Couplet two line long poetry

According to this paper, 70% of long-haulers had an abnormal PET-scan using the reactive 18F-FDG.
So I did one and they found something similar to what they are used to find in Long haulers and in ME patients :
cortical Hypofixation (=Hypometabolism) of the parieto-temporal region (right and left but the left part is the most affected)
It is probably because of an ongoing inflammation according to the paper.
Is there someone who knows what does this part of our brain ?
So that's it. For the moment, nothing can be done to resolve this problem but you still should do it because it is amazing to "prove to yourself" that something is wrong in your body. Self-gaslighting is very destructive so anything that can protect us from that is good.
It didn't change anything except that I feel a little relieved.
By the way, the two other tests that went abnormal for me were a Tilt table test (mild postural tachycardia) and an HHV-6 blood analysis (it shows a reactivation)

I am not officially diagnosed with BPD, I had two therapists in the past telling me I was in the spectrum of BPD but neither of them wanted to "rely on a diagnosis" (which is common in my country, it is difficult to get a diagnosis). Maybe I am just a less of a severe case, and a BPD spectrum is actually a thing.
I do experience numbness and emptiness every once in a while. It feels like I lose the meaning in doing anything, get very sad and have zero motivation. This can last from a few hours to a few days. It has been like this for many years now, maybe 10 years. I am now 35.
I am in a 3 year long commited relationship and due to (probably) symptoms related to BPD it has been really hard to be aware of my feelings. In the beginning of the relationship I was in a kind of a limerant state, especially when things between us were unstable. Then it settled in a comfortable and warm feeling.
My problem is that my feelings are inconsistent. For a few days I feel so lucky to have him, I smother him with hugs and kisses and then I suddenly think that one day he will die and I won't be able to live without him. After that I get a few days of being so numb... I get depressed and uninterested in anything and also lose interest in him and question whether I have ever loved this person. I don't know what the hell that is. I constantly check whether I am attracted to him (we are long distance for a few months per year so that takes a toll on sexual life). I have wondered is this related to BPD? feeling empty and having a fear of being abandoned? Or am I just a horrible person who never loved him and is leading him on?

So this is going to be a VERY long story and I hope some of you can take time out of your day so I can get some perspective from other people as I feel some serious guilt after what happened the past 3 days.
To give some background, I was an employee at a grocery store and I became friends with a girl that I'm going to call Amy for the sake of privacy. Amy was cool and we got along great. She did mention that she had a boyfriend and it honestly didn't bother me at the time. I was just happy I made friends with a cool person at work. We would sit together in the break room and have a lot of conversations together and even add each other on sc and talk occasionally outside of work. She did kind of mention to me however that she doesn't have a lot of friends and she was trying to make an effort to be in a group of friends.
Well at the beginning of this year, she ended up quitting and I was pretty sad as she was one of the few friends I made at this job. We didn't speak again until 2 months after she quit. I have a friend group that I have known since I was in middle school and once or twice a month we get together to play video games, play board games, watch movies, etc. I decided to invite her to this friend gathering as I remembered her saying that she didn't have too many friends and I wanted to see her again. She ended up coming and it went amazing for her. She loved being around my friends, we were all laughing and having a great time. She loved all of my friends and we invited her to our discord server afterwards and she became an official member of our friend group. Afterward, I learned that the reason she quit the job was that she had a miscarriage and it destroyed her emotionally. She told me that inviting her to this friend's gathering sorta changed her life and helped her through that dark moment.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly until one day she asked to hang out with me one-on-one at my place. I agreed and she came over and we played video games and watched a few movies together. It ended up becoming super late and we decided to just sit on my couch and just chill and talk for a bit. The conversation ended up starting to get very personal/sexual and there seemed to be an awkward tension happening in that moment. She then tells me that she's actually “Poly” and is into open relationships. Hearing this, I realized that I sorta had feelings for this girl and I made a very risky move by asking her if she wanted to be together in an open relationship in a FWB way. She talked to her BF the very next day and he agreed to let her be with me in an open relationship and that's when it all started.
The first 2 months of our relationship went great. She was seeing me once a week and we were trying to make our relationship work. We started talking about our personal lives a lot more and it seemed like this relationship was going to work. All of the friend group knew about our relationship and she was still active in our discord server and everything seemed to be going well. The relationship started to get kind of serious and we both said that we loved each other. We started discussing having kids potentially in the future and trying to make this open relationship work somehow as it seemed like we both had serious feelings with each other despite her technically having a BF. I stopped viewing this as a FWB and believed that she was the girl I was going to spend the rest of my life with.
However, things started to go a little downhill in the third month of our relationship. I started to notice that she wasn't as talkative and enthusiastic about our relationship as she once was. She started to reply a lot slower to my texts and we started to get into fights. We ended up getting into a MASSIVE fight about a week ago. Long story short I tried to talk to her about our relationship and was kind of wondering why she was acting the way she was. She EXPLODED on me and started yelling at me and saying I was being so annoying by asking her constantly about our relationship. I tried to be as calm as possible as I didn't understand why she was acting this way. I said something along the lines of “If we are a couple I feel like we should talk this out as I care about you” She then said something along the lines of “we aren't a couple, we are just a FWB”. I was heartbroken when she said this after she told me that she loved me and wanted to have a family with me. It was way too overwhelming for me to handle so I decided a few days after the fight that I would break it off with her.
I sent her a text that said that we should stop being in a relationship and just remain friends. Initially, she agreed but I kind of realized as I kept snapping her and texting her I felt heartbroken and I didn't wanna talk to this girl anymore. So I ended up texting her that I don't think we should see each other anymore as it's way too painful for me. I implied that I don't want her around the friend group anymore as it's going to make me feel terrible and fuck with me mentally. She then insisted that she should stay because she was technically part of the group now and that this relationship should have nothing to do with the friends she made. I then later talked to my friend group and they all agreed that she should be exiled and that my mental health is much more important. We ended up banning her from the Discord server and cutting all contact with her.
Well, I feel horrible now. I understand I was heartbroken and still am but I feel like it was a mistake to kick her out when she told me how much of an impact this friend group had on her, especially through her miscarriage. My friend group is all on my side and thinks I did the right thing by kicking her out of the group but I want to hear other people's perspectives. and their advice

