What is the complete water cycle in a st

Feel free to ask me any questions and I’ll do my best to keep this concise but I can be known to ramble and want to make sure I cover some things I haven’t seen talked about before.
Scheduling: Got new insurance in January. Discovered the insurance covers female sterilization at 100% so I went on the doctor list here, did some research, and picked out my doctor. Called mid January to book, had my consult end of February, surgery was May 15th (last Wednesday).
Consult: I was worried because I’ve heard so much about people getting rejected but the entire time my doctor assured me this was my decision to make and she just wanted to make sure I’d thought about every consequence. I was honest with her that while I was positive this is what I wanted I originally had planned to wait until I was in my 30s to make sure but due to the current political climate I felt I didn’t have the luxury of waiting. I was concerned if I didn’t get this done pre election I’d never be able to or I’d have to travel to get it done. She approved me and we had planned to do a Pap smear while I was there but their computer system crashed so we decided to combine it with the surgery and just do it while I was under.
Pre procedure: Pre-op stuff was super normal. Got a call with instructions around a week out. I can go into more details if anyone has questions but the big thing for me was I was told to not smoke 24 hrs prior and I’ve been trying to quit vaping so I decided to throw out my vape 24 hrs prior to the procedure. The lead up to the surgery was terrible and I regret quitting so close to it because it meant I could drink alcohol or caffeine to try and distract myself since those were also banned so close. But post surgery with me being high on oxy the first few days I completely made it through the worst part of quitting without any problems. I’m only a week clean but highly recommend using surgery to quit addictions it’s a great time to utilize your body being distracted by other stuff.
Surgery: everyone at the hospital was great and nobody tried to change my mind. My surgeon did say I could change my mind up until I was put under and that nobody would be mad. I assured her I was totally hyped and ready to go and that was that. I’ve never had a surgery before so I wasn’t sure how I’d react to anesthesia but I woke up before theyd even finished rolling me into post op. I heard the nurse rolling me in talking about her dog and just was instantly awake and asking her about her pupper. I think I scared her slightly because I was just immediately coherent and mostly just really annoyed because my throat hurt and my mouth was dry. She gave me water and asked if I wanted something for nausea. I didn’t feel any nausea but said yes just in case and I’m glad I did because shortly after she gave it to me I got super nauseous. It kicked in pretty quick and I didn’t throw up so a win. When I first woke up my pain was around a 3 but was quickly ramping up so they gave me a 5mg oxycodone. It took a bit for it to kick in but once it did it completely wiped out my pain. I was able to get discharged within an hour of waking up because I immediately was eating and drinking and was able to get up and walk on my own and go pee which checked all their boxes.
Recovery: I was given 8 oxycodone 5mg and then told to pick up Tylenol, ibuprofen, and stool softener. Alternate the Tylenol and ibuprofen so I’m taking something every 3 hrs and then oxy as needed. I mostly used the oxy to sleep as every muscle in my body felt like I’d run a marathon starting day 2. My back was extremely sore and my skin was tender EVERYWHERE. Also thanks to doing the Pap smear while I was under my vag was sore as fuck too. I must’ve bit my lip while I was under because my lip was all swollen and the absolute worse pain I was feeling was how sore my throat was from the breathing tube. My throat is still sore, back still hurts, muscles are still tender as fuck, but I’m fully off oxy and overall feel fine. I haven’t had a good bowel movement yet so hoping for that soon but I’ll be going back to work tomorrow and overall this surgery recovery hasn’t been any worse than being sick from the flu or something.
Also make sure you have plenty of comfy loose dresses. You will want the comfiest of lounge wear during this recovery. I have my post op this Friday but I’m so happy to finally have this done. It’s a giant weight off my shoulder.

UK based.
Thirteenth post in my accountability series. Using this as a progress diary since startihg my weight loss journey on 12th Feb 2024.
Started the week at 154.2 (down 1.6lbs from) 155.8 the week before.
Now this has been an interesting week to say the least. With 3 weeks left on MJ (I can’t afford to do any longer) I wanted to push the boundaries a little. I wanted to see what wiggle room I have.
I’ve made some real changes with walking, drinking water and portion size, to the point that my body water % is up 3% since making my health a priority, and my average daily steps has doubled. Now this isn’t to say I’m not going to continue with these great habits, but I wanted to see how affected I’d be if I didn’t do these things consistently.
This week I switched out some of my water for lightly flavoured sparkling water on occasion (think appletiser) and had a glass or two of Prosecco a few weeks after work with my husband (had a few days of work and was feeling a lot more chilled than usual).
Brother in law stayed over from Wednesday to Friday. Even though he’s very health conscious, I think his presence threw things off food wise in the house. Husband was more keen to get takeaway and snacks. It’s not necessarily because bro in law wants them, but I think husband feels happy and at peace when he’s around and fully relaxes. I love that, but not necessarily the food effect. I stayed eating the way I have but I had a KFC drum stick and some small chips (very delicious treat, but definitely more than enough).
Husband has been very congratulatory about my weight loss. I wanted us to go through this together as we were both unhealthy, overweight and have been through the rigmaroles of weight loss countless times, but he wasn’t ready. After bro in law left on Friday, and seeing my progress husband spoke to me about being interested in MJ. I’m excited for him if it’s a step he chooses to take.
We had Mexican for dinner on Friday after dropping our little one off at my parents house. I stuck to two appetisers which were protein and salad heavy and seasoned with lime for extra flavour. Delicious. What a relief it is to eat with my stomach instead of my eyes. I’m no longer exhausted thinking about food, I know how much will satisfy me and I don’t go beyond that, because why would I?
Saturday morning rolled round. Husband and I were busy and some friends very kindly offered to look after our dog overnight. We dropped him off and they were very surprised and congratulatory about my weight loss. We see them every few weeks but now the weather is changing, I’m not bundled in jumpers like usual and I guess my weight loss really showed. I didn’t really know what to say! I think I’m almost getting a little embarrassed now. I think I need to work on saying thank you, and knowing that that’s a full and complete sentence. Baby steps with that I guess.
On Saturday afternoon I had a big brunch that was booked from a few months ago and lovely fried rice dish and unlimited Prosecco / woo woo drinks for a few hours. I happily ate my portion of food, taking my time to chew eat and enjoy, rather than wolfing it down like I used to. The flavour was delicious and I really enjoyed it and had time to think about how much I was enjoying it. It’s wild that I didn’t do this before.
Now the drinks… I read a lot on Reddit and otherwise about the averse side effects people have even after a couple of light alcoholic drinks, so I’ve always been cautious about have 0-1 drinks if I do have a drink with MJ. Hand on heart, I lost count after 6 Proseccos, and had a few more in the pub afterwards. I had a small glass of water between drinks when I could remember. I was fully expecting to throw up or have a terrible tummy, but I write this now at 6:47am on a Sunday morning, waking up happy and well rested without even a whiff of a hangover, ready to resume my regular schedule (MJ shot, walk, healthy eating). I think I had a lucky escape, but it definitely isn’t something I’m in a rush to repeat. But a part of me wonders if I’m ok because of all the changes I’ve made. This is now a little blip rather than the norm.
I’m not really sure what my update is about today other than surprise. My son is with his grandparents for the weekend, and I guess I had a big relax. But I’m ready to get back to normal. It’s so interesting how aware I am of how my diet has changed. This would be something I could mindlessly do on a Friday and Saturday without thinking before. It wouldn’t have been an active choice.
Looking in the mirror, I like what I see and how I feel. I’ve readjusted my goal weight again since I feel I look good now (and looking good on the inside according to my stats), so would be happy with the top of the range. I’m really focussed on body recomposition and have started a home programme of 20 minutes of exercise after the little one has gone to bed.
As I expected, there’s nothing interesting to report stat wise, but I enjoyed the week.
SW: 184.4 lbs CW: 153.1 lbs WoW Loss: 1.1 lbs GW: 145-150 with tone/muscle 💪🏾
SW fat percentage: 36% why Last Week fat percentage: 31.4% CW fat percentage: 30.8%
SW visceral fat: 11 Last week visceral fat: 7 CW visceral fat: 7
SW metabolic age: 38 Last week metabolic age: 34 CW metabolic age: 34
Ready for next week ✨

I’ve put myself in a dumpster fire and I’m circling the drain to failing my classes if I don’t pull myself together. Like by tonight.
I naturally cycled to depression a few weeks ago I think. Which would otherwise be a walk in the park with my meds and normal circumstances, but it’s getting completely FUCKED by how much I’m struggling to cope with University. Trying to work through my bad coping habits/mechanisms, ADHD and personal issues at the same time. I feel like a husk with a numb sense of self. I haven’t felt this bad in a long time.
My sleep is terrible, everything’s a mess and I have no one to blame but myself. And here I am here crying to reddit.
I’ve already re-done classes last yr because I was going through medication changes and I’ve burned through the accomodations I’ve got. It’s so simple, I just have to sit and hit keys on my laptop.
If I can just be kind to myself I could fix this. Why is that so hard?
Sorry, I’m doing exactly what I shouldn’t be doing with my time and having a cry for help in the wrong place. I’m sorry. Every inch of my being is clawing at me to shut everything out and ignore it. But then I’ll just end up at a dead end in my bedroom forever. So I just… dissociate ig.

my boyfriend has two cats. one has chronic vomiting where he will throw up consistently for a week or two & then he’ll be fine. this has been going on for a while. we’ve made multiple calls to vets and they never believe that it warrants a visit but i feel like i’ve become more worried about it as time goes on.
the first piece of advice they gave us was to give him something to ease hairballs. we tried this and it helped a little bit but not much. hairballs only are a small percentage of what he throws up. the second thing they told us to do was monitor how fast he is eating. he does eat pretty fast which is what we thought could be the main cause of his vomiting. i don’t know why this would cause vomiting sometimes but not other times. we just bought a slow feeder to try and see how it will improve it. the third thing they told us to do is see if it increases/decreases with different food. we’ve switched the food a few times. he used to be on the iams hairball control and then we switched to the iams food for skin/digestion and we mixed a little bit of these with a broth topper for extra water. now we have switched to completely wet food and are watching if this helps. every food seems like it helps and then in a couple weeks he’s throwing up again.
an important thing to note is his behavior has not really changed. he’s not more lethargic or losing weight. he also doesn’t have diarrhea from what i’ve seen when cleaning the box. he just gets a little clingy after throwing up but that’s about all. we have an appointment next month (soonest the vet had) for a check-up and shots. what tests do you think i should ask them to run to diagnose the vomiting? i really just feel bad for him :/ both of us have never had cats before so when they told us this is normal we didn’t question it until we did more research.

I am a 65 year old transgender lady just beginning my transition. To rehash what I have written in the past a little. I knew that I was a girl when I was 5, though from 5 to 10 I thought that I was the only one like me and then found out there were others like me, like Jan Morris, Christine Jorgensen and others. I should have transitioned when I was 18 but if I had even attempted it my father and brothers would have severely harmed or killed me.
From age 18 I hated me, I ran from me I cursed me, I fought me, I got married, fathered 4 children all so that I could escape being a transgender woman.
28 years ago when I was 37, I attempted suicide while at a teacher conference in Spokane because I no longer could stand the pain for me and for my family. While the conference was going on and I was the only one on a bridge above Spokane Falls I climbed over the wall of the bridge and was a skip away from dropping into the water away from the crest above the Falls. I don’t know what kept me from completing the act.
I have seen 4 therapists, none of them good. About 2 months ago I once again reached the end of my rope. The image in the mirror which I hated was now accusing me of being the worst kind of person a dishonest one. I had narrowed down how I would do it to 3 ways and would have made the decision with in a week or so later
I found a therapist a good one who is teaching me to love the woman I am, the best part of me but still i was considering taking my life …….. but the posts I read here combined with the help that my therapist is giving me has made a real difference. Each of you that post here,have helped me more than I can share and for the first time in my life I feel hope. I am in tears as I write this.
Gratefully forever Kimmi

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“That just became a long term goal,” Thomas mutters to himself. “Foundation must have cracked letting the swamp in. This place is pretty old. I’ll need some form of canoe to get me across, or a way to patch the crack and bail it out.”
Heading back upstairs, he continues pondering what he can do to be able to explore the basement. His thoughts are abruptly interrupted by a rustling noise behind him. He spins around, heart pounding, and sees Katrina standing in the doorway, her bow in hand and a determined look on her face. The last time he saw her, she had been intent on killing him.
“What are you doing here, Thomas?” she demands, her voice sharp and unwavering. “I thought you were dead.”
Thomas instinctively steps back, his mind racing to find a way to diffuse the tension. “Katrina, wait. I’m not here to cause trouble. I just—”
“Save it,” she snaps, taking a step forward. “You ran away, and now you’re hiding out here? Why?”
Thomas raises his hands defensively. “I’m not hiding. I’m just… trying to survive. To find some peace. I didn’t mean to cause any harm.”
Katrina narrows her eyes, her grip tightening on the bow. “You think you can just run away and live in peace while the rest of us struggle? That’s not how it works.”
She begins to walk towards him, “Besides, stealing kid’s lunches and replacing it with pemmican, that sounds familiar. You are nothing but a moocher, and I am here to end that!”
Readying her bow, Thomas interrupts her. “Wait, I know I am not capable of doing much, just make this quick, and don’t hurt this building. If I cannot spread what’s in here, maybe someone else willing can.”
“You would rather die than see this old shack destroyed?” Katrina questions, lowering her bow slightly. “Why, what’s so important in here that you would like to keep, like so many things you have abandoned?”
“Knowledge. Pure knowledge from the time before. It has only been a few weeks, but the amount of information I picked up, I could rebuild the entire village structure to last decades, if not longer. This building still stands even though no one has lived in it for probably a century. I also found books-”
“Books!” Katrina exclaims, distainfully, spitting on the floor. “Look Thomas, I am giving you one last try before I end this all right here right now. But I don’t want to hear anything else about new found knowledge from the slop of the society that came before us. We are where we are right now because they are gone. It collapsed. Nathaniel has many tales of roving bands in the last days leading to our tribes today. I don’t want to hear more about ‘improving lives for all’ or ‘The past has the answers to the future’ as the only major contribution they have made is die.”
“No! I will not abandon the sole reason for my argument. Yes their society fell, but did you know they had running water inside their places! Completely controlled too. It came from underground, where I do not know. But think for a moment! No more outhouses! Also, no running to the creek for water. Not even need to go to a centralized place to get water, it is just there where and when you need it!”
Katrina is not impressed, she begins pulling back her bowstring, ready to end this all.
Getting desperate, Thomas pulls out his last piece of knowledge that may save him and this building: “Also, the only reason I was able to walk out of the village is because of books! I learned how to stand for a fight through a book on fighting called ‘Intro to Martial Arts’! People shut up pretty quick when I was able to stand. They started laughing when I tried using the weapon, which was the next chapter!”
“Fighting styles? As in more than one?” Katrina says lowering her bow yet again.
“Y-yes!” Thomas stammers, sighing as he is not shot yet.
“Show me this ‘book’ and I’ll see if it is worthy of this building and your life.
“Sure! It’s upstairs.”
“Ah ah ah, you are not going to grab it, I will. Where is it?”
“Why are you making this any harder? The stairwell is next on my list to fix, and I had to map out where it is safe to stand! Besides, you saw how well I can handle any weapon, am I really a threat? What could I get that would actually threaten you?”
Katrina narrows her eyes, pauses for a bit, and responds “Fine, but one wrong move and fwoop, bye bye.” She says in a singsong voice.
“I know. I know…”
After carefully getting upstairs and getting the book, he presents it to Katrina. “Just be careful with it, it is old”
“Yeah yeah, old paper mush that will somehow change the village. Not my first rodeo with you saying this.”
Flipping through, Katrina starts out doubting the books veracity, then sees a few images of various stances, weapons, and backgrounds of people. Slowly, she realizes this is the real thing, but with one major flaw.
“It’s mostly words! I can’t read! How is this to be of any use to me!”
“Well, it just so happens that you are standing in front of one of 2 people in the village that can read, and is also not in a mystical daze half the time.”
“Fine, you get to live, for now. Based on what this book shows, you read it to me, I learn it, and then we see if you are worth keeping. I’ll bring out some food for my little reader, and we’ll go from there”
Katrina then vanishes, leaving the book where she stood. With the uneasy alliance made, Thomas now begins reading in earnest to try and remember the meaning of all the new words he’ll have to explain
Patreon as someone asked for it https://www.patreon.com/CollinBarker

