How to photograph pregnant women
Baby Bumps
2010.11.27 19:56 hersheykiss7761 Baby Bumps
A place for pregnant redditors, those who have been pregnant, those who wish to be in the future, and anyone who supports them. Not the place for bump or ultrasound pics, sorry!
2022.11.03 10:32 EliteDribbel howtolooksmax
howtolooksmax.com How to looksmax is a community for men and women to post their pictures for others to give advice on how to improve their appearance.
2017.10.03 05:38 NicoleMary27 She breasted boobily down the stairs.....
A sample of how men who create films, books, TV, and graphic novels characterize women. (Plus memes, shitposts, and meta once in a while.)
2024.05.19 17:48 Loud_Sprinkles5872 Can someone please mark this short essay for inspector calls
the essay has not been completed yet, i just wanted get an opinion on my presentation of ideas. P.S I am aiming for a grade 7-8.
the question : how far does priestley present society as unfair in an inspector calls [34 marks]
the essay :An inspector calls is a morality and an anti-war play written by J.B Priestley in 1945 and set in 1912 in the fictional town of Brumley. The play follows through the involvement of an upper middle class family in the death of a lower class worker- Eva smith. J.B Priestley presents how far society is unfair by using the difference in power within the upper and middle class alongside the division in fair treatment based upon ones position and status within the class and gender hierarchy system. J.B priestley who was a socialist believed that this difference in class and gender systems should be abolished by the adoption of socialist views.
J.B priestley uses Mr Birling to show how far the society is unfair. He does this my presenting Mr Birlings attitudes towards people of lower class; specifically, females. In act 1, Mr birling commands Edna, the Birlings’ maid to “show him in here. Give us more light”. This suggests that Mr Birling expects Edna a worker from a lower class to serve the family tirelessly even past her usual working hours to contribute towards the celebration of Gerald and Sheila ‘s engagement – “ bring us some port”. Additionally, the use of imperative verbs- show and give suggest that Mr Birling commands Edna to follow is orders almost instantaneously. This shows us the mistreatment of the lower classes within the society . Priestley chooses to use Edna as a construct to represent the working lower classes of the patriarchal society in 1912 and 1945. Furthermore, the use of the repetition of “light” in the stage directions and in Mr Birlings words suggests that the working class will be the ones to enlighten the upper and middle classes and bring to “light” the mistreatment and unfair inequalities with in the patriarchal society and class systems. In addition, Mr birling also shows apathy towards the death of his former worker- Eva smith by claiming that “this girl” had interrupted his “business” by protesting for higher wages and it was his “duty to keep labour costs down”. This suggests that Mr Birling dismisses the death of Eva to highlight that he has no responsibility in her death as he was only doing his “duty”. The use of the verb- “duty” shows that he tries to justify his doing by claiming it to be the right thing to do. Priestley does this to further use Mr Birling as a construct of capitalism to encourage the contemporary audience to support socialist ideologies while criticizing the capitalist views held by the upper classes.
J.B Priestley also uses Gerald and Mrs Birling and their interactions with Eva smith/Daisy Renton to show how far the society is unfair. He does this by suggesting how Gerald and Mrs Birling exploited and mistreated Eva even when needed help the most. This is seen when, Gerald comes clean to the inspector stating that he had rescued her from “Aldermann Megarty” only to make her his mistress and lodge her a house over summer. He states that she had “lived economically on what I allowed her” before leaving her towards the “end”. This suggests that despite him rescuing her from a “notorious womanizer” ; had installed a dynamic of control in their relationship by “allowing her”. The use verb –“allowing” emphasises the control he had over her life as his mistress . Priestley chooses to do this to show the audience that even ‘good’ men such as Gerald have a considerable impact on showing how unfair the society of the 1912 is. Additionally, Gerald despite his exploitive behaviour towards the working class states that Eva had made him feel like a “fairy prince”. The use of simile shows that in Gerald’s views he had done the right thing to protect and shelter her, much like what a “fairy prince” would have done. Furthermore, the use of the adjective; “fairy” connotes that Gerald is wanting to be viewed as innocent and sweet almost painting himself as a perfect man who is found only in “fairy” tales. Priestley does this show to the audience that capitalism had been etched into the minds of people and that it will take a long time to overcome it and to support the equal treatment of society. In addition to this, Mrs Birling admits rather pridefully that she had “use my influence to have it refused” when talking about rejecting the charity and donation she could have given to Eva while she was pregnant with Eric’s child. The use of the verb- “influence” shows that Mrs Birling is aware of her social class and uses it actively to assert dominance over the poor working class women who need her help. This is also ironic as she is the head of the Brumley women’s charity organisation yet she undermines the women who need help from her ”charity” by referring to them as –“girls of that class”. The use of the noun- “girl” shows that she looks down upon the women of the lower classes to be immature like girls. Priestley chooses to use Mrs Birling to show that the older generation has negatively impacted the society with their overly capitalist views and to highlight the need to change within the government and non- profit organisations to avoid injustice and inequality in service. This shoes how far Priestley shows that the society is unfair.
thank you in advance :)
submitted by Loud_Sprinkles5872 to GCSE [link] [comments]
the question : how far does priestley present society as unfair in an inspector calls [34 marks]
the essay :An inspector calls is a morality and an anti-war play written by J.B Priestley in 1945 and set in 1912 in the fictional town of Brumley. The play follows through the involvement of an upper middle class family in the death of a lower class worker- Eva smith. J.B Priestley presents how far society is unfair by using the difference in power within the upper and middle class alongside the division in fair treatment based upon ones position and status within the class and gender hierarchy system. J.B priestley who was a socialist believed that this difference in class and gender systems should be abolished by the adoption of socialist views.
J.B priestley uses Mr Birling to show how far the society is unfair. He does this my presenting Mr Birlings attitudes towards people of lower class; specifically, females. In act 1, Mr birling commands Edna, the Birlings’ maid to “show him in here. Give us more light”. This suggests that Mr Birling expects Edna a worker from a lower class to serve the family tirelessly even past her usual working hours to contribute towards the celebration of Gerald and Sheila ‘s engagement – “ bring us some port”. Additionally, the use of imperative verbs- show and give suggest that Mr Birling commands Edna to follow is orders almost instantaneously. This shows us the mistreatment of the lower classes within the society . Priestley chooses to use Edna as a construct to represent the working lower classes of the patriarchal society in 1912 and 1945. Furthermore, the use of the repetition of “light” in the stage directions and in Mr Birlings words suggests that the working class will be the ones to enlighten the upper and middle classes and bring to “light” the mistreatment and unfair inequalities with in the patriarchal society and class systems. In addition, Mr birling also shows apathy towards the death of his former worker- Eva smith by claiming that “this girl” had interrupted his “business” by protesting for higher wages and it was his “duty to keep labour costs down”. This suggests that Mr Birling dismisses the death of Eva to highlight that he has no responsibility in her death as he was only doing his “duty”. The use of the verb- “duty” shows that he tries to justify his doing by claiming it to be the right thing to do. Priestley does this to further use Mr Birling as a construct of capitalism to encourage the contemporary audience to support socialist ideologies while criticizing the capitalist views held by the upper classes.
J.B Priestley also uses Gerald and Mrs Birling and their interactions with Eva smith/Daisy Renton to show how far the society is unfair. He does this by suggesting how Gerald and Mrs Birling exploited and mistreated Eva even when needed help the most. This is seen when, Gerald comes clean to the inspector stating that he had rescued her from “Aldermann Megarty” only to make her his mistress and lodge her a house over summer. He states that she had “lived economically on what I allowed her” before leaving her towards the “end”. This suggests that despite him rescuing her from a “notorious womanizer” ; had installed a dynamic of control in their relationship by “allowing her”. The use verb –“allowing” emphasises the control he had over her life as his mistress . Priestley chooses to do this to show the audience that even ‘good’ men such as Gerald have a considerable impact on showing how unfair the society of the 1912 is. Additionally, Gerald despite his exploitive behaviour towards the working class states that Eva had made him feel like a “fairy prince”. The use of simile shows that in Gerald’s views he had done the right thing to protect and shelter her, much like what a “fairy prince” would have done. Furthermore, the use of the adjective; “fairy” connotes that Gerald is wanting to be viewed as innocent and sweet almost painting himself as a perfect man who is found only in “fairy” tales. Priestley does this show to the audience that capitalism had been etched into the minds of people and that it will take a long time to overcome it and to support the equal treatment of society. In addition to this, Mrs Birling admits rather pridefully that she had “use my influence to have it refused” when talking about rejecting the charity and donation she could have given to Eva while she was pregnant with Eric’s child. The use of the verb- “influence” shows that Mrs Birling is aware of her social class and uses it actively to assert dominance over the poor working class women who need her help. This is also ironic as she is the head of the Brumley women’s charity organisation yet she undermines the women who need help from her ”charity” by referring to them as –“girls of that class”. The use of the noun- “girl” shows that she looks down upon the women of the lower classes to be immature like girls. Priestley chooses to use Mrs Birling to show that the older generation has negatively impacted the society with their overly capitalist views and to highlight the need to change within the government and non- profit organisations to avoid injustice and inequality in service. This shoes how far Priestley shows that the society is unfair.
thank you in advance :)
2024.05.19 17:20 PlateNo956 best stretch mark oil for pregnant women
Welcome to TruthTalky, your ultimate guide to navigating the world of baby care and pregnancy with confidence and ease. From the best baby products to essential pregnancy tips, we've got you covered every step of the way.
Join us on TruthTalky as we empower parents with valuable information and support on their journey through parenthood. From pregnancy to infancy and beyond, we're here to help you navigate the joys and challenges of raising a child.
Website: Explore More on TruthTalky
submitted by PlateNo956 to u/PlateNo956 [link] [comments]
Why is Baby Care Necessary?
Discover the importance of baby care and how it contributes to your little one's health and well-being. Our comprehensive guide explores the essentials of baby care, including hygiene, nutrition, and nurturing.Best Baby Oil: Choosing the Right Option
Explore our expert recommendations for the best baby oil to keep your little one's delicate skin soft, smooth, and moisturized. Learn about safe and effective baby oil options and how to incorporate them into your baby's skincare routine.Best Baby Products Online: From 0 to 9 Months
Navigating the world of baby products can be overwhelming. Our guide to the best baby products for ages 0 to 9 months helps simplify the process, providing you with essential recommendations for your baby's needs.The Importance of Motherhood: A Sacred Journey
Motherhood is a sacred and transformative journey for women. Explore the profound impact of motherhood on women's lives and the deep connection forged between mother and child.Healthy Pregnancy Diet: Nourishing Your Body and Baby
Nourish your body and support your baby's development with our collection of easy and delicious recipes for your pregnancy diet. From nutrient-rich meals to refreshing snacks, we've got your pregnancy nutrition covered.Best Pregnancy Clothes: Comfort and Style
Stay comfortable and stylish throughout your pregnancy with our expert tips on choosing the best pregnancy clothes. From versatile basics to trendy maternity wear, find the perfect wardrobe essentials for your journey.Best Pregnancy Pillow: Sleep Soundly During Pregnancy
Experience restful sleep and optimal comfort with our ultimate guide to finding the best pregnancy pillow. Discover the benefits of pregnancy pillows and how to choose the right option for your needs.How to Calculate Your Pregnancy Due Date?
Stay informed and prepared for your baby's arrival with our due date calculator. Learn how to calculate your pregnancy due date accurately and track your pregnancy milestones with confidence.10 Tips to Reduce Labor Pains: Empowering Mothers
Prepare for childbirth with our top 10 tips to reduce labor pains. From relaxation techniques to pain management strategies, empower yourself with practical advice for a smoother labor experience.Best Stretch Mark Oil for Pregnant Women: Embracing Your Changing Body
Celebrate your body's journey through pregnancy with our recommendations for the best stretch mark oil. Discover nourishing oils that help hydrate your skin and minimize the appearance of stretch marks.Join us on TruthTalky as we empower parents with valuable information and support on their journey through parenthood. From pregnancy to infancy and beyond, we're here to help you navigate the joys and challenges of raising a child.
Website: Explore More on TruthTalky
2024.05.19 17:10 Willfulandexpressive My boyfriend (M40) thinks my clothes make me look pregnant (F33). Is this a varning sign?
Hi! I need help with an ongoing topic for me and my bf. I have gained weight after we got together 2 years ago. Now we have a very affectionate and communicative relationship, but this keeps happening over and over again so I'm getting confused.
I want to hear his opinion on the clothes I wear, I want to hear what colors and styles he likes because I want to look good for him too and not just for me. He's not very clothes interested and so I tend to ask if he like likes something or not when I'm wearing it or if I'm trying something out. In the beginning that was not a problem, I got some good information on what he likes that I can use when I'm in the mood.
Lately I've noticed 90% of what I ask him about he either think it's too "old lady" or it accentuates my belly too much ("I like this one, it doesn't bring attention to the belly as much as your other clothes do"). Granted he's made those comments maybe 3 times each in a 2 year relationship so it's not like he does it all the time.
Before his birthday party he warned me his relatives might think I am pregnant if I don't drink since I've gained weight (they're a family oriented family and his brother just had a kid).
Today when I asked his opionion on an outfit he smiled and whispered kinda quiet an affectionately and like I had a piece of grass on my shoulder or something, "you look pregnant in that". Excuse me??? I asked if him if he liked my outfit?? I said I don't think that's fair, and that I believe he thinks I look pregnant in everything because he's not used to looking at a normal overweight body and first he argued tha, then when he saw I got genuinely sad he let it go and apologised and has apologised several times today because he can see I'm still upset about it.
He is genuinely apologetic, but I still feel sad. I think I can't win and dress pretty for him because he just doesn't like my body. I'm also wondering am I imagining how bad his comments are because it's so important for me to be attractive to him? I mean no comment has sounded mean and he loves me and (tmi) loves touching my body, it's just the way it looks thing. We are afterall just constantly force fed the idea that women should be visually attractive, but that's not all or even the most important in a relationship. Should I accept that's the way it is and stop asking what he thinks? Do I need something of him to stop this from happening/affecting me? Or is there something potentally relationship-ending there (sexual/attractiveness incompatibility)?
He even sent me a text just now bc he knows I don't want to talk and apologized again and said he's going to work on how "how he thinks and expresses himself". I think that's a beutiful apology but I still feel sad. Should I accept it and move on? Am I being overdramatic at this point?
TLDR: Boyfriend thinks my clothes make me look pregnant. Accept anf move on or is there something important to see here?
submitted by Willfulandexpressive to relationship_advice [link] [comments]
I want to hear his opinion on the clothes I wear, I want to hear what colors and styles he likes because I want to look good for him too and not just for me. He's not very clothes interested and so I tend to ask if he like likes something or not when I'm wearing it or if I'm trying something out. In the beginning that was not a problem, I got some good information on what he likes that I can use when I'm in the mood.
Lately I've noticed 90% of what I ask him about he either think it's too "old lady" or it accentuates my belly too much ("I like this one, it doesn't bring attention to the belly as much as your other clothes do"). Granted he's made those comments maybe 3 times each in a 2 year relationship so it's not like he does it all the time.
Before his birthday party he warned me his relatives might think I am pregnant if I don't drink since I've gained weight (they're a family oriented family and his brother just had a kid).
Today when I asked his opionion on an outfit he smiled and whispered kinda quiet an affectionately and like I had a piece of grass on my shoulder or something, "you look pregnant in that". Excuse me??? I asked if him if he liked my outfit?? I said I don't think that's fair, and that I believe he thinks I look pregnant in everything because he's not used to looking at a normal overweight body and first he argued tha, then when he saw I got genuinely sad he let it go and apologised and has apologised several times today because he can see I'm still upset about it.
He is genuinely apologetic, but I still feel sad. I think I can't win and dress pretty for him because he just doesn't like my body. I'm also wondering am I imagining how bad his comments are because it's so important for me to be attractive to him? I mean no comment has sounded mean and he loves me and (tmi) loves touching my body, it's just the way it looks thing. We are afterall just constantly force fed the idea that women should be visually attractive, but that's not all or even the most important in a relationship. Should I accept that's the way it is and stop asking what he thinks? Do I need something of him to stop this from happening/affecting me? Or is there something potentally relationship-ending there (sexual/attractiveness incompatibility)?
He even sent me a text just now bc he knows I don't want to talk and apologized again and said he's going to work on how "how he thinks and expresses himself". I think that's a beutiful apology but I still feel sad. Should I accept it and move on? Am I being overdramatic at this point?
TLDR: Boyfriend thinks my clothes make me look pregnant. Accept anf move on or is there something important to see here?
2024.05.19 16:44 Upbeat_Teach6117 Rewatching Season 3
I've been re-watching the series from the beginning, and I'm now at the end of Season 3, which was filmed during the first several months of the Covid pandemic.
I'm shocked to see the Merrifields travel to Cabo with their sons and parents so that Garrick can get Bert pregnant. I'm shocked to see the Snowdens have strangers move in with them and commit to them. I'm shocked to see the Clarks meet up with a young lady at a restaurant. I'm shocked to see the Winders have a stranger fly cross-country and meet their delicate new baby. I'm shocked to see the Joneses continuously pursue other women (though they do seem to take more health precautions than the other couples do).
Basically, I can't believe these people thought that polygamy was more important than public health was. Now that Covid is endemic instead of an urgent health crisis - and life, for most of us, is back to normal - I'm wondering if I was completely wrong in how I handled myself during the first year or so of the pandemic. I didn't date. I didn't travel. I didn't go maskless while in groups or enclosed places. I didn't attend celebrations or make commitments.
Is anyone else here horrified by the recklessness of the Season 3 SSW cast during Covid, or am I completely off-base?
submitted by Upbeat_Teach6117 to seekingsisterwifetlc [link] [comments]
I'm shocked to see the Merrifields travel to Cabo with their sons and parents so that Garrick can get Bert pregnant. I'm shocked to see the Snowdens have strangers move in with them and commit to them. I'm shocked to see the Clarks meet up with a young lady at a restaurant. I'm shocked to see the Winders have a stranger fly cross-country and meet their delicate new baby. I'm shocked to see the Joneses continuously pursue other women (though they do seem to take more health precautions than the other couples do).
Basically, I can't believe these people thought that polygamy was more important than public health was. Now that Covid is endemic instead of an urgent health crisis - and life, for most of us, is back to normal - I'm wondering if I was completely wrong in how I handled myself during the first year or so of the pandemic. I didn't date. I didn't travel. I didn't go maskless while in groups or enclosed places. I didn't attend celebrations or make commitments.
Is anyone else here horrified by the recklessness of the Season 3 SSW cast during Covid, or am I completely off-base?
2024.05.19 16:40 Pink_Millennial_Girl Unpopular opinion about pregnancy threads
I’m going to get a ton of flack for this. BUT I wish I had never joined a pregnancy community. I’m a FTM and I’m 10w + 4d. I found out at about 4 weeks. So yea lol. BUT due to these threads I now have such a high anxiety about miscarriage. I honestly never thought about it before I got pregnant and when I first got pregnant I didn’t either. It wasn’t until probably like week 8 that I had to take all notifications away for these type of threads. I understand women go through them and want an outlet and want to speak and wouldn’t dare want to take it away from them. But it has caused me so much anxiety that I constantly worry about and can’t get the thought or idea out of my mind. To the point when people ask me what I want. I can’t say because I honestly am only praying for a healthy child and a safe pregnancy. And I’m scared of everything that can go wrong. I like these type of community’s for the information and to be able to vent and then boom out of nowhere someone talks about how they’ve never made it this far and it’s there 4th time or how everything was great and now there 15 weeks and no heartbeat. It’s so fckin scary. And it’s not just Reddit. It’s ig and twitter too, etc. my anxiety is everywhere. I don’t talk about to my friends or partner because it’s like I don’t want to put it out into the universe and I don’t want them to think I’m crazy and I think they’ll just wave me off like girl don’t think about that. You’ll be fine. But I am scared and I really want to stop being scared.
submitted by Pink_Millennial_Girl to pregnant [link] [comments]
2024.05.19 16:36 Pink_Millennial_Girl Unpopular opinion about pregnancy threads
I’m going to get a ton of flack for this. BUT I wish I had never joined a pregnancy community. I’m a FTM and I’m 10w + 4d. I found out at about 4 weeks. So yea lol. BUT due to these threads I now have such a high anxiety about miscarriage. I honestly never thought about it before I got pregnant and when I first got pregnant I didn’t either. It wasn’t until probably like week 8 that I had to take all notifications away for these type of threads. I understand women go through them and want an outlet and want to speak and wouldn’t dare want to take it away from them. But it has caused me so much anxiety that I constantly worry about and can’t get the thought or idea out of my mind. To the point when people ask me what I want. I can’t say because I honestly am only praying for a healthy child and a safe pregnancy. And I’m scared of everything that can go wrong. I like these type of community’s for the information and to be able to vent and then boom out of nowhere someone talks about how they’ve never made it this far and it’s there 4th time or how everything was great and now there 15 weeks and no heartbeat. It’s so fckin scary. And it’s not just Reddit. It’s ig and twitter too, etc. my anxiety is everywhere. I don’t talk about to my friends or partner because it’s like I don’t want to put it out into the universe and I don’t want them to think I’m crazy and I think they’ll just wave me off like girl don’t think about that. You’ll be fine. But I am scared and I really want to stop being scared.
submitted by Pink_Millennial_Girl to BabyBumps [link] [comments]
2024.05.19 16:13 Biggles79 Roland's Durendal sword-in-the-stone at Rocamadour
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):
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:
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. Redman speculates that there may have been three swords there prior to 2011 (p.106). 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.
submitted by Biggles79 to badhistory [link] [comments]
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. Redman speculates that there may have been three swords there prior to 2011 (p.106). 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.
2024.05.19 16:04 APCleriot My Family Isn't In The Family Photos
What’s in the closet, Kirsty?
He knew I hid a secret.
I smiled, tried to look confused.
He waited, crossing his arms.
I worried that he'd already seen. He had.
What else could he think about the pile?
His wife’s a cheater. She has another life. Another husband. Children.
He’d never believe the truth: I’m not a cheater; there’s no other life; no other man; I don’t know who the children are who visit me at night.
But I did have a secret. And maybe it’s fair to say another life, even if was smaller and against my will.
