's two of them) has been killing it in the wine industry, so she decided to jump ship and try to make it in the wine industry with her. Honestly, I don't even think it's Amanda's passion... I just don't think she likes seeing her sister be more successful than her.
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She paints the picture of having a rough upbringing and how her mom was a crackhead jumping from trailer park to trailer park, yet her mom is still very much in the picture..?
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Idk what's true about this girl. She'd rather deflect, gaslight, block, change her appearance and hide all her socials than take any kind of accountability. Manderrsss. DERP. Amanda Elisabeth. Like Kendrick Lamar said:

• Fabricating stories on the family front
• Pathetic master manipulator
• Scam artist with the hopes of being accepted
• And a habitual liar too

You've been warned.

Reply to this post. "What is the single biggest factor that is preventing you from accomplishing your goals"
Unable to reply to it so here.
I'll indulge here a bit.
I will give why it took me 35 years on this planet to get going. And I am guessing many people might be in the same boat generally speaking so it would help for me to be a bit descriptive.
To provide context, I am an immigrant, and I belong to a farmers family and using hands was a requirement and not a choice. I am a 40Y family man with 2 kids. I work at a firm heading a department and I have a very successful side hustle going on.
Being honest, my goals changed a lot ever since I can remember however the core values (if you'd call it that) remained the same.
When I was a pre-teen, I was fascinated by the very concept of 'time'. What it means, how it works and how can I control and thus, manipulate it. Of course it helped my cause to have weird quirks one of those being striking conversations with old people. I used to just sit and ask questions. Two of those being very prominent.

1. What do you think is the point of life?
2. What would you advise me as if you were me back in your days.

I asked the rich, poor and the destitute alike. Of course, the answers were extremely varied and on a spectrum ranging from the wild "You gotta destroy your enemies. If you have done that, you have achieved" to "The point of life is to feel every moment". I had heard so many stories and experiences from their own mouth in their own way probably 100s of times before I turned 18. They did not make a lot of sense then but they do now.
Then I would like to tell a bit about my father. he was a disciplinarian. he did not like anybody speaking over him, nor breaking his rules and he was a man of habit. Used to wake up even before the birds did and go for a long run and I had to punish my legs too in the process unwillingly. As much I hate to admit my father's influence in my life (I hate him honestly, he never cared for anybody's emotions, likes and passions. It was always his way or get out of the way) it has left his mark in which I approach life now. He was a miser and never spent a penny more than was needed. Lived a frugal life and thus our family too. There have been innumerable instances where my friends would indulge and I would literally salivate in front of them and sit embarrassed and insulted but it would be at that. So, my attitude to let go of things came by force, not choice.
Then my grandfather who had the biggest positive influence in my life. He was the most learned man in the town. Respected beyond measure and wealthy AF. However he too never gave me any nice things and I remember going to school wearing ripped pants (and punished too!) for many weeks cause I did not have a new one. However he was always kind to me (kind with his time. which came with its own costs. He would teach me things to the point of caning me if I got them wrong. Beatings were a common day occurrence for me however he toned things appropriately as I got older) I don't know why I loved to look forward to meeting him. I used to meet him in the school holidays about 3 months every year. So he used to provide me with 'knowledge'. So I understood basic physics and universal workings very very early.
So I can give you guys a context why people seem to be dissatisfied with achieving their goals.
Accepting reality as it is.
This is a major disconnect when I see people's views. Reality is not gonna change. Your views, beliefs and understanding can. When I came to this realization (came to it very recently), it was extremely cathartic. Beyond what I can put in words. you gotta accept the world as it is, with the good, bad, ugly. The earlier you do, the more in-sync would you be with the universe around you.
Your goals are unrealistic.
e.g. If I wanna get Arnold Schwarzenegger ripped by the summer which might be 3 months away but I have the body and the lifestyle of a sloth, its not gonna happen. What can happen is you start the process and feel better along the way. Its ok to be mediocre.
Achieving goals is a great feeling but getting there is boring.
People rarely seem to communicate it properly. If you would like to run a marathon which is 40Ks and in no means a small distance when you get gassed out in 100mts right now, you gotta accept that the path to it is gonna be boring. Accept it right off the bat. Its gonna be dirty, painful and a grind. You will get injured, demotivated and probably quit the process hundreds of times before you reach it. But you gotta keep at it and take whatever wins you get along the way. Also, you have to know that you are winning, however small. This came by my grandpa. "You earn your trophies at practice, you just pick them up at competitions". He hammered it home. Literally like a prayer every morning I had to recite this statement. Its boring, embarrassing and emancipating to go through the path but then try to find tiny joys when you do that. Finding joy in the process is very important. You gotta condition yourself to it.