I’ve just learned of this interesting sword via a Facebook post - this thing has been doing the rounds for several years now. The source is an article at online magazine 'La Brujula Verde' entitled 'The sword embedded in the rock of the precipice of Rocamadour for 9 centuries' written by Guillermo Carvajal in Spanish in 2016, then published in 2019 in English, which seems to be what prompted it to go 'viral' to some extent. I'm a few years late but still hoping to nip this one in the bud as far as posting something that the curious can easily find if they care to look. I would link an image of the sword but all images appear on pages with associated bad history and the rules say not to link to that. Anyway...
I saw several people lamenting that the Cluny Museum had taken this treasure down and put it in a museum. For one thing, if a piece of ferrous metal had truly survived 900 years in an exposed rock crevice (the more famous ‘sword in the stone’ at Montesiepi Chapel was at least protected from the elements), it certainly would have required salvage and preservation. However, what the article’s author failed to bother to find out is that this thing was completely fake in the first place, put there to attract tourists (Barber, Arthurian Swords I, Arthurian Literature XXXV, Volume 35, p.14):

Tourists can see [Durendal] fixed in the cliff face above the doorway to the shrine of the Virgin at Rocamadour; but this is a relatively modern feature and the sword is a nondescript nineteenth-century decorative sword of poor workmanship. In 1787 or 1788, a local lord, the Vicomte d'Anterroches, bullied the canons at Rocamadour into agreeing to present the sword then shown to visitors as Durendal - a coarse short dagger, possibly Bronze Age to the prince de Condé, whose collection of antiquities was dispersed at the Revolution. At some point a story was created that Henry the Young King had stolen the original sword when he came to Rocamadour during his rebellion against his father in 1183, but the first printed record of this is in the work of a late nineteenth-century English historian. There is no known connection between Roland and Rocamadour, and even the origins of the idea that Durendal might have been at the shrine are totally obscure.

Barber’s reference for the sword being fake is none other than the Cluny Museum itself, where the now-relic fake ended up (L'épée: usages, mythes et symboles : Paris, Musée de Cluny--Musée national du Moyen Âge, 28 avril-26 septembre 2011, p.97). The Cluny didn’t acquire it to preserve some 900-year-old treasure, they took it because of its significance as an example of how swords are used symbolically. Notably, as they say, pregnant women in the early 20th century would ask that particular fake sword for favours for their unborn children. Now, there has to have been an earlier sword there because Alexis de Valon noted in 1851 that;

...in Rocamadour and its environs, local people revered Durandal, believing that both it and its modern substitute could make childless women conceive.

(Harry Redman, Jr. 1991. The Roland Legend in Nineteenth Century French Literature, University Press of Kentucky, p.104).
Despite Barber’s comment about unknown origins of the Rocamadour 'Durendal' we do in fact know these, back to the early 17th century at least and summarised by Redman as follows:

Writing in 1620, Scipion Dupleix stated that Roland had been interred at St. Romain's and that, according to tradition, his sword had been placed at his head and his horn at his feet. Later, he added, the sword was taken to Rocamadour, while the horn was deposited in St. Seurin's. Mérimée, Inspecteur Général des Monuments Historiques, was in an excellent position to know where such things ought to be, and he thought the sword was still at Rocamadour. Frédéric Mistral was convinced of it. Mérimée's friend Alexis de Valon was not so sure and held that it had been removed from Rocamadour at the time of the French Revolution and replaced by another one not at all resembling it. Prince Lucien had the sword, along with its owner, interred at Roncevaux. For Peyrat, Roland, his sword, and his horn were all buried where the paladin was struck down. Cervantes, we recall, believed that the sword was in the Madrid museum where Quinet claimed to have seen it.

(Harry Redman, Jr. 1991. The Roland Legend in Nineteenth Century French Literature, University Press of Kentucky, p.213). Lots more in that article on the background to a claimed Durendal at Rocamadour prior to the insertion of the fake removed in 2011 (and since replaced by a new fake!).
Note that the sword referenced by Cervantes is an entirely different one in the Real Armería de Madrid, which was never claimed to reside at Rocamadour. So we have two competing 'surviving' Durendals, neither of which are even period, much less anything to do with Roland. This is typical of ‘surviving’ heroic swords which are mostly contemporary to the time when they are first claimed to be original. There's every chance that the Rocamadour sword is a replacement for something much older. Whether any sword once in that rock face dated to Roland's era or could even have been his, we will never know. I suspect it originated as a classic ecceliastical fundraising effort, like Arthur and Guinevere's grave at Glastonbury Abbey. Regardless, the claim at hand is about the sword removed in 2011, and we can be certain that the this was definitively a fake, itself now replaced by a sword that will likely also be assumed as real in future. And if you've been to Rocamadour since 2011, the sword you saw is brand new.
Sources - inline with text/linked.

My ex girlfriend and I were together for 2 years and 4 months. I was his fifth boyfriend while she was my first official girlfriend (since my 2nd year h/s fling isn't included).
To give a context, I met her when she was still in a relationship with here 4th bf, tho it was about to end because she had issues against the man. my ex and I started as friends, via chat and our relationship progressed too fast that after a week, I decided to admit my feelingsfor her - with the intention to just confess then move on. But No, she also admitted about her feelings. Of course, since she was still in a relationship at that time (tho they in a cool off) we decided to stop our conversation. Unfortunately we can't. We were so attached and emotionally invested in each other that we just can't let go. My point here is that, right from the start we knew that there was something unexplainably unique about our relationship. To the point that I already believed that there is indeed destiny.
However, our relationship was not as good as it seem to others. We had so many issues, some were unresloved. But the worst (I guess) was my anger issues. I easily get disappointed to persons close to me, because I expect them to understand and know me, hence, I tend to say harsh things, yelling at people around me - an attitude which I got from my own family (of course, I'm not blaming them, but just to give a context). Nevertheless, please do note that I don't hurt people physically. For so many times she asked me to change it or else she might leave. I did promise her that I'll change, I made effort to change, and I know and she knew that I made some progress. However, I couldn't completely get rid of it, I still have that anger issues whereas I still lash out when I cannot anymore control my emotions. No matter how hard I try to change, still it seems that it's a part of me, and I guess I need pychological help.
The last time that I lashed out to her was April 6, but I was able to say sorry and make it up to her (I thought I did). However, she broke up with me at the midnight of April 16th, two two days after our monthsary: She asked me if I'll be upset if she woulf have to breakup with me. That time, I realized that maybe I just had to giver her some space because I thought that we just needed SOME time apart (because we've done it before and we even broke up for a week). But the last time was different. We broke up in good terms but after a few days she started to spite me, and even started talking with other men. (Twas too fast, I believe).
So I decided to talk to her in person (because we broke up in chat because I can't see her during those time - but also note that distance was never an issue here...) and when we met, I begged her to come back. CryingI pleaded for several times, but each time she would say no - that her decision is final. Explaining that even her friendswould look down on her if she would still enter into a relationship with me, and even her mother was already upset to me (I heard it on the phone when she called my ex while we were talking). And most of all, she said that she can't anymore wait for my growth/change. We cried. But still we had amake out and hugged each other. She even told me how she loved me so much; "but I have to choose myself this time" she said.
Now, it's been a month since our breakup. But it's still so fresh for me. I still cry even today. I'm so attached to her and dependent that I don't know how to live without her. I love her so much despite hurting her emotionally. I've sworn to myself that if ever I'll be given a chance to hsve her back, I'll never mess it up again. I know I'm do stupid for doing it too late. But you know, I still hsve this hope in me, that although her words tell that it's over, yet her actions would somehow show the contrary for many reasons, such as: 1. She still keeps all the things I gave her and she asked me to keep also some of her things like her guitar (which she said would be of more use to me than her), and she asked me to keep our picture in a frame which she used to place on her desk (because she said she would just get hurt by looking at it). 2. I told her when we met that I'll be waiting for her, so long as she doesn't have a boyfriend yet, and her reply: "please don't pressure me". If I really do not anymore have the chance, she could've instead told me not to wait anymore. 3. Although she posts and reposts about relationship problems with men - and at the same time about her current happenings with a man, which they are now in a talking stage - she still get to look at my stories, posts, and I even made a playlist on spotify wherein I invited her to join and she accepted. AND: she is used in posting her thoughts and rants about our relationship problems in Twitter, but lately ever since I started sharing my sentiments also in Threads, she also did the same! She is now posting in Threads, not anymore in Twitter - and I know so that I'll het hurt, and at the same time I'll get to know (or st least, have an idea) about her current life happenings.
4.Also, she still asked me to attend her graduation.

1. Lastly, in EVERY letter she wrote to me, she told me about how much she loves me (always / forever) and how much she looks forward to marry me. I still hold on to that until now. Because of thise words and actions she have shown, I am still hoping that she will return.

Damn, I love that girl so much that I am willing to give up anything for her (even though I find it too hard to change my attitude despite my serious efforts). But.. but, I badly want to change, I just don't know how I'll do it successfully. I promised myself that she will be the last girl I will ever lov in my life. After all, I don't think there is still love left to give to another when I gave it all to her.
Please, I need your opinions. So my questions are: 1. Is it still possible to fix our broken relationship? 2. If yes, what should I do, provided that she asked me not to contact her for a while? (No specific time frame was provided). 3. My guts tell me that I have to do something or else I'll lose her entirely since she's starting to tall to other men (tho according to her are just for fun), however, the fact that she told me not to have contact with her temporarily, I'm stumped whether I should talk to her and when should I.
Thank you, I hope you'll have the patience and kindess to read this.

Hi everyone,
I've been exploring Catholicism for almost 9 months, after an experience I had when I was ill. I am from a completely irreligious background so have been doing my best to study the Bible, the church fathers, and the catechism.
I am debating starting RCIA this year, but I'm running into some issues, and could use some advice:
1) I'm getting married right in the middle of the 'cycle,' and I'm concerned that this might mean my (natural - neither myself or my partner are baptised) marriage will be invalid because I'm taking steps to full conversion and will be technically living as a Catholic as much as I can during this period.
2) Speaking of my fiancé, we have been together for 12 years and are each other's first loves. As neither of us were particularly religious for much of our relationship, we have lived together as a couple, with all that entails, for years. He is from a Muslim background and whenever children were discussed, due to my apathy towards religion, we decided we would raise them with a mix of Muslim and (admittedly secularised) Christian tradition.
If I were to get my marriage convalidated after Baptism, I know that I will have to promise to raise any children Catholic. Unfortunately, that hasn't been in our plans for many years, and whilst I could take any theoretical future children to Mass, I believe infant Baptism would be out of the question. I can't bring myself to promise something during Convalidation that I wouldn't be able to keep.
My fiancé has been incredibly supportive during my faith journey, but the looming prospect of future children is making me worry. The teachings around birth control are also a sticking issue; most Catholics I know in real life are ambivalent to this teaching (and so is my fiancé - he doesn't agree with it). I just worry I'll be only able to receive the Eucharist once (after baptism), and the rest of my life I'll be either confessing using birth control, or shying away from the confession booth put of shame.
I really don't know what to do. I don't feel worthy enough to even sign up for RCIA. I feel like whatever I do, I will end up being a bad Catholic.

I don't know what to really tag this or how to make a post on here but I need help/advice.
(F/15) don't know if that's necessarily info.
Yesterday I pretty much ate like crap, I had a small (???) Pizza to myself and a veggie burger in the afternoon with literally less than 15 fries. I also wanted to try a dumb experiment I saw on YouTube and had some baking power (1/2 tsp in the morning and 1 small actually spoon full before going to bed around 7pm) and lemon water (both times). The thing is, I'm having the symptoms that come along with it (the runs and nausea) but I'm about to go on my cycle and these are also some symptoms I experience with it, along with that, I only had around 4-6 hours of sleep. Usually when I lack like everyone else I'm nauseous but I never vomit.
I don't think it's serious to the point in need to call 911 or tell my parents (I don't want them finding out because I'm shamefully old enough to know better not to have eaten the baking powder in the first place).