I should have destroyed those frames, burned the photos within. Now it looked like I saved them, cherished them. The truth couldn’t be farther. I feared to touch anything to do with… whatever they are…with one exception.
“It started last Halloween,” I said to George, my husband, my real husband.
He stopped packing for a moment, working out the impossibility of this statement. “I’m taking the girls to my parents.” He resumed the tossing of shirts, pants, etc. into our big suitcase.
“It’s true,” I said, but weakly. The children in the picture are at least six and four respectively. They were born six months ago.
“They’re not… my kids,” I said of the boys in the photos. They’re not kids is what I almost said.
George stopped and squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Kirsty,” he said slowly, “there are baby pictures. I saw them.”
“That’s-”
He quickly raised his finger, exasperated, angry, done.
“The first picture is you holding a newborn, and…” He swallowed painfully, his throat gone dry. It always does when he’s upset. “And the father in that picture, with his arm around you, isn’t me.”
When I couldn't deny it, he nodded like he knew all along our marriage would end.
We were happy. We really were. George and I had managed to overcome the typical breakdown that often comes with raising children. Only since last Halloween had distance been made by me.
I should have told him as soon as it started.
“Girls!” he called as I followed him down the stairs to the front hall of our lovely home. We’d scrimped and sacrificed to buy and keep this place, our dream by the lake. He’d been so proud. I couldn’t tell him I wanted to leave the first night sleeping there.
Cara and Ella protested through play, ignoring the adults, continuing to jump on an old box they’d long since flattened. Rays from the western sun placed my daughters into an inspired, hallowed light, and I started to cry. He was going to take my babies away.
George opened the door, intending, I’m sure, to drop the suitcase in the car before returning to physically carry the girls out.
But he hesitated in the doorway.
“George?”
The suitcase fell with a solid thud on the floor. “There’s no way,” he said.
“What?”
“There’s no way,” he said, with emphasis on the last word, “you would have had time for…this…”
Not defining "this" as cheating was progress. “Yes!”
He glared, quieting my desperate enthusiasm. I wasn’t off the hook. “Tell me. The truth.”
“I can’t.”
He reached for the suitcase.
“No, not because I don’t want to,” I protested. “I don’t know what’s happening!” I sat on the carpeted steps and stared through blurred vision at my trembling hands. The shriek I’d filled the house with - “happening!” - had put a halt to the box's obliteration. Cara and Ella hesitated for a few seconds before leaping into action.
Cara, the oldest, six, punched her dad in the buttocks. “You have to be nice!”
Ella, four, sat beside me and patted my trembling hands. “It’s okay, mummy.”
Such lovely daughters. Nothing like the boys in those photos when they were this age.
George grasped Cara's wrists and gently walked her back into the house, using his foot to kick the suitcase from the swing of the front door.
"It's alright, girls," he said with weak resolve. "Go and play."
"No!" Cara shouted. She kicked at her father and he pulled her close into a bearhug. Gradually, the girls calmed and were convinced to return to the box in the front room.
"Kirsty," George said, "you have to tell me." He sat down on the step beside me. "Please." I would do anything to take away the hurt in his eyes. "Please."
"I can't. But… I can write it down. Maybe." I took out my phone. We shared Google Drive. When I made a new document, he reluctantly started his phone. The man was a dream. He watched his screen, and waited patiently for my words to appear.
Without preamble, I returned to the awful moment when it all began: a strange and disturbing dream. Words came like an infection from beneath a torn scab. The wound had been opened. Nothing could stop this now.
Sex with another man has never been a desire of mine. I love George. He loves me.
Plus, the man in my dream was a stranger, and not particularly handsome. He has a plain face set to unwavering boredom and unkempt male pattern baldness. Our dream sex felt obligatory, just something we had to do.
I awoke on the wrong side of midnight. November 1st and I was craving ice cream instead of the girls' gathered candy. The freezer left by the previous homeowners came with unopened ice cream. Freezer burned or not, I wanted some.
After retrieving a spoon from the kitchen, I intended to destroy a brick of neopolitan. He waited in his flannel pajamas, barefoot on the concrete floor. His arms were crossed.
"Cravings?" he said.
I dropped the spoon. It clattered down the basement steps. Before I could run away, he disappeared like someone had erased him from head to foot in one clean sweep.
Had to be a dream. That's what I told myself. The spoon stayed in the basement until daylight. Ghost or nightmare, there was laundry to do the next day.
I crossed the concrete floor fast and only felt safer when I'd closed the door to the more modern laundry room. Never thought builder's grade tiles and track lights would make me feel anything but sad.
His voice caught me sorting.
"Kirsty!"
I dropped the cup of detergent all over the floor.
"Shit."
I came out of the laundry room, figuring George had been looking for me in uncharacteristically rude fashion. He hated speaking between rooms. Shouting throughout the house was highly impolite. It must have been important, I figured.
As soon as I stepped onto the bare concrete, however, deep sadness, the kind that seems to physically leech the strength from your body, dominated the room.
"Hello?" I don't know why I said that. The basement is a low ceilinged rectangle. There are no hiding spots except for the laundry room I'd come from. After a deep breath, I walked briskly to the stairs.
"Any day now," a raspy voice breathed into my ear. I jolted and slipped forward, falling and clipping my chin off a step. It made my teeth click painfully. Nobody there, of course. I ran upstairs and George had gone outside with the girls to play hide and seek.
I wanted to tell him. He looked so happy. It's hard to convey in words the kind of smile he showed me through the window. Imagine contentment mixed with unreserved joy and hope. Yes, it's difficult to picture. So few of us can ever have such a moment. Sort of like finding a natural view completely untouched by humanity. Beyond rare and precious.
I’m rambling now to avoid writing about what followed. The point is I couldn’t tell him. I hoped it’d go away and stop.
But, of course, it didn’t, and things got much worse.
I awoke in a great deal of pain. Having already given birth to children, the feeling was familiar. Despite getting up and gasping, George continued to snore in our bed. He’s a deep sleeper, but a quick and early riser. I’ve never heard him complain about getting out of bed either, especially when there’s an emergency.
I might have woken him up but I was disoriented and confused. Part of me believed I was still pregnant with Ella. It wasn’t until I’d gone all the way to the kitchen to avoid waking up the girls, that my brain caught up: Girls. Plural. Ella was asleep in her bed upstairs.
“Ohhhhhhhh shiiiiiiiiiiit.” I knew the signs of labour. This couldn’t be happening. “Ohhhhhhhhh.”
I was definitely going to wake everyone up if this continued.
My phone was upstairs by my bedside table. We don’t have a landline. I should have called 911. I should have woken up George.
Instead, I went downstairs where I could vocalize pain without disturbing anyone. Such a pathetically passive response. But that’s how I was raised. Keep it down, don't you frown.
His hands seized mine as soon as I descended the last step. Serious and bald without dignity is how to best describe his physical appearance. Cold and cruel is what he is. The lights turned off and, in the perfect darkness of the basement, he was all that I could see.
He produces a red light from his body somehow but his touch is literally frosty.
"Kristy, it's time," he said. No joy there. Just straight facts. Something was coming. I was going to give birth to it. In the dull red glow of his being, the first boy came.
"His name is Hadad," the man said, placing a large, infant boy with a lot of hair and, I swear, a hint of beard, on the bare concrete. Hadad looked like a three month old they use as newborns on TV. He didn't cry. He hardly seemed to breathe as his dark eyes roamed the darkness. His light resembled the man's, a less intense red.
I felt another contraction, and winced.
"She comes next," the man said.
I felt so weak. "Who are you?" I asked him.
At last, he smiled and I wished he hadn't. It made me feel small, insignificant, and beneath his concern. "You know who I am," he said. "I'm your husband."
Pain wracked my entire body. Something didn't feel right. The birth of Cara and Ella had been without difficulty.
"Push," my "husband" ordered. "She is upset with you, and will kill you if you don't get her out now."
"It has to be a nightmare," I told him. Sweat poured in streams down my face. The unborn "she" in question writhed and damaged my insides. I screamed. I couldn't help it.
"Push!"
I obeyed and the second boy spilled onto the bare concrete, coated in blood and dust.
"It's a boy," I said.
The man looked displeased. "The body is male. She is Hebat. No wonder she is angry." Like the other infant, Hebat appeared aware of her surroundings and had far too much motor control for a newborn. The light pouring from her body was dull silver. Her eye sockets were two pits of concentrated despair. I had to look away.
The babies were pressed into my arms.
The man stretched out beside me. "Open your eyes and smile." I resisted. "Do it. Now." What choice did I have? The flash from his cell blinded me. They were all gone by the time my sight recovered. Only the sweat remained as evidence of the ordeal.
It had to have been a hallucination. Some very bad food poisoning maybe. The source could be as simple as an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. I had been stress eating since we'd moved in. I stood up and took some comfort in a Charles Dickens' reference.
"More of gravy than of grave about you," I said. My words seemed consumed by the dreadful weight of the air. "Whatever you are."
Whatever you are: something bad in any case. At best, I'd hallucinated prolonged and traumatic labour and needed medical attention. Yet, when I limped up the basement stairs, all thoughts of waking George vanished. There on the kitchen island sat a propped frame containing the photograph taken only moments ago.
The man looked happy. Only Hadad appeared in this picture, which meant another one was somewhere. I didn't panic. I worried more about what George would think if he saw the photos. I had to find them all.
Hebat and his father and I were mounted in a dark wood frame by the master bedroom. It'd be the first thing anyone saw if they woke up. I plucked it off the wall and, together with the first photo, tucked it under some blankets in the dresser we'd shoved in the small walk-in closet.
You might not believe this, but I went straight to sleep after. I climbed under the blanket in my sweaty pajamas, shut my eyes, and didn't have enough time to deny what had happened. I was unconscious until morning.
George placed a coffee on my nightstand. That's what I remember. He rubbed my feet while I slowly awoke. The girls were watching TV downstairs, munching on apple slices. There was forty minutes still before we had to seriously consider getting ready to take Cara to school.
George would drop her off on his way to work downtown. He chose his hours and always chose convenience for his wife and kids. Ella and I planned to spend the morning gardening. Then we would nap much of the afternoon away until George and Cara returned. A life so perfect is so very rare.
I didn't want to spoil things with a very convincing nightmare. Besides, I felt fine. Not so good that I wanted to look in the dresser to see if those photos really were there, but not ill. So I remained silent again.
November started fine. Idyllic days and nights filled with laughter and joy and television. Just as I started to believe in the dream we'd made, they came again.
The wail of a child's hunger is a powerful call for a parent. When it's a chorus, even of two, it cannot be ignored. Only I awoke to Hadad and Hebat's cries for their "mother" from the basement.
Half asleep, I drifted into the kitchen and searched for their milk bottles. When no bottles could be found, I remembered they were newborns. Milk swelled in my breasts and made my nipples ache. Just like when Cara or Ella would awaken in the night. It was a relief to feed them.
But what the fuck was I doing?
I was acting like the man in the basement and the devil babies were mine. It'd been less than a week since Halloween and that horrible nightmare illusion. I had already taken on the beleaguered newborn mother role without question.
Their cries intensified and flayed the weak resistance of exhausted reasoning.
Don't wake George. Don't wake my babies, my real babies.
"What took you so long?" the man critized, his voice monotone, the question unrhetorical.
"I… was sleeping. I went to the fridge first." Under his severe gaze, I stopped in the midst of the dark room. Hadad had quieted. Hebat cooed as if laughing at her own joke. I couldn't see them because the lights were off. They liked the dark better. Somehow I knew that about them and him.
"You should sleep down here," he said. "A mother should always be close to her babies."
The statement was nonsense but not altogether wrong. I wanted to be close to my babies, the daughters sleeping in bliss upstairs, away from the evil fermentation in the basement.
"Kirsty," he said. "Are you listening?" His hand touched the small of my back. The gentleness surprised me. I squawked and flinched away. "What’s wrong with you? They're hungry." He pressed on my shoulders until I sat on the cold floor.
They came from the shadows, already walking. I wanted to go, but I knew he wouldn't allow it. He pulled my cat t-shirt off over my head and their fierce mouths suckled, relieving the pressure of excess breast milk quickly. It felt physically good and psychologically alien.
I looked down at them once and immediately regretted it. Their emanated light had intensified to a point where perception of them hurt.
Each time I blinked my eyes were drawn to some isolated part of their bodies. The vision got closer to the point of disgust. Everything is gross if you're close enough. There is no beauty under a microscope. If you think there is then you're not using the right magnification.
Hebat's eye drew me in. At first, I saw the dark sphere, and then the strands of her eyelashes. Her gravity kept pulling until the creatures that live in eyelashes were revealed: Demodex folliculorum. I looked the microscopic horrors up.
The babies had more parasites than any child should. They wanted to show me and could somehow do so.
I asked him about it. "Why are they showing me these worms?"
He smiled, contemptuously as usual. "Trying to impress mother. Neither of them understand your horror and insignificance. You are the ant who knows they're an ant. Lucky you. They think you will be proud of the life their corporeal forms produce and host. Give them a few hours. It will pass."
"Why are you doing this to me?"
"I'm not sure what you mean. We're married. Now, prepare to smile." His cell reappeared and I noted the lack of features; it might have been a singed rectangle of spent firewood. He frowned when I failed to smile. "Smile, Kirsty. These are your children."
I managed to stave off the tears and hold the babies close. The smile was more difficult. In the inevitable aftermath of their sudden disappearance, the frames depicted an exhausted, wrinkly woman smiling painfully. It took a second to recognize myself.
The things in the basement sapped my strength. I looked dehydrated, beleaguered. The scale in the bathroom said I'd dropped six pounds. I'd weighed myself the morning before.
"Whoa, you've lost weight," George noted, thinking I'd be pleased. "This place has been so good for us, eh?'
To produce another smile proved as draining as the previous night. "Y-yes," I stuttered too late for him to ignore.
"Hey," he said, touching my forearm.
I flinched.
"Whoa, you okay? What's wrong?"
I should have told him. "Nothing. Bad sleep. A nightmare. I'll be fine."
A lie is an agreement. George wanted to agree, I think. He wanted life to be fine because he was happy for once. We struggled so hard before we came to Bridal Veil Lake. It was supposed to be our dream.
Guilty if I told him the truth. Guilty because I didn't. I began to resent his happiness, though he had done nothing but be the wonderful man he'd always been.
To Cara and Ella I became a body in motion, No brain left to guide them away from harm or answer their questions about nature and the universe.
"I don't know." That's what I told them often.
So they began to treat me like a kind of butler.
"Can I have some juice, please?"
"Sure, sweetheart."
"Mommy, can I have a snack?"
"Of course." And I'd run off to fetch it.
"Cookies."
"Yes, dear."
When Christmas came, I had two and they induced the same level of joy. Visiting the basement to feed and nurture Hebat and Hadad became a nightly occurrence. I'd learned to awaken, if I could get to sleep at all, and go quietly.
He berated me severely if I missed a night, and there were subtle threats made casually.
"I may have to squash you yet," he said, his tone as deep and cold as always.
"It won't happen again," I promised. "They’re getting big." In fact, they were no longer infants. Both had grown to the approximate age of six or seven in a few months. Still, they never spoke. Their dark eyes watched me as they ate food from the kitchen upstairs, food I'd hidden from my family.
"More meat," the man demanded.
"Of course." And I ran to the freezer and gave them frozen sausages in the package. They never complained or demanded the food be prepared a different way. No objections from my "husband" either.
Hebat tore the styrofoam and plastic wrap away and flattened the row of sausages stuck together between powerful molars. Hadad contented itself with licking them like a popsicle.
I'd stay until the photo. Then they'd release me by vanishing. Always with an exhausted breath, I'd trudge up the stairs and search for the frames and hide them in the same place.
They only smiled in the pictures. At no other time did they express any kind of emotion unless indifference counts.
My own children and husband weren't doing much better. Their concerns about my fatigue and ruminating slowly ceased as I repeated the excuse: I’m just tired. It'll pass.
Of course, I did not know when the nightmare would stop.
"When will it end?" I asked him one night, while Hebat and Hadad exercised like they had a mission.
"What do you mean?" he said.
I was surprised he answered. He usually didn't. "This. This. When can I go back to normal and not come down every night? I'm so very tired."
He frowned and I thought some punishment must be coming. Instead, he looked more confused. "I don't understand. You aren't happy? Your children grow into power and strength and will take their place in the world. They will be great and you - you, of all the tiny things, made that happen. Ask yourself what you want out of life, and see if Hebat and Haddad aren't your answer."
Too many words, all at once, for an exhausted mother. I didn't speak for the rest of the night. The infernal trio vanished, and the latter moments of the ritual I carried out with his challenge in mind.
I want my children to be strong, happy, and safe.
"Juice," Cara demanded the next morning, a Saturday, while she watched cartoons.
"Get it yourself!" I hissed, from tired to angry in a second.
"But I can't," Cara accurately pointed out. She didn't look away from the TV. Looking at me wasn't safe, and she knew it. Her and Ella held hands and sat a little straighter. It broke my heart. What had I done?
George came downstairs, attracted by my shouting. "What’s going on?"
Empathy became sadness, and the constant burden rekindled to anger swiftly. "Just children treating me like a servant."
He smiled. "Ah, yes, and how are the royal princesses this morning?"
His levity irked me. "You would know if you didn't sleep in so much."
The smile vanished from his face, and instead of the fight I seemed to want, he mumbled a quiet apology and joined the girls. They climbed onto him as he wrapped them into a cuddle.
"What are we watching?" George restarted his smile, his calm, for the girls. I hated myself. It had to end. Tonight.
After another dreary day of going through the motions, and the girls and George had fallen asleep, I went to the kitchen and chose the knife I thought sharpest.
"Kirsty," he said, his voice a whisper rising from the depths of the house.
"Coming," I whispered back.
"Mom," said another voice, a girl's, and I knew that Hebat had, at last, found herself and the wholeness of her being had been corrected.
I started to cry. I went downstairs and there she was with her brother and her father. He looked tired but some of the grimness had cracked to allow the first real contentment I've ever seen him express.
"Is that for the cake?" he asked. "We already have one."
I remembered the sharp knife. "Meat," I said. "There’s ham in the freezer."
He nodded, seeming to accept the answer.
"Mom," Hebat said, "Do you think I'm…" She gestured to herself, her face, and her body, and I understood the question, born from doubt and a desire to be validated.
I pulled her close. "You are the most beautiful girl in the whole world." We cried together. Hadad cut into a poorly made, asymmetrical cake by the light of his aura. No one cared that he did so on the floor. I brought out the ham from the fridge and we ate slices with our hands.
"It's almost done," he said. "They’re nearly grown. They are strong, and they are happy. You've done a good job, Kirsty." He watched our children fight to smear icing on each other's faces. "I'm sorry if I was mean. Or cold. I've never done this before." And he meant raising children. "It was the hardest, scariest thing anyone can try. I shouldn't have blamed you for… Hebat… It wasn't your fault."
Before I could pat his hand, he and the kids vanished. Darkness so familiar couldn't extinguish a new fear. I went upstairs and found the last frame. I held my daughter in the photo, my beautiful Hebat. He must have taken the photo without my notice.
I took it upstairs but couldn't bring myself to hide it.
I didn't see that one, George wrote into the document.
I forgot he was watching.
He typed again: Are you saying there is something in the basement?
Yes, I replied.
He stirred in the living room. I hadn't moved from the stairs, but I could tell by his stomping how angry he'd become. All of his negative, violent traits he saved for those in the world who would harm his family. George the Protector was fearsome to behold.
But he had no chance against my other husband.
"Come out! Come out you coward!" George bellowed. At first, nothing happened. The moment before calamity, even when the specific consequences aren't known, is still in slow motion. He carried on shouting. The girls rushed into the hall and didn’t hesitate to investigate.
"No!" I shouted. "Cara! Ella!"
Their feet padded down the steps. A violent commotion followed, screams and raging voices, both deep and childishly shrill.
The most unsettling quiet followed.
I chewed through the fear and the horror tearing me apart and finally moved.
No evidence of violence could be seen from the top of the stairs. The concrete looked bare and dusty and the light revealed nothing more. They were gone, all of them.
"Hebat," I whispered. "Cara? George?"
Him, I thought of, the nameless husband and felt no hint of his presence. He'd always been there. I know that now. It had nothing to do with the house. His absence was felt more than his insidious presence. Yet, I felt no relief. George and the girls were gone. I sat on the floor and cried for all my missing children.
When I finally emerged from the basement, the whole house had been filled with night. Their photos were everywhere. The others were upstairs. I gathered them on the kitchen island. How could I explain any of this to the police?
I needed help. I called my parents. It took twenty minutes before my father picked up.
"Kirsty? What's wrong?"
"Dad," I whimpered. "George is gone. Cara. Ella."
"What? What did you say?"
"They’re gone, dad. George. The girls are gone."
I heard his bed springs protest as he rolled out of bed. My mom said something I couldn't hear, and he shushed her.
"Kirsty," he said, "are you alright? Are you hurt? Are you in danger?"
Why was it so hard to understand? "Dad. George is gone."
"Kirsty, who the hell is George?"
It was my turn to be confused. "He's my- you know him. My husband…"
"Kirsty," he said very slowly, "are you on drugs? Did you take something?"
"No. Are you?"
"Excuse me?"
I hung up.
I have their photos. I have all of their photos. That's what I brought to George's parents before the sun rose. They wouldn't open the door and spoke to me through an intercom.
"George is gone," I said.
"We'll call the police."
"This is your son. These are your granddaughters."
I heard my mother-in-law say, "Who is she?"
"We don't have a son," my father-in-law said. "Go away."
I left.
Back to the house. Our dream sat empty and I live there, but none of the people in my family photos are my family.
I remember but the world never does. My parents think I'm ill and that I used AI to create the family I apparently never had.
How did I buy the house without a job or income? With deep concern for my mental health, they showed me a news story. I had won the lottery the day I turned eighteen.
His influence there, payment for services rendered.
A lie is an agreement.
What had I agreed to? I'm afraid I know the answer: I never wanted a family.
God help me. God help them.
I don't know what to do with these pictures.
submitted by APCleriot to nosleep [link] [comments]
He knew I hid a secret.
I smiled, tried to look confused.
He waited, crossing his arms.
I worried that he'd already seen. He had.
What else could he think about the pile?
His wife’s a cheater. She has another life. Another husband. Children.