Quitting is OK
This is very important. There is no shame in quitting as long as you have not lost the view of the end goal. If you wanna learn rock-climbing, you will start it, get intimidated/injured/fatigued along the way and just quit. Its OK as long as you really want to climb that rock!
You can 'want' to quit smoking while smoking and thus will give it a go and then come back to it. Thats OK! Dont beat yourself up for it. This also builds mental fortitude. Slowly you start looking into things that help you get to what you want. You are navigating through life that has so many unknowns and mostly within yourself so its OK that you have wavered from your path.
Dont get greedy
I belong to a culture that believes and understands that one came naked and is gonna go naked. When you have this realisation, you try to help the other. Its ingrained into us. We as humans have and always will leave the next generation much much better off than the older. Getting greedy for accumulation holds us back and thus baggage. You have to stay away from it.
Be selfish
I know controversial but you gotta look out for yourself before you do for others. Its not that you become miserly from benevolent but you can only help others if you are capable enough first! This is easier said than done. But I have learnt to look out for myself first before I do for others. It has help me stay sane.
Be comfortable in your own skin.
Again, returning to the first point however be comfortable first. I meditate, in other words, I see my thoughts/subconscious birthing thoughts, my mind accepting them and start processing to a point of being important to be aware enough of it and then fading away. All of it in what feels like an instant. Personally its so important for me to spend time with myself every day. Grandpa taught me this but I have started it very recently. I have come to realise that your brain is like a muscle. there are some parts of it that need stimulation/blood circulation that is just not possible when your brain is processing and your consciousness accepting like your daily existence. You gotta find that time and space where you are just not disturbed by anything (people/gadgets/noise/light, etc). Devoid yourself of any external stimuli and you would see what I mean. I do this early in the morning when everybody's asleep and I have around 20 mins to myself. Again, this is a process of self discovery every day. There are days I feel I did not do it, and days I feel very peaceful and I am OK with it. I take around 15 minutes to get to the point of being in the 'zone' if you'd call it and stay there around 3-4 mins till the mind starts doing mind things and then a few more to realize that I am there and then out of it. Its like an addiction now. If I dont get that daily, I want to get it. I will find that space anytime of the day and do it.
Peace.

DRAMATIC ENTRANCE
Hey, all! It's been about a month since my last post here and this was (mostly) intentional since I was focusing more on some life events. Some things have happened in the life of Fix and Sid and I'm a bit backlogged with things I want to post but this will include the major points. So, this would normally be the part where I say that I'm going to try and keep this short... but let's not kid ourselves. ON TO THE UPDATE!
Let's see... first, I think it's important for me to follow up from my last post here regarding my worries surrounding the Amends Letters I wrote to Sid's family. So the letters didn't go back with Sid when planned since they decided to stay with me for more than the normal 3 days (we were in a hybrid living situation) but they did get to the family. Once Sid sent me a text that they were delivered and read, all I could do was try to patiently wait and pretend I wasn't going insane waiting for a reply. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has problems sitting in those uncomfortable moments; the moments where you're hoping for a positive reaction but the wait continues and you decide that any response would be better than nothing. So I sat in that for about 2 weeks. Sid would come over and they were kind enough to let me know that their family wasn't upset but they needed time to work through their feelings just like Sid did. I didn't pester my partner about this but I also don't have a poker face so they could read the anxiety. This period was a test for me to practice being out of control while performing daily activities. I would check in with my counselor, Hera (who is the BEST counselor this wayward could ask for), who would make sure I was staying in the moment and not steering towards unhealthy coping mechanisms. So I waited. And waited...
About 1.5 weeks after the letters were sent, Sid started sliding in conversations about me seeing their family again. They would talk about how it's been about 8 months since I've spoken to any of them besides Sid's siblings: Kyle and Claire. I would tell Sid that it would be very uncomfortable seeing them without addressing the topics in the letters; it would feel like everyone is just ignoring an eldritch horror standing in the middle of the room. Sid would always say that I'm still in the family and they would be happy to see me but I would stick to my feelings that I want to clear the air before attending any events. The last thing I want is to be the reason a family gathering is awkward or turns hostile... not that I think they would be hostile but the anxiety was still getting to me so I was assuming the worst. During this time, I noticed that Sid was asking to stay over for longer more and more. I took this as a sign that they were enjoying spending time with me again and I would take my partner part-time than not at all. About 2 weeks after the letters are read and Sid is still at our loft just spending time with me.