I (M42) and my spouse (F40)
I just had the shock of my life, and possibly the most dramatic upheaval imaginable. I'm scared, concerned and i wonder if anyone else has a similar experience. This is concerning my soon to be ex-wife. Not an easy read or even to type, but strap yourselves in. We were married for 13 years, had known each other for 23. She was a child that grew up in a war in her home country, and was effected by it more than she let on. During the last 4 years of our relationship, she started developing incredible anxiety and depression. She would become like an exposed nerve, and every perceived slight became something she would ruminate on for days at a time. We had some events in our marriage that were incredibly stressful. Our son was born prematurely, our daughter when she was born was also traumatic. She was always highly strung when i knew her. i was very much the calming influence to her and it was a role that developed in our dynamic. i would be her rock and safe place. Things started to change, and dramatically so. I travel with work and she would look after the kids. i would be home large parts of the year, but i would have to go away sometimes for 4 weeks at a time. When covid hit, we were both home for a better part of 18 months, and i started to notice things that concerned me. She began to become incredibly paranoid about neighbours. She was certain they were spyi ng on us somehow (even though they were 80, and not at all interested in us). This spiraled from the neighbours commenting on the length of our grass. It effected her, and she became fixated. Any new neighbours she instantly distrusted, and she believed they all spoke badly of her.none of it was true, but in her state of hypervigilance, she was misinterpreting signs. A strange look, or half glance was enough to make her feel unsafe and scared. This slowly devolved into her being fearful of being spied on in the shower, people who walked dogs the same time each morning past our house were doing it to spy on us, etc. I could see it was draining her, and making her very ill with stress so we discussed maybe going to therapy, which she did. During the years we were together, she had been on various anti-depressants to cope with depression. I always chalked it down to post natal depression and the stress being a mother brought to her, especially when i went away. She attended therapy, but would stop when it became uncomfortable. She then opened up to me one day regarding it. It turns out that she was molested as a child by a family friend, and had buried it. that coupled with seeing her childhood friend die from an explosion (which i knew about) had effected her more than we knew. The therapy seemed to make it worse, and since that point things took a massive nose dive. She was an incredibly bubbly, happy and cheerful person to everyone. or so i thought. She would sometimes drop the mask at home, and i could see the turmoil developing. I hate to admit it, but i was blind to it for many years. she had masked it from the very beginning. Her paranoia got worse and worse. she came off of her antidepressants and started using weed vape pens to be able to cope with the incredible anxiety. I watched her drift apart from me over the last two years, her kindness towards me vanishing and almost a resentment towards me. She would complain about the new house we had bought and that she hated it because of the neighbours. We discussed moving, but she realised in her more lucid times that the issue would follow her whereever she went. The last year together she would speak about moving to another country. I said i would, but after my parents, who are old, passed. i didn't want them to not see our children in their final years. We had grown apart, she had this strange push-pull dynamic with me. One day she'd love me and be this caring person, the next cold and distant. I tried incredibly hard to pull us back together whilst dealing with her delusions of paranoia that were still ongoing, but the more i tried (and at some points i was quite combative and forceful) to get her to communicate, the more she pulled away. There was hardly any intimacy, which i yearned for and would comment on. She would initiate it sometimes, but for me, i'm ashamed to say, i complained about it a lot. She would have sex with me on occasion, and then if we argued later say "i didn't really want sex, it was like rape". This hurt me to my core, and made me bitter about how we were. The arguments became worse and worse. She started resenting me for trapping her. That was her reality. i had trapped her in the relationship. It wasn't true, but she was upset i travelled with work and could escape when she couldn't. It was never escape for me, i travelled because i had to. Her and the kids were all i wanted to be with. Travel to me was a chore.
Slowly she withdrew more. The more i tried to help and talk, the more she withdrew. All the time she was still paranoid, and now believed the neighbours were spying on her with cameras in the garden. the "cameras" were garden lights.
After three years of constant paranoia and her anxiety, it was starting to effect me. We couldn't go out in the area as she hated the neighbours. Yet to their faces she was bubbly and happy, smiley and almost overly kind. Yet when we were alone, the mask would slip and all her thoughts about them would spill out. Our social life started to be affected,
Anything i said was misunderstood or taken in such a way that i was insulting her. If i said she was silly for thinking in a certain way, i was calling her stupid. Anytime i tried to logic something out with her regarding the neighbours (for example she believed they were watching her shower) it was dismissed. I actually showered and told her to ask if she could see me from the garden. She was confused when she saw she couldn't.
The delusions became worse, and she became more and more paranoid. The textured glass in the bathroom was the wrong way around in her eyes, so people could see in. The motion activated light at the bottom of the garden was a camera, for sure. things like this.She withdrew more and more. I had to go away on a work trip, and the day before i left she asked for a divorce. I was hurt, but said "we can talk about it when i get home" when i arrived at the destination i was working across the world, i messaged her. No response. I tried multiple times until eventually i got a text "The kids will be taken away from me, and i will be sent back to my home country" I rang my father who lived very close to us to find out what was happening.
She had asked him to take her to the police station. She said to report the neighbours for spying, which she did try to do. they obviously didn't listen. She was taken to hospital by my father as she was having a mental breakdown and behaving strangely. I told my boss i had to fly home as something was happening. he booked me the earliest flight and i flew back. I was arrested from the plane. She had accused me of Rape, Control and coercion and ABH. Things i would never do. I was arrested, questioned and told not to go back to my home or to contact her. In one day i lost everything. I was in shock and was an emotional wreck. Worst of all i was concerned and scared for my wife and kids. She blamed me for her emotional state. said i had caused everything and had abused her constantly for years. After a week of staying at my friends house, social services got involved as the kids were missing school. It turns out she was taking the kids to hotels because she was terrified of staying at home. The kids told me later that "mummy thinks men are after her" instead of telling any authorities this, she said it was because she was scared of me. Social services believed everything she said. I was under investigation for the allegations, although not charged. The investigations were ongoing for three months, and in that time i wasn't allowed to contact her at all. Unfortunately in my fear i contacted her repeatedly. She had me arrested for harassment, and i was charged and convicted. I wasn't ever abusive in the texts, but i did contact her a lot.
I secured access to my children through a rushed family court order. I also placed a block on her leaving the country without seeking my permission with the children, as she had taken my passport details to apply for the kids passports without my knowledge. I did this due to her erratic behaviour and i knew she wasn't stable. My father thought i'd over-reacted, but my ex was so good at masking she hid how she really felt even to him. Oscar level masking.
Looking back i realise how bad it was. She ran from her home country at 18 and always ran. she always wanted to move jobs if something went wrong. She would cut off long term friends in an instant if she felt any pressure form them. Her first instinct would always be to flee anything. Any littlle insignificant thing or slight would become something she'd chew over for weeks, often applying the worst case scenario that would then become her reality. The truth was she was constantly afraid. I think at the end i became something she was afraid of too. My determination to keep us together and keep her from falling apart became too much for her. I wasn't always kind and was exasperated a lot. I was too demanding on someone that was exhausted, anxious and clearly unwell. Unfortunately i didn't realise this until too late. I still see the children, but have zero contact with her. She filed a restraining order due to the harassment conviction which i will adhere to. I'm currently going through family court again to secure further rights. She applied for full custody and has said some very terrible untruthful things at court to almost destroy me and remove me from her life. I'm a broken man because of it all, but staying strong for the kids.
I hope there will be some sort of resolution in the future, but i realise that she's scared of me now as she is scared of everything. She told me near the end that she trusts nobody. This broke my heart. The court on the last visit realised that something wasn't right. they have ordered a investigation into our family, and it will hopefully be reported in June when we go back to court. Her medical documents have been re-visited and statements taken. My father witnessed some very strange behaviour and has reported it. We just have to see what happens. She has requested to sell the property we lived in, and i'm slowly watching the life we built implode. She also has asked for the order that stipulates the need for permission to leave the country lifted. June will be the crunch time.