He’d never believe the truth: I’m not a cheater; there’s no other life; no other man; I don’t know who the children are who visit me at night.
But I did have a secret. And maybe it’s fair to say another life, even if was smaller and against my will.
I should have destroyed those frames, burned the photos within. Now it looked like I saved them, cherished them. The truth couldn’t be farther. I feared to touch anything to do with… whatever they are…with one exception.
“It started last Halloween,” I said to George, my husband, my real husband.
He stopped packing for a moment, working out the impossibility of this statement. “I’m taking the girls to my parents.” He resumed the tossing of shirts, pants, etc. into our big suitcase.
“It’s true,” I said, but weakly. The children in the picture are at least six and four respectively. They were born six months ago.
“They’re not… my kids,” I said of the boys in the photos. They’re not kids is what I almost said.
George stopped and squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Kirsty,” he said slowly, “there are baby pictures. I saw them.”
“That’s-”
He quickly raised his finger, exasperated, angry, done.
“The first picture is you holding a newborn, and…” He swallowed painfully, his throat gone dry. It always does when he’s upset. “And the father in that picture, with his arm around you, isn’t me.”
When I couldn't deny it, he nodded like he knew all along our marriage would end.
We were happy. We really were. George and I had managed to overcome the typical breakdown that often comes with raising children. Only since last Halloween had distance been made by me.
I should have told him as soon as it started.
“Girls!” he called as I followed him down the stairs to the front hall of our lovely home. We’d scrimped and sacrificed to buy and keep this place, our dream by the lake. He’d been so proud. I couldn’t tell him I wanted to leave the first night sleeping there.
Cara and Ella protested through play, ignoring the adults, continuing to jump on an old box they’d long since flattened. Rays from the western sun placed my daughters into an inspired, hallowed light, and I started to cry. He was going to take my babies away.
George opened the door, intending, I’m sure, to drop the suitcase in the car before returning to physically carry the girls out.
But he hesitated in the doorway.
“George?”
The suitcase fell with a solid thud on the floor. “There’s no way,” he said.
“What?”
“There’s no way,” he said, with emphasis on the last word, “you would have had time for…this…”
Not defining "this" as cheating was progress. “Yes!”
He glared, quieting my desperate enthusiasm. I wasn’t off the hook. “Tell me. The truth.”
“I can’t.”
He reached for the suitcase.
“No, not because I don’t want to,” I protested. “I don’t know what’s happening!” I sat on the carpeted steps and stared through blurred vision at my trembling hands. The shriek I’d filled the house with - “happening!” - had put a halt to the box's obliteration. Cara and Ella hesitated for a few seconds before leaping into action.
Cara, the oldest, six, punched her dad in the buttocks. “You have to be nice!”
Ella, four, sat beside me and patted my trembling hands. “It’s okay, mummy.”
Such lovely daughters. Nothing like the boys in those photos when they were this age.
George grasped Cara's wrists and gently walked her back into the house, using his foot to kick the suitcase from the swing of the front door.
"It's alright, girls," he said with weak resolve. "Go and play."
"No!" Cara shouted. She kicked at her father and he pulled her close into a bearhug. Gradually, the girls calmed and were convinced to return to the box in the front room.
"Kirsty," George said, "you have to tell me." He sat down on the step beside me. "Please." I would do anything to take away the hurt in his eyes. "Please."
"I can't. But… I can write it down. Maybe." I took out my phone. We shared Google Drive. When I made a new document, he reluctantly started his phone. The man was a dream. He watched his screen, and waited patiently for my words to appear.
Without preamble, I returned to the awful moment when it all began: a strange and disturbing dream. Words came like an infection from beneath a torn scab. The wound had been opened. Nothing could stop this now.
Sex with another man has never been a desire of mine. I love George. He loves me.
Plus, the man in my dream was a stranger, and not particularly handsome. He has a plain face set to unwavering boredom and unkempt male pattern baldness. Our dream sex felt obligatory, just something we had to do.
I awoke on the wrong side of midnight. November 1st and I was craving ice cream instead of the girls' gathered candy. The freezer left by the previous homeowners came with unopened ice cream. Freezer burned or not, I wanted some.
After retrieving a spoon from the kitchen, I intended to destroy a brick of neopolitan. He waited in his flannel pajamas, barefoot on the concrete floor. His arms were crossed.
"Cravings?" he said.
I dropped the spoon. It clattered down the basement steps. Before I could run away, he disappeared like someone had erased him from head to foot in one clean sweep.
Had to be a dream. That's what I told myself. The spoon stayed in the basement until daylight. Ghost or nightmare, there was laundry to do the next day.
I crossed the concrete floor fast and only felt safer when I'd closed the door to the more modern laundry room. Never thought builder's grade tiles and track lights would make me feel anything but sad.
His voice caught me sorting.
"Kirsty!"
I dropped the cup of detergent all over the floor.
"Shit."
I came out of the laundry room, figuring George had been looking for me in uncharacteristically rude fashion. He hated speaking between rooms. Shouting throughout the house was highly impolite. It must have been important, I figured.
As soon as I stepped onto the bare concrete, however, deep sadness, the kind that seems to physically leech the strength from your body, dominated the room.
"Hello?" I don't know why I said that. The basement is a low ceilinged rectangle. There are no hiding spots except for the laundry room I'd come from. After a deep breath, I walked briskly to the stairs.
"Any day now," a raspy voice breathed into my ear. I jolted and slipped forward, falling and clipping my chin off a step. It made my teeth click painfully. Nobody there, of course. I ran upstairs and George had gone outside with the girls to play hide and seek.
I wanted to tell him. He looked so happy. It's hard to convey in words the kind of smile he showed me through the window. Imagine contentment mixed with unreserved joy and hope. Yes, it's difficult to picture. So few of us can ever have such a moment. Sort of like finding a natural view completely untouched by humanity. Beyond rare and precious.
I’m rambling now to avoid writing about what followed. The point is I couldn’t tell him. I hoped it’d go away and stop.
But, of course, it didn’t, and things got much worse.
I awoke in a great deal of pain. Having already given birth to children, the feeling was familiar. Despite getting up and gasping, George continued to snore in our bed. He’s a deep sleeper, but a quick and early riser. I’ve never heard him complain about getting out of bed either, especially when there’s an emergency.
I might have woken him up but I was disoriented and confused. Part of me believed I was still pregnant with Ella. It wasn’t until I’d gone all the way to the kitchen to avoid waking up the girls, that my brain caught up: Girls. Plural. Ella was asleep in her bed upstairs.
“Ohhhhhhhh shiiiiiiiiiiit.” I knew the signs of labour. This couldn’t be happening. “Ohhhhhhhhh.”
I was definitely going to wake everyone up if this continued.
My phone was upstairs by my bedside table. We don’t have a landline. I should have called 911. I should have woken up George.
Instead, I went downstairs where I could vocalize pain without disturbing anyone. Such a pathetically passive response. But that’s how I was raised. Keep it down, don't you frown.
His hands seized mine as soon as I descended the last step. Serious and bald without dignity is how to best describe his physical appearance. Cold and cruel is what he is. The lights turned off and, in the perfect darkness of the basement, he was all that I could see.
He produces a red light from his body somehow but his touch is literally frosty.
"Kristy, it's time," he said. No joy there. Just straight facts. Something was coming. I was going to give birth to it. In the dull red glow of his being, the first boy came.
"His name is Hadad," the man said, placing a large, infant boy with a lot of hair and, I swear, a hint of beard, on the bare concrete. Hadad looked like a three month old they use as newborns on TV. He didn't cry. He hardly seemed to breathe as his dark eyes roamed the darkness. His light resembled the man's, a less intense red.
I felt another contraction, and winced.
"She comes next," the man said.
I felt so weak. "Who are you?" I asked him.
At last, he smiled and I wished he hadn't. It made me feel small, insignificant, and beneath his concern. "You know who I am," he said. "I'm your husband."
Pain wracked my entire body. Something didn't feel right. The birth of Cara and Ella had been without difficulty.
"Push," my "husband" ordered. "She is upset with you, and will kill you if you don't get her out now."
"It has to be a nightmare," I told him. Sweat poured in streams down my face. The unborn "she" in question writhed and damaged my insides. I screamed. I couldn't help it.
"Push!"
I obeyed and the second boy spilled onto the bare concrete, coated in blood and dust.
"It's a boy," I said.
The man looked displeased. "The body is male. She is Hebat. No wonder she is angry." Like the other infant, Hebat appeared aware of her surroundings and had far too much motor control for a newborn. The light pouring from her body was dull silver. Her eye sockets were two pits of concentrated despair. I had to look away.
The babies were pressed into my arms.
The man stretched out beside me. "Open your eyes and smile." I resisted. "Do it. Now." What choice did I have? The flash from his cell blinded me. They were all gone by the time my sight recovered. Only the sweat remained as evidence of the ordeal.
It had to have been a hallucination. Some very bad food poisoning maybe. The source could be as simple as an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. I had been stress eating since we'd moved in. I stood up and took some comfort in a Charles Dickens' reference.
"More of gravy than of grave about you," I said. My words seemed consumed by the dreadful weight of the air. "Whatever you are."
Whatever you are: something bad in any case. At best, I'd hallucinated prolonged and traumatic labour and needed medical attention. Yet, when I limped up the basement stairs, all thoughts of waking George vanished. There on the kitchen island sat a propped frame containing the photograph taken only moments ago.
The man looked happy. Only Hadad appeared in this picture, which meant another one was somewhere. I didn't panic. I worried more about what George would think if he saw the photos. I had to find them all.
Hebat and his father and I were mounted in a dark wood frame by the master bedroom. It'd be the first thing anyone saw if they woke up. I plucked it off the wall and, together with the first photo, tucked it under some blankets in the dresser we'd shoved in the small walk-in closet.
You might not believe this, but I went straight to sleep after. I climbed under the blanket in my sweaty pajamas, shut my eyes, and didn't have enough time to deny what had happened. I was unconscious until morning.
George placed a coffee on my nightstand. That's what I remember. He rubbed my feet while I slowly awoke. The girls were watching TV downstairs, munching on apple slices. There was forty minutes still before we had to seriously consider getting ready to take Cara to school.
George would drop her off on his way to work downtown. He chose his hours and always chose convenience for his wife and kids. Ella and I planned to spend the morning gardening. Then we would nap much of the afternoon away until George and Cara returned. A life so perfect is so very rare.
I didn't want to spoil things with a very convincing nightmare. Besides, I felt fine. Not so good that I wanted to look in the dresser to see if those photos really were there, but not ill. So I remained silent again.
November started fine. Idyllic days and nights filled with laughter and joy and television. Just as I started to believe in the dream we'd made, they came again.
The wail of a child's hunger is a powerful call for a parent. When it's a chorus, even of two, it cannot be ignored. Only I awoke to Hadad and Hebat's cries for their "mother" from the basement.
Half asleep, I drifted into the kitchen and searched for their milk bottles. When no bottles could be found, I remembered they were newborns. Milk swelled in my breasts and made my nipples ache. Just like when Cara or Ella would awaken in the night. It was a relief to feed them.
But what the fuck was I doing?
I was acting like the man in the basement and the devil babies were mine. It'd been less than a week since Halloween and that horrible nightmare illusion. I had already taken on the beleaguered newborn mother role without question.
Their cries intensified and flayed the weak resistance of exhausted reasoning.
Don't wake George. Don't wake my babies, my real babies.
"What took you so long?" the man critized, his voice monotone, the question unrhetorical.
"I… was sleeping. I went to the fridge first." Under his severe gaze, I stopped in the midst of the dark room. Hadad had quieted. Hebat cooed as if laughing at her own joke. I couldn't see them because the lights were off. They liked the dark better. Somehow I knew that about them and him.
"You should sleep down here," he said. "A mother should always be close to her babies."
The statement was nonsense but not altogether wrong. I wanted to be close to my babies, the daughters sleeping in bliss upstairs, away from the evil fermentation in the basement.
"Kirsty," he said. "Are you listening?" His hand touched the small of my back. The gentleness surprised me. I squawked and flinched away. "What’s wrong with you? They're hungry." He pressed on my shoulders until I sat on the cold floor.
They came from the shadows, already walking. I wanted to go, but I knew he wouldn't allow it. He pulled my cat t-shirt off over my head and their fierce mouths suckled, relieving the pressure of excess breast milk quickly. It felt physically good and psychologically alien.
I looked down at them once and immediately regretted it. Their emanated light had intensified to a point where perception of them hurt.
Each time I blinked my eyes were drawn to some isolated part of their bodies. The vision got closer to the point of disgust. Everything is gross if you're close enough. There is no beauty under a microscope. If you think there is then you're not using the right magnification.
Hebat's eye drew me in. At first, I saw the dark sphere, and then the strands of her eyelashes. Her gravity kept pulling until the creatures that live in eyelashes were revealed: Demodex folliculorum. I looked the microscopic horrors up.
The babies had more parasites than any child should. They wanted to show me and could somehow do so.
I asked him about it. "Why are they showing me these worms?"
He smiled, contemptuously as usual. "Trying to impress mother. Neither of them understand your horror and insignificance. You are the ant who knows they're an ant. Lucky you. They think you will be proud of the life their corporeal forms produce and host. Give them a few hours. It will pass."
"Why are you doing this to me?"
"I'm not sure what you mean. We're married. Now, prepare to smile." His cell reappeared and I noted the lack of features; it might have been a singed rectangle of spent firewood. He frowned when I failed to smile. "Smile, Kirsty. These are your children."
I managed to stave off the tears and hold the babies close. The smile was more difficult. In the inevitable aftermath of their sudden disappearance, the frames depicted an exhausted, wrinkly woman smiling painfully. It took a second to recognize myself.
The things in the basement sapped my strength. I looked dehydrated, beleaguered. The scale in the bathroom said I'd dropped six pounds. I'd weighed myself the morning before.
"Whoa, you've lost weight," George noted, thinking I'd be pleased. "This place has been so good for us, eh?'
To produce another smile proved as draining as the previous night. "Y-yes," I stuttered too late for him to ignore.
"Hey," he said, touching my forearm.
I flinched.
"Whoa, you okay? What's wrong?"
I should have told him. "Nothing. Bad sleep. A nightmare. I'll be fine."
A lie is an agreement. George wanted to agree, I think. He wanted life to be fine because he was happy for once. We struggled so hard before we came to Bridal Veil Lake. It was supposed to be our dream.
Guilty if I told him the truth. Guilty because I didn't. I began to resent his happiness, though he had done nothing but be the wonderful man he'd always been.
To Cara and Ella I became a body in motion, No brain left to guide them away from harm or answer their questions about nature and the universe.
"I don't know." That's what I told them often.
So they began to treat me like a kind of butler.
"Can I have some juice, please?"
"Sure, sweetheart."
"Mommy, can I have a snack?"
"Of course." And I'd run off to fetch it.
"Cookies."
"Yes, dear."
When Christmas came, I had two and they induced the same level of joy. Visiting the basement to feed and nurture Hebat and Hadad became a nightly occurrence. I'd learned to awaken, if I could get to sleep at all, and go quietly.
He berated me severely if I missed a night, and there were subtle threats made casually.
"I may have to squash you yet," he said, his tone as deep and cold as always.
"It won't happen again," I promised. "They’re getting big." In fact, they were no longer infants. Both had grown to the approximate age of six or seven in a few months. Still, they never spoke. Their dark eyes watched me as they ate food from the kitchen upstairs, food I'd hidden from my family.
"More meat," the man demanded.
"Of course." And I ran to the freezer and gave them frozen sausages in the package. They never complained or demanded the food be prepared a different way. No objections from my "husband" either.
Hebat tore the styrofoam and plastic wrap away and flattened the row of sausages stuck together between powerful molars. Hadad contented itself with licking them like a popsicle.
I'd stay until the photo. Then they'd release me by vanishing. Always with an exhausted breath, I'd trudge up the stairs and search for the frames and hide them in the same place.
They only smiled in the pictures. At no other time did they express any kind of emotion unless indifference counts.
My own children and husband weren't doing much better. Their concerns about my fatigue and ruminating slowly ceased as I repeated the excuse: I’m just tired. It'll pass.
Of course, I did not know when the nightmare would stop.
"When will it end?" I asked him one night, while Hebat and Hadad exercised like they had a mission.
"What do you mean?" he said.
I was surprised he answered. He usually didn't. "This. This. When can I go back to normal and not come down every night? I'm so very tired."
He frowned and I thought some punishment must be coming. Instead, he looked more confused. "I don't understand. You aren't happy? Your children grow into power and strength and will take their place in the world. They will be great and you - you, of all the tiny things, made that happen. Ask yourself what you want out of life, and see if Hebat and Haddad aren't your answer."
Too many words, all at once, for an exhausted mother. I didn't speak for the rest of the night. The infernal trio vanished, and the latter moments of the ritual I carried out with his challenge in mind.
I want my children to be strong, happy, and safe.
"Juice," Cara demanded the next morning, a Saturday, while she watched cartoons.
"Get it yourself!" I hissed, from tired to angry in a second.
"But I can't," Cara accurately pointed out. She didn't look away from the TV. Looking at me wasn't safe, and she knew it. Her and Ella held hands and sat a little straighter. It broke my heart. What had I done?
George came downstairs, attracted by my shouting. "What’s going on?"
Empathy became sadness, and the constant burden rekindled to anger swiftly. "Just children treating me like a servant."
He smiled. "Ah, yes, and how are the royal princesses this morning?"
His levity irked me. "You would know if you didn't sleep in so much."
The smile vanished from his face, and instead of the fight I seemed to want, he mumbled a quiet apology and joined the girls. They climbed onto him as he wrapped them into a cuddle.
"What are we watching?" George restarted his smile, his calm, for the girls. I hated myself. It had to end. Tonight.
After another dreary day of going through the motions, and the girls and George had fallen asleep, I went to the kitchen and chose the knife I thought sharpest.
"Kirsty," he said, his voice a whisper rising from the depths of the house.
"Coming," I whispered back.
"Mom," said another voice, a girl's, and I knew that Hebat had, at last, found herself and the wholeness of her being had been corrected.
I started to cry. I went downstairs and there she was with her brother and her father. He looked tired but some of the grimness had cracked to allow the first real contentment I've ever seen him express.
"Is that for the cake?" he asked. "We already have one."
I remembered the sharp knife. "Meat," I said. "There’s ham in the freezer."
He nodded, seeming to accept the answer.
"Mom," Hebat said, "Do you think I'm…" She gestured to herself, her face, and her body, and I understood the question, born from doubt and a desire to be validated.
I pulled her close. "You are the most beautiful girl in the whole world." We cried together. Hadad cut into a poorly made, asymmetrical cake by the light of his aura. No one cared that he did so on the floor. I brought out the ham from the fridge and we ate slices with our hands.
"It's almost done," he said. "They’re nearly grown. They are strong, and they are happy. You've done a good job, Kirsty." He watched our children fight to smear icing on each other's faces. "I'm sorry if I was mean. Or cold. I've never done this before." And he meant raising children. "It was the hardest, scariest thing anyone can try. I shouldn't have blamed you for… Hebat… It wasn't your fault."
Before I could pat his hand, he and the kids vanished. Darkness so familiar couldn't extinguish a new fear. I went upstairs and found the last frame. I held my daughter in the photo, my beautiful Hebat. He must have taken the photo without my notice.
I took it upstairs but couldn't bring myself to hide it.
I didn't see that one, George wrote into the document.
I forgot he was watching.
He typed again: Are you saying there is something in the basement?
Yes, I replied.
He stirred in the living room. I hadn't moved from the stairs, but I could tell by his stomping how angry he'd become. All of his negative, violent traits he saved for those in the world who would harm his family. George the Protector was fearsome to behold.
But he had no chance against my other husband.
"Come out! Come out you coward!" George bellowed. At first, nothing happened. The moment before calamity, even when the specific consequences aren't known, is still in slow motion. He carried on shouting. The girls rushed into the hall and didn’t hesitate to investigate.
"No!" I shouted. "Cara! Ella!"
Their feet padded down the steps. A violent commotion followed, screams and raging voices, both deep and childishly shrill.
The most unsettling quiet followed.
I chewed through the fear and the horror tearing me apart and finally moved.
No evidence of violence could be seen from the top of the stairs. The concrete looked bare and dusty and the light revealed nothing more. They were gone, all of them.
"Hebat," I whispered. "Cara? George?"
Him, I thought of, the nameless husband and felt no hint of his presence. He'd always been there. I know that now. It had nothing to do with the house. His absence was felt more than his insidious presence. Yet, I felt no relief. George and the girls were gone. I sat on the floor and cried for all my missing children.
When I finally emerged from the basement, the whole house had been filled with night. Their photos were everywhere. The others were upstairs. I gathered them on the kitchen island. How could I explain any of this to the police?
I needed help. I called my parents. It took twenty minutes before my father picked up.
"Kirsty? What's wrong?"
"Dad," I whimpered. "George is gone. Cara. Ella."
"What? What did you say?"
"They’re gone, dad. George. The girls are gone."
I heard his bed springs protest as he rolled out of bed. My mom said something I couldn't hear, and he shushed her.
"Kirsty," he said, "are you alright? Are you hurt? Are you in danger?"
Why was it so hard to understand? "Dad. George is gone."
"Kirsty, who the hell is George?"
It was my turn to be confused. "He's my- you know him. My husband…"
"Kirsty," he said very slowly, "are you on drugs? Did you take something?"
"No. Are you?"
"Excuse me?"
I hung up.
I have their photos. I have all of their photos. That's what I brought to George's parents before the sun rose. They wouldn't open the door and spoke to me through an intercom.
"George is gone," I said.
"We'll call the police."
"This is your son. These are your granddaughters."
I heard my mother-in-law say, "Who is she?"
"We don't have a son," my father-in-law said. "Go away."
I left.
Back to the house. Our dream sat empty and I live there, but none of the people in my family photos are my family.
I remember but the world never does. My parents think I'm ill and that I used AI to create the family I apparently never had.
How did I buy the house without a job or income? With deep concern for my mental health, they showed me a news story. I had won the lottery the day I turned eighteen.
His influence there, payment for services rendered.
A lie is an agreement.
What had I agreed to? I'm afraid I know the answer: I never wanted a family.
God help me. God help them.
I don't know what to do with these pictures.
2024.05.19 15:53 Faps88 I think my friend's bf is cheating but I don't have proof..