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Edited by WaveOfWire
- - - - -
Two days… It had been two days that Tracy had gone to sleep while Harrison was working, only to come back in the morning to see him still in the workshop. She knew he was damn productive, sure, but that really couldn’t be healthy. Apparently, it had something to do with the weird bowl of orange… soup… that Cera gave him. No way was it just caffeine; any amount of the stuff would have been filtered out of his system by now. He mentioned a tingling feeling too…
Damn, she did not know enough about drugs to even start assuming what that massive alien had Harrison fucked up on. At least the scanner said he was ‘fine’—if you ignore the other glaring issues the machine brought up. Plus, he said he didn’t mind it. Either way, he managed to complete the weaving component and a few other electrical backbones of the fabricator last night, so the project was practically done, and after seeing the engineer work himself half to death, she was dead-set on finishing it.
She was currently tits-deep into the upper manufacturing portion of the towering machine. It took a tall step-stool—on top of the nearby desk—for her to push her small shoulders through the even smaller access panels high on the everything-printer. It was difficult to fit her torso in, but she managed, holding a flashlight between her teeth as she fiddled with a stubborn series of mechanical ‘hands.’ Nothing new. The situation reminded her of the ‘shop back on Mars; it had the same ever-present scent of copper and industrial sealant. All that was missing was her dad’s ancient tunes blasting through some shitty speakers… Hold on…
The modular component in her grip was successfully attached with a resonating thock. Tracy squirmed out of the dim wire-filled crevice, trying her best to not rip her only tank-top on any bolts or corners, and getting a face-full of the bright flood-lights illuminating the workshop. She scowled and blocked out the searing light with a hand, but she was a bit too late to avoid going half-blind.
“Are the mechanical manipulators in?” Harrison grunted, poking his head out underneath the printer’s floor-adjacent maintenance hatch. She looked down at him as she tried to blink off the spots in her vision. His hair was messy, barely kept in line by his habit of combing through it with his fingers. The areas around his eyes were dark and sunken… Guess that’s what two all-nighters did to a man. He’d be seeing the hat man or start hallucinating if he didn’t get any sleep soon… but then again, the two of them were so close to finishing the fabricator…
“You bet.” She gave him a thumbs up, slamming the panel cover closed. “Feel free to test it.”
He nodded and slid back underneath the machine. “Gotcha”
She gently stepped off the stool and slid off the side of the desk, stretching herself out. If her piss-poor sitting posture or her tank-top puppies hadn’t already fucked her spine up, bending over backward to build this fabricator sure as hell would. She sat down next to the panel where Harrison resided, resting her back against the fabrication tower. Her excited voice broke the muffled noises of the engineer’s work. “So… Harrison?”
“Hmm—”
“—Mind if I play some music?”
The sounds from the hatch stopped, followed by his muffled, shocked tone echoing from beneath the fabricator. “You have music!?”
She smirked at seeing the expression on his face when his head popped out again. “I sure do… Did you seriously not download any to your data pad?”
He slipped out from beneath the fabricator fully, huffing as he took a knee beside her. The scent of melded rubber, wire, and his liquid labor reached her nose not-so-unpleasantly. “You would not believe how much of a pain it is to repair an entire barracks without it… So, yeah, I didn’t.”
“Sooooooooo, whatcha wanna listen to? I’ve got almost everything on here—besides the super niche, of course.” She pulled her data pad out, swiping to the massive music folder
“You wouldn’t like the kinda music I listen to; It’s ancient.”
She gave him a lighthearted, annoyed glare. “Welcome to the club… Now what’ll it be?”
“It’s Old Earth kind of ancient… but alright” He looked up at the ceiling in thought, lips pursed. “Do you have anything from Styx or Sweet?”
She stared at him incredulously, her smirk turning into a fully-fledged smile. “Oh my God. You are an absolute dork! You actually listen to Golden Age music?”
His brows raised, accusatory. “And you somehow know exactly who those bands were and what age of Old Earth music they came from?”
She smugly leaned in closer. “That’s because I’m just as much of a nerd with that kinda music as you apparently are.” She quickly looked upward, addressing the workshop AI. “Sebas, connect nearby speakers to my data pad’s audio.” Tracy elbowed the engineer lightly as the PA system chirped its affirmation. “Now, Mr. Golden Age music, which albums do ya want me to queue up?”
- - - - -
The two of them listened to music for hours, tossing on songs they liked as they came to mind while they worked. Harrison had a ton of recommendations that spanned all over the Golden Ages and some twenty-first century classics. She didn’t even know half of them, but she was vibing either way, adding on her own taste by intermingling some older rock tracks and newer electronic beats. The playlist was steadily built up as the day went on. Thank God her dad showed her a vast array of tunes; she might not have been able to keep up with the engineer if her old man hadn't.
It made the work go by so fast, their conversations blurring as they jumped from topic to topic. They discussed whatever came to mind—old hobbies, old jobs, and old interests. A lot was left behind in Sol… At least she knew that the only other human on the planet was more interesting than a soulless workaholic. It turned out that he was a pretty big history buff, and he apparently read a lot about the colonization of the Sol system and the various wars of independence thereafter. Curious, she asked where the interest stemmed from, and he explained that his grandfather was an admiral in the Slavic-Europan deep-ice submarine fleet, which explained how Harrison’s mother was able to afford to immigrate to Mars from Europa.
He could also play an acoustic guitar, and, unfortunately for Tracy, he wasn’t even the slightest bit interested in printing one out, citing that it was a waste of time and material that would be better used elsewhere. That didn’t stop her from writing a note on her data pad to do so later, though. She hadn’t seen someone play one of those in years—the last time was probably in some old music video from the early twenty-second century. What a shame. She would have liked to hear some of the Europan songs his grandmother taught him.
On the bright side, the man seemed to take an interest in her odd hobbies. He brought up the folder of 3D models that she accidentally uploaded to the inter-module system and asked where she got the inspiration for what was in it. Boy, was he not ready for her ‘WarHalberd40k’ lore dump. Props to the guy for not standing up and leaving the workshop throughout her rambling. He even asked questions about the different factions and their weapons, which she was more than happy to talk about.
She also ended up going over the other franchises and hobbies she was interested in, such as robotics and the like. The only interruptions to their chat were the occasional Akula or Craftsman asking for insight regarding the various tasks he had allotted to them, or Shar coming in to check up on Harrison between guard shifts.
The new dynamic of the group was pretty interesting, to say the least. Tracy hadn’t been out to interact with the whole lot of Malkrin, but she definitely noticed how they treated the engineer. They’d started to look up to him in a way ever since he started showing off technology. In a little over two days, the man had shown them that he could provide the materials for a brick house, fine clothing—especially by the alien’s standards—armor, and delicious food. That wasn’t even mentioning the other benefits the technician heard a few of the ‘banished’ talking about over their meals: heating, electric lights, and other assorted machines.
She’d be feeling pretty happy about herself if she was in his position, having so many look up to him and be grateful at the same time. He seemed to view it a lot more robotically, however, only striving to get the basics done. Luckily for him, his basics were their luxury.
That wasn’t all there was to the topic; the engineer lamented about how the colony was going through food just as quickly as materials. The meals weren’t the direct issue he had, more that he had to start focusing on long-term resource harvesting rather than directly preparing for a literal horde of monsters—which wasn’t exactly ideal. It was a good thing that they just so happened to take on an influx of Malkrin then…
Either way, they finally finished the ‘totally legal modification’ for the fabricator, meaning they could at least partially address the latter half of his worries. The whole process of ripping out an old printer and replacing the parts for a new one felt a lot easier than she imagined… even if it took her at least forty-eight hours to complete it… with help from Harrison. Maybe that was why it felt so easy… She supposed the colony overseers didn’t choose the man for no reason, so his skills made sense.
“So… what do we want to print out first?” Tracy questioned, having finished testing the last major component.
The engineer stretched his arms up into the air and rotated his shoulders, then pulled back the desk’s chair and took a seat. “I’ve had just one thing in mind since the start of this whole project.”
Her brows raised in a mix of excitement and curiosity. She leaned forward, looking at the computer monitor from over his shoulder. “Oh? What’s that, then?”
A smirk formed along his cheek, the computer mouse rapidly clicking through the blueprint folder. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about what kind of firearm we need since I started dabbling in belt-fed weapon systems.” He opened one final file, a short loading bar preceding the exploded assembly view of… “An M2 Browning machine gun. It’s more than powerful enough to kill in one shot, while also being capable of fully-automatic fire, with a capacity of however many rounds we want in a belt-box.”
“Uh…huh…” She gave a skeptical nod and took a step back, not exactly sold on the idea. “It looks ancient. It’s kinetic, right? Why aren’t we using energy-based weapons? Don’t we have a gunpowder shortage coming up?”
He moved his chair off to the side to look back at her. “We just can’t; Simple as. We’ll need who knows how many more AI cores before we can get started on that level of equipment, Trace,” he huffed, returning his gaze to the specifications of the firearm. “This isn’t the most ‘modern’ weapon we can make, but its twenty-first century counterpart helps with an improved design… somewhat. And, as I said before, it should be more than capable of killing a bug in one shot, so Shar can just tap-fire it to save ammunition.”
Her head tilted quizzically. “Shar?”
“Yup,” he returned confidently. “It’s the perfect weapon for her.”
She raised a brow. “How so?”
He held his hand up, counting his reasons on his fingers. “She’s always on the front line with a shield, she can absolutely handle the weight and recoil, her four arms make reloading it simple, plus she’ll need something with range and power that isn’t a spear. So, why not? And, if for some reason, she doesn’t want to use it, we can just convert it into a turret—which is something I was planning on doing anyways with however more M2s we print out later.”
“I doubt she’ll say no to any gun you give her,” Tracy chuckled while shaking her head, inadvertently causing her bangs to cover her eyes.
“Fair enough,” he conceded with a bob of his head. “What do you think, then? What kinda weapons do you have in mind?”
She reapplied her goggles into an impromptu hairband, feeling a smirk cross her face. “Thought you’d never ask. What purpose do we need these guns to fulfill? Hordes I’m guessing?”
“That’s the idea, yeah. That doesn’t mean they all need to be machine guns, though.” He tapped the belt-fed shotgun beside him.
“Well, lemme see what we’re working with first.” She suddenly stepped forward, leaning over Harrison’s seat to access the keyboard and mouse. Her arms briefly rubbed against him, forcing him to roll his chair backward. She suppressed a giggle at seeing his incredulous frown.
Her eyes quickly traced the hundreds of individual files, clicking through all sorts of folders, each arranged from pre-twenty-first century ‘antiques,’ to more modern iterations of kinetics and particle weaponry. There was… a lot on there—almost too much to reasonably comb through. Why? Did the colony overseers just say ‘fuck it’ and put whatever they could find on here? Were they expecting the pioneers to make a museum of everything?
She sighed, standing up straight and facing Harrison. “Y’know, I’m actually impressed you managed to find that M2-whatever in there…”
He shifted in his seat, resting an elbow on the desk. “Yup, there’s a lot. I’m almost tempted to just make several of those machine guns and just call it a day, but I feel like that’d be too much of a strain on resources, no?”
“I don’t really know enough about how you fight those spider-crab things, or how to get more gunpowder, so… maybe?” She shrugged, biting her cheek in contemplation. “You might just wanna make a few smaller caliber weapons… like, uh… those old kinetic service rifles. If your pump-action shotgun works fine, I’m sure some normal guns would work just fine for now, right?”
He hardily gripped his firearm, hauling it up to his lap. “Depends on what you mean by ‘smaller caliber.’ The whole reason why the KS-23 here works—” he pulled out a massive shell from the ammo belt, displaying it on his palm. “—is because the twenty-three-millimeter round has enough energy transfer to mess up any bug's shell and insides. I’d say the smallest rounds we could use would be point-two-forty-three caliber to get any similar results.”
Brief flickers of grungy orange shells and gnashing teeth marred Tracy’s sight. She forcibly suppressed them, distracting herself with dry humor and a strained laugh. “Guess those fuckers can really take a punch, huh?”
He shook his head somberly. “I couldn’t imagine going up against them without a gun… Anyway, I like your idea of a standard rifle for now. Then, when we have some product lines up, we can go a little more in depth into personal weapons.”
“So are you gonna take one?” She hopped up on the desk, letting her legs swing off the side.
“Don’t think so, no. I’ll stick with my shotty.” The internals of the heavily modified weapon rattled as he held it up and inspected it. “Doesn’t mean I’ll keep it as is. I’m thinking of printing a laser aiming module so I can point-fire it accurately, and maybe a melee-oriented muzzle brake or a lighter chassis to reduce weight… Not sure though.”
She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, her cheeks in her palms. “Melee-oriented? Oooooh, like a chain-sword or something?”
His short chuckle coerced a smirk to her face. “No, not like that. More something to use as a bludgeoning tool. Right before the blood-moon, I ended up getting just as much use out of this shotgun as a hammer than as a… well, a shotgun.”
“That’s pretty fuckin’ metal. So are you just gonna make the barrel into a giant bayonet?”
He nodded. “Not exactly a bayonet, but something more like a door-breaching break.”
A short silence settled on their conversation, the faint sounds of the fabricator’s hum and distant woodwork coming to light. Right, there was an outside world… She’d been too caught up talking to Harrison for however many hours it had been. She wondered how successful the fisherwomen were in collecting, and how things had been for the others working on the wood storage shack. Maybe it was already completed? The sun peered through the cargo bay door, proving that it was only about midday. What else would they work on today?
“Hey,” she ventured.
“Hm?” the engineer hummed, his eyes focused on the monitor beside the technician.
She scooted closer to his keyboard. “What’re we doing after this?”
“What do you mean?”
She leaned backward, propping herself up on two hands. “Project wise; what’s the next big thing?”
“Uhmmm…” he muttered, interacting with the computer for a few more seconds before finally meeting her gaze. “Well, I’ve just allocated the fabricator to print out the M2, three FALs—wood furniture, of course—then there’s the magazines and ammunition, so we’ve got a lot of time to kill. The next big thing is definitely going to be metal procurement, and— Oh, right!” Harrison stopped mid-sentence, reaching into his backpack and pulling out several finger-sized metallic cubes, a sudden fire in his eyes. “Okay, so a while ago, during an encounter with three colossi, Shar and Akula found a cave with some ‘surface’ metal deposits. I took a piece off to analyze, but never got the chance to until last night. Anyway, we don’t have any machines to examine the ore, so I made use of the recycler and broke it down to its baser components.”
She nodded along, seeing where he was going with his explanation. “I’m guessing those shiny cubes are the metals from the ore?”
“Sure is. So, as it turns out, we have a pretty damn close supply of not only iron, but also, zinc, sulfur, and a small amount of cadmium. I talked with Sebas about it and did a little research. We believe it’s something akin to sphalerite, given its composition and looks, which implies it’s a sedimentary exhalative deposit. That means there must have been some volcanic…”
Harrison continued talking about underwater deposits and ancient rock formations, bringing up some theories brought forward by the now 4-AI-core-powered Sebas, delving into the current land mass’ history and possible ore output. A lot of it went over the tradewoman’s head, but she still listened intently… Honestly, she could have listened to the man talk about finding metals for hours. It was sort of like the podcasts she used to listen to while completing colonist training, but even more personal and somehow easier to get lost in…
“…find some other minerals further down like silver, but it also might be an active lava zone. Again, these are all theories and this world could just throw the fundamentals of geology away as it does for physics. Anyway, sorry for going on for so long about that, just thought it’d be important for getting some metals in the future.”
“No, no,” Tracy assured, alleviating him of concern with a wave of her hand. “If there’s anything the colony overseers emphasized, it was farming and mineral acquisition. Don’t worry.” She smiled, pointing a thumb to herself. “I just wanna know how I can help.”
“Actually, I’ve a few things only you can do. I’d like to make use of your impressive drone-making expertise for a few applications, if you don’t mind.”
The task of keeping eye contact slipped into an impossible feat in the span of a singular second, planting a pang of embarrassment on her reddened face, forcing her to inspect her fidgeting hands. “I-I wouldn’t say ‘impressive’… b-but what do you have in mind?”
She could see him raise a brow out of the corner of her vision. “Well, after what you’ve shown me with the reconnaissance flyers, I’d like your help in setting up a more permanent ‘net’ of them to scour the meadow and parts of the nearby forest to look out for any approaching hordes. I don’t want to be snuck up on… again…”
‘Again.’
She noted his small frown and sunken eyes, both a little more exaggerated than they already were. It wasn’t like she’d deny his request, but the pangs of empathy over their shared situation all but solidified her resolve. It was the least she could do. She could help him. She would help him.
The technician exhaled slowly, taking on a more serious and understanding tone than before. “I… can do that. For sure. What else?”
“I appreciate it.” He gave a wane smile. “I’ll help you with whatever you need for the project. For the other drones, I’m thinking about a small exploration vehicle to map out caves around us and mark any minerals, as well as a submersible to look for potassium deposits in the ocean.”
“So… search bots?” She crossed her arms, confidence growing; those were her specialty. “Depending on how long the fabricators take and what kind of base drones are in the blueprint folders, I should be able to get those done in no time. All I need to know are the search cues for potassium and how many drones you want.”
He quickly shuffled a few folders on the computer, turning the monitor for her to see some scientific documents with various images and walls upon walls of text. “There’re plenty of resources for that on here for what to look for, and there’s always Sebas, so feel free to ask him since he can just sort through the data for you anyway. If you can, I’d like it if you could focus on the submersible after the reconnaissance drones.”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll be right on it, then.” She gave him a thumbs up, slipping off his desk and toward her own.
“I’ll bring you lunch in a bit. Imma go check on the others,” he called.
Her stomach grumbled at the mention, her head turning to give him an appreciative smile. “Oh! Thanks!”
\= = = = =
Avian creatures chirped from their perches in the trees nearby. The wind softly rustled red leaves as grass gently gave way to calculated footfalls. A warm sun laid its light on Shar’khee’s neck. It was surprisingly pleasant, were one to take the time to notice. The mainland was a confusing place for the paladin, with its disparate representations of nature contrasting so heavily. Some days were filled with blood and ravenous beasts, while others were left within the domain of simplicity and beauty. She was content to have the latter, yet it felt like a facade veiling the former—a soft exterior covering the maliciously spiked interior. Never could she leave herself to carelessness, no matter how welcoming it might be.
Hence why she worked to ensure the safety of the star-sent’s castles and their inhabitants, her days largely spent patrolling for any roaming swarms that may wish to cause them harm. She typically used the routine to think, but today offered little in the way of solitude. This time, she was accompanied by the previously banished guardswoman, and was tasked with instructing the new one, though the specifics of what such lessons should entail were vague. Still, Shar’khee did all that she could so as not to disappoint Harrison, so she could only attempt to meet his expectations of her.
She told the yellow-skinned female of the threats that the settlement faced, how one was to defeat them, and what to expect from the beasts. The guardswoman was directed to practice her form with the spear in both thrusts and throwing for some time afterward, proving herself to be well-built. Such was expected of her profession after all.
It was pleasing to have another capable of patrolling the settlement’s outskirts for swarms, as it would greatly impact how effectively the colony could react to such a threat. If her routine was to suffer for the colony’s well-being, she was happy to show the new one her patrol route and note what to look out for.
The guardswoman was not a perfect student, however. Shar’khee never addressed it directly, but the yellow-skinned female obviously discredited the danger posed by the abhorrent, not-so-subtly shrugging off any warnings.
…That was until they stumbled upon the ‘hyena-boars,’ as Harrison called them.
The beasts resided in a clearing not too far from the castles, carelessly meandering across the sea of tall grass. Shar’khee quickly crouched, dragging the guardswoman down with her. Once she assessed that the creatures were not an imminent danger, she decided it would be an excellent opportunity to show the new one how to properly engage a threat. She was about to propose the idea, yet her speech was silenced just as swiftly.
Orange flashes darted through the trees around the glade. Taloned feet and gnashing teeth tore across the ground toward the unsuspecting beasts at the center. It was much too late for them. They were slow. Surrounded. Unaware. It was as quick as it was vicious, the forest’s reds turning a deeper crimson hue in a moment's notice underneath the abhorrent’s brutality.
Gangly monstrosities gnawed and ripped at the dead creatures, brief glimpses of raw flesh and white bone protruding from the small spaces between the clumped-up beasts. Repulsive wet splatters of blood and gore overlapped the calm noises of the forest, the grisly scene serenaded by the softest of nature’s symphonies. It was a sickening juxtaposition.
Shar’khee bit back the unease and steeled herself. They were within twenty paces—close enough to smell the abhorrent’s vile stench of rot and bile, yet far enough so as not to be noticed. She briefly considered backing away and retreating, her focus bouncing between the different avenues of escape, or how to cover her footst—
Crack.
Several sets of feral, eyeless maws snapped in their direction, the blood dripping off freshly dampened teeth. The guardswoman gasped, Shar’khee’s gaze following to see the mistake: a singular broken branch crinkled as a yellow-colored foot raised off the splintering twig.
The paladin exhaled sharply and smoothly stood up, brandishing two spears and her shield. Her glare settled on the still crouching guardswoman. “You are to stay behind my shield and let them appr—ch. Rem—ber what I have told you. Aim for their maws when you thrust y—r lance.”
The other female nodded, shakily pulling out her own weapons with unsteady placement hampering her grip. There was an obvious nervousness to her gaze. Hesitance. That would not do.
Shar’khee faced the prowling abhorrent her knuckles shifting hue as she prepared for their advance, for there was no chance that they wouldn’t. True to her experience, the stalking turned to a gallop with several clicks of grotesque tongues, the swarm bolting toward her as one. She snarled and slammed her bulwark into the ground, letting the approaching beasts skewer themselves amongst its spikes.
There were only ten—a paltry amount. She had defended against magnitudes more, and yet she still stood. What is more, they were mindless. Uncoordinated. They would be but stains in the cloth she used to clean her armor. Perhaps, if they were fortunate, they might leave a furrow in her shield to remember them by. Her arms tensed as the first leapt.
One by one, the abhorrent fell, their repulsive green blood splattering under her thrusts. Each awaiting corpse tore across the grove’s grass, lunging to their deaths with gaping maws and unfeeling hunger, yet she did not yield. Their shells were crushed by her shield and impaled by her Goddess-blessed spears, becoming but one more smear across their surface. Ten motionless lumps lay before her, seeping their ichor into the soil, none having passed the barrier she became. Dead, just as the Creator intended. She remained vigilant for a few moments longer, watching for any more of the disgusting creatures.
None showed themselves, finally allowing blood to flow to her fingers once again. The shield’s heavy presence weighed down her back, the blood flicked off of her spears before she returned them to their place.
“Are y–u well?” Shar’khee addressed the frozen Malkrin, wiping away the splatter on her bracers. The guardswoman stared at the small pile of deceased creatures, her heavy breaths and widened eyes moving from the spear from her singular kill. The paladin huffed. “We are fort—ate that there were so few.”
“F-Few? God help us…” Her horrified, stunned gaze slowly met the paladin’s. “Y-You said there were hundreds on the crimson nights? H-How do you… They were s-so fast.”*
”As I h–ve warned,” Shar’khee affirmed.
“You are a paladin! You all exaggerate your feats… I thought it was just a facade!”
“I have no r—son to lie,” she returned tersely, shrugging off the insult to her station and shaking her head. “The mainl—d is far more dangerous than ten gnash—g beasts; more so than that of your island hamlet. Pick yourself up. We m—t inform the others of this incursion.”
The yellow-skinned female snarled, furrowing her brows at the ground in frustration. At whom…? Shar’khee? Herself? Regardless, the female promptly gathered her composure, pushing air through clenched jaws. A step forward had her feet splash in the small pool of blood, the Malkrin nodding toward the paladin to continue back to the castles.
“…for the village.”
Shar’khee paused in her stride and faced her, frowning at the determination and anger leaking through the intent. “W—t was that?”
Her question was returned with honesty, a huffed voice marred by vexation. “Paladin, how am I to defend my village-mates as I am now?”
“‘As you are now?’ What do you m—n?”
The guardswoman stared down at her spear, wood creaking under her grip. “I have faltered before what you deem a paltry threat, and the thought of an even greater one sows dread deep within my bones. I wish… I wish to be better prepared to defend those of my village. I cannot help but see their faces on those of the furred creature in the clearing, and yet, even if I am so close, I am just as unable to protect them.”
Shar’khee stared down the yellow female, a long gaze taking in a rare showing of sincerity. “Y—r fears are one we all share, new one. Do not be ashamed of them. All t—t matters is that you do not let them rem—n mere fear, but make them your strength. So tell me, do you wish to impr—e? To ensure they do not fall while you are support—g them?”
The yellow-skinned female released a shuddering breath that bled off the worst of her indecision, a newly invoked flame flaring within her visage. “I do, paladin. I seek to protect and to be of use.”
“Then, if you wish to make y—rself resilient in the face of all that opposes us, it would be my undertak—g to forge you anew. Fortunately, Harrison has ordered such already, and his guidance shall prove ever useful, should you pursue it.”
The guardswoman shuffled in place at the star-sent’s mention, her eyes slipping downwards. “He is of a great many resources, but I would rather receive your teachings than those of a craftsman… or that of a male, deity-sent he might be.”
She placed a palm on the female’s shoulder. “He is far more than you might ever k—w. Regardless of if you ac—pt his guidance, I commend your conviction. However—” Her hand gripped tighter, though not enough to instill hostility. “—understand that you are protecting more than just your vi—age-mates.”
The new one nodded, staring up at the paladin with stallwart resolve. “Of course. I shall be in your tutelage, then.”
Shar’khee smiled. “T—n let us begin.”
\= = = = =
Akula was becoming increasingly certain that she knew how her parents once felt. The green-skinned fisherwoman was currently rotating between the many tasks placed upon her, guiding the newcomers through the minutia of their tasks so they might live up to the potential Harrison saw within them. She was gratified to have her own talents recognized by the Creator, but it also placed a great many responsibilities in her talons. Of course, she handled each new addition with finesse befitting her heritage, never once balking from the increasing demands. If anything, she felt validated; it was required of her as a female anyway, was it not? The more feminine-appropriate labor and management one undertakes, the higher authority they were granted.
It began with a simple assignment to oversee the chef’s introduction to the star-sent’s provided cooking appliances. As fascinating and convenient as utilities were, she held no interest in preparing any more food than she already had, but teaching another to operate the machines would alleviate such requirements of her. She reluctantly accepted the task when it was proposed, especially considering the fact that Harrison was much too busy with his other projects to bother with something as benign as cooking. His work was more valuable elsewhere.
The task itself went well, and the pink-skinned chef was quick to pick up on the use of the various kitchen devices, as well as the smoker. A grin had grown when she considered the possibility of all males understanding such domestic things readily, yet her mirth at removing the masculine job required of her was short-lived. Despite the newly initiated Malkrin’s success, Harrison had Akula frequently return to oversee the numerous cooking operations being conducted. That was in tandem with the back-to-back fishing trips made by both herself and the newly acquired females.
…Which was something else the green-skinned cycle-worshipper was ordered to oversee.
She had left the chef to his devices after producing another batch of partially seasoned meals, returning to the Creator with hopes of a break. He applauded her efforts with a nod and tersely spoken appreciation, then quickly pushed two spearguns into her hand and directed her to the ocean, where the twins were ‘working with jack shit,’ as the busy male said. She was to give the fisherwomen the tools and make sure they were used properly, and offer additional assistance in acquiring ‘enough fish to have us fed for a little bit.’
So, she left to complete the given task, feeling somewhat appreciative that her speargun was of superior quality to those she would be delivering—the newcomers were only afforded the lesser, roped-bolt version. It was only natural that she was in possession of their greatest assets, of course; the star-sent saw her as the only one capable of wielding such fantastic ammunition, showing trust that was rightfully placed in her. That did not mean the gray-skinned females were unsatisfied with their own gifts, however. The twins were swiftly caught up on the ‘manual of arms’ and sent to work, somehow managing to keep up with Akula in spite of their land-based origins. The two were fast enough to outpace the cycle-worshipper in sheer speed, but their lack of numerous winters spent traversing deeper waters meant they required frequent rests, breaking the ocean’s surface after every third captured fish or so.
Still, she had to appreciate their dedication to their task. They never complained about Akula pushing them further to reach the star-sent’s vague objective. Such a task was entrusted to her—and by proxy, the other two—and thus it would be completed, no matter how much her comfortable bed… couch called her tiring muscles.
The group of three hauled net after full net of fresh meat to the chef—and sewist, who later joined him—forcing him to relegate much of the catch to long-term storage as the kitchen simply could not deal with the surplus. At least three-quarters of the fish were put to slow cook in the now Malkrin-sized smoker. The craftsman had upgraded it with a kit provided by Harrison, who had recycled much of the dining room and workshop furniture to accommodate it. The Creator’s showcased urgency to gather materials was clearly not unfounded… It was admirable how he used what little he had left to ensure food would not be scarce. Additionally, the apparatus exuded an excellent scent for all the survivors to enjoy, the earthy aroma drawing in some of the other Malkrin for their breaks or meals.
Those were not the end of the cycle-worshiper’s tasks, however. She was also required to report on Shar’khee’s progress in training the guardswoman—helping to recycle the small swarm of abhorrent they cleared earlier—as well as the wood storage building’s progress. Indeed, she was advising and assisting however and wherever applicable. To say she was seen all around the settlement would be an understatement.
Nevertheless, she was appreciative to see her efforts bearing fruit by sundown. The processing of their meals from sea to plate was quite efficient, and those that Akula taught were now well-practiced in their duties. The twin fisherwomen dove from wave to wave, bringing fish back to the barracks, where the cook and sewist swiftly worked to transfer the meat to pans and smoker hooks alike. Then, the remnants of the Sea Goddess’ aquatic gifts would be subsequently recycled and given purpose anew as biofuel or perhaps future fertilizer.
The endless onslaught of duties and responsibilities had enlightened her, in a way. She could see where Harrison came from now; having a working project go from one point to another without input nor difficulty was a sight to behold, and it made her swell with pride. It was a surmountable feat to teach the barbaric ground-worshippers to do something properly.
…Well, they were not horrible Malkrin, so perhaps simply calling them ‘uninitiated’ was a more apt descriptor…
No matter the tribulations faced, and no matter how draining her new authority might be, her rest at the end of the day would be one that was well-earned, and it would be had with a sense of satisfaction. She deserved it, and perhaps that extended to the rest of the settlement as well.
- - - - -
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Next time on Total Drama Anomaly Island - Mine! Mine! Mine!