As someone who has to study psychology - even i never opted to do this in real life like i have to now - after some years aside my young upwbd i just feel i need to warn, the need to get help, the impulse to help those ill cursed cluster Bs and the necessasity to feel again, especially to feel this stupid happy childish curiosity about meeting people (not gender related) without seeing them as black and evil and being overall negative.
I tried everything, materially, non materially, educating myself, healing myself, trying everything. I have dedicated fulltime to this illness, did build future arround it, still want it to work.
But at the end of every cycle you are the one takimg the toll and pay.
There are thousands of paintable pictures about the situation between my own mental illness and hers.
Same on the other side.
They have - if at all - a weak but in general negative self from my hpov, playing tough outside.
Every even small negative experience reenforces their self so they accept cruelty as normal. You can tell worst dehumanizing things to them that will not make them question your love.
You will even only give a nice look to a woman walking by without even thinking sexually about that one- it will trigger a tantrum. If not now it will be on their list for the later tantrum. This what you do is a existiential thread to them. They know tjis the, feel it, so it must be true end the panik must be extetnalized onto you.
Actually they build their own living hell in a cage. They cling onto you as they need someone in their cage not to be alone. But you may not be positive in that cage it would bring light into it, as this would expose them and aniliate them.
So they try to drag you down into that cage and keep you there
Any sane person would have keft long ago.
Your exploited codependency abd ppl pleasefixer weak core illness keeps you on the freeze effect with a arroused ANS only partionally using the fight response when you can't swallow it any more.
Problem is the trauma bond. This hell inflicted on you has two neural damage paths.
One is the ANS arrousal if shes there (walking on eggshells) of insecurity. But The second is the withdraws arrousal that happens if you try to break the bo nd. (The learned especially emotional helplessness).
Detachement is a hell of a process- the longer you tolerated it, the more mental healing you have to do.
I just feel that a open discussion in this helps me to feel if i am sane or paranoid.
At the moment i feel disgusted even at small disrespects.
As a example i wanted to do something nice at a restaurant at a fixed time which led to her rearranging the time against plan and when i arrived she already had ordered a cake and coffee and was eating with the lame "there was only one piece of that cawke left, you understand that i had to order it before you came" later ordering a secomd piece of that cake.
I feel disgusted and repelled