My (35F) best friend Emma (35F) has been with her BF Mark (38M) for about 8 months.
During their short relationship, Emma has caught Mark messaging other attractive women on Instagram asking to meet up and being flirtatious.
The final straw came around Jan where Mark was caught IG messaging a woman from the gym. Emma confronted him and he messaged the woman saying "I can't talk to you anymore because my girlfriend won't let me 🙄". Very disrespectful. Emma took a break from him.
Problem is, they were due to move in together in Jan too. So Emma was stressing about how she gave her roommate notice to allow Mark to move in and now she's not sure because he's been messaging other women but can't afford the rent on her own.
Emma finds out at the same time.. She is PREGNANT. Emma decided to forgive Mark and let him move in on the basis that he unfollows women on IG and stops messaging women unless they are a known female friend. And he promised he did not actually do anything physical cheating wise.
Cut to my dilemma : this weekend was their baby gender reveal party. My friend Emma tagged Mark in the reveal photos on IG. I have realised that Mark's IG profile was public on Friday, but had been made private as soon as the baby related tags to his profile happened.
There could be innocent reasons for this but given his history it seems sketchy to me? Maybe Mark wants to message with women on IG without them seeing his girlfriend and baby on the way?
I don't think I can bring this up to Emma with so little proof of bad behaviour and don't want to stress her out unnecessarily. But I think it's so weird to have a public profile and then make it private as soon as he is tagged in their baby scan and gender reveal photos.
What do you think? Is there anything I can do to get more solid proof he is being sneaky?
Tldr : friends boyfriend has made his Instagram account private suddenly after she tagged him in their baby scan and gender reveal photos. I think this is odd when he has a history of messaging women on IG.
submitted by Faps88 to relationships [link] [comments]
During their short relationship, Emma has caught Mark messaging other attractive women on Instagram asking to meet up and being flirtatious.
The final straw came around Jan where Mark was caught IG messaging a woman from the gym. Emma confronted him and he messaged the woman saying "I can't talk to you anymore because my girlfriend won't let me 🙄". Very disrespectful. Emma took a break from him.
Problem is, they were due to move in together in Jan too. So Emma was stressing about how she gave her roommate notice to allow Mark to move in and now she's not sure because he's been messaging other women but can't afford the rent on her own.
Emma finds out at the same time.. She is PREGNANT. Emma decided to forgive Mark and let him move in on the basis that he unfollows women on IG and stops messaging women unless they are a known female friend. And he promised he did not actually do anything physical cheating wise.
Cut to my dilemma : this weekend was their baby gender reveal party. My friend Emma tagged Mark in the reveal photos on IG. I have realised that Mark's IG profile was public on Friday, but had been made private as soon as the baby related tags to his profile happened.
There could be innocent reasons for this but given his history it seems sketchy to me? Maybe Mark wants to message with women on IG without them seeing his girlfriend and baby on the way?
I don't think I can bring this up to Emma with so little proof of bad behaviour and don't want to stress her out unnecessarily. But I think it's so weird to have a public profile and then make it private as soon as he is tagged in their baby scan and gender reveal photos.
What do you think? Is there anything I can do to get more solid proof he is being sneaky?
Tldr : friends boyfriend has made his Instagram account private suddenly after she tagged him in their baby scan and gender reveal photos. I think this is odd when he has a history of messaging women on IG.
2024.05.19 15:09 subredditsummarybot Your weekly /r/LGBT recap for the week of May 12 - May 18, 2024
Sunday, May 12 - Saturday, May 18, 2024
submitted by subredditsummarybot to lgbt [link] [comments]
Art
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 1,219 | 29 comments | [Art/Creative] So I found this sweet game 🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵 |
| 421 | 15 comments | [Art/Creative] As a 30 yo asexual lesbian, I wish people understood this better |
| 382 | 18 comments | [Art/Creative] First time creating art for Pride Month—what do you think? |
| 316 | 11 comments | [Art/Creative] Someone took a photo of a Pride parade using a (minolta hi-matic af2 with fujicolor c200, I thought people here would enjoy it |
| 261 | 9 comments | [Art/Creative] Is art welcome here? |
Memes
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 2,697 | 33 comments | [Meme] my uncle tries, but he really Doesn't Get It |
| 625 | 25 comments | [Meme] My trans friend sent me this image |
| 370 | 6 comments | [Meme] So you do have an agenda then? |
| 369 | 136 comments | [Meme] Fill everyone in with the gay agenda |
| 279 | 12 comments | [Meme] Sometimes even men can scratch that lesbian itch if they have the right vibes (see: The Orion Experience) |
Politics / News
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 1,213 | 91 comments | [Politics] The other chaser! |
| 943 | 45 comments | [News] US State Department Issues Security Alert for Americans Abroad: Heightened Risk for LGBTQ Events |
| 826 | 55 comments | [News] Link in the comments.. |
| 421 | 13 comments | [News] Nemo, Eurovision’s first nonbinary winner, gets a hero’s welcome in Switzerland |
| 187 | 11 comments | [Politics] Poland ranked worst country in EU for LGBT+ people for fifth year running |
Advice
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 1,220 | 48 comments | [Need Advice :snoo_thoughtful:] My mom found my ally flag |
| 872 | 223 comments | [Need Advice :snoo_thoughtful:] Why do some people use queer as a specific label? |
| 675 | 77 comments | [Need Advice :snoo_thoughtful:] I hate being in a gay cis-trans relationship |
| 615 | 182 comments | [Need Advice :snoo_thoughtful:] What’s the best answer to “you don’t have to make it your whole personality”? |
| 562 | 127 comments | [Need Advice :snoo_thoughtful:] What do I do if I cannot respect peoples pronouns? |
Coming out
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 2,705 | 71 comments | [:usrrainbowupvote: Coming Out!] I just came out to my mom |
| 176 | 33 comments | [:usrrainbowupvote: Coming Out!] I have to come out to my homophobic parents this weekend, can y'all hype me up? |
| 86 | 4 comments | [:usrrainbowupvote: Coming Out!] My mom is an ally!? (Update on previous post) |
| 42 | 7 comments | [:usrrainbowupvote: Coming Out!] omg omg omg!! coming out!! |
| 20 | 3 comments | [:usrrainbowupvote: Coming Out!] Came out and I am SO happy!!! |
Other Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 5,755 | 422 comments | [:flag-united-states: US Specific] The NFL has directly addressed the anti-LGBTQ+ comments made by Kansas City Chiefs' Harrison Butker as a petition to axe the star gathers 85,000 signatures |
| 3,536 | 137 comments | Apparently I'm trans. |
| 3,327 | 101 comments | [:flag-united-states: US Specific] His terms are acceptable |
| 2,877 | 774 comments | Who’s your favorite problematic representation?🏳️🌈 |
| 2,669 | 266 comments | FBI warns terrorist groups may target pride events, venues |
| 2,597 | 171 comments | I dont even know what to say 🤦♂️ |
| 2,421 | 85 comments | Utah's trans bathroom snitch site is showing "page not found"! |
| 2,240 | 114 comments | You know that lazy transphobic joke about them misgendering you a thousands years from now? |
| 2,219 | 73 comments | ftm |
| 2,015 | 33 comments | On this day (International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia ) let us remember all those LGBTQI people who lost their life in WWII |
Top Comments
2024.05.19 12:13 sexycutielovelylife Is it okay to ‘not have a cycle’?
Hi everyone, fairly new here but I was hoping I could get some advice based on what a doctor told me.
So I was diagnosed with PCOS in 2022, shortly after I turned 18 and have been still learning as much as I can about it practically every day but recently I went to my doctor to complain about migraines.
I told her that I think stress makes them worse because that does run in my family,(and because it was exam season stress was way up there) but I told her that I also got really bad hormonal migraines around the time of my period. I mentioned that I have PCOS and I thought that this was fairly normal because of the hormonal imbalances and so on.
I told her I was on the pill (dianette to be specific) and she said she thought this might have been the cause of my migraines. She told me I shouldn’t be taking it long term like I had been, on and off for the previous 3 years or so.
I was initially prescribed dianette when I was 15 because I had acne, I’d never had a period on my own until I started the pill at that age. I stopped taking the pill after the dermatologist discharged me saying that my skin was clear and I could keep taking the medication for as long as I liked, which wasn’t the case apparently for BC. I stopped taking it when I was about 17 and my acne came back worse than ever before, hirsutism just happened, I just looked way more masculine in general it was pretty horrible. And oh yeah I didn’t have a period in a year because I wasn’t on the pill anymore.
I went to the doctor about this when I was 18 and they diagnosed me with PCOS.
But recently, when I mentioned to her saying that I hadn’t had a period without being on the pill she said that it sounded like I was being prescribed a pill that was giving me migraines and she told me to stop taking it immediately.
She put me on metformin instead, which I was happy about because basically everywhere online mentions how it’s really helpful for PCOS, and she talked to me about how it can help.
When I enquired about the fact that I might not have a period without the pill, because that’s never been the case for me, she basically said that metformin could help me lose weight (I am fairly overweight and have been since I was about 13/14, puberty age) and overtime I could see my period naturally, but then she also said that might not happen even if I lose weight, but it’s okay because I don’t ‘need to have a cycle’ unless I want to get pregnant.
I thought this sounded very weird from the first time she mentioned this but I just took her advice and stopped taking the pill and started taking metformin immediately. Maybe about a week after I started metformin I had a period, which was really surprising because I’ve never had a natural period before without being on the pill. I’ve never just gone to the bathroom and started my period because I’ve always had some indication of when it might start because of the pill.
But since then I haven’t had another period, and clue tells me it’s been 60 days since my period ended.
So I guess I’m just wanting to hear for other people who don’t ’have cycles’ and is this actually okay or should I just go and see another doctor.
I was talking to a friend about this the other day and I was saying that it’s weird because most women go through different phases every month where you feel a bit worse then a bit better and all that sort of jazz but I think I just feel the same all the time because I ‘don’t have a cycle.’
Is it really okay?
submitted by sexycutielovelylife to PCOS [link] [comments]
So I was diagnosed with PCOS in 2022, shortly after I turned 18 and have been still learning as much as I can about it practically every day but recently I went to my doctor to complain about migraines.
I told her that I think stress makes them worse because that does run in my family,(and because it was exam season stress was way up there) but I told her that I also got really bad hormonal migraines around the time of my period. I mentioned that I have PCOS and I thought that this was fairly normal because of the hormonal imbalances and so on.
I told her I was on the pill (dianette to be specific) and she said she thought this might have been the cause of my migraines. She told me I shouldn’t be taking it long term like I had been, on and off for the previous 3 years or so.
I was initially prescribed dianette when I was 15 because I had acne, I’d never had a period on my own until I started the pill at that age. I stopped taking the pill after the dermatologist discharged me saying that my skin was clear and I could keep taking the medication for as long as I liked, which wasn’t the case apparently for BC. I stopped taking it when I was about 17 and my acne came back worse than ever before, hirsutism just happened, I just looked way more masculine in general it was pretty horrible. And oh yeah I didn’t have a period in a year because I wasn’t on the pill anymore.
I went to the doctor about this when I was 18 and they diagnosed me with PCOS.
But recently, when I mentioned to her saying that I hadn’t had a period without being on the pill she said that it sounded like I was being prescribed a pill that was giving me migraines and she told me to stop taking it immediately.
She put me on metformin instead, which I was happy about because basically everywhere online mentions how it’s really helpful for PCOS, and she talked to me about how it can help.
When I enquired about the fact that I might not have a period without the pill, because that’s never been the case for me, she basically said that metformin could help me lose weight (I am fairly overweight and have been since I was about 13/14, puberty age) and overtime I could see my period naturally, but then she also said that might not happen even if I lose weight, but it’s okay because I don’t ‘need to have a cycle’ unless I want to get pregnant.
I thought this sounded very weird from the first time she mentioned this but I just took her advice and stopped taking the pill and started taking metformin immediately. Maybe about a week after I started metformin I had a period, which was really surprising because I’ve never had a natural period before without being on the pill. I’ve never just gone to the bathroom and started my period because I’ve always had some indication of when it might start because of the pill.
But since then I haven’t had another period, and clue tells me it’s been 60 days since my period ended.
So I guess I’m just wanting to hear for other people who don’t ’have cycles’ and is this actually okay or should I just go and see another doctor.
I was talking to a friend about this the other day and I was saying that it’s weird because most women go through different phases every month where you feel a bit worse then a bit better and all that sort of jazz but I think I just feel the same all the time because I ‘don’t have a cycle.’
Is it really okay?
2024.05.19 12:11 MeatJordan Where CAN I protest this?
Let me start with the summary version:
It all began when I first stumbled upon Inside Edition's videos of women - that's WOMEN getting slammed, insulted, and blasted for "showing too much of their body (with kids around)". Then it escalates further when they show a school is photoshopping out women's cleavages to make them look "modest" for their yearbook. I feel this type of treatment towards the female human is all wrong! Like, can't anybody learn to appreciate and look at the female body without censoring it in any way? Can't you let ANYBODY, including kids, get a chance to learn about the differences between the male and female human bodies????
Then comes along... you guessed it. That one video Inside Edition publishes. And after seeing her top blurred, my inner voice in my head: "That's the last straw!" Like, can't some of us get a chance to learn something new that just aroused our curiosity? Such as how the human body changes with time in terms of both genders? Like, now, I can finally visualize myself (my whole body) from little boy to fully grown man. But when Inside Edition published that footage, the new question that took me by storm is: what would a female look like from little girl to fully grown woman?
But with YouTube's broken comment system GHOSTING certain-to-random comments, even on my backup YouTube account, I can't seem to get ANY messages across!
Speaking of which, when I tried to post this on Feminism and AskFeminists, they BOTH perma-banned me for NO REASON and muted me from talking to their mods for 28 days!
Why do I say "no reason"?
"Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in this subreddit because your post violates this community's rules. You won't be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.
If you have a question regarding your ban, you can contact the moderator team by replying to this message.
Reminder from the Reddit staff: If you use another account to circumvent this subreddit ban, that will be considered a violation of the Content Policy and can result in your account being suspended from the site as a whole."
As you can see, there is no specific reason listed in the message above. So this is why I claim or what I mean by "banned from a sub for 'no reason'. - Even for something that was never officially listed on that sub's rule board.
Once more, I, along with these parents of their own daughter proved one major point: if a male can go topless/show their body, then so can a female - regardless of age!
Can't I get a chance to learn something new? Some evolution/development processes for certain things can be a little more complicated then you originally first thought.
Now here's the detailed version:
Ok, before you start reading below, I want you to visit this and read the whole article to better understand my situation: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/guelph-parents-angry-after-topless-girl-8-told-to-cover-up-1.3124762
I got banned from Lemmy social site servers for "CSAM" all because of this: the Napalm Girl pic and another thing I saw on Inside Edition's channel in addition to some nude statues - literally artwork of naked people - all because I was trying to protest ~the inconsistencies of censorship towards the female human~ - regardless of their race AND age!
Let me be clear on one thing: I didn't post any "CSAM" on the Lemmy servers! I'm protesting something that I feel is unfair towards the female human.
Please ~actually watch these before jumping to conclusions~ so you can actually understand what I’m really protesting!
Women Who Were Told Their Outfits Were ‘Too Revealing’
Mom Says She Was Kicked Out of Gym For Revealing Tank Top: I Felt Humiliated
Cops Dragged Woman Off Beach After Complaint About Her Bikini
It’s one thing to say a girl’s outfit or body is “too revealing”,
Teens React After Yearbook Photos Are ‘Modesty Edited’
it’s two things to photoshop out a girl’s cleavage to make her look “modest” for a yearbook or a portrait!
9-Year-Old Saves Family From House Fire
But censoring a topless preteen girl who thought up an ingenious strategy to stay cool like her friends in the same stuffy room while at the same time not caring who’s around her? THAT’S REALLY CROSSING THE LINE!
It's all thanks to some videos from Inside Edition's YouTube Channel.All these videos Inside Edition posted are developing a question in my mind that's getting the better of me: why so much hate on the female human - even as children? Like, why do they censor the little girl's chest? Can't anybody learn to appreciate the appearance of the female body? Just like those parents of their own 8 year old daughter, I too am genuinely outraged by this type of treatment towards the female human!
And what's the big deal with nipples? I'm just trying to ensure everyone is treated equally regardless of race, and gender... AND age (after what I just witnessed). And if no one's gonna speak up about this, I might as well step up to the plate. After all, somebody's got to do it!
That little girl in the final video made two non-verbal messages clear: one: if a boy can do it, then so can a girl! And two: no one is too young for anything! As long as you have the knowledge capacity and I.Q level to do it properly and safely, you'll be fine. I was able to refuel my dad's car and cook my own dinner when I was 6 and without setting anything ablaze by accident.
However, when I try to illustrate with that video, even though Inside Edition is an official news channel, the responses I get back are rather bitter! They remove my post or ban me from the sites I post on for "promoting nudity involving a minor"!
~WHERE~
~CAN~
~I~
~ASK~
~OR~
~SHARE~
~THIS~
~SUBJECT?!~
Due to my autism, I only know basic English. So I need to illustrate to get most of my messages through. I thought hard, I tried, and low and behold, they were removed hours later mainly because they "didn't fit the subject of the forum". Even though my multi-subject based thread does have some material relating to this forum's topic. These sites and mods are all really stretching my problem solving skills beyond the breaking point for this one. I'm merely protesting with these pictures and videos as illustration. I'm not that good with words, so I need pictures to get half my messages across as noted above.
Many subreddits or forum sites don’t accept URLs, pictures, specific website URLs, or even a combination! Thereby hindering my ability to fully explain what I’m witnessing! In this case, the sentences “It’s one thing to say a girl’s outfit is ‘too revealing’, it’s two things to photoshop out a girl’s cleavage to make her look ‘modest’ for a yearbook.” actually corresponded to several videos I beared witness to on Inside Edition’s YouTube channel.
I actually tried to post that URL with that blurred 9yo girl in a subreddit in the past and you won’t believe this: I actually lost my reddit account for 2 days for “promoting nudity involving a minor”! Other sites like the adult video forums who accept uncensored nudity-based images I mentioned just delete my thread! Another site I recall banned me for 1 year for “spam” - even though I only made this protest post twice (after they removed it once).
So that meant I had to approach this from a different angle: after that experience, I got a little paranoid from using that said video URL to illustrate. So I tried explaining this protest without the URLs - and this is in conjunction with certain sites restricting my ability to post images, URLs, certain site URLs, or a combination. It seemed to end up making things worse! Because without the visual evidence, it makes it much harder to fully explain what I’m witnessing.
So without the URLs included - that visual illustration, on the sites I tried along with Lemmy World, it actually made things worse! That’s what lead Lemmy.World mods to ban me for life for “CSAM” or made other people think I watched child porn when I clearly didn’t. The lack of visual evidence (due to my past reddit experience combined with the site’s posting restrictions) is what lead to this “pedophile” confusion. So please help me talk some sense into the Lemmings world, Lemmy.ml, and Lemmy.world mods that this was all a major misunderstanding and Lemmy is pretty much the only reddit alternative out here where I can try asking another question. My attempt to appeal has failed on 3 Lemmy social sites - even after I tried notifying the mods on the third Lemmy server site before making the post, so I need your help now!
I felt after Inside Edition uploaded that blurred 9yo girl video… I thought to myself “That’s the last straw!” Someone needs to protest these absurd censorship laws that they apply to the female human!
Why can males show most of their body but females can’t? - In most cases that is? Whatever happened to "Free The Nipple"?
Children should have the same… rights to do things as any adult! It’s about possessing the knowledge capacity and I.Q level to safely execute this action. E.G, on those “Family Day” episodes of The Price is Right and Let’s Make a Deal; those kids made smart choices when picking the correct numbers to items to win a prize.
I’m not joking around here! This type of treatment towards the female human needs to stop - this includes race and age. - It’s like racist people, but in age form.
Does it look like I’m laughing for fun? Of course not! Since no one else is protesting this, and YouTube has a flawed comment moderating system hindering my ability to post on even random videos (I.E, "ghosting"), I have to take more drastic measures to protest by stepping up to the plate and shouting out “Can’t we all be equal in terms of a huge variety of traits?” Yeah, the last thing I need is a vein-bleeding broken-record robot impeding or hindering my ability to seek answers to a question!
We need to learn to appreciate or accept how the female body appears regardless of race and age!
Stop trying to blame it all on me! None of the stuff in the vids posted, is that. If it was, Inside Edition would be the guilty party, and Youtube for not having already deleted them. If it doesn’t violate Youtube’s TOS, it should be fine to post anywhere. If there was even a hint of impropriety to it, at the minimum the vid would have been age restricted.
No one would answer! Not even Inside Edition themselves were willing to offer an answer when I even found their email address, the sites dedicated to helping those in mental, suicidal, or emotional distress (those forum sites even PERMA-banned me for "spam" - that's right, SPAM! (Even though there was absolutely no mention of a permanent ban or rule about "spam" in their forum guidelines!) Is that the definition of "spam" when I make a bad thread only once?! And when I try to appeal the ban, the same message "please contact the administrator if it was done in error" is blocking my ability to click the contact button! Or sometimes it's a blank white page with that message in the top left corner of the window! - Which adds more insult to injury, because I can't click anything as all the buttons have disappeared! That means I can't log out of that site either!), OR the adult video forums that support uncensored nudity images would accept that video link URL let alone the entire topic itself! So I really am at a loss for thoughts and words on what I just experienced! Heck, I even tried the professional therapists of talkingforchange.ca But even they too were too reluctant to talk as they claim my post regarding the censorship of women is not for their platform and they disconnected the chat 2 seconds after their last reply to me. And I highly doubt that ANY site will allow me to illustrate with a picture of the Napalm Girl (Phan Thi Kim Phuc) when she was 9, certain pictures of Pampers diaper boxes (why do you think they (Pampers, Huggies, etc.) even allow a pic of a topless little boy or girl to be plastered on a diaper box we see in grocery stores/supermarkets everyday?), Leela when she was an infant in the episode Leela's Homeworld, or even Belgium's famous kids: Manneken Pis/Jeanneke Pis. That, combined with YouTube having a flawed comment moderating system hindering my ability to post comments on certain-to-random videos (I.E, "ghosting"), I'm forced to take more drastic measures to get my messages across. All this combined, ~I'VE NEVER FELT SO SHUNNED FROM THE INTERNET IN ALL MY LIFE!~
But here's a strange catch: sometimes on some sites, Napalm Girl is censored, other sites she isn't. So I felt that I need to protest this. It seems everyone is too chicken to even start this subject! Don't these numbskulls know not to judge a book by it's cover?! This is where I ask myself "NOW WHAT?!". This can't be one of those "exceptional" cases where they say "suicide never solves anything" doesn't apply to these types of situations. In other words, all hope for resolving these types of situations really is lost. I really do feel left in the dark on both the subject of sound effects and nudity!