One day, I come in and Sid's already there which is strange since they work later hours than I do. They are sitting at the table talking on the their phone and they just blow a kiss at me, point to the shower, and then point to the chair across from them. I'm thinking that they just want a convo after I clean myself from the day so I scrub down (Defense Soap is great after a day of touching sweaty people) and then come back out to the dinning chair. Sid is still on the phone and it's then that I realize they're talking to their parent which puts my guts in a knot.
Sid's trying to wrap up and just giving me signals that I should try to calm down... which only makes it worse! Eventually, they wrap up and reach across to grab my hands which is where the conversation starts. Sid tells me that was one of their parents and they wanted to know if it would be okay with me if they came over that night to discuss my letter. When I tell you my heart jumped... I swear I kept my partner waiting 3 days for an answer, but I just said "tell them to come by!" After another quick phone call, Sid checks in with me to see how I'm doing and I don't try to hide my feelings here, I said I'm terrified of what they may say or how they may look at me. As much as I wanted to ask Sid what they were thinking, I didn't since it would all be in the open soon. Sid said that two (out of 3) of the parents were coming over in about 30 minutes and that they would be right here with me the whole time.
So Sid's parents were already in town visiting with Sid's siblings which is why a typical 3 hour wait turned into only 30 minutes. Their talking to me and asking me if they should cancel and I just lay it all out there. I say that I'm not sure what they want to say but they have the right to express their feelings to me about how I've treated their child. I say that I'm scared and anxious, but avoiding situations like this is a big part of what got us here so I'm just going to work on dealing with it. I then make some tea and just cuddle with Sid for a bit to calm my nerves... then the bell rings and it's time to face my fears instead of running away.
Sid gets up to get the door and I make the move to stop them and walk to open the door and there they are. I can not tell you how many features I love about Sid are just outright STOLEN from their parents. The eyes, the stance, the expressions, hell, even the muscles are just ripped from their parental units. In this moment, I felt like I was staring at an older version of my partner and the shame tried to hold me down. I physically shook my head and welcomed them in. Now, I'm not going to go in depth about the conversation as I believe their are some things that should stay between family, but I will give you the general idea. They expressed their appreciation for me acknowledging my wrongs and how this has influenced the family dynamic. They also expressed the hurt they have felt directly by me and how they still grapple with loving the person who has brought their child to tears on multiple occasions.
A lot of tears were shed by all parties and the general consensus is that they love me and would like to see their child happy with a safe partner, and it's for me to show that I can be that partner. Much like my talks with Sid, there wasn't any yelling or name calling; it turns out that Sid also stole their emotional intelligence and empathy. That family has so much love in their hearts and I expressed my guilt at hurting them. It all ended with them saying that they still view me as family and would like it if I started coming around again for gatherings, if Sid and their siblings were okay with it.
Then they left. All of the emotions I grappled with were pulled out at once and I got a little light headed and almost passed out. Sid helped me to the couch and I was quickly able to get myself back together. Then we just held each other and cried. I am so tired of being the cause of their tears. I truly am.
So this past weekend, Sid was over and said they wanted to talk with me (this is the major update). They stated that they have noticed the changes I've made to myself and how I communicate with them; how I'm more willing to push through the uncomfortable to directly address issues. They said that they were holding back their joy at seeing how I handled the situation with their parents: how I wasn't hiding behind them at the door like I would have in the past, how I was pushing through my desire to just hide away, and how I owned up to my actions instead of trying to finesse the conversation. This is when they said that they would be willing to try to Reconcile with me if I still feel up to it.
So this is a situation that I have been dreaming about for the past several months. I asked them if they understand that I'm still working on myself. I know that I won't cheat on them again but I can't honestly say that I'm what they deserve, but I would work my ass off to become that. I asked if this was acceptable and they said YES!
queue hugs, tears, and a ton of lewd acts
So there you have it, Fix is officially in reconciliation with their partner who is now back in the loft "full time."
I can't express how grateful I am to the kind people of this sub. Truly. I was just another hurt wayward who was trying to Fix their screwup but the support I received here has steered me in the right direction and I thank you.
I had a session with my counselor today and they were so understanding and kind; they told me that the guidance I have received from them and other support groups is just that and I shouldn't sell my efforts short. They say I've made great progress in a short amount of time but the most important part is I seem to have the drive in me to continue improving myself for the long term and that this is what caused my partner to give me my last shot.
It's going to take a while until I see myself as anything but a fuckup, but I'm going to keep working at it. Speaking of, I have to go journal for the night. Thanks for sticking through my treatise! Bye bye!