(First one had a decent reception so uh... heres part two. Im gonna do these as often as I can as long as people still like em. If they fall off then oh well. Im still happy so many people like it.)
I contemplated, for what seemed to be an eternity, whether or not to kill it. Just... another bug I told myself. My hand was shaking... why was I shaking? Why couldnt I do it? Why? Just lift your gun, and fire. Do it you coward. Do it. My fingers desperately clutched the pistol grip. I could feel a bead of sweat drip down my wrist inside my glove.
3 must've picked up on my sudden anxiety. They handed me their teddy bear. "Its okay mister. Mr Ears will keep us safe. He usually protects me but you can borrow him if you want."
I stared at the bear. It was a ragged thing. A typical brown teddy bear that had been torn and resown multiple times. It had bloodstains on its belly and the color had faded from what I can only assume was years spent as a sponge for tears. Its ears were strangely enough a bright yellow color. The same yellow every helldiver knows all too well. Despite its condition you could tell this bear was well loved. And here this child was offering it to me.
I holstered my senator and grabbed the teddy. It felt oddly void of stuffing. Most likely from the constant resowing that was done. I held it back out to 3. "Ill let you hold on to him for now kid. But keep him close okay? Were gonna have a tough time gettin out of here so he'll need to help out alright?"
3 nodded. Damn. Hell of a name for a kid. Gotta think of something else. For now though, I had to find another way to get the beacon working. It had power, but no way to activate it. I wondered if I could reroute one of the broadcasting stations to send out a signal. Hell, we blow em up enough cant be too hard to get it working. I pulled up the local scan on the planets surface. There were a few points of interest I logged before I lost contact with the Mother of Iron.
First, was obviously extract. Needed to keep that saved. Second was a number of different bug holes we managed to clear out before extract. Ill keep those in just to be safe. Third, here it was. An illegal broadcasting station. It was a longshot for a number of reasons. One, I had to find a way to carry the beacons transmitter 4 miles north on a bug infested planet. Thats the easy part. Second... well. Ive got to get 3 there alive with me. I didnt know what had stopped me from killing them at the moment but now I think that it was the thought that maybe our on ship doctors could cure her. Yeah. Thats it! If.. IF I could get us off this rock then we would both be able to get the best care there is. That.. yeah. That could work. Third though. Third was the hardest part. It was rare for a superdestroyer to turn around and send extract for a single Helldiver that had, in their eyes, failed to make it on board the first one. I had to convince them it was worth the time, and money, needed to be spent. Damn. I guess I had time to think of a pitch. For now. Beacon. Broadcasting tower. Simple.