Once more, I'm not being a ped, I'm protesting all these absurd censorship rules and regulations that revolve around the female human - regardless of race and age - after what Inside Edition posted. Watch the videos I found again for clarification. In other words, ~the inconsistencies of female human censorship~.
Can you really - you know, hurl insults at Inside Edition or blast them for what they did? It was their idea to publicly publish the footage. Just like how that one photographer made the choice to publicly publish footage of the Napalm Girl when she was 9 and completely nude. Therefore, it should be ok to share this footage anywhere.
But some areas censored Napalm Girl's nipples, but others did not - excluding her groin. Then there's the diaper boxes I found in any supermarket. And finally... Surprise surprise: typical women being scolded by other people for wearing something "inappropriate" or "showing too much of their body". I look around and since no one else is protesting about this, I might as well do it! After all, someone's gotta step up to the plate to hit that ball! I will not sit idling by the sidelines and continue to watch the female human get treated/censored like this! I will stand up, step up, and speak out towards these absurd reactions, rules, and regulations that revolve around the appearance and censorship of the female body! What about the famous Jeanneke Pis in Belgium? Do you think she along with other nude statues are trying to promote pedophilia?
submitted by MeatJordan to whatsbotheringyou [link] [comments]
It all began when I first stumbled upon Inside Edition's videos of women - that's WOMEN getting slammed, insulted, and blasted for "showing too much of their body (with kids around)". Then it escalates further when they show a school is photoshopping out women's cleavages to make them look "modest" for their yearbook. I feel this type of treatment towards the female human is all wrong! Like, can't anybody learn to appreciate and look at the female body without censoring it in any way? Can't you let ANYBODY, including kids, get a chance to learn about the differences between the male and female human bodies????
Then comes along... you guessed it. That one video Inside Edition publishes. And after seeing her top blurred, my inner voice in my head: "That's the last straw!" Like, can't some of us get a chance to learn something new that just aroused our curiosity? Such as how the human body changes with time in terms of both genders? Like, now, I can finally visualize myself (my whole body) from little boy to fully grown man. But when Inside Edition published that footage, the new question that took me by storm is: what would a female look like from little girl to fully grown woman?
But with YouTube's broken comment system GHOSTING certain-to-random comments, even on my backup YouTube account, I can't seem to get ANY messages across!
Speaking of which, when I tried to post this on Feminism and AskFeminists, they BOTH perma-banned me for NO REASON and muted me from talking to their mods for 28 days!
Why do I say "no reason"?
"Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in this subreddit because your post violates this community's rules. You won't be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.
If you have a question regarding your ban, you can contact the moderator team by replying to this message.
Reminder from the Reddit staff: If you use another account to circumvent this subreddit ban, that will be considered a violation of the Content Policy and can result in your account being suspended from the site as a whole."
As you can see, there is no specific reason listed in the message above. So this is why I claim or what I mean by "banned from a sub for 'no reason'. - Even for something that was never officially listed on that sub's rule board.
Once more, I, along with these parents of their own daughter proved one major point: if a male can go topless/show their body, then so can a female - regardless of age!
Can't I get a chance to learn something new? Some evolution/development processes for certain things can be a little more complicated then you originally first thought.
Now here's the detailed version:
Ok, before you start reading below, I want you to visit this and read the whole article to better understand my situation: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/guelph-parents-angry-after-topless-girl-8-told-to-cover-up-1.3124762
I got banned from Lemmy social site servers for "CSAM" all because of this: the Napalm Girl pic and another thing I saw on Inside Edition's channel in addition to some nude statues - literally artwork of naked people - all because I was trying to protest ~the inconsistencies of censorship towards the female human~ - regardless of their race AND age!
Let me be clear on one thing: I didn't post any "CSAM" on the Lemmy servers! I'm protesting something that I feel is unfair towards the female human.
Please ~actually watch these before jumping to conclusions~ so you can actually understand what I’m really protesting!
Women Who Were Told Their Outfits Were ‘Too Revealing’
Mom Says She Was Kicked Out of Gym For Revealing Tank Top: I Felt Humiliated
Cops Dragged Woman Off Beach After Complaint About Her Bikini
It’s one thing to say a girl’s outfit or body is “too revealing”,
Teens React After Yearbook Photos Are ‘Modesty Edited’
it’s two things to photoshop out a girl’s cleavage to make her look “modest” for a yearbook or a portrait!
9-Year-Old Saves Family From House Fire
But censoring a topless preteen girl who thought up an ingenious strategy to stay cool like her friends in the same stuffy room while at the same time not caring who’s around her? THAT’S REALLY CROSSING THE LINE!
It's all thanks to some videos from Inside Edition's YouTube Channel.All these videos Inside Edition posted are developing a question in my mind that's getting the better of me: why so much hate on the female human - even as children? Like, why do they censor the little girl's chest? Can't anybody learn to appreciate the appearance of the female body? Just like those parents of their own 8 year old daughter, I too am genuinely outraged by this type of treatment towards the female human!
And what's the big deal with nipples? I'm just trying to ensure everyone is treated equally regardless of race, and gender... AND age (after what I just witnessed). And if no one's gonna speak up about this, I might as well step up to the plate. After all, somebody's got to do it!
That little girl in the final video made two non-verbal messages clear: one: if a boy can do it, then so can a girl! And two: no one is too young for anything! As long as you have the knowledge capacity and I.Q level to do it properly and safely, you'll be fine. I was able to refuel my dad's car and cook my own dinner when I was 6 and without setting anything ablaze by accident.
However, when I try to illustrate with that video, even though Inside Edition is an official news channel, the responses I get back are rather bitter! They remove my post or ban me from the sites I post on for "promoting nudity involving a minor"!
~WHERE~
~CAN~
~I~
~ASK~
~OR~
~SHARE~
~THIS~
~SUBJECT?!~
Due to my autism, I only know basic English. So I need to illustrate to get most of my messages through. I thought hard, I tried, and low and behold, they were removed hours later mainly because they "didn't fit the subject of the forum". Even though my multi-subject based thread does have some material relating to this forum's topic. These sites and mods are all really stretching my problem solving skills beyond the breaking point for this one. I'm merely protesting with these pictures and videos as illustration. I'm not that good with words, so I need pictures to get half my messages across as noted above.
Many subreddits or forum sites don’t accept URLs, pictures, specific website URLs, or even a combination! Thereby hindering my ability to fully explain what I’m witnessing! In this case, the sentences “It’s one thing to say a girl’s outfit is ‘too revealing’, it’s two things to photoshop out a girl’s cleavage to make her look ‘modest’ for a yearbook.” actually corresponded to several videos I beared witness to on Inside Edition’s YouTube channel.
I actually tried to post that URL with that blurred 9yo girl in a subreddit in the past and you won’t believe this: I actually lost my reddit account for 2 days for “promoting nudity involving a minor”! Other sites like the adult video forums who accept uncensored nudity-based images I mentioned just delete my thread! Another site I recall banned me for 1 year for “spam” - even though I only made this protest post twice (after they removed it once).
So that meant I had to approach this from a different angle: after that experience, I got a little paranoid from using that said video URL to illustrate. So I tried explaining this protest without the URLs - and this is in conjunction with certain sites restricting my ability to post images, URLs, certain site URLs, or a combination. It seemed to end up making things worse! Because without the visual evidence, it makes it much harder to fully explain what I’m witnessing.
So without the URLs included - that visual illustration, on the sites I tried along with Lemmy World, it actually made things worse! That’s what lead Lemmy.World mods to ban me for life for “CSAM” or made other people think I watched child porn when I clearly didn’t. The lack of visual evidence (due to my past reddit experience combined with the site’s posting restrictions) is what lead to this “pedophile” confusion. So please help me talk some sense into the Lemmings world, Lemmy.ml, and Lemmy.world mods that this was all a major misunderstanding and Lemmy is pretty much the only reddit alternative out here where I can try asking another question. My attempt to appeal has failed on 3 Lemmy social sites - even after I tried notifying the mods on the third Lemmy server site before making the post, so I need your help now!
I felt after Inside Edition uploaded that blurred 9yo girl video… I thought to myself “That’s the last straw!” Someone needs to protest these absurd censorship laws that they apply to the female human!
Why can males show most of their body but females can’t? - In most cases that is? Whatever happened to "Free The Nipple"?
Children should have the same… rights to do things as any adult! It’s about possessing the knowledge capacity and I.Q level to safely execute this action. E.G, on those “Family Day” episodes of The Price is Right and Let’s Make a Deal; those kids made smart choices when picking the correct numbers to items to win a prize.
I’m not joking around here! This type of treatment towards the female human needs to stop - this includes race and age. - It’s like racist people, but in age form.
Does it look like I’m laughing for fun? Of course not! Since no one else is protesting this, and YouTube has a flawed comment moderating system hindering my ability to post on even random videos (I.E, "ghosting"), I have to take more drastic measures to protest by stepping up to the plate and shouting out “Can’t we all be equal in terms of a huge variety of traits?” Yeah, the last thing I need is a vein-bleeding broken-record robot impeding or hindering my ability to seek answers to a question!
We need to learn to appreciate or accept how the female body appears regardless of race and age!
Stop trying to blame it all on me! None of the stuff in the vids posted, is that. If it was, Inside Edition would be the guilty party, and Youtube for not having already deleted them. If it doesn’t violate Youtube’s TOS, it should be fine to post anywhere. If there was even a hint of impropriety to it, at the minimum the vid would have been age restricted.
No one would answer! Not even Inside Edition themselves were willing to offer an answer when I even found their email address, the sites dedicated to helping those in mental, suicidal, or emotional distress (those forum sites even PERMA-banned me for "spam" - that's right, SPAM! (Even though there was absolutely no mention of a permanent ban or rule about "spam" in their forum guidelines!) Is that the definition of "spam" when I make a bad thread only once?! And when I try to appeal the ban, the same message "please contact the administrator if it was done in error" is blocking my ability to click the contact button! Or sometimes it's a blank white page with that message in the top left corner of the window! - Which adds more insult to injury, because I can't click anything as all the buttons have disappeared! That means I can't log out of that site either!), OR the adult video forums that support uncensored nudity images would accept that video link URL let alone the entire topic itself! So I really am at a loss for thoughts and words on what I just experienced! Heck, I even tried the professional therapists of talkingforchange.ca But even they too were too reluctant to talk as they claim my post regarding the censorship of women is not for their platform and they disconnected the chat 2 seconds after their last reply to me. And I highly doubt that ANY site will allow me to illustrate with a picture of the Napalm Girl (Phan Thi Kim Phuc) when she was 9, certain pictures of Pampers diaper boxes (why do you think they (Pampers, Huggies, etc.) even allow a pic of a topless little boy or girl to be plastered on a diaper box we see in grocery stores/supermarkets everyday?), Leela when she was an infant in the episode Leela's Homeworld, or even Belgium's famous kids: Manneken Pis/Jeanneke Pis. That, combined with YouTube having a flawed comment moderating system hindering my ability to post comments on certain-to-random videos (I.E, "ghosting"), I'm forced to take more drastic measures to get my messages across. All this combined, ~I'VE NEVER FELT SO SHUNNED FROM THE INTERNET IN ALL MY LIFE!~
But here's a strange catch: sometimes on some sites, Napalm Girl is censored, other sites she isn't. So I felt that I need to protest this. It seems everyone is too chicken to even start this subject! Don't these numbskulls know not to judge a book by it's cover?! This is where I ask myself "NOW WHAT?!". This can't be one of those "exceptional" cases where they say "suicide never solves anything" doesn't apply to these types of situations. In other words, all hope for resolving these types of situations really is lost. I really do feel left in the dark on both the subject of sound effects and nudity!
Once more, I'm not being a ped, I'm protesting all these absurd censorship rules and regulations that revolve around the female human - regardless of race and age - after what Inside Edition posted. Watch the videos I found again for clarification. In other words, ~the inconsistencies of female human censorship~.
Can you really - you know, hurl insults at Inside Edition or blast them for what they did? It was their idea to publicly publish the footage. Just like how that one photographer made the choice to publicly publish footage of the Napalm Girl when she was 9 and completely nude. Therefore, it should be ok to share this footage anywhere.
But some areas censored Napalm Girl's nipples, but others did not - excluding her groin. Then there's the diaper boxes I found in any supermarket. And finally... Surprise surprise: typical women being scolded by other people for wearing something "inappropriate" or "showing too much of their body". I look around and since no one else is protesting about this, I might as well do it! After all, someone's gotta step up to the plate to hit that ball! I will not sit idling by the sidelines and continue to watch the female human get treated/censored like this! I will stand up, step up, and speak out towards these absurd reactions, rules, and regulations that revolve around the appearance and censorship of the female body! What about the famous Jeanneke Pis in Belgium? Do you think she along with other nude statues are trying to promote pedophilia?
2024.05.19 12:02 Gasman2019 Going through a breakup, I’m questioning god lately
Why does he keep putting these women in my life who leave me? My first relationship was 3.5 years and she cheated and got pregnant my most recent was 5 years and she ghosted me 3.5 months ago.
I’m just going through so much hurt and loneliness I feel alone. How come god just don’t give me someone who will stay? Is it all my fault? I’ve struggled with alcohol and gambling addiction so I’m sure that plays a part. I just don’t want to die alone with no family
I am 35 male, no kids, no gf, no wife, not much family. I’m lonely just want other Christian’s to chime in on what god says about being alone, breakups, and loneliness
submitted by Gasman2019 to Christianity [link] [comments]
I’m just going through so much hurt and loneliness I feel alone. How come god just don’t give me someone who will stay? Is it all my fault? I’ve struggled with alcohol and gambling addiction so I’m sure that plays a part. I just don’t want to die alone with no family
I am 35 male, no kids, no gf, no wife, not much family. I’m lonely just want other Christian’s to chime in on what god says about being alone, breakups, and loneliness
2024.05.19 07:37 Lost_Wishbone_1580 My body is disgusting now
Before I start, this is obviously not anything I’d say to other moms or hold other moms to.
I’m 10 months pp and I’m at the end of my rope. I gained 64 pounds while pregnant, got a host of nasty side effects from it (aka stretch marks from my belly button to my knees) and then had an incredibly defeating c section.
I went way too hard trying to drop the weight and feel in control of SOMETHING, and actually developed an ED (which I seem to have beaten back). As of now I’m 50 pounds down. I’ve been working out 3-5 days a week (sometimes twice a day), been getting 5-10k steps a day in. I’ve completely reinvented how I eat (Cut out most junk and processed foods), and according to my OB I was able to close my DR.
However. I still CANNOT look at myself without wanting to cry or die or both. I recently had to chop my hair, and learned that “mom bob” is a thing due to hair loss. I had large breasts before baby (36G) and due to breastfeeding they’ve sagged and deflated worse than I could have imagined. I have to lift them to feed the baby. Even though I’ve worked out non stop and have successfully closed the DR, my belly still looks 3-4 months pregnant, and my scar looks like a death metal album cover because all my stretch marks and PUPP rash run through it. I’ve massaged my scar to the ends of the earth and it’s less bumpy but it’s still red and my stomach still bulges over it.
I look like the worst, ugliest stereotype of a mom body. And it absolutely horrifies me. The idea that my body is permanently changed and slam dunked into an undesirable condition is…a lot. I thought I would feel better at this point in the game but I tried on swimsuits (not even very revealing ones) at target and almost broke down. I don’t just look overweight still, I look wrecked. I told my husband I feel like an Amazon box that got kicked and beat up and bashed in but no one cares bc what came in the box is fine. The worst part is that my c section was the worst day of my life- I don’t feel proud or happy about it. So all the damage is extra upsetting, because I’m not one of these women who can say it was all worth it for their baby.
My husband and I are talking about having another baby. I love the idea except I cannot bring myself to have sex in any way shape or form because of how my body looks. He tells me I’m beautiful and it actually makes me angry because to me it’s so false-and the idea that he thinks I’m beautiful like this is actually revolting to me. We’re down to having sex maybe once a month. It’s taking a toll. I’ve pulled away from going thrifting with friends because I can’t find clothes that fit.
I’ve gone just about everything I can think of doing past reactivating the ED (don’t want to), taking Ozempic, or getting surgery. I’m at the end of my rope. What the hell am I supposed to do now?
submitted by Lost_Wishbone_1580 to BabyBumps [link] [comments]
I’m 10 months pp and I’m at the end of my rope. I gained 64 pounds while pregnant, got a host of nasty side effects from it (aka stretch marks from my belly button to my knees) and then had an incredibly defeating c section.
I went way too hard trying to drop the weight and feel in control of SOMETHING, and actually developed an ED (which I seem to have beaten back). As of now I’m 50 pounds down. I’ve been working out 3-5 days a week (sometimes twice a day), been getting 5-10k steps a day in. I’ve completely reinvented how I eat (Cut out most junk and processed foods), and according to my OB I was able to close my DR.
However. I still CANNOT look at myself without wanting to cry or die or both. I recently had to chop my hair, and learned that “mom bob” is a thing due to hair loss. I had large breasts before baby (36G) and due to breastfeeding they’ve sagged and deflated worse than I could have imagined. I have to lift them to feed the baby. Even though I’ve worked out non stop and have successfully closed the DR, my belly still looks 3-4 months pregnant, and my scar looks like a death metal album cover because all my stretch marks and PUPP rash run through it. I’ve massaged my scar to the ends of the earth and it’s less bumpy but it’s still red and my stomach still bulges over it.
I look like the worst, ugliest stereotype of a mom body. And it absolutely horrifies me. The idea that my body is permanently changed and slam dunked into an undesirable condition is…a lot. I thought I would feel better at this point in the game but I tried on swimsuits (not even very revealing ones) at target and almost broke down. I don’t just look overweight still, I look wrecked. I told my husband I feel like an Amazon box that got kicked and beat up and bashed in but no one cares bc what came in the box is fine. The worst part is that my c section was the worst day of my life- I don’t feel proud or happy about it. So all the damage is extra upsetting, because I’m not one of these women who can say it was all worth it for their baby.
My husband and I are talking about having another baby. I love the idea except I cannot bring myself to have sex in any way shape or form because of how my body looks. He tells me I’m beautiful and it actually makes me angry because to me it’s so false-and the idea that he thinks I’m beautiful like this is actually revolting to me. We’re down to having sex maybe once a month. It’s taking a toll. I’ve pulled away from going thrifting with friends because I can’t find clothes that fit.
I’ve gone just about everything I can think of doing past reactivating the ED (don’t want to), taking Ozempic, or getting surgery. I’m at the end of my rope. What the hell am I supposed to do now?
2024.05.19 07:23 nighthaj Circadia study is looking for participants with diagnosed DSPD/ASPD (with monetary compensation)
The Lane Lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (one of Harvard Medical School's hospitals) is conducting a remote study on people already diagnosed with DSPD/ASPD and is currently looking for participants.
Link to the study
According to the study's website, participants can receive "up to" $480 in monetary compensation for engaging in the following activities over a period of approx. 4 - 6 weeks:
I'm not affiliated with the study. I think the exclusion criteria are somewhat questionable and the provided information could be more specific. However, seeing how extremely difficult it can be for people with DSPD or ASPD to earn money, the study could be a good opportunity for some people to earn a couple hundred dollars with relatively minimal effort.
submitted by nighthaj to DSPD [link] [comments]
Link to the study
According to the study's website, participants can receive "up to" $480 in monetary compensation for engaging in the following activities over a period of approx. 4 - 6 weeks:
- wearing an Actiwatch
- logging their sleep
- answering questionnaires
- completing 2 dim light melatonin assays saliva samples
- completing 1 DNA saliva sample
- diagnosed with DSPD or ASPD
- sighted
- aged 23 years or older
- not be a college student
- not currently pregnant and not have given birth in the past year
- not taking medications that inhibit melatonin production
- not have not suffered traumatic brain injury, a stroke, or live with a seizure disorder
- not have gingivitis, xerostomia, or periodontitis
- read and write English at an 8th grade level and above
I'm not affiliated with the study. I think the exclusion criteria are somewhat questionable and the provided information could be more specific. However, seeing how extremely difficult it can be for people with DSPD or ASPD to earn money, the study could be a good opportunity for some people to earn a couple hundred dollars with relatively minimal effort.
2024.05.19 06:48 Live_Elderberry8823 Getting over someone who is not good for you?
I ‘37F’ left my boyfriend ‘41M’ over a year ago. It was needed. He had zero respect for me after have our child and would lash out and blame everything that went wrong on me. I had been with him 14 years and realized everything was getting worse.
Don’t get me wrong. I had some red flags about two years into the relationship. But I was dumb and thought love could be enough.
Years later we went through a bad spot but got replaced what most women see as someone in pursuit of a goal. Then things leveled out and it was ok but not exactly where I wanted to be.
We hit some hard times before I got pregnant. It was an accident, not planned because I was thinking of leaving before then. Even started house hunting. Then found out I was pregnant and decided to try once more.
He literally had zero respect for me at that time and I was not ok continuing that role. No amount of trying to talk would lead to a discussion but more just him giving me the silent treatment. More my health and metal health I had to get away.
Now he is dating, honestly I thought that would be better for me. A push for me to actually move on with my life. But I feel paralyzed. Sure in the end he was absolutely horrible to me. But it is hard to shake 14 years. Harder still for me to see him with another genuinely good woman. Like does he even deserve that.
In the end I am upset and feel oh so played. How did I get so bamboozled. How do I even trust a guy is who they say they are after this. It took so damn long to see the true colors. I need to get over this person but it doesn’t help that I have to work with them for my son.
How do I get over this person. I hate that I have to keep communication up but that’s just facts.
submitted by Live_Elderberry8823 to mentalhealth [link] [comments]
Don’t get me wrong. I had some red flags about two years into the relationship. But I was dumb and thought love could be enough.