Today, I will be giving nicknames to all NYC subway lines. Some are well-known, others I made up. I will be giving a little explanation to why, as well.
1: Best on Broadway. It stops a lot, but man is it good uptown!
2: Seventh Avenue Shuttle. Ripping through midtown at 45-55mph??!! YES PLEASE!!!
3: Red Rocket. Just as fast as the 2 on the express track...or even faster...than still not slow in Brooklyn. Fastest train in the whole freakin' system.
4: Lexington Laser. Soon as it arrives at 125 St you already know it's gonna barrel to City Hall...straight as an arrow and fast as a laser.
5: Dyre Direct. Express in all three boroughs it goes through during rush hour.
6: Pelham Packer. Frequent, but overcrowded as heck!
7: International Express. Most diverse train line in the world.
A: Airplane. Stops are mad far apart. Speedy. And goes to JFK. But also like an airplane, prone to delays.
B: Brighton Blazer. Only way to get to/from South Brooklyn in a good amount of time...all the other trains are slow as heck but B is really fast.
C: Catch the A train. Please do, it's so much better.
D: Dreadfully Delayed. If you want a hyper-express, take the A/4/5, not this garbage.
E: Excellent Express. Sorry, but "Homeless Express" just won't cut it for a line as great as the E. Super fast(48mph) on Queens Blvd, good local on 8 Ave/53 St.
F: Flying Fish. Jumps out of the water on QBL for a little while and zooms...then back to square one cuz it can't actually fly.
G: Garbage. That's just what it is.
J: Joke. Again, that's just what it is.
L: Local Legend. How does a train run every 2 minutes and get from Canarsie to 8 Ave-14 St in 45 minutes while stopping at every stop? The locals say it's just a legend...but others say it's real, it's called the L train.
M: Mystery. Why it won't just do its job and departs the terminal 20 minutes late just to terminate a few miles from it?
N: New Yorker's Nightmare. If New York is the Big Apple, the N train is that brown part so rotten you can't even bite into it. Worst line in the system, or at least up there.
Q: Quiet Queen. While the Q train itself may be quiet, so is the speed of its express runs, and for that matter, its entire route.
R: Rarely Right There. When it is you celebrate, then you rethink your life choices because you go 10mph and get passed by like 15 E/F trains.
W: Weekday Only. And even when it runs it's terrible.
Z: Zombie. Never knew it existed.
So yeah, that's it!(I didn't include shuttles). Comment your thoughts below!