(Part 2 out now)
I woke up with a cough of blood and pain. I felt something metal with my hands as I looked down. A long stint of rebar poked out of my ribcage and through my chest plate, covered in a mix of my blood and the bile of a bug.
I reached down and grabbed my Senator, feeling its trusty weight in my hands. I haphazardly tried to place the barrel against the portion of rebar sticking out of my back. This had better work, I thought. I pulled the trigger once and with a loud Crack I felt the vibration from the shot in my stomach. I tried to choke down vomit and pulled the trigger twice more Crack, Crack. With the third shot the rebar gave way and I rolled to my side and collapsed on the ground. Agony shot through my body as I hit the dirt.
I realized then, Hmmph, they left me. During Extraction one of the other divers called in a 500kg as we were about to board Pelican 1. She had thrown it over one of those damned chargers in an effort to kill one last bug but... it started charging us. I was the last one in line and just as I was about to board... i was thrown 200 feet away from extraction site. I don't blame them. I'd have left me too. We had successfully evacuated a number of scientists and other military personnel, but we'd lost the planet. No hard feelings I guess.
I tried to pull my mind away from those thoughts and just focused on one. Survive. I pulled myself to my knees and looked at the rebar again. Cant park there bud, I thought tryna cheer myself up. I had dropped my senator when I fell and ended up with two free hands. I reached down and with the assistance of my servo-assited armor prepared to wrench the rebar from my chest. Alright, count of three, I thought. One my heartrate quickened. Two I adjusted my grip ever so slightly. Three I ripped the metal rod out and felt a hot stinging pain shoot through my body. I quickly grabbed a stim and applied it.
I winced as the stim numbed my broken ribs and began rapidly working to heal them and my open chest wound. After a couple seconds, I could stand.
I took quick stock of my inventory. My Senator with 23 rounds left, two ration packs, a canteen of water, 1 stim, a knife, and a bag of oatmeal. Oatmeal? Seriously? I'd rather have ammo but... beggars can't be choosers.
I looked around me. Snow and beaten down rubble surrounded me. This was some kind of research station, I think. Didn't bother grabbing the name. Cold as hell and nothing really around to get my bearings. Great. I thought. Im gonna die inside a freezer. I started looking through the rubble for anything useful. I found a corpse of one of the scientists that hadn't made it to evac. I grabbed the ID card off his jacket. Figured It'd get me inside a building if there were any left standing. I crawled out of the rubble and onto the snowy tundra.
The sun had set and with it most of the light I would've been able to utilize. I scanned the horizon for a blinking light. Blinking like meant beacon. Beacon meant possible radio, maybe some ammo. I clocked one to the southwest and began walking that direction senator drawn.
I spotted a few distant bug patrols illuminated by moonlight but they had no interest in me. I kept my head down and kept moving towards the light. Details started to take shape and I could see this was a research station. Perfect I thought.
I reached the door and used the key card. There was a Beep and the red light flashed green. The door cracked open before jamming. Oh no you dont, I thought and with one hand yanked the door open. I closed it behind me with the same hand to keep the wildlife disinterested.
Inside was dark and damp. I had lost the seal integrity on my suit so there was barely any oxygen regulation. Didn't need it on this planet but still, it's a bitch to fix. I turned my flashlight on and started scanning the room for a light switch. I found one but wouldn't ya know it... dead. At least the beacon had power. I walked over to the radio and pulled off my helmet. I wedged the flashlight in my neck and leaned my head to the side. I started flipping switches and turning dials to see if there was a response. Nothing. Id have to find the master terminal. I grabbed the flashlight and donned my helmet again. I began scanning the room again before I heard it. A little shuffle behind me. I turned quickly and drew my senator raising it at the source of the sound.
It was a small child. At least... thats what it appeared to be. At first glance I could see bindings on its legs and arms. A hospital gown with little ducklings on it and a teddy bear tucked under its arm. I lowered my senator as it spoke.
"Dr. Mehon told me to wait here. He said hed be right back."
Dr. Mehon was probably dead I thought. I knelt down and put my hand on the child's shoulder. "Whats your name kid?"
"3". I felt a rage build up. I swallowed it quickly.
"Well 3, what uh... why.. why do you have bin.." I stopped myself. Whatever those scientists were doing here...
3 looked up at me and I noticed it. A cat like set of eyes. Other little details started to click as well. Four fingers on each hand, slightly pointed ears, a discoloration of skin and a rigid scale-like spine on the shoulder.
"The radio doesnt work mister." 3 seemed to have understood their situation. "Dr Mehon destroyed it before he left."
I realized then that it was unlikely either of us would make it off this planet alive.
EDIT: Part 2 out now! (Part 2's a lil shorter) I Didnt think itd get this many upvotes and comments. Ill keep writing then. Feel free to suggest names for 3!

Hey fellow transportation lovers! I really like tf1 but some aspects of it prevents me from fully enjoying it. For instance, the cities are a bit life less, the citizens are only walking to or from a station. Another aspect is that the maps are too small and there are not enough towns. I want there to be several larger cities and then a large number of villages or smaller towns. I want to be able to build a long train line between two or three of the larger cities which also runs through, but doesn’t traffic, the smaller towns. There are then shorter lines that traffic the smaller towns!
So my question: is it worth buying tf2? Is the game much better than the first when it comes to these aspects? Thanks for any help you all can provide!

so lets give some background- Ill call the first friend maya. She is a very sweet person and honestly would never purposely hurt anyones feelings. Lets call this second girl cara and cara honestly can be passive aggressive and be stubborn about her opinions. Theres another girl, lets call her Bee. Bee used to be best friends with maya but now only talks and prefers to talk to cara, which is her choice so its whatever. Cara has shit talked all of us including Bee and we know this for sure. She left her old friend group because they knew she shit talked them, and she blames me for them coming up to me and asking if she did the same with me, which I said yes to. We are all part of another big friend group lets say 14 people. We put our differences aside because its really not that deep and everything was chill In our group. Recently some girl started a slander account on insta making fun of people in our year group. We were curious who it was as this was the third time i think and they never got caught. While the whole gc were texting and trying to figure it out just for fun, Cara says she knows who it is and what we are guessing is wrong and she knows how this girl "operates." We just asked out of curiosity, "who is it" cause i thought as good friends for a few years she would tell us. She said she didnt want to and coudnt. we said and I quote "alr its ur choice but is there any reason you cant?" we asked out of concern and curiosity and it was well intended. However, she said she just "I cant." we then said "ah fine then its ur choice."
Maya asked after "did this person say anything to u before doing this?" which she asked because she thought that the person behind the account had announced it and cara heard or something along those lines. Cara interpreted it as Maya was saying she was involved in the account and was friends with this person which:

1. if youre friends with them, then you arnt responsible for their bad actions but covering up for them is wrong, so as long as u report it, its fine and we dont really care
2. Where tf did u see it as if maya was saying u and this person were besties, her text did not say anything like that at all???
3. if you arnt going to tell us who it is, why keep announcing you know this person and how they "operate," which makes it sound like you know them well