Years later we went through a bad spot but got replaced what most women see as someone in pursuit of a goal. Then things leveled out and it was ok but not exactly where I wanted to be.
We hit some hard times before I got pregnant. It was an accident, not planned because I was thinking of leaving before then. Even started house hunting. Then found out I was pregnant and decided to try once more.
He literally had zero respect for me at that time and I was not ok continuing that role. No amount of trying to talk would lead to a discussion but more just him giving me the silent treatment. More my health and metal health I had to get away.
Now he is dating, honestly I thought that would be better for me. A push for me to actually move on with my life. But I feel paralyzed. Sure in the end he was absolutely horrible to me. But it is hard to shake 14 years. Harder still for me to see him with another genuinely good woman. Like does he even deserve that.
In the end I am upset and feel oh so played. How did I get so bamboozled. How do I even trust a guy is who they say they are after this. It took so damn long to see the true colors. I need to get over this person but it doesn’t help that I have to work with them for my son.
How do I get over this person. I hate that I have to keep communication up but that’s just facts.
2024.05.19 06:02 karenvideoeditor The Zoo [Part 8]
First / Previous
Suzanne thought it was absolutely brilliant of me to put books on a flash drive for Sun. She explained that Sun wasn’t as sophant (her word, not mine) as she might seem, more of a repository of information, but she was fairly intelligent. It was how she was able to connect Andrew being in pain to the fact that I was friends with Andrew, and that I would want to know that he was in trouble. Apparently some of Sun’s species had given some ‘wisdom’ to others in the past and it had made its way into mythology.
The key fact was that she was not smart enough to protect herself and her kind from the clever, organized poachers. With that information in mind, it was fascinating for me to think of how Sun took in and organized what she learned. It was almost as if she was a walking, talking library.
On the topic of tours, my first one went wonderfully, and I’m almost hoping Suzanne lets me do more of them. I know not all the tourists are going to be as awesome as these people were, but Suzanne gave me a lot of slack when it comes to dealing with them. She actually said that being a smartass is not grounds for dismissal, and that if I’m sarcastic or facetious to guests who are being ‘daft’ and they complain, she really doesn’t care. Is this the perfect job for me or what?
There were four guests in this party, two adults who were sisters and two children of one of the women, brothers aged thirteen and seventeen. The tour was a birthday gift for the older of the boys from his aunt, since apparently he was passionate about animal protection and conservation.
When they arrived at the front gate, I was sitting at Andrew’s desk, going over the booklet of information one last time. When the visitors pressed the button that sounded the alert buzzer, I tucked away in a drawer and let them in. I did have a cheat sheet with information about the animals on my phone just in case, a brief notation of each of them and which enclosure they were in, but I really didn’t need to use it.
Exiting through the front door, I saw them walk up the path toward me. “Hi, I’m Ripley,” I said, holding out a hand toward the woman closest to me.
She shook it firmly. “I’m Denise. This is my sister Carla and my nephews, Wesley and Jason,” she said, motioning to each of them in turn.
“I heard it’s your birthday,” I said to Wesley, giving him a smile. “You’re interested in animal conservation?”
“Back where we live, yeah,” he said, nodding. “The animals that you’ve got here are incredible. I can’t wait to see them.”
“Well, I can’t wait to show them to you,” I said. “Right this way.”
I led them on the path around the building, toward enclosure one. Despite the horrific memories of the animal killing Stanley’s friends, I knew it was just an animal, and I had to push past my feelings on what had happened. Keeping a small smile on my face, I motioned to the enclosure. “Fiercely territorial and amazing hunters, despite their large size, they’re arboreal and known to dart from tree to tree with barely a sound. This is one of only about two thousand left in existence.”
“Two thousand, three hundred and fifty six at last count,” spoke Wesley, his eyes on the trees.
I blinked, surprised and impressed. “Well that was fantastic. Do you plan on stealing my job when you graduate?”
Wesley looked at me with a grin. “Nah, everyone knows Suzanne only offers humans this gig. And I want to help animals like this one get off the endangered species list. The zoos are great for awareness and fundraising, but then the money has to go somewhere. I want to be doing the real work.”
“That’s really great,” I told him. “I wish you all the best in that career path.” At that, we saw the animal climb down from the tree, wandering a few yards from the tree line. This was because 90% of the time, when humans were at their enclosure and making noise, whether it was speaking to each other or calling out to the animal, it was someone bringing them prey to eat. Or, in my case, enrichment toys to play with.
“Whoa,” Wesley whispered.
“How close can we get?” spoke up Jason.
“The warding starts at the fence,” I told him with a small gesture. “So, just there.”
Both boys wandered closer and I glanced at their parents. It seemed that Suzanne’s zoo had a serious reputation for high quality invisible walls, because they didn’t look worried in the slightest about the boys being hurt or killed.
“They prefer dense forest as their home and have been known to make their nests in trees up to twenty meter in the air,” I continued. “And when hunting, they’ve been seen dropping eight meters straight down. They have incredibly dense yet flexible musculature, which allows them to tackle their prey without injuring themselves.”
There was more information about the animal that I continued to rattle off, though Wesley chimed in at certain points with the info I was about to convey. That was highly entertaining and very cool. When I’d been in school, I’d never met anyone who had my level of passion about endangered animals. I wondered if things were better where these folks came from, but realized that considering there were so few of these animals left, I guessed not.
The animal paced a little bit, seemingly waiting to see if we were the kind of humans that came bearing food, before deciding we weren’t and climbing back up into the trees as easily as I would climb some stairs.
As we moved onto enclosure two, Jason spoke up. “Are there any animals here we can touch or feed or something?”
I sighed inwardly before slowing to a stop. “Well, can you show me your hands?” Jason looked bemused, holding out his hands. “I mean…they both look like they’re in great shape. You can stand to lose one.”
The two women chuckled and Wesley smirked as Jason shoved his hands into his pockets. “Very funny.”
Grinning, I started walking again. “The animals here are all carnivores and all predators. You get to see them, but that’s it.”
“Alright.”
When we reached enclosure two, I started on my next spiel. “We’ve got three reanimated dead in this enclosure,” I spoke. They were just coming out from the trees as we arrived, presumably having heard our approach. “Marissa, Connor, and Bradley. They were donated by families who knew where they would be exhibited. Their next of kin, whoever they are, can’t stand the idea of putting them down. But we need to make sure they don’t have access to corpses, because one of them plus one corpse equals two of them.”
“They eat flesh though, don’t they?” Wesley asked.
I nodded. “Oh, yeah, but it’s from bodies that have already been dismembered. There’s no chance of them being affected by the transformation because it’s all parts.”
“Oh, got it.”
The creatures with blueish-white skin had superhuman strength, which is why they qualified for the security of Suzanne’s zoo. They also were likely the source of any Earth tales of people being brought back to life as zombies, specifically draugr, according to my research. They smelled like rotting flesh, so even as I kept talking about them and giving a background to the people they used to be, we were quick to move on once Wesley had gotten a good, long look at them.
“Enclosure four’s animal is a vampiric spirit. He’s a small, hairy humanoid creature with pointed ears. He wears a hat, and if he somehow loses it, he freaks out,” I said.
“They eat horses,” Wesley noted. “Also anything that gives them the chance to sit on it, usually catching them by surprise while they’re sleeping.”
The creature came out from the brush, giving us a suspicious look. He wasn’t in his humanoid form though; for some reason, he’d chosen to shapeshift to a dog.
I nodded. “Yep, indeed. Once the prey is dead, then he’ll eat it, and he has a voracious appetite. We have two wolves and two bears in the forest, which is one of the reasons I’ve got some self-defense items,” I said, patting my belt where my pepper spray (rated for bear) and my taser. “But the wards keep them out of this area of the zoo, so it’s really not much of a worry. It’s also a known shapeshifter, preferring the form of a dog, as you can see, as well as a cat, a snake, or even white butterflies, though the last one is rare.”
“The white butterflies are supposed to be a sign of good luck,” Wesley said, glancing to me. “Too bad we got the dog.”
“Yeah, otherwise you might be able to talk your mom into getting scratch-offs on your way home, huh?”
Wesley smirked at me.
The next enclosure was Spike, and he was waiting for us, dripping wet from having just emerged from the lake. I gave the introductory information about him, which included his propensity for eating animal eyes, nails, and teeth. “Recently, I’ve given him some enrichment activities, and I learned he likes artichokes, pecans, and hazelnuts,” I said, taking a bag out from my cargo shorts. “Wesley, do you want to toss this bag into the enclosure?”
The boy’s eyes widened and he nodded excitedly. He took a look into the paper bag before wrapping down the top to make sure nothing would fly out. Then he chucked it underhand past the fence. It landed a few yards from Spike, who waddled over to it quickly and tearing the bag open, spilling out the prizes inside. As the animal ate the pecans and hazelnuts, Wesley asked, “How’d you figure out he likes those?”
“It’s not all about taste,” I told him. “It’s mainly the difficulty of getting them out of the shells. He’s used to having to work for the parts of his prey he likes the most, so this mimics that activity, and he enjoys the process. I tried a bunch of different foods to find a few he liked.”
“Cool,” Wesley murmured, staring at him.
We watched Spike eat until he’d finished and then he went back into the woods, leaving us to move onto enclosure five. Japanese camellia were plentiful here, a type of pink flower, and that was because they grew anywhere near one of his species made their den. “This girl spends most of her time in the lake also,” I said, as the creature made its way toward the fence separating us from it. “But as you can see, she’s just as curious as the rest about what we’re doing here and whether we have food for her. She eats fish mostly, but she also regularly gets live prey.”
This creature was a spider-like monster, having six legs with long claws on each, and the head of an ox with two sharp horns. She was capable of shapeshifting to look like a human, but I guessed that she wasn’t fond of it, since I hadn’t yet seen her in that form.
“She prefers the easy way of catching prey, so to speak, by hiding in the lake and pouncing when something comes for a drink of water,” I explained. “Apparently humans are some of her favorite prey. She has an advantage of being able to spit poison, which often hits her prey in the eyes. But it’s usually used in defense rather than offense, since she secretes a limited amount.”
“What kind of animal would even go after something like this?” Jason asked, staring at her.
“Never discount one of its own species when you’re thinking about what might attack an animal,” I replied. “There are places that are breeding all of the animals here, but competition for mates is common. That means an advantage in a fight, like poison or venom, can make or break who the winner is.”
“Ah, gotcha.”
“It can’t spit past the warding, right?” Carla suddenly asked.
“Oh, no,” I assured her. “We’re fine. The wards wouldn’t let anything cross over.” She nodded, appeased.
The animal in enclosure six was the ginormous seal-hippo, Fiona, and she was looking at us as if she was imagining sprinkling us with herbs and spices and stuffing us in an oven. “This girl is one animal I’m going to work on enrichment activities for next,” I told them. “She prefers to feed on crayfish, though she’s happy to eat any humans that wander into her territory. She’ll even make a sound like a baby crying to reel us in. I’ve heard it a bunch of times.”
“Can you get her to make the sound?” Jason asked, perking up.
I grinned. “Not on command, sorry.”
“What enrichment are you thinking of trying?” Wesley asked.
“Possibly food placed in puzzle feeders,” I told him, “since she has claws that are pretty dexterous. Maybe a piñata made out of newspaper with flour inside, or a scarecrow that mimics a human.”
“Awesome,” he muttered.
After a little more educational tidbits, we moved onto Yui’s enclosure. “What is that?” Wesley asked, smiling.
“I got Yui the closest thing I could to a ping-pong ball,” I replied. “She quite likes it.”
“That’s so funny,” he said as she came out of the trees in her spider form. “I mean, the idea of her being a bloodthirsty hunter who seduces men to their deaths and eats them alive, but then on the other hand, she likes playing with something like this.”
“It is a little funny,” I agreed. “But when it comes down to it, all the animals here enjoy activities besides hunting.”
“She can shapeshift to look human, right?” asked Jason, trying to be casual about knowing something factual like his nerdy brother.
I nodded. “She looks like a woman from a region of Earth called Japan. And she’ll use strategies like holding out a hand to shake to get you closer. She tried that on me when I first got here but, as you can see,” I said, holding up my hands and waving them, “I didn’t fall for it.”
The boys both laughed as they got closer to the fence, watching her slowly pace near the trees.
Next was Sun, but she didn’t make an appearance as I spoke about her species. “Well…unfortunately we can’t guarantee that every animal comes out to say hi,” I sighed. “But…oh wait, here she is.”
The green lion with several horns and many eyes along her flank came out from the forest. “Hello,” she spoke.
“Hi, Sun,” I replied. “We have visitors.”
“What’s that?” Wesley asked suddenly, pointing at the small plastic bag that was still where I’d left it.
“Oh! That is Sun’s enrichment,” I said with a smile. “I put dozens of books on a flash drive and found that she can read them just like she’d read a shelf of books.”
Wesley’s eyes widened. “Wow. I don’t think I’ve read about anyone trying that before. That’s really cool.”
“The books are new and interesting,” Sun spoke, drawing our attention. “I’m grateful for them.”
I nodded to her. “You’re quite welcome.”
The next animal, unfortunately, wasn’t there, and we waited around for ten minutes as we discussed him. He was large and reptile-like with red eyes, with its hind legs and tail making him look vaguely like a kangaroo. Then, enclosure ten was a terrifyingly disturbing creature, the not-a-centaur with no skin, that I’d only seen a few times while walking my route. It gave a good demonstration of its ferocity, showing its sharp teeth and snapping at us a few times.
“I’m thinking of trying salt licks and other horse enrichment like a big bouncy ball,” I told Wesley, whose eyebrows went up at that. “Maybe give him more things to forage like scattered grains or a box filled with pinecones and seeds. Foraging is a huge part of a horse’s life in the wild, and humans have to do a lot of activities like that to keep pet horses busy. Of course, he also loves the little salt-water lake that was built for him.”
We spent some time looking at the animal before moving past our last stop, the empty enclosure of the animal was stolen. Carla glanced at me with a sad smile, knowing what had happened, it seemed. I gave her a nod as we continued on our way, walking into the office. “So, I hope everyone enjoyed themselves!” I said with a smile.
“That was the coolest birthday present I’ve ever gotten,” Wesley said, looking to Denise. “Thanks so much, seriously.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said with a nod. “I’d never been here before, and knew I’d find it fascinating. Thank you for the educational aspect,” Denise said, glancing at me. “I learned quite a lot.”
“Happy to hear it,” I said, returning the nod.
As I escorted the guests out of the zoo and locked the door behind them, I reflected on how much I’d changed. The first time I’d seen Yui’s tarantula form, I’d nearly passed out from fear. Now here I was, walking tourists around like it was no big deal. Humans really can adapt to anything, it seems.
That afternoon, Suzanne had texted me that she was coming by after my shift, and I met her in Andrew’s office, shutting the door to the security room behind me. “How’s Andrew?” I asked first thing.
“He’s doing well,” she said with a wide smile. “Back on non-hospital food. He’s allowed to order food on his phone, and to hear it from him, that’s the best news he’d received in a long time.”
I chuckled. “I guess some clichés are true for a reason.”
“Indeed.” She took a breath. “All right. Ripley…I would like to discuss something with you.”
My face went slack at the serious tone in her voice. “I’m not… Am I being fired?”
“What? No!” she exclaimed. Then she chuckled softly. “No, it’s nothing like that. Just, here, let’s have a seat.” Suzanne walked over to the couch and sat at one end, and I took the other. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve kept from you, that I wanted to keep from you until you found your sea legs here.”
“Well…I have,” I said with a nod. “So, what is it?”
Suzanne took a breath. “I knew your mother.”
The words hung in the air for a moment before making their way to my ears. It was a perfectly logical sentence, and yet it didn’t make any sense. “What?” I finally managed.
“When you graduated college, I decided to move the zoo from Italy to within driving distance of your home,” she said softly. “Near enough to your town that you’d see the advert. We ignored any other applicants and I hoped you’d apply. Actually, I expected you’d apply. Not just for the money, but considering the field you wanted to go into. As soon as I’d found out your major, I knew.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, holding up a hand. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “How do you know Patricia?”
“She owned the zoo before I did,” Susan explained. “Fourteen years ago…she was working to track an injured animal that we could bring into the zoo and she was killed by poachers.”
My heart calcified in my chest and a lump lodged in my throat. As my breaths became shaky, I stared at her in shock. “She…she’s really dead?”
“You suspected?” she asked softly.
“It…” I swallowed hard. “We had her declared legally dead after…I don’t know, seven years I think. My dad wanted to go after her for child support, but the police said…they said they couldn’t find…” Tears came to my eyes and I blinked them back before I met Suzanne’s gaze. “She owned the zoo?”
Suzanne nodded. “It was her baby, you’d say. When Patricia passed, I inherited it, which we’d discussed beforehand, a legal just-in-case that I never expected her to need. I’m under the impression that you were told she went to Africa for her photography career, but she was in fact going to remote areas back in my home world almost every time.”
“But I-I saw the photos,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “You’re telling me she put on a show of getting pictures that someone else took for us to see every time she visited? Did my dad even know?”
“I suppose that’s an accurate way to put it, putting on a show. And no, your father was never told. It’s not the way of things to tell humans unless it’s necessary. I won’t bore you with the details, but us and humans, we’re distant relatives, so we can still have children. But it wasn’t planned. Your mother fell in love with your father despite herself; she hadn’t meant to find love. Then she became pregnant with you and…well, the rest is history.”
“I think she had a different definition of love than the one I have,” I said tightly. “You’d think she’d have put her survival as more of a priority. Put being with the man she ‘loved’ as a priority. Her kids needed her. I needed her. She signed up when she became a mom. She could’ve screwed up all the time but she couldn’t even manage that one job: be there. When I was in the hospital, I kept thinking, ‘Where is she?’ and now you’re telling me that she put these animals above being there for her kids, and this whole time she’s been dead.”
“The hospital?” she asked, furrowing her brows.
“Never mind,” I said tersely, averting my gaze.
Suzanne hesitated before she nodded slowly. “I’m sorry for your loss, and not just for her death, Ripley,” she told me. “Patricia was…well, a ‘free spirit’ would be putting it gently. She always assumed the world would be there for her whenever she needed it.”
Staring at her for a long moment, I shook my head. “Why? Why come here and hire me?”
“I thought that would be obvious,” she said, smiling. “Your mother was so passionate about this place and once I found out your college major, I figured you would be as well.”
“Did you know that I hate her?” At that, Suzanne’s expression froze on the edge of shock. “She…she left us,” I whispered. “Didn’t tell us who she was or what she really did for a living and gave us no closure. And even when she was here, it was just visiting. Her real home was her work. She could give me all the presents she wanted, but even when she was here, half the time she was still on her computer doing work. It’s not like that stereotype of never making it to my tennis practice or something; it’s that it always felt like she was only partially here, even when I was sitting next to her. I don’t even know if I appreciate her turning me into a wildlife fanatic because it…it…makes me feel like I’m close to her in a way that’s just infuriating. She loved the animals more than she loved us.”
“Oh, Ripley-”
“Don’t,” I said, shoving myself to my feet. “Don’t try to convince me otherwise.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said quietly. I pursed my lips. “I was going to say that I’m sorry that was the case. Your mother was…flawed, just like any other person. She had two loves in this world: her family and her work. And often, her work overcame her, her zeal for environmentalism getting in the way of being a good mum. She left your father trying to fill the role of two parents, holding your family together. You and your brother and your father, you all deserved better than that.”
My lower lip quivered but I bit down on it hard. It would’ve been a lot easier for me if she’d been speaking from a place of clueless reassurance about all this. But everything she said was making sense and that meant I didn’t have someone in front of me to be angry with.
“Why didn’t you tell me when Andrew hired me?” I sighed, sitting back down on the couch.
“Well, like I said, I wanted you to find your sea legs,” she said with a small smile. “I didn’t want the truth affecting whether or not you wanted to work here, whether you wanted to stay here after finding out about what the animals are. It would’ve complicated things, the emotions you’ll have to work through now that you know the truth. Whether or not you decide to give another tour, you also know what they’re like. That’s the benchmark I wanted you to reach before you found out about who you are.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Who I-” My face went slack. “Wait.”
Suzanne nodded slowly. “You’re only half human. Your brother too.”
The room seemed to tilt on an axis for a moment. “That means I’m also half…what?”
“We call ourselves Eldritch, these days,” she replied.
My eyes bugged out. “What?” I exclaimed. “So you’re all, like, gods or something?”
Suzanne burst out laughing. “Oh no, goodness, no,” she chuckled. “It’s just a word. We live in a very different world from this one, and a few generations ago we discovered the word and it made its way into our lexicon. But it does mean you can see all the animals. Indeed you did, on the tour you gave.”
“Wait, no, I had the glasses that…” I stopped. “Did those glasses do anything?”
She gave a sly smile and shook her head. “Not a thing. You made incredibly quick progress, and then when it came time for the tour, all you needed was to expect to see the animals, and you did.”
Genetics. That’s what Andrew had said during our interview, that part of how many animals you could see was determined by genetics. I guess having a mother who was originally from the other dimension gave me all the genes I needed to see everything here. “Could I…visit your world?” I asked tentatively. “You said that my mom took photos of the animals there. Could I…” My voice trailed off, not even sure if or how I wanted to finish that sentence.
“Those who are half human, especially those who are raised on Earth, don’t come visit,” she said gently. “I could show you some photos of other animals, and I could loan you as many books as you’d like, but it’s simply not a place where you’d be safe.”
“Oh,” I said, leaning into the couch cushion as I pictured the animals in the zoo. “Yeah, actually that…makes sense.” I paused. “So, what now?”
“It’s up to you,” she said. “I wanted to wait until I was sure you were comfortable with your position here, and then put the ball in your court. And so it is. What do you want to do now?”
What did I want to do? It wasn’t that difficult a question, just a deep, serious one.
I wanted to thrive, as the animals did. This is my enrichment now, working at an incredible, wonderful, terrifying zoo. The experience so far hasn’t been perfect, and I know there are risks, but life isn’t about staying safe. It’s about learning new things and making a difference in the world. And, if you’re lucky, having a job that’s something really special.