I can't seem to accept that this breakup is final. It happened three months ago, but was sudden and seemingly unprovoked. He was a friend of the family that I had a crush on since I was 9 years old. 30 years later, after my husband died, we got back in touch and he told me I was "super special" to him, that we were meant to be together, that he wanted to marry me, and he was even looking into buying a sailboat we could retire on.
He called and emailed me all day every day, made us a massive couple's music playlist with links to videos, and said I was gorgeous but that he highly respected me for wanting to wait until marriage for sex, and agreed to do so.He had come on really strongly the week before this, telling me he has never felt as intensely about anyone as me and he can't think of anything but me 24/7. I got scared and pulled back and he told me I had "really hurt him," even after I apologized, he actually brought it up again at my house. I was very loving and trusting of him since.
Anyway, he was visiting me, we were holding hands, walking in the rain, watching romantic comedies and talking. He suddenly pulled away when we got home and he fell asleep in my recliner. He had a 12-day in a row workweek, was exhausted from driving two hours to see me, was cold, and had a headache, so I just covered him with a blanket and let him be. When it was early morning, he was muttering, saying he was still cold, so I turned on the heater and brought him another blanket. He snapped at me to stop doing things for him. I said that he said he was cold and this is my house so of course I am going to be a good hostess, plus I want to because I love him. He sheepishly said he has trouble receiving, then I went to my bedroom, closed the door, and cried quietly.
About an hour later, it was still dark, and I went out to check on him. He was grumpy and muttering to himself (he had some weed candies before falling asleep). I asked him "Why did you come here?" He said, "I don't know why I came here!" Then he started packing his things to leave and said the following things: -"I can't live up to the man I want to be, that you want me to be" -"I don't understand relationships. I understand sex and friendship, but not this." -"Maybe it was just a fantasy." -"Maybe you can't teach an old dog new tricks." -"I'm dead inside. I don't understand emotions." -"It's gotta be more than just fixing up the house." -"Maybe I just want to leave you before you leave me because you will, and then later it will be more painful for us both." -"I'm a bad person. I can't do this to you."
Then he said "I'm so sorry, X," backtracked as he was walking out the door in order to give me a hug, and then texted me when he got home to tell me he made it home OK (he left during a bad storm). But then he deactivated his Facebook, trashed our playlist, removed my access to his music, and completely disappeared.
I emailed him that night to ask what made him say all these things and leave but he ignored me, which he never did before. I figured I'd send him a birthday card a couple weeks ago. It was just friendly and said I miss talking and hope we can again sometime. No response.
I just don't get how he could go so cold when all he did is talk to me around the clock, send me love songs, and we were childhood friends.
How can I accept such 180 behavior? I have a hard time accepting that someone could go from virtually obsessed to dead cold.

I just want to say this before I get Into anything, this post will contain extremely heavy topics such as talk of rape and sexual abuse involving a child and just abusive behaviors toward a child in general. If you can't handle hearing about these topics in detail, please click off of this post and make sure to take care of yourself. I do not want to cause anyone any sort of harm or anxiety from reading about any of this from here on out.
Lastly, I would like to beg you all that that anyone who reads this post does not share this to anyone else on here or any other website for my own wellbeing and because I don't necessarily feel safe talking about this publicly already and I have already went through multiple accounts before. Thank you for reading this so far if you have, and make sure to eat a meal and take care of your hygiene today.
I recently turned 15 year's old this month, and to be honest I could not be more terrified for the months and year's that are going to be ahead of me. In my life time I have experienced a significant amount of sexual violence and rape that I still get choked up while talking about to this day because I was convinced for so long that if I ever did that nobody would ever believe me. The most significant thing relating to my abuse that has happened to me in my life happened to me starting when I was just a baby by my biological dad, and to this day I still struggle with being able to remember everything that had happened to me and my sister combined because of being stuck in a dissociative state most of my life. I remember when I was raped by my biological dad, I was only 5 year's old at that point and I didn't get the dignity to look at his face while he was doing it. By the time I turned 6 year's old he did end up being caught, but I spent my most earliest year's of my life being beaten and touched constantly beyond belief by the man who was supposed to be taking care of me.
Over the past couple of year's I have noticed that because of what he had done to me and my sister, but including my mom aswell, it had completely affected me and my family who were all already addicted to something no matter it be drugs, alcohol, or for me it would be food. My mom has a lot of trouble accepting it to this day and has spent most of her time drowning herself in alcohol, it has led her to become extremely mentally and physically abusive to me aswell. It took me a few years of my life to be able to admit that because I remember when I protected her with my life, but now I feel like I don't have anything to protect anymore. My mom has become a completely different person, I barely see her In the day because of her job, but at night she will come home and almost always drink wine or some sort of other alcohol at the start of her night. There was a day a couple of months ago where I went to the emergency room because we got into a physical fight, and later on I ended up attempting to take my own life because her abuse had picked up heavily in the past couple of months to where it became unbearable to live around her again.