Cara sent 3 voice messages on the group chat and then a whole paragraph basically saying, "how could u think i would be friends with a person like that tf." I felt bad for Maya as she kept apologising when she didnt even have to, and I know she woudnt even hurt a fly and didnt mean any harm. So I said "i read the text as if she was just asking if this person said something about it to you, not that you were involved." and I also said "its just a misunderstanding cara!" which is what it was. But soon after Bee steps in and asks Maya "are u okay bro tf" "why would you say that" "this is horrendous." and writes a paragraph that assuming stuff is wrong. But didnt cara assume Maya was being mean? Bee and cara sent maya whole rants on priv after, at like 12 in the night and maya was asking me to help out because she didnt know what to do and kept apologizing.
I asked Cara why she didnt see that maya didnt mean any harm, but long story short cara kept telling me that i was gaslighting her and making her believe that her side of the story was wrong and i never took her side,
she brought up her whole old friend group and said it was my fault that they think she shit talked them (there was screen shot proof of her doing that and they only asked me if cara did the same to me which I had proof off so I said yes).
Cara said maya and me attacked her on the gc, and when Bee stepped up it was her being mature and not taking a side which is so wrong what, It feels like double standards to me because when i stepped up and said nothing wrong btw just that it was a "misunderstanding," she said I was wrong. I dont know what to do but its really not that deep and its ruining the whole friend group as no one wants to take sides seeing as we have our finals and no time to fixate on this.
Cara keeps saying no one sees her side and she keeps saying she knows shes correct. I said I acknowledge u have ur own views but so do I so can we just move on from 1 simple text? and she said no. she seems to have forgiven Maya but is still mad at me. I apologised anyway for how our texts may have come accross but she said she doesnt want to see my side because im wrong and i cant justify it.
what should I do and AITAH

I had a reading once with a psychic and she told me I have a spirit guides. I kinda don't believe it because I haven't seen one nor I have a 3rd eye. Several days after that I dream about my spirit guides telling me that they're always by my side and that they love me. There were two of them 1 guy and 1 woman. They have buff bodies and the woman has long black curly hair. In that dream, it was also night and they talk to me a lot and when morning came they said they have to go since they have other works as well. I was sad and beg them to stay and even have them promise me to meet again at night, I woke up after that. The 2nd night, I can't sleep no matter what I do, I'm also skeptical wether what I dream was real or not so yeah no meetup in dreams happen again but that night I can feel like there's a static electricity at the back of my head just below my neck I don't know if it's related to that. There's also a scene one night where I was so frustrated because I couldn't bought the thing I badly need. So even though I kinda find it ridiculous, I keep thinking "If I really have a spirit guide, please help me get it, I badly need that" when I didn't get it, I really cursed them in my head and said a lot of bad things because of so much frustration. I sleep that night and when I wake up, I feel the static electricity at the back of head again (I don't really know how to describe it but it really feels like a static electricity and is tingling) and I was like where they trying to communicate with me again? That day I receive a news that I can finally bought it, when that happened my left ear feels hot all of a sudden like someone literally lit a match to close to my left ear . It was aggressively hot (I don't have tinnitus btw, it happened that one time only) and I laugh because I remember what I did last night. I think that's their way of telling me, "You get what you want, so don't curse at me". So when I apologize, it stop. There were also times were I feel a pressure in my forehead like some invisible hand is pressing against it and sometimes I can also smell ritual oils though we don't actually use one. I also think they're giving me signs specially when I'm about to do a bad decision like one time "I decided to skip my exam, because I'm prioritizing my other workloads, suddenly I smell ritual oils again and I feel like my forehead is getting cold. I didn't think much of it. I was on my way home, when my groupmates told me that the deadline for my workload was moved, that means I don't have to skip my exam, so yeah I went back to school again that time (that was a waste of money and time seriously). Do I really have a spirit guides or maybe it's just in my head? I don't know, If I do can you give me tips and advice on how to communicate with them?

In November 2022 an ex ended a 3 year relationship with me in a very dramatic and unhealthy way. I felt relieved; later I realized our dynamic was very toxic and manipulative.
Since then I tried connecting with new people, both through my social life and the apps. My experiences were a range of ‘not great’ to ‘horrifically bad’. An example of ‘not great’: on the first meeting the guy was crying in my arms because he was still in love with another woman. We are friends now. Example of horrifically bad: the guy would not let me leave his flat and joked about kidnapping me.
I am not really the type of person who needs a relationship to feel ‘happy’. I love my work, my interests, my family, I have many friends around the world, I feel always blessed and surrounded with joy.
In November 2023 I met someone from HK and I learned that something was missing in my life that I hadn’t even realized was missing. Together we created magical worlds in poetry, drawings, stories and shared experiences. I felt more connected to my creative and playful self, I felt more present, less invested in the digital world, enjoying the slowness of the world softly turning around me. I loved how he lives his life with intention, how he connected with all the little creatures around, how he cultivated a garden. Sex was also incredible.
It lasted 5 months. A few weeks ago it ended. For several reasons, he could not commit to a relationship with me.
Now I am trapped in the ‘what if’s. Imagining what my life would be like if we could be together. I am trying to bounce back, but it is not easy. Everything that was so fulfilling before feels so faded now. But I also don’t want to long for a person who doesn’t want me. It doesn’t feel nice.