THE END
First / Previous
***
Patreon
My Website
storiesbykaren
submitted by karenvideoeditor to HFY [link] [comments]
Suzanne thought it was absolutely brilliant of me to put books on a flash drive for Sun. She explained that Sun wasn’t as sophant (her word, not mine) as she might seem, more of a repository of information, but she was fairly intelligent. It was how she was able to connect Andrew being in pain to the fact that I was friends with Andrew, and that I would want to know that he was in trouble. Apparently some of Sun’s species had given some ‘wisdom’ to others in the past and it had made its way into mythology.
The key fact was that she was not smart enough to protect herself and her kind from the clever, organized poachers. With that information in mind, it was fascinating for me to think of how Sun took in and organized what she learned. It was almost as if she was a walking, talking library.
On the topic of tours, my first one went wonderfully, and I’m almost hoping Suzanne lets me do more of them. I know not all the tourists are going to be as awesome as these people were, but Suzanne gave me a lot of slack when it comes to dealing with them. She actually said that being a smartass is not grounds for dismissal, and that if I’m sarcastic or facetious to guests who are being ‘daft’ and they complain, she really doesn’t care. Is this the perfect job for me or what?
There were four guests in this party, two adults who were sisters and two children of one of the women, brothers aged thirteen and seventeen. The tour was a birthday gift for the older of the boys from his aunt, since apparently he was passionate about animal protection and conservation.
When they arrived at the front gate, I was sitting at Andrew’s desk, going over the booklet of information one last time. When the visitors pressed the button that sounded the alert buzzer, I tucked away in a drawer and let them in. I did have a cheat sheet with information about the animals on my phone just in case, a brief notation of each of them and which enclosure they were in, but I really didn’t need to use it.
Exiting through the front door, I saw them walk up the path toward me. “Hi, I’m Ripley,” I said, holding out a hand toward the woman closest to me.
She shook it firmly. “I’m Denise. This is my sister Carla and my nephews, Wesley and Jason,” she said, motioning to each of them in turn.
“I heard it’s your birthday,” I said to Wesley, giving him a smile. “You’re interested in animal conservation?”
“Back where we live, yeah,” he said, nodding. “The animals that you’ve got here are incredible. I can’t wait to see them.”
“Well, I can’t wait to show them to you,” I said. “Right this way.”
I led them on the path around the building, toward enclosure one. Despite the horrific memories of the animal killing Stanley’s friends, I knew it was just an animal, and I had to push past my feelings on what had happened. Keeping a small smile on my face, I motioned to the enclosure. “Fiercely territorial and amazing hunters, despite their large size, they’re arboreal and known to dart from tree to tree with barely a sound. This is one of only about two thousand left in existence.”
“Two thousand, three hundred and fifty six at last count,” spoke Wesley, his eyes on the trees.
I blinked, surprised and impressed. “Well that was fantastic. Do you plan on stealing my job when you graduate?”
Wesley looked at me with a grin. “Nah, everyone knows Suzanne only offers humans this gig. And I want to help animals like this one get off the endangered species list. The zoos are great for awareness and fundraising, but then the money has to go somewhere. I want to be doing the real work.”
“That’s really great,” I told him. “I wish you all the best in that career path.” At that, we saw the animal climb down from the tree, wandering a few yards from the tree line. This was because 90% of the time, when humans were at their enclosure and making noise, whether it was speaking to each other or calling out to the animal, it was someone bringing them prey to eat. Or, in my case, enrichment toys to play with.
“Whoa,” Wesley whispered.
“How close can we get?” spoke up Jason.
“The warding starts at the fence,” I told him with a small gesture. “So, just there.”
Both boys wandered closer and I glanced at their parents. It seemed that Suzanne’s zoo had a serious reputation for high quality invisible walls, because they didn’t look worried in the slightest about the boys being hurt or killed.
“They prefer dense forest as their home and have been known to make their nests in trees up to twenty meter in the air,” I continued. “And when hunting, they’ve been seen dropping eight meters straight down. They have incredibly dense yet flexible musculature, which allows them to tackle their prey without injuring themselves.”
There was more information about the animal that I continued to rattle off, though Wesley chimed in at certain points with the info I was about to convey. That was highly entertaining and very cool. When I’d been in school, I’d never met anyone who had my level of passion about endangered animals. I wondered if things were better where these folks came from, but realized that considering there were so few of these animals left, I guessed not.
The animal paced a little bit, seemingly waiting to see if we were the kind of humans that came bearing food, before deciding we weren’t and climbing back up into the trees as easily as I would climb some stairs.
As we moved onto enclosure two, Jason spoke up. “Are there any animals here we can touch or feed or something?”
I sighed inwardly before slowing to a stop. “Well, can you show me your hands?” Jason looked bemused, holding out his hands. “I mean…they both look like they’re in great shape. You can stand to lose one.”
The two women chuckled and Wesley smirked as Jason shoved his hands into his pockets. “Very funny.”
Grinning, I started walking again. “The animals here are all carnivores and all predators. You get to see them, but that’s it.”
“Alright.”
When we reached enclosure two, I started on my next spiel. “We’ve got three reanimated dead in this enclosure,” I spoke. They were just coming out from the trees as we arrived, presumably having heard our approach. “Marissa, Connor, and Bradley. They were donated by families who knew where they would be exhibited. Their next of kin, whoever they are, can’t stand the idea of putting them down. But we need to make sure they don’t have access to corpses, because one of them plus one corpse equals two of them.”
“They eat flesh though, don’t they?” Wesley asked.
I nodded. “Oh, yeah, but it’s from bodies that have already been dismembered. There’s no chance of them being affected by the transformation because it’s all parts.”
“Oh, got it.”
The creatures with blueish-white skin had superhuman strength, which is why they qualified for the security of Suzanne’s zoo. They also were likely the source of any Earth tales of people being brought back to life as zombies, specifically draugr, according to my research. They smelled like rotting flesh, so even as I kept talking about them and giving a background to the people they used to be, we were quick to move on once Wesley had gotten a good, long look at them.
“Enclosure four’s animal is a vampiric spirit. He’s a small, hairy humanoid creature with pointed ears. He wears a hat, and if he somehow loses it, he freaks out,” I said.
“They eat horses,” Wesley noted. “Also anything that gives them the chance to sit on it, usually catching them by surprise while they’re sleeping.”
The creature came out from the brush, giving us a suspicious look. He wasn’t in his humanoid form though; for some reason, he’d chosen to shapeshift to a dog.
I nodded. “Yep, indeed. Once the prey is dead, then he’ll eat it, and he has a voracious appetite. We have two wolves and two bears in the forest, which is one of the reasons I’ve got some self-defense items,” I said, patting my belt where my pepper spray (rated for bear) and my taser. “But the wards keep them out of this area of the zoo, so it’s really not much of a worry. It’s also a known shapeshifter, preferring the form of a dog, as you can see, as well as a cat, a snake, or even white butterflies, though the last one is rare.”
“The white butterflies are supposed to be a sign of good luck,” Wesley said, glancing to me. “Too bad we got the dog.”
“Yeah, otherwise you might be able to talk your mom into getting scratch-offs on your way home, huh?”
Wesley smirked at me.
The next enclosure was Spike, and he was waiting for us, dripping wet from having just emerged from the lake. I gave the introductory information about him, which included his propensity for eating animal eyes, nails, and teeth. “Recently, I’ve given him some enrichment activities, and I learned he likes artichokes, pecans, and hazelnuts,” I said, taking a bag out from my cargo shorts. “Wesley, do you want to toss this bag into the enclosure?”
The boy’s eyes widened and he nodded excitedly. He took a look into the paper bag before wrapping down the top to make sure nothing would fly out. Then he chucked it underhand past the fence. It landed a few yards from Spike, who waddled over to it quickly and tearing the bag open, spilling out the prizes inside. As the animal ate the pecans and hazelnuts, Wesley asked, “How’d you figure out he likes those?”
“It’s not all about taste,” I told him. “It’s mainly the difficulty of getting them out of the shells. He’s used to having to work for the parts of his prey he likes the most, so this mimics that activity, and he enjoys the process. I tried a bunch of different foods to find a few he liked.”
“Cool,” Wesley murmured, staring at him.
We watched Spike eat until he’d finished and then he went back into the woods, leaving us to move onto enclosure five. Japanese camellia were plentiful here, a type of pink flower, and that was because they grew anywhere near one of his species made their den. “This girl spends most of her time in the lake also,” I said, as the creature made its way toward the fence separating us from it. “But as you can see, she’s just as curious as the rest about what we’re doing here and whether we have food for her. She eats fish mostly, but she also regularly gets live prey.”
This creature was a spider-like monster, having six legs with long claws on each, and the head of an ox with two sharp horns. She was capable of shapeshifting to look like a human, but I guessed that she wasn’t fond of it, since I hadn’t yet seen her in that form.
“She prefers the easy way of catching prey, so to speak, by hiding in the lake and pouncing when something comes for a drink of water,” I explained. “Apparently humans are some of her favorite prey. She has an advantage of being able to spit poison, which often hits her prey in the eyes. But it’s usually used in defense rather than offense, since she secretes a limited amount.”
“What kind of animal would even go after something like this?” Jason asked, staring at her.
“Never discount one of its own species when you’re thinking about what might attack an animal,” I replied. “There are places that are breeding all of the animals here, but competition for mates is common. That means an advantage in a fight, like poison or venom, can make or break who the winner is.”
“Ah, gotcha.”
“It can’t spit past the warding, right?” Carla suddenly asked.
“Oh, no,” I assured her. “We’re fine. The wards wouldn’t let anything cross over.” She nodded, appeased.
The animal in enclosure six was the ginormous seal-hippo, Fiona, and she was looking at us as if she was imagining sprinkling us with herbs and spices and stuffing us in an oven. “This girl is one animal I’m going to work on enrichment activities for next,” I told them. “She prefers to feed on crayfish, though she’s happy to eat any humans that wander into her territory. She’ll even make a sound like a baby crying to reel us in. I’ve heard it a bunch of times.”
“Can you get her to make the sound?” Jason asked, perking up.
I grinned. “Not on command, sorry.”
“What enrichment are you thinking of trying?” Wesley asked.
“Possibly food placed in puzzle feeders,” I told him, “since she has claws that are pretty dexterous. Maybe a piñata made out of newspaper with flour inside, or a scarecrow that mimics a human.”
“Awesome,” he muttered.
After a little more educational tidbits, we moved onto Yui’s enclosure. “What is that?” Wesley asked, smiling.
“I got Yui the closest thing I could to a ping-pong ball,” I replied. “She quite likes it.”
“That’s so funny,” he said as she came out of the trees in her spider form. “I mean, the idea of her being a bloodthirsty hunter who seduces men to their deaths and eats them alive, but then on the other hand, she likes playing with something like this.”
“It is a little funny,” I agreed. “But when it comes down to it, all the animals here enjoy activities besides hunting.”
“She can shapeshift to look human, right?” asked Jason, trying to be casual about knowing something factual like his nerdy brother.
I nodded. “She looks like a woman from a region of Earth called Japan. And she’ll use strategies like holding out a hand to shake to get you closer. She tried that on me when I first got here but, as you can see,” I said, holding up my hands and waving them, “I didn’t fall for it.”
The boys both laughed as they got closer to the fence, watching her slowly pace near the trees.
Next was Sun, but she didn’t make an appearance as I spoke about her species. “Well…unfortunately we can’t guarantee that every animal comes out to say hi,” I sighed. “But…oh wait, here she is.”
The green lion with several horns and many eyes along her flank came out from the forest. “Hello,” she spoke.
“Hi, Sun,” I replied. “We have visitors.”
“What’s that?” Wesley asked suddenly, pointing at the small plastic bag that was still where I’d left it.
“Oh! That is Sun’s enrichment,” I said with a smile. “I put dozens of books on a flash drive and found that she can read them just like she’d read a shelf of books.”
Wesley’s eyes widened. “Wow. I don’t think I’ve read about anyone trying that before. That’s really cool.”
“The books are new and interesting,” Sun spoke, drawing our attention. “I’m grateful for them.”
I nodded to her. “You’re quite welcome.”
The next animal, unfortunately, wasn’t there, and we waited around for ten minutes as we discussed him. He was large and reptile-like with red eyes, with its hind legs and tail making him look vaguely like a kangaroo. Then, enclosure ten was a terrifyingly disturbing creature, the not-a-centaur with no skin, that I’d only seen a few times while walking my route. It gave a good demonstration of its ferocity, showing its sharp teeth and snapping at us a few times.
“I’m thinking of trying salt licks and other horse enrichment like a big bouncy ball,” I told Wesley, whose eyebrows went up at that. “Maybe give him more things to forage like scattered grains or a box filled with pinecones and seeds. Foraging is a huge part of a horse’s life in the wild, and humans have to do a lot of activities like that to keep pet horses busy. Of course, he also loves the little salt-water lake that was built for him.”
We spent some time looking at the animal before moving past our last stop, the empty enclosure of the animal was stolen. Carla glanced at me with a sad smile, knowing what had happened, it seemed. I gave her a nod as we continued on our way, walking into the office. “So, I hope everyone enjoyed themselves!” I said with a smile.
“That was the coolest birthday present I’ve ever gotten,” Wesley said, looking to Denise. “Thanks so much, seriously.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said with a nod. “I’d never been here before, and knew I’d find it fascinating. Thank you for the educational aspect,” Denise said, glancing at me. “I learned quite a lot.”
“Happy to hear it,” I said, returning the nod.
As I escorted the guests out of the zoo and locked the door behind them, I reflected on how much I’d changed. The first time I’d seen Yui’s tarantula form, I’d nearly passed out from fear. Now here I was, walking tourists around like it was no big deal. Humans really can adapt to anything, it seems.
That afternoon, Suzanne had texted me that she was coming by after my shift, and I met her in Andrew’s office, shutting the door to the security room behind me. “How’s Andrew?” I asked first thing.
“He’s doing well,” she said with a wide smile. “Back on non-hospital food. He’s allowed to order food on his phone, and to hear it from him, that’s the best news he’d received in a long time.”
I chuckled. “I guess some clichés are true for a reason.”
“Indeed.” She took a breath. “All right. Ripley…I would like to discuss something with you.”
My face went slack at the serious tone in her voice. “I’m not… Am I being fired?”
“What? No!” she exclaimed. Then she chuckled softly. “No, it’s nothing like that. Just, here, let’s have a seat.” Suzanne walked over to the couch and sat at one end, and I took the other. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve kept from you, that I wanted to keep from you until you found your sea legs here.”
“Well…I have,” I said with a nod. “So, what is it?”
Suzanne took a breath. “I knew your mother.”
The words hung in the air for a moment before making their way to my ears. It was a perfectly logical sentence, and yet it didn’t make any sense. “What?” I finally managed.
“When you graduated college, I decided to move the zoo from Italy to within driving distance of your home,” she said softly. “Near enough to your town that you’d see the advert. We ignored any other applicants and I hoped you’d apply. Actually, I expected you’d apply. Not just for the money, but considering the field you wanted to go into. As soon as I’d found out your major, I knew.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, holding up a hand. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “How do you know Patricia?”
“She owned the zoo before I did,” Susan explained. “Fourteen years ago…she was working to track an injured animal that we could bring into the zoo and she was killed by poachers.”
My heart calcified in my chest and a lump lodged in my throat. As my breaths became shaky, I stared at her in shock. “She…she’s really dead?”
“You suspected?” she asked softly.
“It…” I swallowed hard. “We had her declared legally dead after…I don’t know, seven years I think. My dad wanted to go after her for child support, but the police said…they said they couldn’t find…” Tears came to my eyes and I blinked them back before I met Suzanne’s gaze. “She owned the zoo?”
Suzanne nodded. “It was her baby, you’d say. When Patricia passed, I inherited it, which we’d discussed beforehand, a legal just-in-case that I never expected her to need. I’m under the impression that you were told she went to Africa for her photography career, but she was in fact going to remote areas back in my home world almost every time.”
“But I-I saw the photos,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “You’re telling me she put on a show of getting pictures that someone else took for us to see every time she visited? Did my dad even know?”
“I suppose that’s an accurate way to put it, putting on a show. And no, your father was never told. It’s not the way of things to tell humans unless it’s necessary. I won’t bore you with the details, but us and humans, we’re distant relatives, so we can still have children. But it wasn’t planned. Your mother fell in love with your father despite herself; she hadn’t meant to find love. Then she became pregnant with you and…well, the rest is history.”
“I think she had a different definition of love than the one I have,” I said tightly. “You’d think she’d have put her survival as more of a priority. Put being with the man she ‘loved’ as a priority. Her kids needed her. I needed her. She signed up when she became a mom. She could’ve screwed up all the time but she couldn’t even manage that one job: be there. When I was in the hospital, I kept thinking, ‘Where is she?’ and now you’re telling me that she put these animals above being there for her kids, and this whole time she’s been dead.”
“The hospital?” she asked, furrowing her brows.
“Never mind,” I said tersely, averting my gaze.
Suzanne hesitated before she nodded slowly. “I’m sorry for your loss, and not just for her death, Ripley,” she told me. “Patricia was…well, a ‘free spirit’ would be putting it gently. She always assumed the world would be there for her whenever she needed it.”
Staring at her for a long moment, I shook my head. “Why? Why come here and hire me?”
“I thought that would be obvious,” she said, smiling. “Your mother was so passionate about this place and once I found out your college major, I figured you would be as well.”
“Did you know that I hate her?” At that, Suzanne’s expression froze on the edge of shock. “She…she left us,” I whispered. “Didn’t tell us who she was or what she really did for a living and gave us no closure. And even when she was here, it was just visiting. Her real home was her work. She could give me all the presents she wanted, but even when she was here, half the time she was still on her computer doing work. It’s not like that stereotype of never making it to my tennis practice or something; it’s that it always felt like she was only partially here, even when I was sitting next to her. I don’t even know if I appreciate her turning me into a wildlife fanatic because it…it…makes me feel like I’m close to her in a way that’s just infuriating. She loved the animals more than she loved us.”
“Oh, Ripley-”
“Don’t,” I said, shoving myself to my feet. “Don’t try to convince me otherwise.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said quietly. I pursed my lips. “I was going to say that I’m sorry that was the case. Your mother was…flawed, just like any other person. She had two loves in this world: her family and her work. And often, her work overcame her, her zeal for environmentalism getting in the way of being a good mum. She left your father trying to fill the role of two parents, holding your family together. You and your brother and your father, you all deserved better than that.”
My lower lip quivered but I bit down on it hard. It would’ve been a lot easier for me if she’d been speaking from a place of clueless reassurance about all this. But everything she said was making sense and that meant I didn’t have someone in front of me to be angry with.
“Why didn’t you tell me when Andrew hired me?” I sighed, sitting back down on the couch.
“Well, like I said, I wanted you to find your sea legs,” she said with a small smile. “I didn’t want the truth affecting whether or not you wanted to work here, whether you wanted to stay here after finding out about what the animals are. It would’ve complicated things, the emotions you’ll have to work through now that you know the truth. Whether or not you decide to give another tour, you also know what they’re like. That’s the benchmark I wanted you to reach before you found out about who you are.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Who I-” My face went slack. “Wait.”
Suzanne nodded slowly. “You’re only half human. Your brother too.”
The room seemed to tilt on an axis for a moment. “That means I’m also half…what?”
“We call ourselves Eldritch, these days,” she replied.
My eyes bugged out. “What?” I exclaimed. “So you’re all, like, gods or something?”
Suzanne burst out laughing. “Oh no, goodness, no,” she chuckled. “It’s just a word. We live in a very different world from this one, and a few generations ago we discovered the word and it made its way into our lexicon. But it does mean you can see all the animals. Indeed you did, on the tour you gave.”
“Wait, no, I had the glasses that…” I stopped. “Did those glasses do anything?”
She gave a sly smile and shook her head. “Not a thing. You made incredibly quick progress, and then when it came time for the tour, all you needed was to expect to see the animals, and you did.”
Genetics. That’s what Andrew had said during our interview, that part of how many animals you could see was determined by genetics. I guess having a mother who was originally from the other dimension gave me all the genes I needed to see everything here. “Could I…visit your world?” I asked tentatively. “You said that my mom took photos of the animals there. Could I…” My voice trailed off, not even sure if or how I wanted to finish that sentence.
“Those who are half human, especially those who are raised on Earth, don’t come visit,” she said gently. “I could show you some photos of other animals, and I could loan you as many books as you’d like, but it’s simply not a place where you’d be safe.”
“Oh,” I said, leaning into the couch cushion as I pictured the animals in the zoo. “Yeah, actually that…makes sense.” I paused. “So, what now?”
“It’s up to you,” she said. “I wanted to wait until I was sure you were comfortable with your position here, and then put the ball in your court. And so it is. What do you want to do now?”
What did I want to do? It wasn’t that difficult a question, just a deep, serious one.
I wanted to thrive, as the animals did. This is my enrichment now, working at an incredible, wonderful, terrifying zoo. The experience so far hasn’t been perfect, and I know there are risks, but life isn’t about staying safe. It’s about learning new things and making a difference in the world. And, if you’re lucky, having a job that’s something really special.
THE END
First / Previous
***
Patreon
My Website
storiesbykaren
2024.05.19 06:00 The_Maiden_Jaiden I [18F] discovered that my mother [39F] was cheating on my father [47M] but after telling my father about it their relationship started improving, how do I go about trying to fix my relationship with my mother?
This will be a bit long so there will be a tl,dr at the end if you don't want to read all of it. I'm new at this so bear with me.
Bit of background about myself I [18F] have diagnosed combination type ADHD though for my entire life my doctor has recommended I be tested for Autism and my school has always been saying that I have Autism for as long as I can remember. I have never been emotionally attached to my parents while I am grateful for all they have done for me I have just never been attached to them like I would care if they were gone. When I was in elementary school I was a very hyper child and I was not well behaved at all due to this in kindergarten my teachers would often tell me to go off to another part of the room away from everyone else and give me things to play with so that I would be distracted and they could teach the rest of the class without me disrupting them so I would pretty much be isolated from everyone else. I have been in special needs classes since kindergarten and I have only been put on medication for my ADHD once which was when I was 8 but I was taken off it by my parents as it turned me into a "zombie" I believe the medication was Adderall but other than that I have been unmedicated for ten (10) years. My parents have been married 18 years, I believe they got married because my mother became pregnant with me
I discovered that my mother was cheating on my father about two (2) or three (3) months ago though I had been suspecting it for over six (6) months I just never had any solid proof until two (2) to three (3) months ago. Recently I had my friend send my father the proof of my mother's affair that I have collected but to my surprise after they talked for around 15 about it their relationship has improved significantly compared to how it's been for over a year. This all started in 2023 my mother began constantly face timing this guy we'll call P I had never seen before whenever my father wasn't around when I asked about it she said P was just a friend and so I believed her and I had even spoken to the guy though he didn't sit well with me as he seemed like a prick. After about a month of my mother constantly on the phone with P whenever my father wasn't around I began to wonder if there was more to this, so I began listening in on their conversations whenever I could to see if I could hear anything that indicated that was an affair but I never got anything out of it besides lewd jokes and comments from P about black women. During this time she was giving my father zero affection and had even stopped telling me that she loved me even I said it to her.