I remember when I woke up everyday to her yelling in my face or sometimes she would grip my shoulder and physically rip me out of bed because I was so weak I would barely move my own body. My body was covered in bruises too, they were all a deep purple or yellow color, but everytime I tired to confront her about them she would just deny that she did that and blamed it on me hitting my arm on the wall since I have low iron in my body. It wasn't the physically abusive moments that were weighing on me the most, it was the moments where she would get drunk and she would say the cruelest comments to me which was stuff like I didn't deserve to live or I was just being lazy and leeching off of her to make her miserable on purpose. I hated when I would ask her about those comments the next morning and she would say that I was being 'delusional' again and she never said that because I genuinely believed her sometimes. I guess because of what happened already when I was born with my biological dad that affected my mom too, I never really did grow up with the affection or love that I needed to grow up healthily enough.
It's been hard to accept the past couple of year's of my life, but I've spent a lot of my life ever since I was 5 seeking the attention of older men because that's basically what I was taught when I was younger. My mom had a lot of male friends in person who I would compliment constantly go try and appeal to and I did that to her current boyfriend too at some point. It was the easiest to get that sort of attention from men online, so it led to me getting myself into a lot of situations with older men online where they would make comments about me and be sweet to me and because nobody in my life was showing me that sort of 'love' at that moment, I ended up being groomed quite a lot by those men. I think the most memorable one was the one I met when I was 10 year's old and I began sending pictures of my body to him because he gave me that attention I was lacking in my life, later on he ended up asking me what state I lived in and what the address was. That was the moment where I luckily was smart enough as a kid to not give him that information, but I still feel guilt about that situation to this day and I don't really know why.
I've honestly sunken into a pit of guilt my entire life, but especially in the past few months of my life. I tend to blame myself a lot for what has happened to me and honestly I don't know who to really blame anymore, but all I know is that I most likely am a predator magnet to every older person I meet. I have never really considered myself attractive and ever since I was 6 I have started stuffing my feelings with food, so I haven't been extremely skinny either, but I realized something critical awhile ago that has made my heart hurt even more. It was never about how I look or how skinny I am, it was about the fact that I was vulnerable and these people knew that. I was young and I didn't know any better at that time, I had already been prone to go through something like that again after the man who made me decided that he wanted to have sex with his 5 year old daughter.
After I've realized that, I have become more of a closed off person than I have ever been beforehand. I won't leave my apartment or my room most days and at this point, I have practically tried to board my windows up. I am always so paranoid of the people outside of my home, while inside of my home I can't even find the heart to trust my mom or her boyfriend because of what they have done to me. In the past couple of months, I have also started hearing voices and having hallucinations all over again even while I'm taking my medicine. My mom sometimes holds my medicine from me and I've even caught her snorting it because it'll give her a separate affect than me and basically make her feel high and be able to do stuff like cleaning quicker. My medicine will make me not be able to physically sleep for hours on end and my hallucinations will get worse during that time, it happens almost every night I take it by now. I start to feel like I'm not real either and the world around me starts to become warped in some sort of way, an example I can think of is one thought I have that right now I'm not even sure if I actually did try to leave my apartment that It would work. I feel like I'm almost stuck in some sort of reality that I can't get out of and the people around me or myself, are not real things that actually exist here in this moment.
Past any of that, I wanted to talk about one of the most recent relationships I had with an older person that has stuck with me the most. When I was around 13 or 14, I met a friend of my moms who is a grown man and he is the stepdad of one of my closest friends outside of the internet. Our relationship actually developed pretty quickly at first because he was super sweet to me, but I never expected what his true intentions were as I never really do. There were a couple of times where I stayed at his house with my friend where he would get me items such at candy from the store or drinks, and I thought he had nice intentions when it came to me because he did know of my past with my biological dad. There was a day where he showed up to my house uninvited with some ice cream for me and that's when I became anxious and started to fear the reality of the situation because of my past. In the past with the grooming that had happened to me, my biological dad in specific would get me items so I would do sexual favors for him. After that moment, I tried my best to distance myself from him, but my mom kept inviting him over and he stayed a part of my life.There were days where he kept showing up to my house uninvited constantly, but there were so many moments where I broke down because of my mom and he ran to me to come and comfort me, so I began to feel guilty for thinking of him as a groomer.