call me names.
I lock myself in a room, small dusty room - the dust is mostly dirt blows in through the open windows. pollen. it makes you sneeze, me sneeze, even after I close the windows, when it's getting too cold. call me 'sniffles', that's a name you could call me.
someone is afraid, long time they've been afraid and their fear makes them called 'fraidy cat'. they're shuddering. i look over at them in the corner and they shudder harder - i step closer, they shudder harder - like excited atoms, the friction, they start to glow. fire is burning in the corner of the room with them, in them, around them, and now the wallpaper (pale blue with little pink roses here and there) is charred black. hold out a hand (to offer them comfort), but the time is past (for comfort) and the soot blackens your fingertip. i wrote something in the soot like a dirty or a foggy car window (outside or inside, warm or cold). the wall was warm from their little inferno fire burning fire fire but it was years ago (the two steps across the room were years) and your finger doesn't burn, cold like a wall is cold. close the windows. the ashes make sniffles sneeze.
call yourself something big: you can be 'ace' or 'joe cool' or 'the fonz' or 'bullit' or 'brainy smurf' or 'indiana jones' or 'mr. creosote', point is that you've got a lot to give. I'm you. I know i'm you because in mirrors you look me right in the eye. I look over your shoulder. I push a boulder. The moon is like a boulder in space, weightless, and the earth and the sun are pushing it together. One does more work than the other. Rumor has it the moon's just an affectation the earth came up with to impress the sun. instead of reading this you should read that calvino story about the moon.
anyway, the moon's something big. all the dogs howl at it - of course they would. they're just a piece of the earth same as all of us, so it's a kind of arrogance then, the moonhowl, it's look-at-me look-how-great-I-am. I have some barbed wire too, the two dogs on opposite sides, one that's free and the other that isn't, the free one gets stuck below in the middle of the night and bleeds to death, the unfree one runs in circles pointlessly, digs a rut in the ground that matches the fence - the clever observation would be that the one with the name, 'fido' or 'rex' or 'killer', that despite being trapped in the boundary of the fence he's the one who's really free, and the one who has no name (he never had any use for one) is imprisoned in his own way, not by the fence but by his exclusion from the things that matter, the naming of things, etc. that's what you might write if you were trying to be clever.
instead of being clever, you could write the most obvious thing in the world. you could recite it, out loud, in public. you could read and write and recite to delight, the light that burns twice as bright, scribble with some graphite, at night. the persistent rumor (as advanced by the koyannisqatsi guy (that word, so mysterious and alien, of course actually just swiped like everything else from the people it once belonged to, belongs to him now)) that television rots children's brains has little basis in reality. i spent half my life watching television. if i remember correctly the gimmick in this film of his was that the kids were all zombies staring at the television, and the television was showing the disney adaptation of pinnochio or something. maybe it was dumbo. these are both films about being a prisoner. (sniffles might have been that disney dwarf, call him 'sneezy')
the thing i was getting at is that the cathode ray tube is where electrons go. your brain, your personality, it's all the same thing, electrons. they're stuck in your brain. some people believed that x-rays or gamma radiation or something were leeching out of the CRTs and this was why everyone was 'getting dumber', and they believed also that the programming itself was to blame, that if only we made the television more Moral and Upright and Proper things would finally fall into place. it never occurred to them that television was downstream of society itself, that is, them and their actions, the ones they do on purpose as well as the ones they do without thinking. in the cartoon, the wolf goes bananas because of how much of a hard-on he has for red riding hood, everyone is laughing when a train whistle comes out of his head or his eyes bulge out of their sockets, or his tongue is suddenly 50 feet long and unrolls like a red carpet, they laugh and the thought process which produces this hilarious moment is "sometimes desire is like your tongue unrolling like a carpet", "sometimes sex is like steam coming out of your ears", "sometimes your heart beats and every pump it's jutting ten feet out of your chest"
more and more quietly you walk up some stairs. they're creaky and you don't want to wake anyone. i say more and more because the first time you climb them, many years ago, it's too loud and you make the neighbors angry, and even though they don't tell you about it with words, you get the message. (one day you'll build a house with stairs that never creak or stairs that always creak, and this will solve the problem once and for all) the same goes for the heart-beats. heart beats too loud or too quietly. softly the heart beats. beats me.

1. RUHN A MUNCH
   
2. EVERYTHINGS CONNECTED OMFNGHFHSHAJAJAJHHJ
   

first with gwydion & then the layout of the lands & Brannon & the fire FUCK EVERYTHINNGNGNGNT IS CONNECTED

1. I FUCKING KNEW JESIBA CARED I FUCKING CRIIIIEEEDDD
   
2. ….the hand incident…..
   