Just another fun little story idea I had. I am still working on Humans are the violent ones but I like to bounce around and experiment with ideas to see what I really like. I also suck at writing more casual stories, as they give me severe writer's block as I try to map out how to make a scene feel genuine in my head, but I promise I'll update that soon. If you like this story and want to see more, then like and comment. I'll gladly continue this series as well.
Start of Personal Log
Humans don't like being told what to do. They don't like being commanded, put in their place, or snubbed. It was an inexorable, inalienable trait of humans, at least any noteable humans, to go against any authority that they believed was against their interests.
Humanity would not fit amongst the stars. Few ever did. It was a trait of most successful species to be willful, ambitious, and to desire more. But once they reached the stars the new (and simultaneously very old) pecking order either quashed any spirit such species had or simply eradicated them. Countless tomb worlds and diaspora served as painful reminders of what became of the nails that chose to stick out. The hammer of order would always strike. There could be no compromise, the very soul of the authority that held the Jurisdiction together relied on a show of unmatched power, or at least the illusion of item.
In reality, the Jurisdiction was an old, fat, and lazy beast. It filled its belly on the corpses of empires far and wide, and sated its bloodlust on the shattered dreams of hopeful cubs. It had every right to, for none could challenge it: there were no new frontiers to explore, nor were there any other enemies to conquer. The Milky Way, as humans had so strangely dubbed our cradle galaxy, as well as Andromeda, had long since been warred over and settled for millennia before humanity had arrived, bright-eyed and with familiar yet otherwise foolish dreams of cooperation and prosperity. The Jurisdiction did not cooperate, nor did it ensure prosperity. Oh, it claimed it did, but in reality it simply took. The rest was just the peace that came with not being the direct target of the biggest fish in the pond. The humans didn't like that, but they had no choice.
Slavery was a common tribute. The Jurisdiction had no use for other resources: it simply took. No, it wanted those who could facilitate that unequal exchange, those raised in a world where the only morality was the one set by your lord. The Jurisdiction was held together by expectations, obligations, and dury more than any kind of shared dream, so when you were ordered to take you did so without question. Humanity was new: they had no niche or value that set them apart, but they had a penchant for killing and taking, so the Jurisdiction gave them a taste of how the galaxy worked. They killed and they took. The humans didn't like that, but what choice did they have?
Humans were strange. They learned, but not in the way most species learned. Most species learned to adapt in a passive way, to adhere to the world around them. They flowed like water, moving past and around obstacles and confirming to the boxes they were assigned too. Humans didn't confirm, nor did they adapt: they made their circumstances fit their desires. They would not move around obstacles, but rather smash through them, and they refused to stay in one box for too long. The Jurisdiction merely saw them as a particularly loud nuisance, but those who faced their wrath knew better.
It is said that when a beast seeks to make an example, it shall humble its rival by killing it's cubs. Children were one of those universal constants that brought entire communities together: the Sok’klar saw their hatchlings as gifts, shaped by the fruitful currents of the universe in perfect harmony. The Yarrack saw each and every newborn whelp as an uncut gemstone, ready to be shaped into something magical. Humanity oftentimes referred to their offspring as angels, or spirits of unbridled good sent by the gods themselves. Children were seen by most of the galaxy as gifts.
The Jurisdiction saw them as a lever to inflict suffering. It had become quite effective at enacting psychological punishments on those that stood up and spoke out. You dare to disobey? You believe you can speak out? Your gifts shall be taken from you, and you shall be without joy.
Humans didn't like this, but the Jurisdiction would have their pound of flesh, and humankind would kneel. And they did. But humans were patient creatures: most species who retained that trait of willful spit also lacked patience.
I had long since become desensitized to the Jurisdiction’s actions: it was simply how the universe worked now, as if it were a constant akin to gravity. Cruelty was the unspoken rule of this seemingly unending age, where our lives never appeared to move forward or backwards, only lay dormant. The Jurisdiction had been the unyielding authority that ruled the galaxy for thousands of years, venerable yet feared all the same.
And for the longest time I was just another cog in its wheel. My name is Kalnuracht Sedjuur-Noumar VII, and was the scion of the noble house Sedjuur-Noumar. I was born into what most would describe as veiled apathy, living a life that could be attributed to the privileged class of feared scribes that enacted the will of those above. I was an administrator and nothing more. And now I am doomed to be far less than that in the eyes of my former constituents within the endless administration. I am the only scion, as is tradition, and without an heir I am the last of my house, our name to be scrubbed from the records, worthless, meaningless, and forgotten.
I am merely Kalnuracht, nothing else and nothing more. I have seen from their eyes, the eyes of the downtrodden, and it makes my crimes of association with the Jurisdiction feel all the more damning on my worthless soul. I am worthless to the world, and this is my story.
End Personal Log #1
Start of Neural Lace Narrative Log #1
They came from the black like carrion birds in the night, encircling our convoy as if it were a dying animal ready to be picked clean without remorse. There was no warning, no list of demands sent out as civilized peoples did, nor was there either any requirement for unconditional surrender nor chance to parlay, as was done so under letter of marque: this was an unmistakable call for violence and nothing else. They sought to reduce us to slag and scavenge the rest.
So, as one would expect, the entire bridge of the ship was nearing a panicked state. This was not the actions of those practicing civility, but rather the common behaviors of despoiling barbarians, the kind that tore their way through the dark reaches of the galaxy as if they owned it.
“Wayfinder, what do your probes see?” Shouted the ship’s sovereign. He was an older Kar’Rowmach, an amphibious cephalopod species with a venerable history within the Jurisdiction going back thousands of years. Normally one such as him would be above me if it weren't for the fact that I was under the authority of the Jurisdiction’s seal of office. He didn't like me very much, but most of his kind shared the same sentiment.
“All dark, honorable Sovereign: the sensor arrays are wailing but the feedback we're reviewing is beyond incomprehensible,” the wayfinder replied with a certain restrained temper in his voice. The Sok'klar wayfinder swayed gently, his tentacled limbs grasping different metallo-liquid braille output arrays, the liquid gallium flexing and reshaping unnaturally to allow him to to take in multiple different sources of sensory output at once, with the primary navigation computer plugged into the cybernetics surrounding his opaque, gelatinous head and plugging directly into his tube-shaped brain.
The Sovereign cursed in Loskat and pointed to his bridge crew while I simply sat in the back, near the Sovereign’s symbolic throne. “Prepare countermeasures and spool up the warp drive, we cannot allow the amanuensis to be taken! He carries sensitive information that only he can translate and transcribe!”
As the bridge crew nodded and began fiddling with their own systems, I preened my feathered hide anxiously. I wasn't a fighter: us nobles of the cloth were the educated minority above all else, not those who waged war or partook in hard labor. Special cybernetics in my brain allowed me to translate triple-encoded messages that usually took a ducal signet codekey or above to parse, but even without that I was a skilled mathematician and logician. I had terabytes worth of knowledge stored within the hardware installed in my head, all well protected of course, but if I were to die it would still be a waste. I could only imagine the damage any malcontenders could do with it if they were able to get their filthy hands on me.
Suddenly, the ship rocked, and the gallium overhead display began to form crescendos like I'd never seen before. “Sovereign, decks A-3 through C-12 are venting atmosphere and our coolant systems have been obliterated,” the Wayfinder spoke in an almost serene voice, as if he was completely unconcerned by current events. I knew they were simply incapable of tonal displays, but it was unnerving nonetheless. “Once we jump, we will not be able to risk another until the vacuum of the void can reduce temperatures to acceptable levels within the plasma capacitors.”
“Damn them,” the armored nautiloid hissed, his barbed feelers coiling in frustration, “May the currents take them. What are our options? what can we see? This fleet cannot fall to the void today, not with such vital cargo.” My hackles rose lightly at the Kar’Rowmach referred to me as some object rather than an esteemed amanuensis of the Jurisdiction, but I bit my forked tongue. Now was not the time to squabble with the sovereign over who was what and what titles I deserved, not while he was so desperately attempting to keep what semblance of order within his fleet that he had left.
I could not blame the crew for being panicked either: wars were practically mythologized now, having been long since rendered obsolete with the rise of the Jurisdiction, and that felt like an eternity ago. Now, either being levied into or joining a ducal naval force was simply another career, more akin to serving as an officer of the law rather than a fully fledged soldier. Minimal training was required, most of it being the technicals of one's duty rather than any kind of combat conditioning, so expecting a fleet to actually be prepared for a combat scenario in a universe where peace was the norm was laughable.
“We are practically blind, Sovereign,” stated the Sok'klar Wayfinder, “our probes are offline, and shipboard graviton displacement sensory arrays have been rendered unreliable at best.”
“What about the particle emission array? Has there been a spike in radioactivity where we were hit?”
The Wayfinder seemed to think for a second, his gelatinous form flexing and morphing a bit before answering. “Affirmative, a jump from negligible to forty billion becquerels along decks A through E-5 on our starboard side.”
“Torpedoes…” the Sovereign hissed, stroking his barbed feelers, “Human Torpedoes. Only those primitives would rely on crude nuclear warheads.” He then turned to his militant leaders on the ship. “Noddos, Rel’ads: organize your phalanxes and prepare to repel boarders. We are bound to be assailed by those rancorous primates, and I want their skulls piled at my feet if they dare set foot on our ship.”
“Your wish is our command, Sovereign,” the two militant commanders spoke as one. Noddos, a large bipedal with multiple sets of curved spines running down his back, a pair of graceful horns sprouting from his head, and multiple rows of sharp teeth in his snout, bowed first, followed by Rel’ads, a marsupial with long saberteeth and thick fur. They both must have been fierce warriors in their own right to each lead a phalanx. They wore thick, semi-powered armor and held dueling polearms alongside their usual plasma casters, and seemed completely unfazed by the situation we were in. As they stomped out of the brightly lit bridge, I let out a quiet squawk of discontentment. “Sovereign, why haven't we jumped again? We are wasting precious time.”
“I am working on it, you spineless beaurocrat!” He warbled back, his feelers tensing in anger, “besides, it's not as if you're the one who will be spilling blood today, amanuensis, so flatten your wretched beak or I shall weld it shut with a plasma torch.
I was about to reply with something indignant, but the ship rocked again, this time causing the lights to flicker and the air to become… thick. The skin under my feathers began to blister, and I became lightheaded and confused. “Seal the damnable vents, initiate radiation scrubbers, and activate secondary life support!” Shouted the Sovereign, “Their nuclear weapons are rendering the ship inhospitable!”
I coughed up magenta blood accidentally, and I could feel more seeping from under my eyes. Some of the crew was in a similar position, but others were more resistant to radiation than I. The Sok'klar seemed completely at ease as he ran his tentacles across his morphic braille arrays before calmly announcing the ship’s status. “I've regained some control over our probes: ten, twelve, and seventeen are active and fully functional, the rest are either still malfunctioning or permanently inoperable. A rapid rise in localized radiation is also interfering with the detection of graviton displacement; we can't sense photon redirection, thus readings will remain inconclusive.
“Wayfinder, damn you, get me some kind of out here! We're easy prey until we can respond in kind!”
“Negative, something has gone awry with our processing hub, I am attempting to troubleshoot-”
And with that, the Wayfinder’s bulbous head exploded in a cascade of opaque lavender blood, covering the front half of the deck crew like a morbid art piece. Some of the crew screamed and shouted in terror before removing their cranial adaptors and choosing to interact with their displays manually. Others died just as quickly, unable to unplug in time as their brain stems fried or their blood boiled. It was a horrible way to go, having your insides neutralized by your own cybernetics, so I was glad I wasn't connected to the system.
“Cybernetic warfare! All systems are to be considered compromised, switch to manual settings or you'll be killed!”
The lights in the bridge flickered again, and the displays went haywire. The bridge crew, which obviously weren't acquainted with working without being hard-linked into the mainframe, moved at a much slower pace.
“Launch missile pods A through F and set to self-target after five hundred kilometers, then rely on their ballistic coordinates to begin firing broadsides! If we can't see the humans due to their meddling, we'll just have to feel them.” Shouted the Sovereign, “and got me a detailed report on the ship’s diagnostics readings. I need to know if this flagship is still capable of escaping or if we'll have to scuttle it and retreat on another.”
“Acknowledged, Sovereign, launching now,” affirmed another deck officer as he swiped across his own gallium output array. I could hear the dull thunk, thunk, thunk of missiles pushing out of their pods before racing off to their intended targets, then the mechanical whirring as the pods rotated to be reloaded by slaves in the lower decks. I was regaining my bearings as the many horrible sensations of being overwhelmed by radiation poisoning were beginning to subside, but I still felt as if I had been microwaved. The air was stale, the crew was horribly sick as well, and even the sovereign himself seemed to be on his last leg. I was beginning to believe that I might die here.
“Sovereign, a message from the lower decks,” shouted a communications officer, his chitin scraping against itself as he turned quickly, “they're requesting reinforcements, something about being overrun.”
“Impossible,” the Sovereign hissed out in a vain attempt to exude confidence, “We must outnumber the humans, they always go for bigger targets out of arrogance.”
“I've received reports that it's not just humans: the primates seem to make up only a third or so of the assailing force, along with some Phaeldaer and Vrex.”
The commander slammed his clawed hands down on his own output array in a fit of rage, obviously overwhelmed by the circumstances, “Then this wasn't just a typical assault, but something more sinister!” The nautiloid warbled, blood seeping from his shell as the full effects of the radiation took hold, “Get Rel’ads on the line, have him divert all spare lances to the lower decks or else we'll lose the only offensive capabilities we can use.”
“Rel'ads has gone dark, Sovereign, his vitals are critical.”
“Then either get me Rel'ads tail-leader or get me Noddos!” He screamed in rage, “don't give me this nonsense! If we don't pick it up we're all going to die, is that what you want?”
“No, Sovereign, I'm simply overwhelmed-”
“We're all overwhelmed! By the tides, I'm dying of radiation poisoning you nincompoop! Get me something I can work with!”
The officer didn't even acknowledge the Sovereign after that, simply turning back to his display. Eventually, the Sovereign was able to get Noddos on the line.
“Sovereign, two thirds of my phalanxes have been decimated by combat with the primitives and the radiation, the rest are in shambles. We must retreat and fortify elsewhere!”
“Then the ship is compromised! Rel'ads is unresponsive and the lower decks are swarming with intruders. We must evacuate the amanuensis to another ship.”
Just as the Sovereign spoke, I heard several gentle thumps rattle against the bridge’s door, and it made me uneasy. Some of the bridge crew seemed to feel the same, as they looked incredibly nervous and some even drew their sidearms. Just as the sovereign turned to give further orders, the door blew inward with a deafening explosion, followed by shouting and gunfire. Several of the bridge officers were dispatched quickly, brain matter and blood splattering against the delicate electronics. Others were shot in the legs, the torso, or in any other exotic yet non-vital body parts. The humans poured in, brandishing primitive ballistic firearms and jury-rigged energy weapons while wearing scavenged, legion-grade powered armor.
The Sovereign was the next to go, but he wasn't afforded an honorable death. He was shot along the arm with a particularly potent plasma caster, burning off his clawed hand and cauterizing the wound, the acrid smell of roasting chitin filling the already hot and cramped bridge. He fell back against his output array, the gallium reaching new highs and lows as more diagnostics and casualty reports were delivered, and he clutched his stump angrily. “I'll burn every last one of you in the foundries! I'll tie you to stakes, cover you in wax and set you alight! Your screams will be broadcasted all over the galaxy!”
One human warrior stomped up and slammed the butt of his rifle into the sovereign’s face, shattering his facial plates and causing blue blood to splatter across his section of the bridge. “Shut the fuck up, you mutant lobster,” the human said before dragging him by both antennae towards the center of the bridge and receiving a stained breeching axe from one of his comrades. “Emmanuel, start recording. We need proof.”
The other human nodded and pressed a button on his armor before lifting up his gun again. The rest of the humans fanned out, holding everyone else at gunpoint. I tried to get up and sneak out, but a human grabbed me by my neck and nearly wrung it out as he forced me to my knees and pointed a sidearm to my skull. “Get down, you piece of shit, before I blow your brains out too.”
“Damnable primate,” I hissed, but he bashed me in my skull with the base of his sidearm’s grip and sent me sprawling, making my already pounding headache worse. Another human shouted at him in a language I didn't recognize, but he sounded furious. The first brought me back up to my knees again, and I complies with a hiss and a groan, blood still leaking from my eyes and mouth and my world was spinning.
The Sovereign struggled, but he was weak from the radiation poisoning and he couldn't exactly resist on account of his lost arm. The human with the breaching ax kicked the Sovereign down and forced him to kneel before lifting up the breeching ax and splitting his chitinous head down the middle with one powerful swing, sending more blood and brains across the floor. “Execution confirmed, take his antennae just in case and we've got ourselves a bounty. Now all we need is that ugly cat’s teeth and the fat hedgehog-thing’s grimy spines and we'll be in business. Although, they do have skulls… we might as well just take their heads.”
The real horror of the situation dawned on me at that moment: they were going to kill us all, or maybe worse. They mentioned a bounty for the commanders, and multiple of the higher ranking ship officers were already dead, their brains splattered against the walls or their bodies torn apart by gunfire. I wasn't dead yet, but that didn't mean much since I wasn't an immediate threat.
“Alright, round them up and bring all the grunts to the hanger bay, then kill the rest,” the leader of the humans said in such a lackadaisical manner that his complete disregard for life almost made me sick… almost. I had seen worse from the Jurisdiction before, but usually that was from me delivering some kind of ordered judgment on a world that had sinned against order. I might have simply been the messenger, but I had seen many of the outcomes. “And make sure to collect whatever proof of bounties you can, we'll need to deliver them to the office to get cashed out. Don't let this be a repeat of last time where Juarez fucking forgot to take a few heads and it ended up cutting our profits in half, the fucking retard.”
Some of the humans chuckled at that as they dragged more of the senior officers away, out of the room and into the hall,where I heard gunshots. The rest of the bridge crew froze in place, different fear instincts kicking in. The remaining Sok'klar corralled together into what seemed to be a singular, semi-congealed mass as if to try and trick the humans into believing that they were much bigger and much more threatening than they actually were. The one Thei’chi on the bridge, an ensign who had clearly thought this would be a simple mission, bore her curved fangs at the humans and growled as they approached, her hackles completely vertical and her eyes dilated. They quickly muzzled and bound her before beating her over the head with a gun stock, sending her sprawling onto the ground. Many others simply cooperated, eyes wide and yet simultaneously empty, as if they couldn't quite process that the ship had been taken and the commanding officers were being executed as the rest were escorted to the hangar.
“Get the damn messenger down to the hanger as well, we need whatever data's in his ugly lizard head, then we can decide on what to do with him.”
I spat at him in spite, as if to try and seem brave, but it was clearly an empty gesture. “You won't get anything, primate! You couldn't possibly crack the encryption!”
The human holding me seemed to wind up for another swing, but the commanding officer simply held up his hand to stop my tormentor before strolling over to me. He knelt down and removed his helmet, revealing a beige-colored face covered in scars, wiry black hair cut down to the scalp, and multiple tattoos. “You're really fucking mouthy for a hostage,” he said before punching me across my beak faster than I could register. I heard a sharp crack as his fist connected, and my head spun again as the metallic taste of blood pooled into my mouth. “I'd advise you to shut up, but I'm sure you won't listen: you aristocratic types are so full of yourselves. Maybe I should have you flogged in the public square until your vocal chords give out once we rip those cybernetics from your head, huh? How's that sound?”
“It won't matter… it won't change anything… the Jurisdiction will hunt you down.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it will happen for some time: they really suck at doing anything that requires effort, even when they're mad enough. They just keep sending their rabid lapdogs to try and smoke us out, and they always end up full of holes,” the human officer said with a smirk, his yellowish-white teeth and green eyes sending shivers down my spine as he drew his knife. “They're just horrible at their job, you know? You've all gotten so lazy and incompetent after being able to just take what you want without resistance, and now that you've met people who are angry and crazy enough to fight back you act as if we're committing some grave injustice,” he placed the knife against my throat, the flat just underneath my now bent beak, “No, we just took a few pages out of your book, ‘cept we've got standards. No kids, for one…” he seemed to look off into the distance as his sneer deepened, “but it's more than that, we don't attack the defenseless in general and we still win against you all in fair fights.”
I went to say something else snarky, but he quickly grabbed my thin tongue with his fingers and yanked it out, blood from my mouth pulling to the floor as he held the blade of his knife against it. “No no, none of that. Say one more thing and I'll cut that rancid little tongue of yours out of your mouth and feed it to you,” he hissed at me, pressing the blade down just hard enough to draw blood. “Do you know what it's like to see a planet turn into a tomb?" he asked me, gritting his teeth, “Do you know what it's like to see everything you've ever known crumble to ash and glass, all the life and the green stripped away leaving nothing but bones? I do. I've seen it happen to countless worlds, and my grandfather always told me stories of how you bastards did it to Earth. He still prays in its direction five times a day, to Mecca, but he knows the Kaaba is gone now, or maybe it's still there, buried in the bones of those who sought refuge there.”
I didn't care for the human’s nonsensical beliefs, but I did care to correct him. “I've seen it before, and I'll see it again. And so will you, it's inevitable. The Jurisdiction will always have its judgment fulfilled, there is no alternative.”
“One day, I hope we can rectify that,” he said, then he sheathed his knife and slammed my head against the metal floor with enough force to nearly knock me out. As I lost consciousness, I could hear him speak. “Take him to the Chop Doc, and make sure the cybernetics don't get damaged: they're supposedly more valuable than any bounty on this ship.”
Warning: Severe radiation poisoning detected. Flush system immediately.
Warning: Neural Lace removal detected, chance of neurological damage high. Proceeded with caution.