I should have known then, but our relationship quickly turned sexual from there because that's when he started touching me In places that I hadn't asked him to. There were a couple of times when he'd hug me and touch me on my lower back or thighs, or when we were in the car and he would grip my thigh and rub it to get my attention, but he would keep it there for a little longer than he needed to. The most terrifying time I remember to this day is when he picked me up to take me to my friends house and he was extremely drunk in the car with me as he did multiple times before, and he started to grip my thigh and move it up to my inner thigh to start touching me more near that area. I was honestly so scared and on the verge of tears that I considered opening my car door and jumping out, but I didn't and I let it happen to me like I always have done. I put my trust into him just like I did with my biological dad and he ended up hurting me so much, yet there are still a lot of moments where I have my doubt everyday. There were moments where I'd be sleeping where he would try and sneak up on me while I was sleeping, so I began sleeping with my friend so he wouldn't touch me or do worse in the middle of the night.
Like I said, I still have my doubt about that situation and I don't really understand why. I honestly wish sometimes that he would've got it over with and just raped me when he wanted to even when I know that's not what I really want in the long run. It was his approach that was what makes me think that to this day, he was so sweet and gentle at first that it honestly made me believe that It was like I was in love for the first time, but in reality he knew what he really wanted. I won't lie when I say that I really do miss him sometimes, he made me feel wanted and not like I was just some dog chained up in someone's backyard that was being kicked around and starved all day. I had never really had anyone compliment me like he did before and it made me feel like I really was pretty after I have lived my life thinking that I was hideous and I didn't deserve love or to live. I tend to catch myself thinking that I miss my abuse because it made me feel wanted, but I know that It has basically ruined my life and now all I do is rot away in my room all day and night.
When I was sent to the hospital a couple of months ago, I was officially diagnosed with the illnesses C-PTSD and schizotypal disorder all while I'm on the autism spectrum. I can't say that I'm especially happy with my diagnoses, but I'm just exhausted from waiting for so long and having so many people in my life tell me that I was being dramatic. It feels like I can finally 'justify' how I feel even though I know that I had a right to be upset from the start because I didn't really have a choice, I was traumatized and the people who hurt me will never apologize either. I really am not sure what I'm supposed to do with my life outside of the hospital if I'm honest, I have been more lost in my life than I have ever been before, and more now because I just went through a break up with someone I thought was the love of my life too. I know that you may read all of this and may think that I am being dramatic, and that may be the truth, but please don't come onto this post to shame me for anything I have talked about on this post.
If you're going to ask, I did post something on a separate account a couple of day's ago, but I did have to delete that post and that account for Mt safety and now I'm back hopefully forever this time. That's only if you read something similar to this awhile back, so you just know that I'm not trying to impersonate someone on here. I added more detail to what I was talking about as requested last time aswell since I know I wasn't very specific and I may have confused some people last time with my wording. Honestly, I haven't been okay at all I don't know what I'm going to do after I'm done posting this. I really am not sure what the point for me is the post this is besides having people hear my story, but I don't expect anything from anyone and I just hope that maybe something can change soon and these feelings will magically go away one day, but they won't anytime soon.
I've spent so much of my life pretending to be someone else, I find myself invalidating my own identity sometimes for the attention of the people around me too. I know my identity at this time in my life and I identify as transmasculine, but sometimes I just want to be someone's pretty girl and I want to be cared about and loved for again like those men showed me year's ago. I know this journey hasn't been easy to find my identity, but I'm sad to say that I would throw it all away in a heart beat just to feel the way I did when I was with those men because I don't think I'll ever feel loved like that again unless I purposefully seek it out myself. I don't know how I feel anymore, either it be about myself or how I feel about all the people who have hurt me, but I just wish that people were honest with me and that I could believe that people really do love me for who I am and not like they're all lying to my face.
I have completely isolated myself lately and I have stopped talking to any of my friends or family either it be online or in person, I just can't find the energy or the trust to talk to any of them. I have found that all of my online friends revolve around one of my online groomers who they all still talk too and my family hasn't recognized me for who I am in year's so I just feel so utterly stuck. I have nobody stuck in my life anymore, I just want nothing more than some friends who would take their time with me and our relationship and someone who I could be close and vulnerable with again without it being like the rest of them, but I can't trust anyone and I hate myself for that. I hate those people who have hurt me most of all for that, but they have all made me have so much doubt I honestly don't know who to blame anymore.
I really do think it's my fault to this day and I don't think it'll change anytime soon, whenever my mind may change any amount about what I've been through it'll always revert back and I'll end up doubting myself yet again. I hate isolation, but it's where I feel the most safest at this point in my life because I am terrified of how my friends think of me and I believe that if I stay friends with people that I am hurting them even though that's never my intention. All I have ever had for anyone in my life is love, yet all they have ever done is hurt or use me or I have hurt them and I've tried my hardest to change so I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. I am still uncomfortable in every relationship I have to this day and I don't really know why, I just wish I could get a little bit more comfortable and I could stop being a coward and running away once conflict sparks or I get afraid that I'm hurting the people I love the most.