Eventually I got fed up with them constantly talking to each other and I was very angry with my mother for taking me and my three (3) year old brother to the park for as she called it "family time" only for her to be off on her own away from us and on her phone the entire time texting and face timing P and even flat out ignoring me numerous times whenever I tried to talk to her or asked her to watch me do something, this upset me because I like getting attention from others and she had denied me that. So after I was fed up with them I went off on my mother for the first time ever while she on the phone with P and said some not nice things to her and said not nice things about P, I also brought up my suspicion of her having an affair which she denied and when I pressed her about why said lied to me about things regarding P such as where he lived, how she knew him, why she only ever called him whenever my father wasn't around, and why she started talking to him she told me it was because she "wasn't allowed to have friends" which is not true she has many friends many of which I know. After that all happened I stopped talking to her for a while and she stopped calling him whenever I was around and I began to wait for opportunities for when I could take her phone and go though it as I knew her password. I couldn't just wait for her to go to bed as she is a light sleeper and my father goes to bed a different times from her so he would see me and question me as to why I was taking her phone or she would end up waking up and question me so I had to wait for when she left her phone unattended which wasn't very often.
Two (2) months ago I was able to swipe her phone and go though it and it was all right there. I love you's, naked pictures, sexual conversations, talk of divorcing my father for P and taking my brother with, and I made sure to get plenty of pictures of it and I even found out that on a trip she took to "Ohio" in which is paid 300$ for plan tickets to and from she had actually not went there and instead went to the state P lives, I also found P's Facebook where he had pictures of himself with my mother together and the dates the pictures were posted and the date my mother left for her trip matched up, during that trip she had actually never even called back home to talk to me, my father, or my brother. For a while after I confirmed my mother was cheating on my father I blamed myself because P asked me if I was okay with him talking to my mother (This was when I still though he was just her friend) and I said I was and it made me feel like I was the one that allowed this to happen but I realized it wasn't my fault and the only one to blame was my mother. After my mother returned from her trip she had actually wanted to have sex with my father for the first time in a while though I suspect she only did it because she had sex with P and wanted to do it with my father in case she became pregnant though I have no evidence to prove this but I do know that birth control does not work for my mother as when she conceived me, my sister, and my brother she was on birth control same as her mother though take that with a grain of salt as my mother is terrible at taking medication at the same time everyday. After that I began to plan out what to do, I didn't care about what would happen to me if they got divorced I was thinking of how I could try and get this to work out best for my brother. My at the time boyfriend had gone though a similar situation as to what I was going though, his mother cheated on his father and divorced him and ran away with her affair, leaving behind her children and leaving her ex-husband in lots of debt from legal fees. I didn't want that to happen to my father so I talked with my at the time boyfriend and my friends as for what I should do and I also looked into what the divorce laws in my state which my state does not count adultery as grounds for divorce.
Eventually I got another chance to go though my mother's phone and it was more of the same old stuff but in one part she told P that she was in the process of filing some kind of legal paperwork and P seemed excited about that there was also a "protected files" thing on her phone that needed a password to get into but since it wasn't the same password as the one to her phone I couldn't get it. Once I saw that I knew I couldn't wait any longer and I had my friend send my father the proof though a burner phone number so none of it was connected me and they wouldn't know I had all of the evidence then I waited for him to confront my mother. It didn't take long for that to happen as soon as she came home from work he was on her about it but he never raised his voice or showed any kind of aggression towards my mother they just calmly talked for about 15 minutes. During so my mother never showed any kind of regret or remorse, she never even said sorry mostly just saying "believe what you want to believe" she told my father that he was just a friend from high school (Though I think there is more to it than that) and that he was obsessed with her and wanted her to divorce my father for him and even her parents where egging her on to do it but she said she didn't want to give up her family and home just to start all over and that if she wanted to leave she would have already left, but that doesn't really make sense to me as if you cared so much about your family and the life you built then wouldn't you show some kind of emotional response when all of that was threatened? she also implied that the lewd pictures she had sent P he had paid her to send them. After they finished talking they hugged and carried on with their day like nothing had happened and they have been doing things they hadn't done in years, cuddling in bed together, kissing, and hugging. Today I checked my mother's phone again and it seems she has stopped talking to P all together and doesn't even have him as a friend of Facebook anymore and I can't find their messages on Facebook messenger anymore though I doubt she really stopped.
TL,DR: My mother cheated on my father but after exposing her cheating to my father their relationship began to improve, I want to try and fix my relationship with my mother for the sake of my brother but I don't know how to go about it
While their relationship is improving my relationship with my mother is in the trash I have told her to stop talking to me or doing anything with me period as I despise cheating but I would like to attempt to fix my relationship with my mother because I want to be in my brother's life and I feel if things between me and my mother sour she will prevent me from being around him and I plan on moving out as soon as I am able to. I have two (2) older half sister's 21 and 25 respectively (Same father different mother) but I don't get to see them much since they have their own lives and one of them even has her own family, my mother also doesn't like them and I feel she played a role in keeping me from seeing them when I was growing up and I have one (1) younger sister that was put up for adoption though it is an open adoption so I still see her every now and then, I have never been able to form any kind of relationship with my siblings as I never grew up with them and I scarcely saw them during my childhood but my brother is the only one I have been able to be with long-term and I want to be able to build a relationship with my brother as he grows up and I believe fixing my relationship with my mother will help me be able to do this. I want to be able to fix things between me and my mother for my brother but at the same time I don't want to reveal that I was the one that caused her little affair to get exposed as I feel that will damage our relationship even more. How should I approach mending things with her without damaging things further? I don't believe cheaters should be given a second chance with the person they cheated on but I want to fix things between me and mother at least temporarily for my brother.
submitted by The_Maiden_Jaiden to relationship_advice [link] [comments]
Bit of background about myself I [18F] have diagnosed combination type ADHD though for my entire life my doctor has recommended I be tested for Autism and my school has always been saying that I have Autism for as long as I can remember. I have never been emotionally attached to my parents while I am grateful for all they have done for me I have just never been attached to them like I would care if they were gone. When I was in elementary school I was a very hyper child and I was not well behaved at all due to this in kindergarten my teachers would often tell me to go off to another part of the room away from everyone else and give me things to play with so that I would be distracted and they could teach the rest of the class without me disrupting them so I would pretty much be isolated from everyone else. I have been in special needs classes since kindergarten and I have only been put on medication for my ADHD once which was when I was 8 but I was taken off it by my parents as it turned me into a "zombie" I believe the medication was Adderall but other than that I have been unmedicated for ten (10) years. My parents have been married 18 years, I believe they got married because my mother became pregnant with me
I discovered that my mother was cheating on my father about two (2) or three (3) months ago though I had been suspecting it for over six (6) months I just never had any solid proof until two (2) to three (3) months ago. Recently I had my friend send my father the proof of my mother's affair that I have collected but to my surprise after they talked for around 15 about it their relationship has improved significantly compared to how it's been for over a year. This all started in 2023 my mother began constantly face timing this guy we'll call P I had never seen before whenever my father wasn't around when I asked about it she said P was just a friend and so I believed her and I had even spoken to the guy though he didn't sit well with me as he seemed like a prick. After about a month of my mother constantly on the phone with P whenever my father wasn't around I began to wonder if there was more to this, so I began listening in on their conversations whenever I could to see if I could hear anything that indicated that was an affair but I never got anything out of it besides lewd jokes and comments from P about black women. During this time she was giving my father zero affection and had even stopped telling me that she loved me even I said it to her.
Eventually I got fed up with them constantly talking to each other and I was very angry with my mother for taking me and my three (3) year old brother to the park for as she called it "family time" only for her to be off on her own away from us and on her phone the entire time texting and face timing P and even flat out ignoring me numerous times whenever I tried to talk to her or asked her to watch me do something, this upset me because I like getting attention from others and she had denied me that. So after I was fed up with them I went off on my mother for the first time ever while she on the phone with P and said some not nice things to her and said not nice things about P, I also brought up my suspicion of her having an affair which she denied and when I pressed her about why said lied to me about things regarding P such as where he lived, how she knew him, why she only ever called him whenever my father wasn't around, and why she started talking to him she told me it was because she "wasn't allowed to have friends" which is not true she has many friends many of which I know. After that all happened I stopped talking to her for a while and she stopped calling him whenever I was around and I began to wait for opportunities for when I could take her phone and go though it as I knew her password. I couldn't just wait for her to go to bed as she is a light sleeper and my father goes to bed a different times from her so he would see me and question me as to why I was taking her phone or she would end up waking up and question me so I had to wait for when she left her phone unattended which wasn't very often.
Two (2) months ago I was able to swipe her phone and go though it and it was all right there. I love you's, naked pictures, sexual conversations, talk of divorcing my father for P and taking my brother with, and I made sure to get plenty of pictures of it and I even found out that on a trip she took to "Ohio" in which is paid 300$ for plan tickets to and from she had actually not went there and instead went to the state P lives, I also found P's Facebook where he had pictures of himself with my mother together and the dates the pictures were posted and the date my mother left for her trip matched up, during that trip she had actually never even called back home to talk to me, my father, or my brother. For a while after I confirmed my mother was cheating on my father I blamed myself because P asked me if I was okay with him talking to my mother (This was when I still though he was just her friend) and I said I was and it made me feel like I was the one that allowed this to happen but I realized it wasn't my fault and the only one to blame was my mother. After my mother returned from her trip she had actually wanted to have sex with my father for the first time in a while though I suspect she only did it because she had sex with P and wanted to do it with my father in case she became pregnant though I have no evidence to prove this but I do know that birth control does not work for my mother as when she conceived me, my sister, and my brother she was on birth control same as her mother though take that with a grain of salt as my mother is terrible at taking medication at the same time everyday. After that I began to plan out what to do, I didn't care about what would happen to me if they got divorced I was thinking of how I could try and get this to work out best for my brother. My at the time boyfriend had gone though a similar situation as to what I was going though, his mother cheated on his father and divorced him and ran away with her affair, leaving behind her children and leaving her ex-husband in lots of debt from legal fees. I didn't want that to happen to my father so I talked with my at the time boyfriend and my friends as for what I should do and I also looked into what the divorce laws in my state which my state does not count adultery as grounds for divorce.
Eventually I got another chance to go though my mother's phone and it was more of the same old stuff but in one part she told P that she was in the process of filing some kind of legal paperwork and P seemed excited about that there was also a "protected files" thing on her phone that needed a password to get into but since it wasn't the same password as the one to her phone I couldn't get it. Once I saw that I knew I couldn't wait any longer and I had my friend send my father the proof though a burner phone number so none of it was connected me and they wouldn't know I had all of the evidence then I waited for him to confront my mother. It didn't take long for that to happen as soon as she came home from work he was on her about it but he never raised his voice or showed any kind of aggression towards my mother they just calmly talked for about 15 minutes. During so my mother never showed any kind of regret or remorse, she never even said sorry mostly just saying "believe what you want to believe" she told my father that he was just a friend from high school (Though I think there is more to it than that) and that he was obsessed with her and wanted her to divorce my father for him and even her parents where egging her on to do it but she said she didn't want to give up her family and home just to start all over and that if she wanted to leave she would have already left, but that doesn't really make sense to me as if you cared so much about your family and the life you built then wouldn't you show some kind of emotional response when all of that was threatened? she also implied that the lewd pictures she had sent P he had paid her to send them. After they finished talking they hugged and carried on with their day like nothing had happened and they have been doing things they hadn't done in years, cuddling in bed together, kissing, and hugging. Today I checked my mother's phone again and it seems she has stopped talking to P all together and doesn't even have him as a friend of Facebook anymore and I can't find their messages on Facebook messenger anymore though I doubt she really stopped.
TL,DR: My mother cheated on my father but after exposing her cheating to my father their relationship began to improve, I want to try and fix my relationship with my mother for the sake of my brother but I don't know how to go about it
While their relationship is improving my relationship with my mother is in the trash I have told her to stop talking to me or doing anything with me period as I despise cheating but I would like to attempt to fix my relationship with my mother because I want to be in my brother's life and I feel if things between me and my mother sour she will prevent me from being around him and I plan on moving out as soon as I am able to. I have two (2) older half sister's 21 and 25 respectively (Same father different mother) but I don't get to see them much since they have their own lives and one of them even has her own family, my mother also doesn't like them and I feel she played a role in keeping me from seeing them when I was growing up and I have one (1) younger sister that was put up for adoption though it is an open adoption so I still see her every now and then, I have never been able to form any kind of relationship with my siblings as I never grew up with them and I scarcely saw them during my childhood but my brother is the only one I have been able to be with long-term and I want to be able to build a relationship with my brother as he grows up and I believe fixing my relationship with my mother will help me be able to do this. I want to be able to fix things between me and my mother for my brother but at the same time I don't want to reveal that I was the one that caused her little affair to get exposed as I feel that will damage our relationship even more. How should I approach mending things with her without damaging things further? I don't believe cheaters should be given a second chance with the person they cheated on but I want to fix things between me and mother at least temporarily for my brother.
2024.05.19 05:42 ButterflyApathetic As a nurse struggling with infertility, caring for patients with miscarriages brings up a lot for me.
I’ve been a nurse for 5.5 years, dealing with infertility for 3.5, at my current job for 2. It’s one of the busiest mother-baby hospitals in my area, and I didn’t fully realize how many D&Cs would come through surgery and recovery where I work. Most hospitals perform them, it wasn’t a question I thought of asking when I took the job.
The fucked up part about it in my head, is that I feel like if some higher power sees me caring for these women, holding space for their stories, while silently fighting a similar battle, maybe if I endure it enough I will be deemed “worthy” of pregnancy.
I don’t really ever tell my patients I’m in a similar situation, it’s usually not appropriate. My therapist was shocked when I told her how often I care for these patients (and you know shocking a therapist isn’t a good thing).
What I have learned is that women are incredibly resilient and I’m humbled to be a part of their care, and also that the world really isn’t fair.
Some patients stick with me, I won’t go into detail but it’s always the nicest women/families and the most heartbreaking stories. And yet these women still find grace and kindness and optimism and strength. I have never been pregnant so I don’t know exactly what it’s like but I can relate.
I know this might be incredibly triggering to some because it is a real experience for many of us, and I’m sorry about that. I just wanted to vent as I feel like this is a specific pain I’ve been given to carry. I’ve never felt like it hinders my ability to do my job, if anything I feel better equipped because I know the pain. But I also feel like it is my duty, and sometimes it really hurts my heart.
submitted by ButterflyApathetic to IVF [link] [comments]
The fucked up part about it in my head, is that I feel like if some higher power sees me caring for these women, holding space for their stories, while silently fighting a similar battle, maybe if I endure it enough I will be deemed “worthy” of pregnancy.
I don’t really ever tell my patients I’m in a similar situation, it’s usually not appropriate. My therapist was shocked when I told her how often I care for these patients (and you know shocking a therapist isn’t a good thing).
What I have learned is that women are incredibly resilient and I’m humbled to be a part of their care, and also that the world really isn’t fair.
Some patients stick with me, I won’t go into detail but it’s always the nicest women/families and the most heartbreaking stories. And yet these women still find grace and kindness and optimism and strength. I have never been pregnant so I don’t know exactly what it’s like but I can relate.
I know this might be incredibly triggering to some because it is a real experience for many of us, and I’m sorry about that. I just wanted to vent as I feel like this is a specific pain I’ve been given to carry. I’ve never felt like it hinders my ability to do my job, if anything I feel better equipped because I know the pain. But I also feel like it is my duty, and sometimes it really hurts my heart.
2024.05.19 05:41 ChesyGordita Pregnant Karen
I used to work at Taco Bell around 3 years ago, so I've had my fair share of Karen's, but this lady, took the cake for the worst one I have dealt with. Every so often when we would get a new menu item, we'd watch videos for it. So I had someone else covering my position so I could do mine. It took me roughly 30 minutes to finish them and the second I get back into my position, I had the unfortunate luck of dealing with this lady. I cashed her out and gave her food to her, everything seemed fine. Until she's banging on the window and demanding I speak to her or she won't leave. So I opened the window and she immediately started cussing me out, at first, I had no clue what she was even talking about. But she proceeds to continue cussing me out that if her food is messed up like last time that she's gonna be pissed because a pregnant women should never have to leave their house again because of someone else. I completely understand being irritated when your food is messed up, but it's not appreciated cussing someone out. She continues to yell at me about how pregnant she is and how rude I apparently was being, even tho I hadn't really said much. She then refused to leave until we gave her a refund because we inconvenienced her by being awful at our jobs. When she finally left, I had to take a second to recompose myself.
Complete side story that the above story made me think of, I also had the horrid luck of dealing with a couple who didn't specify that they wanted the baja freeze and not the soda. So as usual, I'd read back the order and they said it was right. They get to the window, they get cashed out and we hand them the sodas and they're immediately like we didn't order these, we want the freeze. Normally, I'm like whatever and just give them the freeze anyway, but these people ordered 6 drinks. So I'm dumping them out and throwing the cups into the trash. I make the freezes they wanted and the other person I'm working with goes to hand the drinks to them. They refused to take them because I had an attitude and was being a bitch. So someone else had to make them again because I was being so aggressive while making the other freezes. Meanwhile I'm just trying to do it fast because it's fast food and it's practically engraved into your brain. Not only did we waste a lot of soda, we also had to waste the freezes because they touched both of them and this was during the peak of Covid.
submitted by ChesyGordita to CharlotteDobreYouTube [link] [comments]
Complete side story that the above story made me think of, I also had the horrid luck of dealing with a couple who didn't specify that they wanted the baja freeze and not the soda. So as usual, I'd read back the order and they said it was right. They get to the window, they get cashed out and we hand them the sodas and they're immediately like we didn't order these, we want the freeze. Normally, I'm like whatever and just give them the freeze anyway, but these people ordered 6 drinks. So I'm dumping them out and throwing the cups into the trash. I make the freezes they wanted and the other person I'm working with goes to hand the drinks to them. They refused to take them because I had an attitude and was being a bitch. So someone else had to make them again because I was being so aggressive while making the other freezes. Meanwhile I'm just trying to do it fast because it's fast food and it's practically engraved into your brain. Not only did we waste a lot of soda, we also had to waste the freezes because they touched both of them and this was during the peak of Covid.
2024.05.19 05:08 YoMawsaPuss Married man for 20 years cheats repeatedly
I found out a man Id been seeing for over a year is married. Told me he's separated "done and dusted" was the phrase. Doesn't take me long to find people online. Not gonna say how I found out, cos F*** him and I don't want him to know but it was an easy Internet search. Turns out he's done it loads even when she was pregnant with their first baby. His wife is a stupid c***. She said she was told by other women it was just sex, but for us... he met some of my family, we had nights out, I had things in his flat like toothbrush, exorcise hour conditioner, bath robe. He'd put my favourite wine and snacks in his home fridge for me for after work for movie time. He's probably told her since I told her that it was just sex, but it wasn't. He invested time in me. I'm completely done so the time now seems like the biggest con, and I hope he jumps off a balcony. His sons don't need a mother who constantly allows a man to cheat on her, and they also don't deserve a father who disrespectfully cheats on their mother time and time again.
submitted by YoMawsaPuss to DarrenGidneyCheater [link] [comments]
2024.05.19 05:06 noonathecreator My Mom's Boyfriend is the Worst Person Ever
I want to preface this by saying that this isn't a newfound rage for him; I've hated him for as long as I've been able to form my own thoughts and opinions. As I get older, I find he discovers more and more ways to upset me. He loves to provoke me by saying things like, "Are you ready for me to marry your mom?" knowing full well that my mom doesn't want to get married anymore, and talking about how "I'll be his daughter." I love my biological father too much to ever have another man ever call me his child.
Not to shift blame onto my mom, but she gave the car that I was supposed to drive to him for no reason and won't take it back because she doesn't want to be an "Indian giver." He's also a raging misogynist. He calls my 11-year-old sister "too emotional" and says her healthy way of emotions is just her being a sensitive woman. He thinks he can talk to her any kind of way but then is shocked to find out that she hates him. He also says that women should listen and obey which drives me up the wall.
He made my mom keep my youngest brother against her wishes when she found out she was pregnant, promising he'd be there to help take care of him. Now that my brother is actually here, he's barely involved in his life. He has no idea that he's about to start school and only ever comes around to "take care" of him and my younger sister on his days off, when his other daughter, from another relationship, is with him or on school nights and then when he does come he just goes to straight to sleep, and leaves my brother alone to cry bloody murder, knowing he can't speak or call for help. My mom ends up taking care of him in the middle of the night.
I really wish he would disappear, but my mom refuses to leave him.
submitted by noonathecreator to Vent [link] [comments]
Not to shift blame onto my mom, but she gave the car that I was supposed to drive to him for no reason and won't take it back because she doesn't want to be an "Indian giver." He's also a raging misogynist. He calls my 11-year-old sister "too emotional" and says her healthy way of emotions is just her being a sensitive woman. He thinks he can talk to her any kind of way but then is shocked to find out that she hates him. He also says that women should listen and obey which drives me up the wall.
He made my mom keep my youngest brother against her wishes when she found out she was pregnant, promising he'd be there to help take care of him. Now that my brother is actually here, he's barely involved in his life. He has no idea that he's about to start school and only ever comes around to "take care" of him and my younger sister on his days off, when his other daughter, from another relationship, is with him or on school nights and then when he does come he just goes to straight to sleep, and leaves my brother alone to cry bloody murder, knowing he can't speak or call for help. My mom ends up taking care of him in the middle of the night.
I really wish he would disappear, but my mom refuses to leave him.