Hi All.
Newbie here - I had my introduction ceremony last night. I feel there is a lot to unpack, but my main question is related to the menstrual cycle.
As a bit of background history, I struggled all my life with balancing hormones but I was able to bring my period to a routine for the past few years. I however have not had my period for 7 weeks prior to the initiation ceremony. I have to say that a couple of days before the ceremony I have received quite a lot of synchronocities related yo the colour red. I have then decided to offer her deep dark red roses on the first night. I feel the ceremony started well, but at some point I started getting weird messages in my mind. Like she was making fun of me of not showing up good enough. I feel I have pushed her away when I panicked. Then I decide to do some ice therapy to calm myself down, at that point I no longer knew if the weird messages were due to the panic or if it was her. Weird, when I go to the kitchen the gas stove was on ( at a low level). I didn't think much of it, I thought maybe one of my housemates forgot it on. Anyway, I go back to my room, I had a large bowl of ice - by the time I am ready to do my ice therapy the ice has melted. That has never happened before so fast - I knew it was her way of letting me know I should face my feelings and push through the panic. In the end I started working with her immediately after I have started working with my therapist on shadow work. I ended up journaling for 3 or 4 hours. And went to bed in the morning. When I woke up I decide to make some breakfast and I turn on the stove only for it to be off in a couple of minutes ( same spot as the previous night). And then it hits me, I was looking at the jam I was making and I don't know why I felt I needed to cook jam, it's not something I usually make. But anyway, that was made of raspberries and strawberries, as you can imagine it was all red. It felt like I am being asked to make some sort of sacrifice, and then I realise. My period has also come through the night, a couple of spots before ceremony and the rest through the night. When I look on my phone I see a notification from my astrological app letting me know there is a full moon this Thursday. In Sagittarius ( fire sign and my rising sign). I know usually the ceremonies are held for her on a new moon, but given these messages should I do something for the full moon? And what exactly? I feel called to do it. I had the rest of the day a lot of the downloads with the same pattern. I go to the park and as I enter I see 3 black dogs, one of them holding onto a red ball for his dear life. That and red triangles I saw everywhere. It got me looking into fire of consciousness and I have some weird feeling related to blood line. I don't know a lot about my family history, but my grandad came into my mind a lot lately. There was even more to unpack, but this is the part that doesn't make complete sense to me.
Please help a newbie!
Thanks, Alexandra