Thank you for reading.

I'm 19 Male, I was born in California, but now go to school in the UK, when I was around a pre-teen I always got compliments on my looks and unknowingly was constantly getting hit on by girls my age even though I was just as dense as any guy, but also I was young and was more concerned on progress on games with my friends. My first real experience with love was with (lets go with numbers for girls so girl 1) girl 1, we used to play video games with each other throughout middle school like Roblox and toon town. Obsession was a understatement with her, I was clueless about it however, constantly going over her house at least 3 times a month until high school. In which I decided to follow my brother who is 2 years older than me to his high school. Being a very popular high school in the area and not cheap. Coming from a decently well off family, my family were more than willing to provide for both of us. Back to girl 1, she willingly followed me to this high school; keep in mind, this high school tuition is in the 10s of thousands of dollars and a pretty extensive test to get into it. She didn't seem to mind and followed me to this school, we both got in and for the first half of the first semester we were close as school went on, I found out one of my good friends from boy scouts was also at the school and slowly drifted towards him, (which I realised in like 3 years this was a pretty dick move as I was unaware she had feelings for me) and constantly got slight hints of her wanting me back in her life, while I prioritized my new friends. However at the same time this is where girl 2 came in, I was seated next to her in Religion class and we became friends instantly, both relating to each other on many topics and we seemed to get along quiet well, and we also had a same elective together, constantly goofing off there too. Her being on the Volleyball team too and me being in the school news program so we would constantly see each other and at school events she would through hearts at me, so naturally I started to like her. Resulting in constant two way flirts between us. Even our parents accidently met at a café, were my mom overheard her mom talking about me. Unfortunately for me, a guy who was on our football team, existed ( I know classic high school drama) came in and it was almost like we never met, she almost instantly in the matter of a week stopped really mentioning me and always talked about this other guy. I knew it but my mind didn't accept it, so I kept on trying, eventually when she found out this guy wasn't going to the school dance, cause he didn't want to apparently. I knew this was my last shot and asked her out, kind of leading into it during a conversation in religion. Only to be turned down, and you know how that affects a friendship so Ill just leave it there. However my friends at the time were fully supportive of me and comforted me, even hanging out more then usual to get over it. Which where that's where girl 3 came in which I started to vent my recent romantic failure to her which she was all ears. I'm going to leave it here and go write the next part as I'm feeling this part is getting to long.

I can't seem to accept that this breakup is final. It happened three months ago, but was sudden and seemingly unprovoked. He was a friend of the family that I had a crush on since I was 9 years old. 30 years later, after my husband died, we got back in touch and he told me I was "super special" to him, that we were meant to be together, that he wanted to marry me, and he was even looking into buying a sailboat we could retire on.
He called and emailed me all day every day, made us a massive couple's music playlist with links to videos, and said I was gorgeous but that he highly respected me for wanting to wait until marriage for sex, and agreed to do so.He had come on really strongly the week before this, telling me he has never felt as intensely about anyone as me and he can't think of anything but me 24/7. I got scared and pulled back and he told me I had "really hurt him," even after I apologized, he actually brought it up again at my house. I was very loving and trusting of him since.
Anyway, he was visiting me, we were holding hands, walking in the rain, watching romantic comedies and talking. He suddenly pulled away when we got home and he fell asleep in my recliner. He had a 12-day in a row workweek, was exhausted from driving two hours to see me, was cold, and had a headache, so I just covered him with a blanket and let him be. When it was early morning, he was muttering, saying he was still cold, so I turned on the heater and brought him another blanket. He snapped at me to stop doing things for him. I said that he said he was cold and this is my house so of course I am going to be a good hostess, plus I want to because I love him. He sheepishly said he has trouble receiving, then I went to my bedroom, closed the door, and cried quietly.
About an hour later, it was still dark, and I went out to check on him. He was grumpy and muttering to himself (he had some weed candies before falling asleep). I asked him "Why did you come here?" He said, "I don't know why I came here!" Then he started packing his things to leave and said the following things:
-"I can't live up to the man I want to be, that you want me to be" -"I don't understand relationships. I understand sex and friendship, but not this." -"Maybe it was just a fantasy." -"Maybe you can't teach an old dog new tricks." -"I'm dead inside. I don't understand emotions." -"It's gotta be more than just fixing up the house." -"Maybe I just want to leave you before you leave me because you will, and then later it will be more painful for us both." -"I'm a bad person. I can't do this to you."