3. Baxian slay
   
4. They were apart too long my heart was aching
   
5. Nesta and azriel are my two favs and I was so happy to watch them + “nyx is waiting” moment had my fucking heart
   
6. Hunt baby I’m so sorry this happened to you king literally had me fucking crying I couldn’t believe they were getting tortured like this. They moved on too quickly from this like I couldn’t deal with that
   
7. FUCKKK THE KINGS
   
8. Ithan slayed. He was too hard on himself. Like king pls she was hater. I didn’t like Sigrid
   
9. Tharion just be doing shit to do shit. I’m down with the wife
   
10. River and ocean queens could’ve sucked my ass they were so annoying and viper queen. Matter a fact fuck all queens and kings Bryce is so real for that
    
11. The twin sons reveal in the boat thing was a TRIP. She’s a motha
    
12. Celestina switch up was crazy, I couldn’t help but laugh at the “no don’t do that” and like her next line was “I yield” like pls bitch u never stood on business
    
13. Literally was throwing up every other page from all the shit that was happening in part 3
    
14. Filing for unemployment had me rooooollllllinnnnnggggggggggg that was the FUUUUNNNIIESSTT thing he could’ve said
    
15. Hunt supremacy
    
16. I literally don’t know what to do with myself I’ve read every series now literally sobbing what do I do
    

Hey everyone. I’m not the best with money so be nice lol. Just need some advice.
I’m 23. I went through a lot these last few years and made some shitty financial decisions. For example I bought a car 3 years ago and now I’m way upside down in the loan. I owe 18k and the car is worth 10k.
I have 3k in credit card debt and 1.5k in very high interest personal loans. I also have 20k in student loans. My credit score tanked last year. I was stuck for a long time in a serving job and now I owe almost 2k on my taxes. I literally made 35k last year and now I make around 42k.
Things are improving but I’m falling behind on the credit card payments and I’m struggling every month to make ends meet. I am going for a promotion at my job which should bring in a few more dollars an hour. I also got my last semester of college fully funded through my work, so no more student loans. The plan is to be in a salaried position at my company by the end December (65k), and I have several people working closely with me to make sure it happens but obviously there’s no guarantee.
My question is do I take out a portion of my old 401k (it’s been sitting in an account from my job two years ago) so I can survive until things get better. I have 7k in the account. I just recently started contributing to a 401k through my new job. I’m thinking of taking out half and rolling over the other half. With half of the account I can pay the 2000 I owe on my taxes, sit some of the money in a high yield savings (I have no emergency fund rn), and put the rest toward my credit cards to reduce the amount of bills I have to pay every month. Otherwise I’ll keep living by my same budget and trying to cut costs wherever possible.
I know this is a huge, huge, huge no no in personal finance, and I’m losing myself hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few decades. My hope is that by finishing school and making a more comfortable wage I can contribute a higher percentage to my retirement accounts soon, and pay myself back some of what I took out. I wouldn’t be considering it but I feel like I have no other way to come up with the 2k for my taxes.
Any advice is more than appreciated!

First off I’ve never went to a doctor I have always battled through it in my own. I’m going to make this as quick and straightforward as possible but it’s a lot to unpack. Anyone who reads it all and can give any input I really do appreciate. I honestly don’t always trust doctors and big pharma so looking for advice from people.
-I’m 30 years old and have legit been battling with my brain/body for as long as I can remember. I own a construction company. Moved into a house that is gutted and needs to be fully renovated (with basically me doing all the work. Like literally everything from plans, budget, and the actual work.). So I say this because a lot of people claim they are busy or have a lot to do. Trying not to sound arrogant but I actually have almost an impossible amount of work I do. Business, newborn, house remodel, and the list goes on. I am obsessed with building, designing, engineering, creating things, and being a craftsman.
-Since I was young I battled with not being able to sleep properly (diagnosed with sleep apnea). And my brain is like this machine that moves at a million miles a minute and I honestly can’t control it all the time. I have huge goals and work from the time I open my eyes till whatever hour I crash. If I am completely sober with no caffeine, nicotine, etc. I cannot process my thoughts. It’s a non stop wave of business ideas, work to be done, work coming up, customer relations, networking, materials and job planning, with always a clear view of my vision for the long term. When this happens I become immobile. I will sit on my phone to space out to quiet the thoughts. Procrastinate and refuse to start the work I know needs to be done now. I oversleep and feel beat and tired all day regardless of how much or how little I sleep. I simply can’t do anything.
-I am cursed with intelligence. I’m not saying this as a positive thing necessarily. Someone close to me is a psychologist who diagnoses autism and they believe after some testing I might be on the spectrum. Take it for what it is but scored 130 on two different types of IQ tests. I don’t tolerate things like small talk, I am fairly quiet (when sober), I do not want to make friends or talk to people who have nothing to offer me (business owners/entrepreneurs, people who are masters of their craft, even people who are considered dreamers and have ideas and goals) are all people I will attach myself too because I find they are the only ones I can have a real conversation with. Relationships are very difficult because they tend to think I’m emotionless. I just have a very direct grasp on my feelings and I can handle them. - I cannot sit on a computer and be productive without an amphetamine. I cannot read a book and retain a single word of it. I’m reading but my thoughts are elsewhere.

Hi! I’ve been doing some research with a reverse dictionary but can't figure out a sign someone used in a story. I have class next week and I’ll ask her then but figured I’d ask here. The sign involves two 5,5 hand shapes. The first hand is in front of the nose with the thumb touching the nose. Then, the same gesture is repeated with the other hand, so the thumb of the second hand looks like it’s creating a long, phony nose. After that, you twiddle your fingers. It was used in a story to convey the concept of entertaining or mocking someone’s attempt, suggesting that what they did was lame. The sign felt sarcastic with the facial expression, so I’m unsure if it means something sarcastically beautiful or impressive or if it’s a negative word like lame or uncool or unfunny. Thanks!