There is some potentially triggering content in this story
Did you know that memories aren’t real? No? Not really, you can misremember or change a memory without ever knowing you have. It’s a sinisterly important fact for me, some would be worried but I find it freeing, I can share this memory without fear or shame. I most likely haven’t remembered what happened as it happened, and considering what happened on the 9th of May all those years ago, I’d say it’s likely I don’t remember. It’s a relief really that memories aren’t real; I have always hated talking about my memories, about myself in general. In my experience, people are not interested in what I have to say, unless it relates to them or it makes me look less than them. Maybe it’s all in my head, everything is really. I’m not the most people friendly these days, I think you could call me a cynic, I call myself a cynic, but I’ll try and keep true to this memory, without the influence of hindsight and my cynicism.
It’s about that puddle and the 9th of May. Why the specifically the 9th of May? Well I don’t actually know why that day, it could have easily been the 8th, the difference is hours. I do wish I could change the setting; it’s almost poetic, I could always be misremembering, it was a long time ago, and I have been told many times since that I have a flair for the dramatic. A dark and rainy night, with the wind howling, well that’s a backdrop I can enjoy.
I’m sorry. Let me start at the beginning for the sake of clarity, otherwise I’ll never finish what I start to say, and I’ll never say what I need to say.
Once upon a time I went to a party. I enjoyed drinking back then, a healthy amount for most people, but for me, a dangerous amount, I had a tendency to get inside my head when I drink.
No again I’m sorry, that’s not the memory I want to share, I want to tell the 9th of May, I think this memory will be harder to tell than I first thought.
It was a birthday party for a friend, well a friend of a friend, I knew two people there, I was speaking my wisdom at the party, normally people would just nod and slide away from that kind of wisdom, but this was during the university days, everyone is intelligent, insightful and understanding at university. We few were the self-proclaimed leaders of the future, and so understood all, my green wisdom spewed with no start or finish was always well received. I remember some of what I said, you can walk into any pub or club and listen to the drunkest person in the room, they would have spewed the same wisdom, wisdom that I thought at the time was original and wise, but really was just old sentiment repeated with new words. Despite what I wanted at the time, wisdom comes with age, not self-assurance.
But this time was my spring years, that sweet age just before I faced reality, the real harsh reality of life, I had just begun to explore the world inside my bubble, and my exploration lead me onto the well-trodden path of clubbing and drinking, the respectable rebellion. I began as I always did, by talking, talking of going to some event, a lecture, a monument, an underground pub, of all the things I could do that evening, the places I could go, I and the other future leaders of the world, the potential was ours to squander. This ended as it always would, in that night club, the very same one I would always go to, my slice of reality.
Apologies my dear reader, I have a cynical mind, it’s hard to keep at bay, I’ll admit that I haven’t really tried to keep it from being an influence here, I can’t seem to help myself, but this next part of the memory is less clear, but I can relay it with a real, shame filled joy. This part of the memory feels more like a dream now, I don’t have the energy to do what I did that night, I don’t have the energy for much these days, I think that makes the memory more fond to me, drinking, dancing, worry free. Maybe fond was the wrong word to use here, jealous is more fitting, jealous of the innocence and time I wasted. The power of a drink back then was incredible; I miss the feeling, that burn in the mouth, the after taste, the saliva, the heat in your chest, and that feeling of being unstoppable. Of course drink has more than one effect, and while I’d like to believe my cloudy memory is caused by false and misremembered facts, or by the merging of a hundred single nights into one endless night, that’s too poetic. No, the memory is clouded by the amount I drunk that night, and many years after as I tried to forget this very memory.
Yet despite this, even now, the fragments still makes me smile, whether it’s because I enjoy the memories of the innocence I held then, or I’m jealous of them I cannot say, I’m a self-proclaimed cynic, not a philosopher or a psychologist, I’ll leave the analysis to better men than me. Instead I’ll try to give you an idea of what happened in the club without my opinions bleeding through. This night in the club was no different from all the others, they all start the same. Moving around the club in a daze, my head feeling big and unsteady, but also incredibly light and empty, my fingertips warm, my feet numb, I remember dancing to songs, dancing on tables, screaming out lyrics, smoking outside, stealing a bottle of champagne, fixing my hair in a mirror, buying a round of drinks, the lights flashing, the bass thumping, fog spewing, standing on my own staring at the old chandelier, crawling on the floor looking for money, I remember walking out the club and how quiet everything seemed in comparison while I tried to keep standing in the night air, looking at my hands, how bright the lights were, how blurry the world seemed and how beautiful the moon was that night.
Here, here the memory starts to come back into focus, the bright street lights and night air always helped me to sober up at night, plus I’ve always enjoyed being outside in the dark night or under the moonlight, I find it comforting to stand under the moon, it’s as if I’m suddenly alive.
As I came to my senses my memory sharpened, but that’s all, my drunkenness remained. I was with a couple of friends, some who I had been at the party with and some who I met in the club, we got food, and we spent such a long time talking, our conversations were mixed, some happy, some sad, all just more green wisdom. Much later on, me and my friend, maybe the one I went to the party with (it might have been someone else, who’s to say?), walked back towards our homes not because we wanted to walk as we said over and over to our screeching friends, but because the taxi was expensive and we couldn’t afford it, we lived in different places but close enough that we could walk together. Its funny to think of this moment, back then I had the money for a taxi, but I wouldn’t spend it on a taxi, now that I’m a poor man, I’ll spend money I don’t have on taxis I don’t need, apparently the youthful idiot I was, was wiser than I am now in some regards after all.
I don’t remember walking with my friend, or rather, I know where we went, how long it took and what we probably talked about, I had walked this walk so many times before this night, and so many after, they are all the same memory to me now, I enjoyed the walking in the night, the exhilaration of that has stayed with me more than the company on those walks. I always used to break it down into three segments, and so that’s how it comes back to me now. Leaving the club, past the library, past the race track, over the river across the bridge, up the steep hill, past the first university gates (which were actually the back gates), round the campus on the public roads, to the second gates (which are the main gates), a long walk with company, a painfully short one with alone. He was still living on the Campus my friend, I lived about ten minutes away from the campus, I said goodbye and goodnight, we agreed to speak in the morning if we survived. He went through the back gates and headed towards the halls, I continued on my way, onto the second segment of the walk past the gates. I was on my own for the rest of the walk; this happened a lot, both during my university days and many years after. I lived on the opposite side of the campus to most of my friends so this part of the walk was always mine alone, even when I started the night with the people I lived with. I didn’t mind, it was nice to enjoy the feeling of being drunk without having to show I was drunk, a few assured moments of peace under the moon light. I never deviated from my path, round the outside of the campus, opposite some housing estates, till I got next to a little shop that sold cheap, bottles of spirit. I would always stop for a moment to wish that shop was open.
Then it was down that straight road, the final part of my walk, big houses on either side, well-lit but not busy. It looked like it was a five minute walk but once you started it felt like it was never ending, and at the end of the night, in the night air, it was never ending. Sometimes I would run, sprint to see if I could make it to the end of that road without stopping, something to break the monotony of walking, other times to tire myself out so I could fall straight to sleep, and sometimes just because I wanted to run. Nearly every day for two years I walked down that road to go clubbing shopping or studying, to go for a meal, see a film, meet a friend, it was a constant part of my life, an unwanted companion and witness. Walking down that road, reader I don’t think I’m able to describe how I hated that road, but I always walked down that road, there were other ways I could walk, quicker ways, but I always took that road.
This particular night, actually at this point I suppose it was the morning. I was walking down that road in the rain and dark between the streetlights, bitterly cold staring straight into a street light walking on the right hand side. I’d always walk on the right hand side, I’m not sure why, whenever I walked on the left I had a bad day. Except for on the 9th, the 9th is the one exception.
I have no clue where the car came from; I didn’t see it until after the jump, just a blurred headlight, a door, a wing mirror. The driver, the make, the model, even the color is a mystery. It appeared and left like a phantom. There was no thought, I moved forward, but I don’t recognize that I was the one who leapt forward.
I remember the fall. I fell backwards. As if my strings had been cut and I fell limp into the puddle, there was no splash as I landed in that puddle.
The feeling I felt in that puddle, it was something I had never felt before or since, an overwhelming pull I was powerless against, I pray to never to feel it again.
Should I describe it? How to describe it? I have to describe it. I can describe the fear it inspired, but not yet, it’s easier to describe fear, but this isn’t meant to be easy, this memory never is. No the actual feeling, that’s harder, It wasn’t a happy emotion, not a powerful emotion, not a sad emotion. Hopelessness? Yes it was hopelessness. Nothing more, nothing less. No hope for the future, no point to anything, I think it is possibly the only time I felt hopelessness. You can’t live without hope.
I couldn’t stand could I? No, I wouldn’t have laid there if I could, to begin with I didn’t want to, didn’t care to, my legs wouldn’t move, arms were like stone, every muscle in my body cramped, I could feel everything. My eyes were open, rain hitting them, rain dripped from my lips to my chin, it tickled. The fingertips were warm, hair moved, stand by stand off my face. Puddle water lapped against my cheek, socks soaking up water, shirt getting tighter and heavier, jacket sleeves filling up with water, keys and wallet resting on my leg. I just lay there staring at nothing, seeing nothing.
I think to begin with I was gone; that everything I held myself up to and was trying to achieve, had suddenly left me, except my memories, memories that weren’t real. For the longest time that’s how I was, empty, even down to my emotions there was nothing I laid there empty. I could feel my body, but I couldn’t move it, I wasn’t welcome, I felt awkward, out of place. I’m not sure how long I lay there, dead (I had to be dead because I had no hope), it could have been a minute; it could have been hours, days or years.
The light was wrong. It was dark, only the light seemed to come from a streetlight, the sky was empty, the moon had left me.
Some portion of my mind came back, I started crying, I had failed, failed at even this simple task, I lay for a long time waiting, waiting for something else to come, I should have gotten up, but I just lay there waiting, I was muttering my secret . If that had been my mind for the rest of my days, I would have spent those days in that puddle unmoving; declared brain dead on the spot. The moment raises such disgust in me, I grieved my most important failure, hated my greatest success.
I’d like to lie here, to say anything other than the truth, to save myself the pain and the shame, but I said I would try to tell this memory as it was, not as I wish it, so while I’d like to say I had a vison, a burst of strength, that hope returned to me, I can’t, because in reality it was two words that saved me.
Two words. The Two words that cut through it all. I’m still not sure if I just heard them from somewhere else, said it myself or imagined it afterwards. “Get up” it was angry, disgusted, the words were almost spat out, “Get up”.
Those words have burned themselves into my mind, and affected me every day since. The fear and inspiration it awoke in my mind, throat pricked and butterflies in my stomach, anxiety. Next to the hopelessness it seemed like life had spoken, with a voice that wielded fear.
I took control of my body then……
No dear reader I didn’t…. I am almost finished, I have to be true to the memory, I can’t spare myself now, it’s too late for me to take it back.
I didn’t take control, I wasn’t there yet, it took me such a long time to regain control again, but it gave my eyes back to me for I had seen nothing long before the fall. I watched as fear drove me, took the strings of my life and moved them, dragging my shell in the dust, screaming.
I cursed everyone and everything, hated myself for what had happened, Oh and the fear, fear of the voice, fear of dying, the fear that someone would see me at this moment, see me and misunderstand me, I didn’t want to die,(I don’t want to die now) I was terrified that I had tried to die, terrified I didn’t know where that urge came from, that moment of energy and intention that was actioned without the consent of my mind, that I was powerless against.
Fear drove me, commanded me out of that puddle. I’d gone insane, truly, completely, utterly mad, I was dragging myself to the curb, screaming, crying, laughing, I ripped my finger nails out, shredded my palms and hands into bloody messes my knees into bruised pulp, my head and face cut by being dragged along.
I heaved up that curb fucking curb, shaking. I started to stand and scramble forward, to escape that spot, that puddle on that road. I stood up hunched and bent, buffet by the wind, laughing, crying, waving my hands in all directions spitting, shouting, wiping blood on my jeans, I was staggering side to side shaking, soaked to the bone, I was mad, insane, disgraced and humiliated.
Why say more? I won’t go further, there is so much more but to understand it…. This was not the place for such memories. That moment all those years ago, was not the eureka moment, the next day I turned this into a joke, a story to tell.
To this day, I cannot tell you what really happened that night all those years ago, as I sit here writing and rewriting the words over and over. I don’t think I’ll ever understand it. I wonder what would happened if I could relive that night again, doing everything again now. This was the time that my bubble began to burst and the real world hit me like a wave. Perhaps it was just a moment of growing pains. I’ve said it before, I’m only a cynic, all I have left is the memory of the 9th of May, a memory I visit daily.