Then he said "I'm so sorry, X" backtracked as he was walking out the door in order to give me a hug, and then texted me when he got home to tell me he made it home OK (he left during a bad storm). But then he deactivated his Facebook, trashed our playlist, removed my access to his music, and completely disappeared.
I emailed him that night to ask what made him say all these things and leave but he ignored me, which he never did before. I figured I'd send him a birthday card a couple weeks ago. It was just friendly and said I miss talking and hope we can again sometime. No response.
I just don't get how he could go so cold when all he did is talk to me around the clock, send me love songs, and we were childhood friends.
How can I accept such 180 behavior? I have a hard time accepting that someone could go from virtually obsessed to dead cold.

Shalom,
I converted 6 years ago (patrilineal, dad didn't grow up practicing so we didn't either) and have only continued to fall further in love with Judaism and my Jewish community, my family did not convert however I've continued to stay close with them but these past 213 days it feels like another knife has been driven into my heart. My brother (20) is a communist, and has been one longer than I've been a practicing jew, however in the past few months he keeps unapologetically pushing genocidal/ blatantly antisemitic rhetoric (apologia) under the guise of leftism. He keeps saying the women who were raped were a "Zionist lie to justify invading war", "IDF helicopters did 10/7", "AIPAC and the Israeli lobby", and incessant comparisons of return to our return to our indigenous land to colonial projects like Rhodesia or the Congo.
He regularly attends zoom meetings with his comrades for his political groups, and in multiple meetings they have presented a false narrative multiple times; They constantly attempt to push Bundism without understanding why the Bund failed. The week after October 7th they held a meeting celebrating the terrorists as martyrs for the proletariat, I was and still am at a loss for words. He refers to Ansar Allah as freedom fighters resisting American neo-colonialism but when I asked him about their "Death to the Jews" slogan, use of slavery, and lack of Teimanim in Yemen all he had to say was I had fallen for Zionist propaganda. Whenever I try to explain the fascist roots of Arab-nationalism he tries to spin a narrative of the Arabs suffering greatly under the Ottoman landlords that sold to Jews and the British with their Balfour declaration.
2 months ago we went to the Holocaust museum in Montreal. For me it was an impactful 2 hour tour of studying each individual exhibit; My brother however was visibly offended by the hostage posters and Israeli flag that dressed the outside and blew through it in >30 minutes. The museum that in excruciating detail explains how the Nazi's used propaganda to turn people to normalize violence against their Jewish neighbors, somehow didn't resonate with him at all. The morning after Kristallnacht the Nazis blamed the violence and damages on the Jews of Germany; My brother is unable to see how his 10/7 Denial is rooted in the belief that Jews are inherently liars and is a tactic not dissimilar to the one used by the Nazis. At the end of the museum there are a few exhibits about the War of Independence and the creation of Medinat Yisrael, this caused him to go on a tirade the whole ride back to the hotel about "the Palestinians shouldn't be held responsible for the crimes of Europeans" and how "Jews now have a home in the west" (there were three exhibits about the mass denial of fleeing Jews from Canadian and American ports).
BZ"H I will be drafting into the Tzahal this August as a Chayal Boded because in my time of being a practicing Jew the antisemitism that remains invisible to my brother became my daily reality. When I started practicing antisemitic "jokes" and games like steal my kippa became daily occurrences. When I started HS antisemitic graffiti, jeers, and social media accounts became pretty common. Last November my synagogue had a bomb threat called, actually every synagogue in my city did. For me, in the past few years it feels like we have been rapidly heading towards pogroms from both sides of the American political isle.
My brother, unsurprisingly, does not want me to make Aliyah and I worry our relationship will cease once I draft because

1. I do not feel comfortable giving intel (like where I serve, live, etc.) to someone who sees our enemies as heroes and potentially endangering the lives of people I serve with.
2. He thinks the IDF and everyone in it is Jack the ripper.

I do not want this post to seem like I do not love my brother, I really do, but it feels like we are in this constant cycle since 10/7 of him falling for lies, arguing with me, and then internalizing those lies even harder because his comrades say so + arguing with people you love is painful. I know if I cut him off he's at greater risk of only digging himself deeper into these hateful ideas, but if I keep this bs in my life I'm going to have a head full of grey next passover.
How did you (other olim with antizionist family) manage to stay sane when you made aliyah? Did you have to cut them off or did you being an Israeli citizen change their perspective?
I hope theres a story in the Talmud somewhere where this story already played out, but if not any help is greatly appreciated!