Disclaimer: I’m not seeking a diagnosis, just looking for advice on how to approach this, what my next steps might look like.
In order for this to make sense, I’ll give my full story so far in this battle:
First thing to note is that after some traumatic emotional abuse experiences at a young age at school from a teacher, I developed what at the time looked like extreme health anxiety. While I was so young that I can’t consciously go back and remember how it felt, I know and have been told that I was generally extremely anxious about health-related stuff, and the most extreme of these was that I thought there was/might poison in my food because I had read about a poisonous frog, and had concluded that there was a slim chance that somehow the poison from the frog could end up in my food somehow, and this led me to not eating and becoming malnourished for a short time, but this changed because my parents locked me in a room until I agreed to eat as an extreme measure once I was becoming dangerously underweight. Just wanted to write that in case it’s relevant, but my more recent experiences are what’s most important.
The first time I EVER noticed obsessive thoughts was when I first tripped acid (note that I absolutely do not do this anymore lmao), and the obsessive thoughts were about me being a sociopath. It was like “am I a sociopath? I’m always so in my head and overthinking things and wondering what the right way to do things is and I don’t know what I actually feel like doing?
Anyway, that trip ended and I kind of just let it be for a little less than a year. Then I entered a romantic relationship. This was also the first ever relationship in my life where I felt like I could fully trust the other person with absolutely anything. But about a month in, I started to notice that I was really getting in my head about whether I loved her or not, whether I was just faking it, wondering who I really was and am I just some sort of autopilot chameleon. I would overthink so much every time there was vulnerability cause I had thoughts like I was either unequipped to deal with her vulnerability, or like I wasn’t capable of it and that made me defective. This led me to IFS therapy focused on trauma. While I have no doubt there are things to be found there, and I do see value in that work, I’m starting to wonder if it’s doing more harm than good as I’ll soon explain.
Fast forward a year later and ive had a lot of shit go down at once, had to leave family home abruptly, relationship is being strained by my mental health. I still suffer from health anxiety and get fixated on things like my pulse/breathing and feeling like my heart is going to stop/like I can’t get enough air in. After experiencing practically constant panic level anxiety for 3 days straight while on a tour (im a musician), I had a full nervous breakdown and ended up in hospital. At the time, it was like I was worried about literally anything making me anxious, which of course made me anxious. I was taking posters off of my walls because I couldn’t stop thinking “what if I don’t really actually like these posters and they’re just there cause I feel like they should be and I’m just doing what I think I’m supposed to instead of what I want, what do I want…?” Etc.
That was 2 months ago. The hospital stay was a constantly terrifying experience of being fixated on my heart and worrying about it being too high, which of course made it so. I got out of hospital, briefly got better and had a couple weeks where everything honestly seemed fine and then fell straight back in following a panic attack while out with a friend. Since then things have been up and down but generally pretty constant. I had to break up with my girlfriend because my mental health was putting too much strain on her, and my constant being in my head around her thinking “am I actually being genuine, or am I just making up what I think I’m supposed to be doing” was also worsening my own struggle.
Upon leaving her, I fully committed to healing and at that time was fully convinced I was dealing with trauma which was causing me to bury emotions and feel inadequate. I became OBSESSED with it. Obsessed with identifying emotions, understanding why they were there, and trying to link things back to this aspect or that aspect of trauma. That was 4 weeks ago, and I’m reaching a really horrible point. I’m at a point now where I’m obsessively thinking about EVERYTHING in an existential kind of way, trying to “work out” my brain. It’s really difficult to describe, but to give a couple glimpses, even as I write this I’m wondering “am I making this up?” And my obsessions become “meta” in a sense, where I’ll start obsessing over understanding/working out the obsessions, and then doing that again and again, like infinite layers of obsession.
I feel trapped by these obsessions, because they completely rob me of my ability to feel definitive about literally anything. My mind has gotten so good at questioning even the most mundane of things that I can’t go a minute without questioning my actions/feelings/obsessively thinking. It stops me from participating in IFS because IFS is so self-led and I just find myself questioning things all the time, less so in sessions but outside of them. And the concept of IFS and understanding the roots of trauma has become such an obsession in and of itself that I’m starting to wonder if it’s doing more harm than good for me right now. Even now I’m obsessing over whether or not what I’m saying is correct/valid or if I’m just making it up. It’s like I’m constantly gaslighting myself. And I keep adding to this out of thinking that I haven’t quite explained it right yet.
Even what I’ve written here doesn’t encapsulate the depth of obsessive introspection that I’m in. I literally do not find fulfilment in anything anymore and find some satisfaction only in things like journaling, therapy, self-help books, videos about it, and in thinking about it constantly. It’s like it’s the only thing my brain is interested in anymore.
While I’m not asking anyone if I have OCD or not, I’ll seek out a professional diagnosis for that, I am wondering desperately about what approach I might take for myself if it becomes apparent that it is OCD. I’ve NEVER heard of anything like this before and I don’t know how to break this cycle, and I don’t understand what the compulsion side of things would be for me if this was OCD. And now I’m thinking obsessively about trying to work out what my obsessions/compulsions might be! I’m trying to change things up by just observing my thoughts as what they are but even then I can become obsessive about wondering if the observation of thought is a thought and then observing that etc.
And if so, then someone who’s seen or experienced this PLEASE tell me I have hope to be different, to be able to live life and find fulfilment again. It’s like I’m in an infinitely deep hole and can’t find my way out. If there is ANY advice that anyone can give about this, then I’ll take it.

Tw: self harm, suicide, depression, sexual assault
I’m 25, and I feel sad, desperate and dead inside to the point of wanting to end things. I live in a country I’ve wanted to move to for years, I’m studying for my dream masters, I have a lot of friends around the world and near me, I have a supportive family and my boyfriend loves me and is here for me despite a long distance. Despite knowing all this, I can’t seem to get myself excited for anything - I’m unhappy, I dread almost everything, I’m irritable or straight up angry almost all the time, especially when I’m around happy people. I’m socially anxious despite being extroverted, and I sit through social interactions trying to focus on connecting with people but I just think about getting it over with and being alone as soon as possible. I’m horrible to my boyfriend half of the time - I love him and I know he’s a great guy, but I can’t help but be irritated by something he does all the time, I’m ruining our relationship and he’s constantly on the verge of breaking up with me. I don’t want that, but I don’t know how to stop all of this. I feel horrible all the time.
This has been going on and off roughly since I entered my teens. My parents provided a less than ideal home situation and I realised I was depressed around 13. Since 12 I’ve had constant patterns of binge eating and starvation, still ongoing. I started self harming at 16 and stopped at 19. When I tried to tell my parents what was going on for me when living at home, they dismissed things completely. At 17 I had a manic episode which landed me in hospital, after which I referred myself to the local mental health service, and after explaining to them my whole situation and that I felt suicidal, I won’t go into the details but I was dismissed as not at risk. A few weeks later I had my first overdose, after which when my mother found out she told me “I should be the one killing myself”. I decided I was going to be okay but failing, so at 18 a few months before going to university I started antidepressants. I struggled a lot after moving away from home and a few months into first year of university I had my second overdose. After this once again I decided I was going to be “okay”, and I started experimenting with drugs, smoking weed every night and all sorts of others. I was much happier in the period between the end of first year of university and the beginning of the 4th year, despite some inabilities to deal with my emotions. A week into my 4th year of university (with covid in full swing), I was r**ed. I spiralled out of confusion and loneliness and had a huge mental breakdown months later. I started to seek out therapy at this time but it was short lived through the university services, and I was still smoking weed non stop to deal with the huge pain I had. After graduating I moved to a different city, started a job, and once again a few months later had a huge breakdown. At this time I met my current boyfriend and started therapy. I was in therapy for about a year before I stopped for financial reasons. I was constantly dead inside, depressed and having constant mental breakdowns and taking out everything on my boyfriend, started fights over nothing every few days until he eventually broke up with me. We got back together a few months later and since then, it’s been a similar pattern of constantly nothing being good enough, fighting over nothing, me cycling through mental breakdowns, feeling dead inside and not knowing why, suicidal ideation and cycling through self destructive patterns: gym addiction, binge eating, weed smoking, wanting to end my relationship out of guilt of being an awful girlfriend. Eating healthy, getting top grades, sleeping well with no partying or drugs and exercising regularly helps and gives me the illusion of being better, and I don’t know why I simply am not…
After years of this, I don’t know what’s wrong with me and I’m not sure if I even can get better. I will be home for the summer and my mums insists on taking me to therapy, and high I was plenty surprised to hear given my financial situation preventing me seeking it out so far and my parents’ historical dismissal. I don’t know what to do in the meantime. I need hope and I need to know why I simply can’t get better and stay better. The pattern of thinking I’m finally okay and normal for years to random mental breakdown and throes of depression is making me genuinely want to end my life. I hate myself for all the fuck ups of my life and for being so unhappy and making the ones who love me unhappy. I feel like I have no right to feel this way considering how good my life is, and considering I’m the one ruining it by isolating myself from my loved ones, sabotaging my relationship by being mean and angry to my boyfriend for no reason, and being ungrateful for all I have.
I don’t know where to stop hating myself. I want to stop feeling anger, sadness, guilt and shame, and I don’t know where to start, because I truly believe I deserve it.

Hi!
A little back story:
I'm (25 year old Male) soon 12 months into my self-improvement journey and it's insane to look back and see how far I've come. I was a hardcore stoner for 10 years, I smoked everyday all day and did nothing with my life. Then, January 2023 I decided enough is enough and I ordered a one way ticket to Asia and committed to change for good.
I traveled for 6 months and it is hands down the best most life-changing experience I've ever had! When I came back home 6 months ago I was met with a choice, either I start smoking again or give up all my stoner friends and start a completely new life. I chose to start a new life, I moved to a new town far away from mye friends and I've been working on myself every single day for the past months and I've had so much progress.
So the thing is, my end goal is to be able to travel the world while working remotely. I want to start something for myself, with a group of people as a team! I'm not sure what or how just yet, all I know is that I will do anything to reach my end goal, and I figured the first step is to break it up into smaller goals, and I'm starting with the most fundamental, which is building self-discipline and getting comfortable outside my comfort zone. This is essential if I'm gonna be able to work towards my goal.
So,
Do you have a goal of living your life to the fullest and explore the world?
Are you currently working on getting self disciplined?
Are you expanding your comfort zone daily?
Do you feel like you're meant for something more than a "regular life"?
Do you have the drive and the will to work towards your goal?
Does the thought of working in a team with like minded people motivate you?
Are you willing to st some point leave friends and family behind to go live YOUR life?
If you can relate to all of the above, send me a message! Maybe we can start something big together as a team.
I don't have a job, and I don't plan to get one for the next two years either, I'm fully committed to reaching my end goal and becoming the best version of myself.
Everything is possible, I've proved that to myself the past year, and I like the thought of working with like minded people and feel like that's a huge motivator :)
Thanks for the read!

I've been thinking about how I'd rearrange things in OTH to firstly maintain characterisation of our favourites and offer challenges and the drama we all know and love!
The first alternative I thought of was Haley and her music. Instead of making Chris Keller some random guy used to get between Haley and Nathan as a romantic threat (that completely overshadows Haley's passion for music and performing), rename him and make him Haley's older-brother who never went to college, works at the record-store and encouraged Haley to sing/play in his band to break her out of her shell. Have the band play regularly at any opportunity that presents itself - the Burning Boat, gigs at the university etc - and really show Haley as invested in a future as a performing musician. Develop her song-writing through her relationships with Nathan (slow things down!) as well as Lucas, because he's incredibly important to her. Tension can arise within the band when they are approached by a manager who starts rearranging things, bringing the focus to Haley instead of her brother because of her voice/appeal to a younger, female demographic, especially with the subject-matter of her songs. Create more tension when they've recorded the album and are presented with the opportunity to tour. Have Haley's brother be the one to break Haley out of whatever bubble she's in with Nathan - if she doesn't do this now, she'll never get the opportunity; when would the Haley he grew up with ever sacrifice her dreams just on the off chance she could have a relationship with a guy?! Haley's parents sign over guardianship of Haley to her older-brother; she has to home-school while they tour so she doesn't get off-track.
Nathan is hurt by Haley leaving but appreciates it's her dream, and he's going to do the same with High Flyers. He and Peyton become closer: they start dating, this time being kind to each other. Nathan shows just how much he has changed - or rather, how much of the kid he's always been has been brought out by Haley's influence. He lets Peyton in this time - we see her try in S1 but he brushes her off, as if it's a big joke - and she supports him with High Flyers etc. However, they reach a point in their relationship where they decide they are better as friends, and split amicably.
Haley struggles while on tour because of the demands and the lifestyle. She's exhausted, her sleep-cycle is messed up, she's overwhelmed, but her brother's there every step of the way to support her. They have a serious conversation about whether she wants to continue touring or if it's too much for her too soon, and they need to find another female vocalist/guitarist, so she can return home, finish school then figure things out. But the key point is this: Haley doesn't give up her dream because she feels pressure from a guy. She takes a detour because her mental-health is suffering. It would make a great storyline feeding into her adult depression, where being away from her family and friends (especially Karen and Lucas) severely affect Haley's wellbeing. The rug's pulled out from under her and she can't handle the instability.
As for Dan, instead of giving him a heart-condition, he could have ALS, Lou Gerhig's disease. It's an incredibly serious, debilitating disease and I can see Dan using it heavily to manipulate everyone around him, possibly over-exaggerating his symptoms until he's no longer pretending and realises too late that he's pushed everyone away with his behaviour. I can see Dan using his illness as a way to get back into Nathan's life ("I just want to see you play at Duke before I die") and manipulate his way into Lucas' ("I want to make things right before I no longer have the ability"). But I'd like to see Karen and Deb continue to support each other where Dan's concerned, with Karen supporting Deb as she pushes for her divorce despite Dan's diagnosis, helping talk Deb out of her guilt etc. And bring back Royal and May. I can definitely see May Scott returning to take care of her son, while Royal would become the next big-bad, going after Lucas and Nathan for not wanting anything to do with their dying father, attacking Deb for abandoning Dan in his time of need etc.
After the dynamics we saw in S1 with Royal and May, their addition would be very interesting, especially seeing Royal play off of Whitey and how Royal and May's relationship would suffer when she sees Royal bullying the boys, and May supports the two women wronged by her own son. I think it would add a lot of depth to Dan's character when he sees Royal starting to bully the boys, and he decides to devote what time and independence he has left to being the boys' protector, ensuring that neither Nathan or Lucas turns out like he did. Dan redeems himself through his genuine support of Nathan and Lucas - and possibly Karen and Deb too.
What do you think? What would you do?

I’ve been rejected from a top US firm after a vacation scheme.
Throughout the scheme I got praise from grad rec, trainees, my supervisor and other partners about my personality and commitment to the scheme.
I thought I did so well that I withdrew from other firms as I was confident in converting.
This was my first VS and is my first cycle. The competition is fierce but I believed I did very well. I was the only underrepresented one in many aspects on the scheme but I did not let this stop me.
I’m happy I got to experience it but now it’s left me in this weird void of what to do next. I planned on quitting my job and doing a masters in September not possible now as I have no security of a TC after it’s completed. (From a very reputable university)
Most direct TC applications open are to firms I did Vs applications to so cannot apply or they’re US firms with an intake of 3/4 trainees. A levels are my downfall so I tend to get rejected based off of those alone. Non RG. 1st Class grade.
The people they gave the TC’s too are all Oxbridge and Durham. Most already held TC offers elsewhere. They’ve never taken on a non RG trainee so maybe I was naive to think I had a chance in the first place.
I have another VS next month but the standard of the US firm has made me not want to sell myself short going to small firm as this other VS. I will still embrace the experience and hope to get a TC.
I also have a Bar scholarship and place Jan25 start. So I have limited time to get a TC before commencing this route into law or rejecting it all together. I want to be a solicitor now and not a barrister.
Feeling like there’s no hope to get a TC and if I had a better educational background I probably would’ve converted the first VS.
I will now reject the masters offer I got for September and I’m not sure what to even do now.